Architectural Technology Commons^™

Unreal Urbanisms | A User Guide To Engagement Gaming For Community Planning, Temitope Olujobi

Architecture Senior Theses

The virtual environment is the digital manifestation of user’s transnational image of the city. It is an image conceived through small scale and short term interventions that prompt experimentation and iteration. Its development is implemented solely through active participation, community engagement and crowd sourcing. Adversely, planning experimentation in the built environment is a climate that conceives slow, costly and often unimaginative progress. Unreal Urbanisms contends that cities in the built environment can use the User Generated image of city created in virtual environments to collaboratively reinvent and re-imagine the design of the urban environment. In the absence of reality (ie. …

Imaging The Near Future, Fang Fan

Architecture Senior Theses

Instead of critiquing the danger of globalization, it propose a rather positive and Utopian version of it. The role of architecture and infrastructure being ambiguous in a future world after globalization, in which infrastructure is heterogeneous and inhabits a global space.

Also it response to the issue of cultural identity in a globalized world, believing that technological interventions will not only adapt to the needs of traveling and migration for a dense population, but also making infrastructure as a space for entertainment and a place celebrates both global and local cultures in a constantly changing world.

Multidimensional Dialogue Through Architecture | An Exploration Of The Possible Dialogue Between Humans And Walls, Fengqi Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes that architectural design no longer has to be primarily static, but rather it can be dynamically responsive to multiple information streams and conditions.

Multidimensional Dialogue Through Architecture is developed from the understanding of human factors and ergonomics. The dispersed works on research and inference are different ways to explore the interaction between the discipline of architecture and the other fields, such as psychology, engineering, bio-mechanics, physiology, cognitive science, and anthropomorphic. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is not to design a specific building that works perfectly in particular conditions but rather to use architectural elements to mediate …

The Renaissance Of The Railway | Towards A Global High-Speed System, Xiaoyu Li

Architecture Senior Theses

The railway has shown its unique character as a mode of transportation since its invention in Europe during the Industrial Revolution. In the beginning, its carrying capacity made it stand out, transforming human behavior, and stimulating economic productivity. During the 20th century, air travel, the railways, and long-distance road networks have shared the burden of human transportation - in many countries the car and plane have won out. In recent decade, however, new interest in the railway's potential has been generated as a result of the emergence of new technologies like high-speed rail and the maglev system. Greater speeds are …

The Burning Building | Fire As Place, Winnie Tu

Architecture Senior Theses

The importance of fire in human social evolution is widely acknowledged but the extent of its impact is not fully explored. Generally, it is connected to energy, light, purification, illumination, creation, destruction and metamorphosis. Fire’s paradoxical nature has built up many societies throughout human history and has been the primary social driver within communities. Due to technological advances, its energy has been transformed into a distant element which is being used discretely in industrial buildings, hidden under basements, or replaced by other forms of energy. Now, heat, energy, and light is readily available anywhere at any time, eliminating the biological …

Where Wellness Begins, Chelsea M. Wheeler

Architecture Senior Theses

A public need for improved health has called into question the manner in which one's built environment has the ability to affect a person's health and well-being. Recent studies have revealed a correlation between health and residence, suggesting that the built environment has a significant influence on occupant health and well-being. As a result of such studies, Delos Living, a well-building consulting firm, has proposed a set of deign standards that can be used to promote occupant health. The problem with such methods is that there are processes of certification relying primarily on post-deign evaluations. This thesis seeks to align …

Innie/Outie | Renegotiating Figure And Structure, Maxwell Rosner

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that in order to sustain its claim to be socially progressive and accessible enterprise, the discipline of architecture must resist the divorce of figure and structure.

Innie/Outie considers Architecture as a simultaneously typological and teleological proposition. Architects exploit typology as a means of classifying, diagramming, and ultimately flattening and iconicizing ideas about Architecture so as to place them within a broader cultural context, thereby making them intellectually accessible to their audiences. By contrast, architects from the advent of Modernism onwards have displayed a critical preoccupation with the discipline’s teleological potential, the creation of form that follows function …

Subtraction | Construction In Reverse, Sherina S. Zhang

Architecture Senior Theses

The life of a building does not begin at the creation of the new; it starts with the subtraction of the old. As the pace of technological development accelerates, buildings are erected and demolished at an unprecedented rate. Cities use their urban artifacts like skyscrapers, to portray economic and political prowess. For example, the ghost cities of China are relics of a burst financial bubble while Venezuelan ruling party elites name business towers after themselves as a show of power and prosperity. Many parts of the world today are now overbuilt with artifacts that decline into obsolescence. Demolition procedures erase …

Two Lands, One System | Redefining The Border Crossing, Matthew Trulli

Architecture Senior Theses

The Israeli and Palestinian populations each have their own distinct infrastructural system, which operates independently and fails to connect the people in this region. This thesis contends that if a two-state solution is implemented under the guidelines of the 2003 Geneva Accord, new connections can stitch the populations of Israel and Palestine together through a reimagined border system.

These divisive infrastructural networks, which are a result of tense relationships, have also sparked increased violence throughout the region, particularly in Jerusalem. The French Hill, located north of the Old City in Jerusalem, is positioned at a critical point in the infrastructural …

The Foreign Complex | A Cross-Cultural Vernacular, Dexter Cicchinelli

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis investigates transforming a decommissioned military site into a productive part of its host nation’s context. Okinawa consists of a group of islands that make up the southern-most prefecture of Japan. MAP It is situated midway between Tokyo and Manila, and called the “keystone of the Pacific” by military planners because of its strategic location. AERIAL FLIGHT MAP It was the site of the devastating Battle of Okinawa in WWII which prompted an ongoing history of military intervention and occupation. TIMELINE Immediately after the war, displaced Okinawans were put in camps while the military claimed land for bases. Some …

The Seed | Urban Vertical Farming Germinated, Michael Lima

Architecture Senior Theses

A city works as an ecosystem in many ways. However, we currently do not live within that ecosystem, as the difference between an ecosystem and a city is the waste output and food input . Nature and society do not exist independently because there are no spaces of nature unaffected by man. With this in mind we need to reestablish our relationship with nature. Architecture and engineering can be used to create buildings that will allow humans to turn cities into ecosystems. This thesis argues that Urban Vertical Farms will produce social and economic hubs that will be a new …

This Is Not The Color Yellow | A Thesis On Projecting Materiality, Annagrace Walton

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis reimagines the traditional materiality of the architectural façade by coupling the functional and aesthetic expectations of the day-lit building face with the supplementary material and narrative possibilities of a projected night time display. Engaging the potential of new architectural technologies, the thesis celebrates both the novel and sensational qualities of physically manifested materials and textures while simultaneously exploring the future possibilities of virtual and augmented materials through digital projection mapping.

Set in spectacle-friendly Las Vegas, Nevada, the test site for this experimentation is the Flamingo Resort in Las Vegas, a pivotal intersection of pedestrian and motor traffic. Re-cladding …

Absorbency In Tidal Resiliency | The Thickened Pier, Shauna Strubinger

Architecture Senior Theses

The inevitable truth of climate change has placed coastal cities at great risk. Past natural disasters in the United States such as Hurricane Sandy and Katrina, displaced many people because these communities’ only protection was their failed infrastructure.1 Although hard and soft infrastructure strategies have addressed the rising sea level, architecture at the building scale creates static surfaces and divisions that are slow to adapt to flooding and leave little to no room for the ambiguity of tidal flooding and storm surge. Though numerous areas are at risk of sea level rise across the globe, the Chesapeake Bay area is …

Memory + Architecture | The Act Of Forgetting, Mariel Mora Llorens

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes the activation and repurposing of buildings associated with traumatic memories as a means of studying the ways in which architecture embodies memories and aids in the process of forgetting. Architecture and the built environment are linked to the creation and recollection of memories because they trigger four of the senses that are related to memory.

To forget is an active, not passive endeavor. Conscious forgetting is not an act of erasing memories, but transforming them by removing the emotional responses that are produced by our recollection of these memories. Like memories in our brains, buildings that have …

Anarchy City, Zhuocen Yao

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is a political manifesto that seeks to address the current chaotic and undesrable politcal environment on the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen (Anarchy City). Acknowledging that:

-Anarchy City has evolved from political borders whose purpose was to create division.

-Anarchy City possesses width and depth, is a 3-dimensional space of physical presence.

-Anarchy City is a "zone of exception" independent from the entities it sets out to separate.

-Anarchy City is anarchic, free of formal rules and regulations and thus free for interpretation.

-Anarchy City is deliberately distinguished from, and …

Private Room Of The Wheel | A New Form Of Transient Dwelling, Kathy Teng

Architecture Senior Theses

The cross-country highway and road trip are deeply rooted in the American psyche, supported by the rapid growth in ownership of automobiles by American families since the 1940s, establishing a sense of freedom and leisure in their mobile lifestyles. However, other highway users have less control and freedom over their daily routine. These users are part of a vast network of international commerce reliant on the long haul.

The time long-haul truck drivers are away from home is prolonged, with the end of each day spent sleeping in fixed truck cabins and eating at banal truck stops. “ ‘I can …

The Synchronous City, Patricia Olivera

Architecture Senior Theses

Architects’ conceptualizations of cities reference and reflect trends in contemporary culture. During the early 1900's, architects such as Ebenezer Howard, and Tony Garnier speculated on modernist visions of cities, while in the mid-late 1900's radical visions of cities by Archigram, and Archizoom emerged. This project will operate along the framework of previous visions of cities by architects and envision a city rooted on the use of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs).

In order to best engage the provocation of a city based on ICTs as the primary means of exchange and interaction between citizens (as opposed to cars, pedestrians, …

Ambient Intelligence | Cognizant Architecture For The Restless, Anne Judkis

Architecture Senior Theses

In recent decades, technology has proliferated throughout our architectural spaces, from personalized handheld gadgetry to smart systems and appliances. This constant barrage of screens and interfaces that humans interact with for large portions of our day has grown to define our very living conditions, particularly by disrupting our circadian rhythms. It is well documented that lack of sleep can lead to numerous long and short term health problems such as weight gain, irritability, to more sever acute conditions like hallucinations and organ failure. This thesis will address architecture's potential to interact with individuals utilizing smart environments that drive kinetic architecture. …

An Escape | Threshold Space Design In Bath, Xihao Chen

Architecture Senior Theses

Threshold, conventionally referring to the line of the door jamb, serves to mark the transition between exterior and interior, or between two separate spaces. Contemporary thresholds are most often underplayed, being deployed as a thin surface, or intentionally minimized in terms of thickness. This thesis argues that the term threshold should be applied to a broader sense of architectural space. When a threshold is stretched and thickened conceptually from a surface to a volume, it can become a threshold space.

This thesis argues that threshold space is simultaneously a place, a puncture in an architectural boundary, and as the in …

Performative Architecture | A Measurable Means Of Evaluating Formal Systems, Garrett Marini

Architecture Senior Theses

The Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo architectural styles relied on perception and an underlying adherence to classical formulas to provide merit and deem an architecture valid. Up through the 19th century before the emergence of modernism these established canons would reemerge both in isolation and as an amalgam of styles. Henry Russell Hitchcock describes this latter episodic phase of building as exhibiting an eclecticism of style, where features of different styles are used together on a single building like those in the Beaux- Arts tradition. In the early 20th century, Louis Sullivan’s modernist dictum of “Form Follows Function,” while seemingly providing …

The Internet Of Things User Interface | Navigating Physical And Virtual Information Spaces, Nhan Bui

Architecture Senior Theses

It is projected that the boundary between our physical and virtual environments will be further blurred through the emergence of the "internet of things" (IoT). The IoT is a network of physical objects embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity that enables its objects to collect and exchange information on the internet. The most prevalent example of IoT today is your mobile phone. The mobile phone is an electronic device with software that tracks your location via GPS and your preferences based on your interactions on the internet. The collecting and exchanging of information in today' centralized internet infrastructure …

Philep | A Self-Sufficient Pod, Brenna Merola

Architecture Senior Theses

Since 2011 civil war has erupted in Syria causing many Syrians to flee the county. About 9 million people have been internationally displaced causing disruption to the surrounding countries, which have had to create new accommodations. Primary issues have been shortage of basic such as shelter, food and water. Through analysis of disaster situations and refugee conditions, the types of infrastructural systems needed for survival can be better understood. This analysis can determine how to integrate systems into an architectural solution to this global issue: temporary housing pods.

Michael McDaniels, EXO Reaction Housing founder, has created a prototype of a …

Algorithmic Settlements | Modeling Informal Settlement Through Automated Generative Design, Ben Anderson-Nelson

Architecture Senior Theses

The position of the architect when designing is to arbitrate which information is relevant and which is not, and to do so across a broad spectrum of fields. Considering this, Christopher Alexander claimed as long ago as 1964, that “design problems are reaching insoluble levels of complexity.”This thesis focuses on informal settlement growth and how architects can investigate growth as a part of master-planning new housing. Drawing on case studies of settlements, video game logics, and existing architectural tools, a tool was developed to study the growth of settlements. This tool is based on cellular automata, a spatial and algorithmic …

Free Encounters | Giving Form To The Informal Workplace, Ryan Williams

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the "office" as a solely economic construct is no more: Its utility as an engine driving productivity and the accumulation of capital has stalled in our present age of information where value is constructed through knowledge exchange and interaction.

Via the use of new technologies, millennial workers' transition from the college campus to the office has become more seamless and, this thesis argues, it is in this paradigm shift that it is possible to identify a blurring of the public and private spheres. The millennial worker-turned-freelancer's life exists forever suspended between work and play, place and …

The Synchronous City, Patricia Olivera

Architecture Thesis Prep

Architects’ conceptualizations of cities reference and reflect trends in their societies at their time of conception. During the early 1900's architects speculated on modernist visions of cities, during the mid-late 1900's radical visions of cities emerged, and now, this project will operate among the framework of previous visions of cities by architects and envision a city based on digital information and communications technologies. We are living a Digital Revolution and exist in the age of Information. This thesis will explore the ways in which a city will be conceptualized if it was based on digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) …

Unreal Urbanisms, Temitope Olujobi

Architecture Thesis Prep

As virtual cities are made in the transnational image of physical cities the same claims about legibility, public image and the five elements of a city’s can be asserted to virtual environment, however; the bottom up approach to building these virtual cities means the appearance, use and interplay of these elements will operate differently. The research of the virtual cities featured on Unreal Urbanisms will be executed in methods similar to the experiments conducted by Kevin Lynch. The first method will be field research in which we navigate the city and map out my own ways of movement and legibility …

The Image Machine, Jeremy Min Burns

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has always been an image machine. From the Lascaux cave paintings to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to the multimedia installations of the Eameses to the early projects of Diller Scofidio, images and architecture have cohabited persistently and productively for centuries. However, since the dawn of the digital age, the ontological status of images has changed; and in turn so has the relationship between images and architecture. Rather than being anchored to a specific material support, images exist as manipulable data. While some have viewed the digital turns as the transcendence of information beyond the human subject, an era of …

Parity, Hamza Hasan

Architecture Senior Theses

Digital data contributes to an increasingly alienated aspect of our infrastructure. The complex practices of the Internet produce highly specified, engineered objects. Though their forms are ‘optimized,’ their intentions are not: the two primary considerations for the development of the infrastructure of the Internet are energy and security. Each category presents its own deliberations, but both often produce non-architectural, infrastructural elements beyond public visibility. The hidden infrastructure of data storage and mining (the indexing and analysis of data and traffic) produces spaces outside the agency of normative architectural discourse.

The key consideration for the design of the Internet is redundancy, …

Releasing The Unconsciousness | Visualizing The City, Taihui Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores how subway stations lost their identity as strategic node of connectivity which constructed the prevailing image of New York City. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Sigmund Freud famously compared the human mind to the city of Rome. He argues that both contain strata of memory and history which have accumulated over the years through a messy and ad-hoc process. Like Rome, New York City also has a layered history, albeit not as deep.

This thesis contends that the subway entrance serves as an experiential entre into the unconscious experience of the unknown elements of the past. …

The Question Of Slim | A Critical Look At Manhattan's Recent Trend Towards Slenderness, Raymond Sova

Architecture Senior Theses

Manhattan’s real estate market since the turn of the 20th century to present day can be characterized as an extreme optimization of the economical elements of architecture. Most of the buildings in Manhattan’s diverse and complex skyline share a tenacious desire to maximize the profitability and feasibility of a site while minimizing overall building expenditure. This concept is defined in Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York,’ as the relationship between “the Needle” and “the Globe.” Seemingly immeasurable wealth and investment have given rise to a new sub-typology of super-tall strikingly skinny (Slim) residential skyscrapers that may very well result in the demise …