Interior Architecture Commons^™

Deaccessioning The Studio, Ayla Rexroth

Theses and Dissertations

I have created several micro-businesses that provide tools and facilitate experiences to help people meet their potential. The form of the businesses has ranged from a street based art gallery inside the drawers of a modern dresser to a business that sews more and bigger pockets into women’s outerwear.

Nest - Caring For The Caregiver, Ashley Whitehead

Theses and Dissertations

Today, more than ever, there exists an overlap between hospitality and healthcare industries; with the impact being felt in the way hospital interiors are designed. This influence impacts the patient’s experience but focuses very little on the experience of the caregiver. Caring for a sick child takes an emotional, mental, and physical toll on a family. It is especially challenging to care for a sick family member when away from the comfort and security of the family’s private home. This project explores that challenge through the interior design of a space that, for both patient and family, is restorative, healing, …

Interhouse: A Place For Growing Up And Growing Adults, Nilufar Makhamatova

Theses and Dissertations

Society has become increasingly segregated by age which lessens the opportunities for communication between generations. Before the Internet, children and adolescents typically learned through traditional means - their parents, school teachers, and life experiences. Adults believed they were capable of recognizing and addressing the needs of children and adolescents. (Strom & Strom, 2012) Now, the global media is widely accessed by people of all ages which gives it the ability to influence a large population in different ways. This has led to children and adolescents being more heavily influenced and educated by the media than other traditional sources. Adolescents, in …

The Exchange: Curating Authenticity + Interaction, Sarah Webb

Theses and Dissertations

For a physical space to have an emotional impact on those who experience it, we must consider the connection and relationship between objects and experience, and how people make individual connections to insentient places. It is this symbiotic relationship that allows a building or space to attain a “soul”.

Through the adaptive re-use of a Richmond, Virginia building, this thesis project explores strategies of staging physical interaction and organic experiences through art and culture in the context of a mixed-use niche hotel.

Virtual / Reality: Designing Permeable Spaces For Social Well-Being In The Digital Age, Thomas R. Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

The digital age has pushed people closer together than ever before. A device that fits in the palm of your hand allows instantaneous communication with billions of other human beings. People share everyday experiences, passing thoughts, personal photos, sometimes privately, often publicly. Distances between people and places feel reduced. Never has it been so easy to be so emotionally close to so many people.

But as digital experiences become routine, our collective perceptions of closeness and distance shift. As virtual communities become larger, so does our awareness of the actual distance between things. Even though humans can be genuinely close …

Heritage Hotel: A Marriage Of Heritage Tourism And Boutique Hospitality, Leah A. Embrey

Theses and Dissertations

As defined by Wai Mun Lim and Mel Endean in 2009 in their article “Elucidating the aesthetic and operational characteristics of UK boutique hotels” in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Boutique hotels have less than 100 rooms, have an individualistic and unique design, are often in historic buildings, and have highly personalized service for guests. I found that a boutique hotel that focuses on historic preservation and heritage tourism does four things. First, it respects the history of the building it is housed in, preserving as much of the original structure as possible. It also takes advantage of …

Boomerang Studio: Community Design For Action, Jessica Walton

Theses and Dissertations

An arts education space, focusing on concepts of design thinking aimed at providing low income middle and high school teens of color the opportunity to learn about interior design, architecture and crafts. Ultimately, Boomerang Studio hopes to engage students in the world of design as a means of creating greater diversity within these disciplines.

A City Winery - Revealing Process + Promoting Interaction, Eline Warren

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project is an exploration of process in both design and winemaking. Wine has long been a part of Virginia’s history and culture and in recent years has influenced architecture and design that is specific to winemaking and hospitality. Through an interior intervention, this project addresses the many challenges of marrying production and hospitality design criteria under one roof. The final design encourages understanding of process through links between production and consumption with both a winemaking facility and laboratory that are integrated into the surrounding hospitality-oriented spaces. This visual exposure to the facility stimulates patron interest and intuitive knowledge …

Momentum Clinic For Teen And Young Adult Cancer Patients, Merian O'Neil

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the needs of teen and young adult cancer patients undergoing long-term chemotherapy treatments and the design of an outpatient clinic that accommodates this population’s unique needs. Most teens endure long-term treatments in a pediatric facility targeted primarily for children, while others are treated in adult facilities. Teens have different privacy and social needs than children, and while they are not adults, they are involved in their own treatment decisions, unlike children. The target age group for this study is teens and young adults, ages thirteen to twenty-two. A common theme emerged from research and interviews conducted in …

Kensington Center For Health: An Exploration Of Health, Wellness And The Built Environment., Rose Peck

Theses and Dissertations

This is a project that explores how design can integrate medical treatment and community support. The high prevalence of chronic disease is creating a national healthcare crisis. Chronic disease is the leading cause of death and disability in the United States. Consideration of a holistic sense of well-being that focuses on disease resistance, resilience, and self-management is necessary to realize and sustain health outcomes. Community engagement is imperative to improve adherence rates for lifestyle changes. This project aims to design a community wellness space that is focused on prevention, resilience and self-management. A new typology of a community-anchored wellness clinic …

The Richmond Maker Museum: The Evolution Of Process, Erin E. Casey

Theses and Dissertations

The Richmond Maker Museum is a working museum design, offering an inside look at past achievements, juxtaposed with the unlimited future possibilities of an evolving, active maker culture. It is a dynamic place designed to allow makers to showcase skills, take risks, engage the public, and grow their craft in real time. The museum displays finished pieces, introduces makers, demonstrates the processes they employ in their work, and invites the community to meet the artisans who, through skill, ingenuity, and hard work, make the artifacts on display. This type of educational museum experience does not currently exist on this scale …

The Immersive Media Library @ Vcu, Michael Rosenthal-Mix

Theses and Dissertations

Answering the call issued by John Underkoffler in 2010 about the future of UI, I have imagined the Immersive Media Library (IML) as an annex of the main VCU library, offering a concentration of visually immersive spaces to compliment the space the university is already building in the renovated Cabell Library. The design is new in that the emphasis is placed on the collaboration between librarians and visitors in creating new work. Focusing on the interpersonal might be unexpected from program with such an emphasis on new technology - but I see it as vital part of the new computing …

A Modern Craftsman Revival, Eugene M. Rader

Theses and Dissertations

Introducing concepts of Craftsman kit construction to the interior, as well as modern technology to lessen the cost of handcrafted details, opens the possibility to new methods of modular design in which interior units are configured around structural skeletons and central base points that provide supply lines to residential units. One example is Dutch design firm Minale-Maeda’s Keystones, a 3D printed connector that holds together any necessary components, like furniture. These keystones can be printed at home and save time and the need to obtain anything but essential components (website). The design firm works to create an “ongoing awareness of …

School For Autism - Responding To Autism, Roy D. Abdun-Nur

Theses and Dissertations

Schools can often be overstimulating environments for children with autism. Creating a space where these children can thrive is what this project explored. The site used for this exploration was the Lewis Ginter Recreation Association on the north end of Richmond, VA. Children with autism have very sensitive needs, so exploring these needs within the context of an educational setting provided for an in-depth journey into the lives of those affected by autism.

Music And Movement, Yvonne M. Lefrancois

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this project is to provide a musical hub for the learning, practice, and performance of music for students ages 10-18 in order to cultivate trust and education in the community. This project examines the role music plays as a vital part of our communities and city resources. The communities we live in should not only supply opportunities for the music but support the music. Support of the music can allow cultural learning in the community and create a new pattern of education between parent and child. Just as most school systems support the learning of math and …

Creating Place For A Placeless Generation, Laura Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Making up one quarter of the current United States population, some 80 million Generation Y-ers are changing the ways in which we live, work and play. Dubbed “Millennials” this population is comprised of those individuals born between 1980 and 2000. This generation is the first to have been raised with cell phones, the internet, and reality television. The “Selfie” or “Me Generation” is snubbed for narcissism and an instant gratification attitude. Yet on the whole Millennials have progressive values, are well educated, are conscious of their health and are optimistic about the future despite coming of age during the Great …

The Majlis Metamorphosis: Virtues Of Local Traditional Environmental Design In A Contemporary Context, Shaikha Almahmoud

Theses and Dissertations

In the Arabian Gulf countries, the majlis is a central part of the house. The most public space within it, the majlis represents the household’s occupants to society and its social and economic status. As the house reflects culture and civilization, so the family is understood as a micro-level society of individuals raised in its institutions. Hence, the house is a manifestation of family structure, religious beliefs, and individual needs and desires, reflecting the family’s economic, cultural, and social backgrounds and aspirations. The majlis offers a unique space in Arab societies, articulating cultural and social factors that directly impact identity …

Old To New And New To Old: A Study Of Dematerializing Transitions Between Old And New Architecture, Jane Ellen T. Moss

Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the juxtaposition of classical and contemporary architectural forms as they coexist within Richmond City’s urban fabric. It is an assessment and understanding of how the built environment can reinforce transitions between old and new in ways that both integrate architectural differences and embrace historical identity.

Richmond, and a large part of Virginia in general, has been shaped by the historical events of its existence. The sights of the city reveal a clash of the old and new. It is a city where newer developments and traditional elements have been trying to co-mingle.

The design incorporates a contemporary …

Lucky Strike House: The Space Between, Monika Shreves

Theses and Dissertations

With the onset of one of the worst economic downturns in recent history, the face of poverty is changing. This project seeks to explore a design solution aimed at helping a newly emerging segment of the population: the “half homeless”, formerly middle class individuals/families who lost their jobs and homes during the recession.

Set in the building known as the Lucky Strike Power Plant, the project contains two distinct, but overlapping, programs: 1) multi-family housing, and 2) a continuum of supportive services accessible to both the residents and the community at large. The main focus of this project is the …

616 Hull Street_ Interaction Through Discovery In Design, Elizabeth T. Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

The community of Old Town Manchester lies across from downtown Richmond on the south side of the James River. Annexed in 1910, Manchester was the industrial hub of the city and home to the Chesterfield Railroad, the first railway in Virginia and used to transport coal. These industrial roots are still evident today in the warehouses and manufacturing facilities that continue to operate or have been repurposed.

The building of focus is located on the corner of bustling Hull Street and quiet 7th Avenue. Distinctive in its stone masonry exterior, 616 Hull was constructed in the 1920s as a Chevrolet …

Second Skin, Britta Bielak

Theses and Dissertations

Reason for writing. The space of confusion and possibility where the practices of art and design collide seems to be in a constant amoebic state. This place of shared influence and growth seems to pervade not only the intersection of these two disciplines, but within interior design, the intersection of people and space. How can the boundaries between an interior space and it’s inhabitants be as richly embedded with tension and opportunity as the edges where art and design meet? Like art and design, how can a space and it’s visitors interact to affect one another?

Problem + Methodology: This …

Reorientation: A Journey Through Spatial Sequence, Eman Alsulaimani

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction | The building for this thesis project is one with a long history. Originally built as the First Baptist Church, it was converted over the years to fulfill a role completely different from its original intent; a student center! During this process and after a series of renovations, the Broad Street main grand entrance lost its place and the arrival into the building became much less choreographed. Essentially, over time one could say that this building had been flipped around, it has lost its original intent, grandeur and purpose. Hypothesis | I challenge the idea of flipping the building …

Story-Telling Through The Design Of A Permanent Mission Trip Training And Housing Facility, Betty L. Rowe

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed- assembly space is designed as a permanent mission trip training and housing facility. Predominately the space will be used by middle school and high school youth. By creating a modern experience, teens are given a better opportunity to engage in a space they can relate to. It becomes a space where young people feel encouraged to share their feelings, beliefs and desires as they journey into a closer, more intimate relationship with a higher being.

The space is intended to serve a transient population. A large portion of the first floor is devoted to communal gathering which provides …

Form-Function Relationships In The Development Of Lds Church Architecture, Ebbie Lavar Davis

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the functions: ordinances, meetings, programs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the development of the physical plant. Inversely, the effect of Church house forms on the development of Church function was investigated. It was found that:
1. In Latter-day Saint Church development, form has always followed function.
2. Function has influenced form to a great extent. Priesthood, meeting, or other program needs are a prime factor in changing the form and design of Church buildings.
3. Form has influenced function only insofar as the physical …