Interior Architecture Commons^™

Wood City: Timberizing The City’S Building Blocks, Stephen Luoni

Community Design Center Faculty Publications and Presentations

"Wood City" applies mass timber engineering to the 19 building categories that essentially shape our built environments, otherwise financialized as real estate products by Wall Street. Suburban offices, fast-food restaurants, metal warehouses, big-box grocers, garden apartments, single-family houses, hotels, self-storage facilities, assisted living facilities, strip-shopping centers, etc. constitute 75% of the built environment. Given that the US will double its built environment in just one generation coupled with the urgency to develop low-carbon futures, what if cities were built from the only construction system sequestering carbon and engineered to be “energy positive” – wood? Real estate value chains are undergoing …

Modular Interior Partitions In Commercial Housing: A Case Study, Adam David Meleo

Construction Management

The ability to modify an interior space with ease and reasonable cost is beneficial to designers, owners, and end-users. Modular interiors are not a new concept. Modular interior partitions can come in the form of Japanese Shoji screens, as well as folding walls that would be found in a convention center. While not new in concept, the market for products that allow partitioning an interior space with ease appears to be growing with the introduction of innovative products and solutions. This paper will focus on two student housing projects in San Luis Obispo, California, with regards to their design and …

Designed For The Camera: Irish Interior Makeover Television 1996–2014, Neville Knott

Dissertations

This thesis examines how television makeover programmes, broadcast in Ireland between 1996 and 2014, mediate the professional practice of interior design. It argues that the programme-makers, in seeking to engage viewers, used a series of strategies—notably the suppression of professional and educational knowledge about interior design—to convey an image of staged coherence that was arrived at unproblematically. In that process, it will be argued, interior design knowledge got lost, and entertainment triumphed. Focusing on these strategies, the thesis considers how the production process used interior design, nonetheless, to attract an audience and generate ratings, focusing on the relationship between amateurs …

New Considerations In Designing The Circulation Elements To Reduce Covid 19 Infection, Sara Chamass, Selim Kilani, Anas Mattar

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

As a result of the global pandemic recession of COVID-19, cities have imposed several restrictions to control this outbreak by closing their frontiers and forcing social distancing. The conjecture has arisen as to how architecture could be entirely influenced. This field is involved in finding solutions to reduce the spread of this pandemic which became a new issue. Unfortunately, due to the shortage of the movable and flexible circulation elements, the considerations and architectural preventive measures taken were affected during the planning of the post-pandemic built-environment. This paper, therefore, aims to propose a checklist of new design considerations for the …

Restoring History: Mixed-Use Hotel & Retail Center, William Chase Sisk

Symposium of Student Scholars

Monroe, Georgia, is a unique small town, located halfway between Athens and Atlanta. The small-town atmosphere and amenities have become a popular destination for people attracted to the historic buildings, downtown events and UGA football home games. Monroe is popular for its wedding venues, antique malls, and car shows, but there are not enough hotel rooms. Currently within the historic downtown, there are only one bed and breakfast, two AirBNB’s, and no hotels, although every downtown storefront is occupied by restaurants, retail stores, and businesses.

The need for overnight accommodations has raised the possibility of a new mixed-use hotel and …

An Architect’S Perspective On Indoor Gardens, Chanhyuk Joo

International Programs

Started question with "How to prepare designing an indoor garden in an Architecture perspective." This poster explains requirements for indoor gardens in terms of engineering and physical design, as well as expectations for the future.

Sullivan Sustainable Housing Unit, Riem Rostom

2021 Spring Reports (Sullivan)

Students in ENGR401 were tasked with providing recommendations for an energy efficient heating and cooling system for a housing design provided by IAD251. Students performed necessary calculations and compared information with sustainability factors. There are also further recommendations for building sustainable housing.

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Covid-19 Infection Control On Visual Art Installations In Hospitals With Pediatric Patients, Shannon Kimich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the impact of COVID-19 infection control on visual artwork in pediatric hospitals and hospitals caring for pediatric patients. The study involved five hospitals in three southern America states and addressed visual artwork and art installations. The researcher administered an internet-based survey to participants in job functions related to hospital administration, environmental services, and project management across the facilities and received participation from 18 respondents. Additionally, telephone interviews were conducted with three participants with the job titles project manager/analyst, child-life specialist, and environmental services director. Survey questions were designed to examine visual art programs in selected children’s hospitals …

Mélange De Motifs: Custom Pattern Designs Inspired By The Interiors, Architecture, And Gardens Of Vaux-Le-Vicomte, Jill Christine Harmon

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

How can a historic precedent be successfully employed to inform modern design? History will always provide a degree of influence in contemporary design. In design, a historic precedent can be the backbone of a creative concept and stands as a relevant and informative aspect throughout the project. The precedent acts as a basis in developing designs with substance and meaning and is a fundamental practice in architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design. Delving into the history of Vaux-le-Vicomte, often referred to as Vaux, provided three relevant aspects which compose the historic precedent for this MFA project. First, the creative initiative …

The Art Of The Climbing Wall, Gavin P. Day

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The aim of my thesis is to share the intricacies of climbing wall design, and the building blocks of art, science, and philosophy that go into the work. I will also be detailing my journey of learning through mentorship, trial and error, and my own experience with climbing. All of this culminates in a redesign of the current climbing wall at ETSU’s Basler Center for Physical Activity. While there is limited information on climbing wall design theory, insight is given through industry standards, competition regulations, and interdisciplinary design philosophies

El Croquis Night: Excursus Into Nocturnal Obliteration In Architectural Media, Javier Fernández Contreras

Interiority

El Croquis is one of the most prestigious architectural magazines in the world. Founded in 1982 by Richard Levene and Fernando Marquez, it publishes five monographs every year. The volumes dedicated to established Pritzker Prize names like OMA Rem Koolhaas, SANAA Sejima & Nishizawa, Herzog & de Meuron, Alvaro Siza or Rafael Moneo, are considered their respective oeuvre complète. The journal almost never publishes nocturnal photographs of interior spaces. The same goes for other major architecture magazines. In February 2020, HEAD – Genève invited Richard Levene to create a night edition of El Croquis. The workshop focused on the …

Prioritising Storage Practices: A New Approach To Housing Design Thinking, Elena Marco, Katie Williams, Sonja Oliveira

Interiority

Inhabitants of UK housing have more possessions than ever, whilst space for living in standardised houses is at a premium. The acquisition of material possessions, and how it affects both space and inhabitants’ wellbeing, has not previously been considered in architectural practice or housing policy research fields. This paper addresses this gap, by exploring how practising architects design for the storage of material possessions in housing. For the first time, it places storage practices at the centre of housing design thinking, by engaging practising architects in a design intervention to explore original design solutions that support inhabitants’ lives and lifestyles, …

Between Inhabited Interiors And Interiors On Display: Exploring Spatial Boundaries At Rosenborg Castle, Ane Pilegaard

Interiority

When visiting museums, we meet various types of physical barriers, such as glass vitrines, railings, and extended ropes, which have been put there to protect the objects on display. Such barriers are often accused of creating an unfavourable distance to museum objects but can also be thought of in more positive terms, as this article will seek to demonstrate. Based on analyses of museum display boundaries at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, where visitors can experience objects from The Royal Danish Collection within historic interiors, the article looks into the effects of such boundaries on the museum experience. The article explores …

The Public Interior Space Within Louvre Abu Dhabi Dome: A Visual Reflection, Karim Musfy, Marco Sosa, Lina Ahmad

Interiority

What defines an interior space? Is a traditional threshold the only building element considered as a clear component demarcating interiority from the outside environment? Could light or water be just as clear? How can scale challenge the identification of an internal space? Is a living space more identifiable as an interior volume? What about an internal courtyard for a family house outlining the beginning of a nation or the opposite extreme in the time-space continuum, a 24,000 square meters domed roof over a series of intimate spaces establishing a nation’s cultural intention internationally? Can a central space act as a …

New Territories: Reimagined Interiorities, Lucy Marlor

Interiority

At a time where boundaries within society, culture, and technology are continually challenged and redefined, even the commonly understood binary oppositions within areas such as gender, age, and digitality (Negroponte, 1995) are becoming less visible, measurable, and socially accepted. In this new realm where even physical reality is encroached upon by the digital, are the tangible and perceived distinctions between interior and architecture also becoming extinct? The emergence of more flexible and transitional space appears to not only blur the boundaries of inside and outside, interior and architecture, but also the previous distinctions of function. Space is no longer solely …

Virtual Interiorities, Adam Nash, Kate Geck, Andy Miller

Interiority

A practice of the virtual offers to interior design a dynamic conception of interiority that transcends simplistic representative notions of space, recognising the inseparable relationship of space and time, as well as an understanding of interiority as lived experience and its attendant amenability to active interpretation and therefore design. Ultimately, a practice of the virtual facilitates an understanding of interior as a dynamic and ongoing network of relations, and interior design as individuating participation in this network. In this article, we describe in detail an expanded notion of the virtual, and extrapolate how an understanding of this notion might help …

Animated Interior, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

An animated interior represents a departure from the idea of interior space as a permanent and timeless entity. The understanding of animated characters in the interior allows for the emergence of our complex relationship with space through various forms of engagement. The understanding of an animated interior offers further possibilities that become the basis of design practice. This issue of the Interiority journal presents a collection of inquiries and approaches that reveal various animated qualities of the interior in various contexts. The articles address the character of the interior, which is dynamic and dependent upon various temporal conditions of inhabitation. …

Grafting Interiority: Generative Methodologies Between The Natural And The Synthetic, Rana Abudayyeh

Interiority

Design is approaching a crucial period where the exchange between interior and exterior systems needs to be rethought and addressed from the standpoint of resilience and innovative environmental responses. The era of the detached interior bubble that is climate controlled and therein severed from natural systems is no longer justified or feasible. Interior spaces must respond to environmental conditions and proactively engage natural systems. The paper examines grafting methodology as an interior spatial formula that aims to generate complex sectional strategies for new programmatic typologies. It showcases work from a third-year interior architecture studio where students utilised natural landscapes as …

Sensory Refreshment: Tcm Reconsidered, Ni Tang

Masters Theses

With the rapid development and expansion of our cities and the economic demand placed on residents, city dwellers are under more personal stress than ever. Long commutes, overtime work, irregular rest, unhealthy diets, urban pollution and noise all adversely impact wellbeing. These unhealthy conditions overwhelm the mind and make residents mentally and physically sub-healthy. Sub-health is a state between complete health and sickness, which is especially common in large cities. The sub-health rate in Shanghai and Beijing has reached more than 70%.

Chinese medicine can regulate the human body from a holistic perspective and help solve sub-health problems. Chinese medicine …

Posthuman Ecologies, Christine Chang

Masters Theses

As we move further into the Anthropocene — an epoch of geologic time where human activity has caused significant impact on the planet’s natural systems — we can no longer ignore the environmental consequences of our actions. The artificial disconnect between humankind and wilderness has caused us to create built environments that reinforce a false separation from natural landscapes.

Modern architectural movements push us towards surroundings that create disconnect from our sensory relationship to matter and temporality. We must engage with the inevitable decay of the built environment to restore our neglected senses. Reconnecting architecture to local ecologies through adaptive …

Space Between Memories: Pause, Young Jae Cho

Masters Theses

The early 20th century was an important time for economic development and modernization around the world. However, the Republic of Korea spent decades suffering under Japanese colonial rule. For that reason, preservation or demolition of buildings built during the Japanese colonial period remains a polarizing topic. Many of these structures have been demolished or neglected, unrecognized for their historical and architectural value. Although Koreans learn about the colonial era in school, if those physical places experienced in their daily life gradually disappear, they will forget this difficult history. These structures should be a space where people can feel historical lessons …

Living · Sharing · Connecting : Rebirth Of Longchang Apartments Heritage Community, Linhong Jiang

Masters Theses

The Longchang Apartments, which the British designed during the Shanghai Concession Period, is considered a building of great historical importance. However, the disconnected relationship between this historic building and the ever-developing modern society surrounding it becomes more and more evident over time. The backward living conditions of residents and management fail to meet contemporary needs, which intensifies various conflicts between different user groups within the historic site.

This thesis proposes a different way of living in high density within historic structures and explores a new program focusing on user groups’ behavior and interaction to activate the site. The adaptive reuse …

Unraveling The Living: Reframing Cramped Housing As A Social Living, Dong-Zoo Han

Masters Theses

In Seoul, people of the poorest economic status live in compressed units no larger than 32 square feet, known as “sliced housing.” The majority of these residents hope for better living conditions, but they are unable to move for multiple reasons. This is an interwoven sociological issue that requires intervention proposals that improve the physical and mental wellbeing of the people in these housing situations. This thesis demonstrates possible architectural interventions that will enhance the quality of life and support systems within Seoul’s “sliced housing” villages.

Other urban villages in Seoul in similar states of degradation have been destroyed, with …

Remember Me: How We Can Modify The Home For People With Dementia, Wenjin Wang

Masters Theses

More than 50 million people live with dementia worldwide. For reasons of familiarity, affordability, and psychological comfort, the home is uniquely preferred by people with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers for aging in place. Ample studies show that built environmental features (e.g., furnishing, lighting, layout) influence the daily lives of PwD. These features can be modified easily and with fewer disruptions to daily life at home. However, most PwD and their caregivers usually have little knowledge of what can be achieved through simple interventions to environmental features.

There is a great need for an exhibition to explain the dementia-friendly home …

Reinforcing Connection Within Collective Housing: A New Vision Of Red Steel City, Guangyi Niu

Masters Theses

Red Steel City is a historical residential complex built 64 year ago for the first workers of the Iron & Steel Complex in Wuhan, China, under the help design guidance of the former Soviet Union. Equipped with educational and medical facilities, this “City” nearly meets every need of the residents. Where residents worked boosted the development of steel, which is considered a prerequisite for industrialization, and where they lived became the template for the era when China was finding its footing in its incredible drive to industrialization.

The original plan of Red Steel City did not consider practical conditions like …

Health + Efficiency House: A Take On The 50x50 Glass House, Eva Wieczorek, Krystal Bacon, Kaylee Hernandez, Jennifer Long, Moises De La Cruz, Elle Gallmann, Jurgis Vaišvila

Architectural Engineering

Under the guidance of Professor Edmond Saliklis and Professor Meredith Sattler, four Architectural Engineering students joined forces with three Architecture students from both Cal Poly and Vilnius Technical University in Lithuania. The portfolio exemplifies a complete reimagination of Mies van der Rohe and Myron Goldsmith's 50x50 Glass House as if it were designed today in Palm Springs, CA. The work completed in this interdisciplinary studio includes historical context, abstract creation, architectural and structural design all relating back to the Glass House.

The Nolan House, Keiko-Ann K. Sanders, Gilbert C. Munoz, Michael A. Bahr, Titas Kalvalnis

Architectural Engineering

As a precedent, The Green Team analyzed the history of glass architecture, literature, and culture. Based on our research, we found that glass is often depicted as breakable, delicate, and a way to expose or display aspects that would otherwise be hidden. We challenged ourselves to incorporate safety and privacy into our glass house as a way to combat the pre-existing notions of glass in architecture.

Williamson County Building Safety Plan, Jack Combs

City and Regional Planning

My senior year at Cal Poly offered me a vast array of opportunities for enriching my knowledge of the field of city and regional planning. The most impactful of my experiences was the time I spent working for the facilities department of Williamson County, Texas. This department is responsible for constructing and maintaining all of the buildings owned and occupied by Williamson County; this includes more than 60 buildings and more than 2,000,000 square feet. Additionally, as the fastest growing county north of Austin with roughly 600,000 residents, this department had many pertinent development projects to attend to.

As an …

Reclaiming Modern Architecture: An Urban Visual Narrative Of Kuwait City, Yara Hadi

Masters Theses

For a city to be remembered, to be successful, to be desired, a distinct connection has to be made between the city-dweller and the city itself. In 1938 Kuwait transformed from a town that relied on trade into a single resource exporter of oil, fueling a booming modern economy. The influx of the automobile and modern solutions to Western ways of living would forever change the city. In the speed of these developments, critical aspects of city planning such as the pedestrian and the harsh desert climate were overlooked. Kuwait began to lose a connection between the city and its …

Augmented City, Xing Huan

Masters Theses

Racial hatred, diplomatic conflicts, financial wars, environmental destruction, Covid-19 raging. In this imperfect world that doesn't run in the way we want, we may grow numb, weary, and look for alternate realities that act as a relief from these increasingly bizarre events. And due to the current pandemic, ordinary individuals forced into isolation in a strange foreign city risk losing their psychological identity as well as their connection with the society. The city becomes a metaphor of this alienation as, in some cases, it lacks a sense of belonging by already built urban structures that disenfranchise both the individual and …