Interior Architecture Commons^™

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 …

Woven Healing: Reimagining The Rural Health Center, Mahasweta Jayachandran

Masters Theses

Seventy-five percent of India’s population is rural. Of those rural citizens, almost nine out of ten lack access to adequate health facilities. While the existing composition of any village in India is housing, temple, and agriculture, the physical well-being of residents has no home. When the local government builds a new isolated healthcare center, these disconnected centers become deserted and a place of unhealthy activity.

How do you effectively embed a new spatial intervention within an existing system of the village that supports health, rather than extending the boundaries of the village into sprawl? Historical study of medical practice in …

Going Back, Zhiyi Hilary He

Masters Theses

The acceleration of social urbanization and education universalization in the past 30 years of China has promoted the popularization of mandarin among the public. Meanwhile, the dialect, as a unique regional language, is gradually dying away. In the city where I grew up, Taizhou, only the elders are likely to speak Taizhou dialect frequently in their life, while others prefer to use mandarin rather than dialect. The truth is the usage rate of dialect has gradually decreased from generation to generation. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide an opportunity for the public to “dialogue with the past” …

Overflowing Boundaries: Competition And Mutualism In Urban Villages, Chen Zhang

Masters Theses

Villages besieged by urban sprawl have been isolated and forgotten, broken from urban texture and social relationships. However, this kind of encirclement has no clear boundary and is entirely permeable. Infiltration and overflowing occur on various scales. On the urban scale, the old villages gradually abandoned the agricultural lifestyle and connected with the new industrial city. On the architectural scale, urban villages attempt to integrate with cities by imitating the urban façade wherever they come into contact along the fluid boundary. Some warehouses, small plants, and small workshops have appeared in urban villages. On the human scale, people's lives overflow …

Ritualizing Of Space In The 21st Century: Fostering Of Communal Identity Through Celebration Of Tamil Culture, Mridula Swaminathan

Masters Theses

South India is known for its traditional belief systems and the numerous architectural manifestations of these beliefs. The scale and extravagance of temples and the palaces for the kings are an example of how important culture and ritual were in the past. Now some of these structures, such as the Thirumalai Nayakar Palace in the city of Madurai, the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu, stand in a modified societal context with no cultural or ritualized significance. Moreover, the host of this project, the Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal, situated in a city brimming with multiple sacred rituals performed along the city streets, …

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 …

Terminal: Through The "Windows" Of A Tram Car Museum, Yuyi Si

Masters Theses

The typical city museum is more concerned with the city’s past: focused on founding myths or historical events. The content is frozen and lacks engagement. Simultaneously, the city itself develops rapidly and shifts, just as the citizens move and change. To address this disconnection, it is necessary to create an active city museum that joins place, memory, and people by putting museum learning in context throughout the city and engaging audiences in their daily lives.

Dalian in Liaoning Province, China, is recognized as a historical and tourism district with a unique city fabric and collection of architectural styles. The city …

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 …

Remembering Chinatown: A Fusion Of Food, Identity, & Memory, Robert Yang

Masters Theses

In 2016, the Chinese American Restaurant Association recorded a total of 50,000 Chinese restaurants operating in the United States, far exceeding the number of McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFCs, and Wendy’s combined. In the near two centuries that Chinese people have been a part of the American fabric, our food has become one of the country’s most popular ethnic cuisines. While these restaurants stand as testaments to the tenacity and entrepreneurship of the Chinese immigrant, they are also reminders of the centuries of adversity Chinese Americans have endured. The racial divisions triggered by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 have resulted …

The Second Home: Breaking The Cycle Of Lonely Death, Woohee Kim

Masters Theses

Lonely Death Syndrome is a phenomenon in which an isolated person suffers a lack of social relationships and dies alone. This is a serious problem in modern South Korea, particularly among poor elderly people living in Seoul. Though the government has tried to help, there is an obvious bureaucratic limit in resolving the sense of loneliness. In Seoul, Nowon-gu is one of the districts that has the highest concentration of poor seniors, and high-rise rental housing built for this population. These apartments are uniform in design in order to house as many people as possible economically in a limited space, …

The Retrieval Of Memory: Holding Time In The Shanghai Gasometers, Liman Wei

Masters Theses

Shanghai was primarily an industrial city from the 19th century to the 20th century. By serving as a carrier of time, the past industrial architecture in Shanghai is invested with the collective memory of its past inhabitants. Now that Shanghai has entered the post-industrial period, according to the Shanghai 2035 Urban Plan, the Yangshupu Industrial Zone will be transformed into a new Central Activity Zone. As a result of this plan, old residential neighborhoods nearby will be demolished and replaced by new high-rise residential buildings. The relationship between old residential areas and industrial buildings will be uprooted. Memories of industry …

Rural Acupuncture: Carefully Introducing Tourism Within An Underground Village, Shangyun Zhou

Masters Theses

Di Keng Yuan(地坑院) are traditional cave dwellings in northern rural China, with a history of over 4,000 years of use. Today, living in Di Keng Yuan represents poverty and lower social status. Most Di Keng Yuan are ignored and abandoned by local people more interested in urbanization and the evolution of society. Yaodi Village is facing such a challenge of hollowing, meaning 1.young rural labor flows spontaneously into big cities, resulting in increased rural aging and 2.residents living in rural areas have gradually moved to the surrounding areas, resulting in the abandonment of cave dwellings, and the village is becoming …

Nossa Quadra, Nossa Historia: The Power Of Collaborative And Communal Outdoor Spaces As A Tool For Belonging & Agency, Rebecca Maria Pepl

Masters Theses

Brazil - a country with a history of colonization, slavery, precipitated industrialization, rapid urbanization, superimposed european modernism (architectural and ideological), unstable politics, growing inequity, socio-economic stratification and overpopulation combined with a lack of adequate housing for the wider population. The government has been trying to solve these issues with standardized, unsuccessful social housing projects along the periphery of the city, disregarding the population’s lifestyle and neglecting their visions. This perpetuates existing discriminatory divides, enforced through architecture and infrastructure.

This thesis attempts to improve the quality of life of the residents in the Cohab Neighborhood in Recife, which is one of …

Adaptive Reuse As Evidence Of Scientific Progress: Recontextualizing A Space For Growing Knowledge, Kayci Gallagher

Masters Theses

With the constantly evolving initiatives of astronomical exploration comes the obsolescence of instruments conceived to support research; a sure sign of the scientific process. However, architecture constructed to shelter these constantly shifting tools often remains fixed, growing incapable of supporting advancing technology. Typically, these shelters are sidelined in favor of new infrastructure. Many optical observatories around the world face this issue and must choose between preserving the past or abandoning the site altogether. That these buildings are no longer needed for revolutionary research shouldn’t be disappointing: it is a signal of human achievement, and the scientific process requires a more …

The Future Of Beijing Urban Courtyards, Zhuoqi Xu

Masters Theses

The Beijing Siheyuan is typical and representative of traditional Chinese residential construction. It is not only an architectural form but also a reflection of the traditional modes of living in Beijing. However, with the changes in family structure and people’s living needs, the spatial pattern of traditional courtyards has been unable to meet the life and economic needs of modern society. The scarce public space, poor living environment, and the low-quality of residents’ life led Siheyuan to lose its original status. Despite these challenges, whether for the protection of the overall style of Beijing’s old city or the renewal of …

Migrating Architecture: Vernacular Futurism, Yichu Jiang

Masters Theses

The history of mankind is migration: while large migrations describe groups and communities, each individual has a unique life history of migration. When moving to a new place, singly or in groups, migrants need self-identification support to adapt to a new environment. As the built environment continuously interacts with human’s everyday life, architecture provides a stable environment, which helps to build individual perceptions in space and social relations. Therefore, architecture migrates with its population and evolves according to context.

Tulou, as a result of historical turbulence and massive migration in China, exemplifies such a phenomenon of migrating architecture. The prototypical …

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 …

Ascents And Descents In The 21st Century: Restoring Chand Baori, Japneet Pahwa

Masters Theses

Water is a basic human right and a resource that should be accessible to all. The largest and deepest stepwell in the world, Chand Baori in dry Abhaneri, Rajasthan, is visited by many but serves its purpose for none. This hundred foot deep subterranean structure once allowed access to fresh water during hot and dry seasons, and served as a cool sanctuary for pilgrims, caravans and villagers.Unfortunately, due to climate change and political discourse, the underprivileged, rural population of modern India often does not have access to water. Stepwells were built in India in the 3rd century CE, in the …

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 …