Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons^™

White Picket Possibilities: Socially, Economically And Environmentally Reshaping Suburbia, Brendan Carroll

Architecture Senior Theses

What does the future of suburbia look like? For much of its history suburbia marketed itself as a pillar of the American dream. While it could be argued that for many years owning a single-family home was an obtainable goal for most Americans, this is far from the case today. Suburbia has shifted from the housing type advertised for the masses to a housing type only obtainable by a fraction of Americans. Suburbia and the housing units within it do not match the social, economic, or environmental needs of today's society.

As the demand for suburban living remains at all-time …

Linear Waltz With Nature: A Self-Supporting Infrastructure In Nature, Shangkun Zhong

Architecture Senior Theses

This project aims to create a sustainable system that addresses waste management issues in urban areas by examining the functionality of recycling infrastructures and how they can be integrated. The system will absorb waste and convert it into renewable energy to support a field station in Tibet, where self-sustainability is critical, due to the remote location. Architects often demonstrate their understanding of sustainability through various means such as integration, passive/energy-saving, and natural architecture. This thesis argues that a sustainable system such as CopenHill, can exemplify the combination of green-manifested design and recycle content as a sustainable cycle that supports human-nature …

Assemblage Dwelling: A Radical Migrant Domesticity In Urbanity, Protik Choudhuri

Architecture Senior Theses

Humanity will end the 21st century as an entirely urban species. But urban environments are factories- the site of perpetual reproduction of services, interactions, urban and domestic spaces for capital accumulation, rather than the outcome of social processes. As such, the conditions under which migrants have integrated into the urban environments globally are characterized by the extraordinary struggle for decent housing and work.

Globally, it is the squatting movement that responded by countering exclusionary forms of ownership and radically transforming urban and domestic conditions for migrants through two distinct operations: the illegal appropriation of vacant buildings and domestic interventions centered …

Threshold Tectonics: Reclaiming Space Through Geomorphological Design, Amreeta Verma

Architecture Senior Theses

This research posits that a revitalization of indigenous earth architecture practices in a contemporary context can mitigate the immense waste and embodied carbon in the construction industry while engaging practices of land return and reclamation. Locally sourced earth materials are the focus of this research because when utilized in a circular consumption cycle, they can be reused or returned to the natural environment. Designing with a temporal understanding of material decay, changing site conditions, and project life cycle reduces the impact of construction waste on the burgeoning issue of environmental degradation and resource depletion. Material experimentation is used to develop …

Mela: Vessels Of Ephemeral Architecture, Neha Tummalapalli

Architecture Senior Theses

In states of temporality, conventions can be challenged and reimagined. Ephemeral architecture responds to fluctuating conditions and are often built with lightweight, recycled materials that allow for reconfiguration and reinvention. Melas, Sanskrit for "gathering," become a lens through which ad hoc urbanism can be further explored in its most idealized form. Melas include gatherings of all scales that are commercial, celebratory, or religious. The large crowds and temporary nature of these events allow for thoughtful ephemeral configurations to be tried and tested.

The largest gathering of humans in the world is the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, India. This religious pilgrimages …

The Way Of Water: A Cultural Revival, Mariana Munoz

Architecture Senior Theses

THE WAY OF WATER: A CULTURAL REVIVAL MARIANA MUNOZ:

This thesis aims to address the challenges facing the coastal community of Condado, Puerto Rico, by proposing interventions that protect against floods and restore access to water, while also enhancing daily life and cultural practices. Through an examination of the community’s existing conditions, and answer three research questions: (1) how to mitigate flooding without displacing the community, (2) how to meet the needs of the community during times of emergency, and (3) how to integrate interventions into daily life and existing practices. The proposed interventions include a canal system to redirect …

Radicalization Of The Spectacle: Fostering Free Artistic Expression Through Architecture, Mackenzie Lubin

Architecture Senior Theses

My thesis, entitled Radicalization of the Spectacle, explores the intersection between the urban conditions of New York City, Times Square, and the notion of radicalization. The term ‘radicalization’ refers to an extreme change in worldly affairs. This term is critical in understanding my view of architecture, as it suggests architecture must formatively react to changes in culture, climate, politics, etc. Moreover, the term ‘radical’ is aggressively progressive and favors social reform performance, adding an urgency for new ideas to form. Secondly, the term ‘Spectacle’ refers to a visually and spatially arresting event that is dramatic in occurrence. The act of …

Socializing Vacancy: An Architectural Thesis, Greg Winawer

Architecture Senior Theses

A large portion of office space has been left vacant, and thus provides no beneficial program to its remaining occupants or the local urbanity it is surrounded by. When considering what can be done with this vacant space, the primary motivation should be to integrate a program which does the opposite: a program which positively disrupts its existing context to hybridize and improve the current outdated programmatic arrangement. To insert a residential program into an existing office tower both disrupts and enhances the rigorous flows of our working and our domestic lives. The predefined universal concept of the ‘working-day’ is …

Dissolving Realities: An Endless Domestic Landscape, Hanzang Lai, Phang Lim

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores how the exponential growth in communication technology is changing the way we interact with the tangible and intangible spaces. The invasion of the public into the private, the collective into the domestic, the work into the leisure, and the ability to be constantly connected wirelessly have caused a dissolution of the physical domestic space. The domestic space has lost its value of privacy and intimacy and the boundary between the binaries will be no more. The gap between “the control” and “controlled” has widened and productive workers will be oppressed to be even more productive under the …

Optimized Density: Rehabilitating The Tower In The Park For The 21st Century, Emmett Walker

Architecture Senior Theses

Optimized densification is the exploitation of under utilized space to create a more dynamic cooperative based density often times adding onto what is already exists. The pursuit of maximizing intelligently can help to relieve socioeconomic exclusivity, create a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle and influence social mixing. Though architecture can only have a limited influence on the social climate of a place like New York City, re-envisioning and optimizing the density of the tower in the park typology can lead to a more harmonious engagement between buildings and their surrounding context or population. Optimizing density could be the modern day American …

Food Form Function, Travis Telemaque

Architecture Senior Theses

By 2050, the global population will have grown to over 9.7 Billion people. Traditional farming practices will no longer be able to sustain food production for the increasing population. This thesis demonstrates how architecture and urban food production can be used to educate and reconnect our cities with locally sourced food. Integrating food production into dense urban settings will create a more efficient and resilient city.

A Simulation-Assisted Workflow For Outdoor Thermal Comfort Design In Downtown Syracuse, Pouya Zhand

Architecture Senior Theses

Cities are not just about the buildings and skylines. Cities are also about the space be­tween buildings (the ground in figure-ground). More importantly and fundamentally cities are about people and the life that happens between buildings. Simulation tools can inform the design of attractive public spaces by pro­viding insight about the environmental conditions.

Learning From The Informal: Designing A New Housing Typology For Informal Development In Cairo, Cherif Farid

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis examines what to design when designing for the informal and questions the role of the architect. The project combines the inherent qualities of the informal; self-built, incremental construction, and flexibility of spatial uses, with alternative urban design strategies.

The design strategy is to control the ground plane and roof scape, while leaving an open frame in between to be incrementally filled with housing. This frame allows residents to voice their identity by physically constructing their homes. It introduces an urban system that is composed of blocks that consist of an aggregation of identical units. The blocks are connected …

The Shenzhen Activist Program`, Hyunggyu Kim, Jae Hyun Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

There is a gap between being an architecture student in western countries and working as an architect in underrepresented communities. Architect Teddy Cruz defines the role of an activist architect as "expanded mode of practice", and the task of "deigning the protocols or the interfaces between communities and spaces".

This thesis contends that architecture schools need to continue to embrace the widely-accepted norm of studios studying abroad and working in an international studio. Current study abroad programs tend to skew towards being touristic field trips and there is not a curriculum or programmatic investment in cultivating relationships between the visiting …

Aftermarket Supermarket | A Speculative Retrospective, Alexander Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

In the preface to Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology, media theorist Eric Kluitenberg writes that “the delusion of the new”1 pollutes our theorizations of new media. This sort of technocratic fetishization of emergent technologies can only amount to a surfatial investigation of its effects or capabilities. Architectural investigations of virtual reality and other new media systems suffer from this tendency as well. Content-based experimentation and criticism obsess over the simultaneously exciting and daunting prospects of what we can now do or make with recent digital developments. There’s definite value in such endeavors, but frankly, in the grand …

Deployable Domesticity, Daniel Hopkins

Architecture Senior Theses

Deployable homes have characterized the survivalist origins of our species, the lifestyles of disenfranchised populations, and the luxurious retreats of others. Still, a predominance of contemporary domestic space relies on the ‘permanently’ stationary and situated object. As the social and ecological conditions of our society are rapidly and continually fluctuating, we must reaffirm our association with deployable culture and expand the utilization of mobile and adaptable unit. Further, architecture must negotiate the contrasts between ephemerality and permanence.

Through speculation of the social and sustainable implications of the deployable unit, issues of flexibility, material selection and afterlife, economics, ecology, and efficiency …

A Shifted Perspective On Affordable Micro Housing, Jonathan Reisman

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that growing cities around the world are out-pricing the younger demographic from the urban fabric. It recognizes that constantly rising real estate markets are forcing millennials outside of city centers. It understands that socially, the younger demographic provide the energy and atmosphere required to keep the city alive, and ultimately believes that in order fro young professionals to reclaim their position int he hosing market, a new typology of hosing need to be established.

Such housing takes increasing urban density into consideration, and provides an appropriate dwelling supply for expensive cities moving forward. It is a typology …

Collaborating With Catastrophe | A User's Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Farming, Patricia Cafferky

Architecture Senior Theses

“Collaborating with Catastrophe” contends that architecture has the capacity to visually manifest unseen forces through design’s reaction to them, allowing people to more fully comprehend and engage the intangible. Climate change, arguably the largest threat to modern day humanity, is not visible, existing only as a collection of data and patterns in a statistical construct. Taking stock of the present day failings of society in the face of crisis, this thesis then extrapolates a potential future dystopia precipitated by man-made pollutants in order to engage the problem at its most severe. Architecture is then able to make the toxic visible …

Redefining The Constraint | Designing Control To Support Rehabilitation, Jessica Borri

Architecture Senior Theses

The concrete lined cells of a contemporary prison do not lend themselves well to processes of rehabilitation. This thesis contends that it is time for architects to rethink the architecture of the prison. When an inmate knows he is being watched, he tends to exhibit positive behavior out of fear of the consequences of any action deemed to be negative. This thesis contends that by incorporating the apparatus of surveillance seamlessly into a prison's architecture it may be possible to provide spaces that feel more open and less oppressive.

One way to generate a feeling of openness is to create …

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.

It's Not Easy Being Whole | Reevaluating The Relationship Of Part Whole In Pursuit Of A New High-Rise Vernacular, Josh Bransky

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has the power to structure societal relationships. Specifically, architecture's form can bring the balanced relationship between community and individual identity, as exhibited in vernacular single-family homes, to the housing tower. This thesis plans to achieve such a social orchestration through a nuanced understanding of formal part-to-whole relationships, or "differentiated" parts within the whole, exhibited in a 300' housing tower in Seattle, WA.

By carefully balancing the relation, material, scale, and form of each part, this project will achieve this difficult whole (of differentiated parts). Mining this middle ground will produce a housing tower in Seattle, which actively balances the …

The Allopoiesis Of The Urban Artifact And The Palimpsest Of Context, Cristina Abondano

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that Pathological Urban Artifacts , as defined by Aldo Rossi, could be made Propelling through Allopoiesis in combination with the palimpsest of the urban context. The proposal consists of a dialogue between the two strategies of growth, aiming to reconnect the Artifact to the city.

Allopoiesis is the process by which a system produces something other than the system itself. In this thesis, allopoiesis is the mapping of the artifact’s underlying geometry as catalyst for urban development.

Rossi sees in the Propelling Urban Artifact a formal structure that confirms the presence of the city and persists through …

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 …

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 …

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 …

A Mat Response To Deinstitutionalization | A Model For Spatial Medicine, Dominic S. Lipuma

Architecture Senior Theses

In an attempt to salvage the institution, this thesis adopts the Mat-building strategy and typology, coined by Alison Smithson in 1974, exploiting its inherent qualities as a minimal, flexible, and temporal framework, which best supports the unique program of a Community Mental Health Center (CMHC).

This is in response to the severed and contentious relationship between architecture and mental health, in regards to psychopathology. The two fields were estranged with the onset of deinstitutionalization, beginning in the 1960s, and the consequent abandonment of architectural issues has prevented their reconciliation. As a result, further social issues have manifested, with higher proportions …

Incision Of Division, Nicoletta Kyverniti

Architecture Senior Theses

Conflict is a timeless topic of conversation, rising and recurring in various parts of the world. Whether active or dormant, the conflict exists within our urban environments in multiple forms and scales. A border that cannot be crossed. A building that cannot be accessed. A view that cannot be seen. It defines how we move within our cities and creates distinct boundaries. Architecture can diverge form its current use of division to instead exhibit the potential for mediation. It can confront the divide through incisions into the existing site thus exposing the need to intervention. It can cerate a wall …

Occupy Pomo | A Citizen's Guide To Urban Excavation, Kriti Garg

Architecture Senior Theses

Traditionally, architects' definitions of solid-void conditions create a dichotomy between private, or built matter, and public, or void, spaces. Yet, this notion is a missed opportunity to understand the complex society of the twenty-first century that no longer operates within the realm of open, public space nor acts as a point of primal cohesiveness for culture and community. Rather than aggregating at instances of density, it is lost within a new ghostly cosmopolitan substitute of mass consumption and globalized culture. This new public realm is a "phantom public sphere", one comprised of "sub-publics", tailored to the demands of a mass …