Architecture Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2743
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Item The Resilient Island - Revitalizing a Broken Home(2022) Peña, Alexander Bradley; Hu, Ming; Tilghman, James; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Disaster struck Puerto Rico on September 6th, 2017, when Hurricane Irma, a category 5 hurricane, breached the islands. Communities had no time to recover as Hurricane Maria, an even bigger threat, reached land not more than two weeks later. These two disasters happening in quick succession led to a devastating death toll of 2,975 people and caused a total of $90 billion in damages. This had been the most devastating disaster to hit in over 100 years. The people of Puerto Rico are still recovering to this day and are trying to find solutions to creating community resiliency. This thesis will focus primarily on what makes a community resilient and how to apply this to other Caribbean nations. Not all Caribbean islands face the same challenges and each one has its own identity. To assume that all islands are the same would be irrational. Additionally, this thesis will look at how a community can shift from being unconventional to very functional. Throughout the recent years, there has been a shift in design and function toward creating communities that are more sustainable, durable, and resilient. While this shift can occur easily in more modern societies, those that lack the resources to do so will continue to struggle unless proper support can be given.Item MEADWORKS – HYDROLOGY, ECOLOGY, MEAD AND ARCHITECTURE(2019) Huck, Kyle Patrick; Noonan, Peter; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis seeks to redefine the relationship between communities and water infrastructure through a scalable and adaptable hybrid architectural solution. By focusing on the ambiguous intersection of nature and the built environment, this thesis will make an attempt at place-making in a setting typically disregarded by cities and communities. Challenging the boundaries of public infrastructure, architecture, and landscape architecture, this thesis will provide a dynamic solution to the water pollution epidemic of the Chesapeake Bay that involves subliminal community awareness and engagement. Through the program of a meadery, beekeeping, agriculture, and brewing will integrate with water treatment infrastructure to mutually benefit all processes.Item Integrating Infrastructure South of the Capitol(2017) Camargo de Albuquerque Sanchez, Pedro Henrique; Kelly, Brian; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis looks at the role that infrastructure plays as it relates to the city. It is about taking an area of uninhabitable and divisive infrastructure and elevating it to something civic. It focuses in an area just south and west of the U.S. Capitol Building. It aims to embrace railroad and highway infrastructure as elements that serve multiple city needs, as part of the everyday, while adding artistic and monumental attributes to Washington D.C. It accepts the premises that the presence of, and the need for, the infrastructure will remain. This thesis proposes a master plan, involving the redevelopment of portions of Interstate 395, 695, and 295 highways and the railroads, to provide better use of valuable land, re connection of neighborhoods, and to create place, experienced through a series of civic spaces. Ultimately this thesis aims to set a new ideal that embraces infrastructure and elevates it to civic quality.Item Creating Common Ground: Architecture For Tactical Learning and Creative Convergence(2015) Sherry, Valerie Lynn; Vandergoot, Jana; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Certain environments can inhibit learning and stifle enthusiasm, while others enhance learning or stimulate curiosity. Furthermore, in a world where technological change is accelerating we could ask how might architecture connect resource abundant and resource scarce innovation environments? Innovation environments developed out of necessity within urban villages and those developed with high intention and expectation within more institutionalized settings share a framework of opportunity for addressing change through learning and education. This thesis investigates formal and informal learning environments and how architecture can stimulate curiosity, enrich learning, create common ground, and expand access to education. The reason for this thesis exploration is to better understand how architects might design inclusive environments that bring people together to build sustainable infrastructure encouraging innovation and adaptation to change for years to come. The context of this thesis is largely based on Colin McFarlane’s theory that the “city is an assemblage for learning” The socio-spatial perspective in urbanism, considers how built infrastructure and society interact. Through the urban realm, inhabitants learn to negotiate people, space, politics, and resources affecting their daily lives. The city is therefore a dynamic field of emergent possibility. This thesis uses the city as a lens through which the boundaries between informal and formal logics as well as the public and private might be blurred. Through analytical processes I have examined the environmental devices and assemblage of factors that consistently provide conditions through which learning may thrive. These parameters that make a creative space significant can help suggest the design of common ground environments through which innovation is catalyzed.Item [Re]Connecting Communites: Activating the Infrastructural Void(2010) Trice, Marcela Piedad; Ambrose, Michael A; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Once, a city was divided in two parts. One part became the Good Half, the other part the Bad Half. The inhabitants of the Bad Half began to flock to the good part of the divided city, rapidly swelling into an urban exodus. If this situation had been allowed to continue forever, the population of the Good Half would have doubled, while the Bad Half would have turned into a ghost town" _ Rem Koolhaas There is a tendency in recent urban development to allow for networks outside of architecture and urban planning to guide the development and growth of cities. To the cities' detriment they have become disconnected and isolated fragments of a once functional and united community. In his Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas calls for an "architectural warfare against undesirable conditions." The highway interchange system found in many cities around the world could be considered such a condition. However, there can be more optimistic interpretations of such a site. The interchange provides an opportunity to rethink the interstitial spaces of a wasted landscape. An architectural intervention woven into the figure of an interchange can be the structure needed to graft the city to its original system of connectivity. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the possibilities of placing a unifying architectural form into an infrastructural wasteland.