2012 SMArchS Theses | MIT Architecture

THESIS 2012

SMArchS Aga Khan Program For Islamic Architecture Building Technology Design & Computation History, Theory & Criticism Architecture & Urbanism

Department of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Techno

SMArchS The Master of Science in Architecture Studies, a two-year program of advanced study beyond the first professional degree in architecture, is founded on research and inquiry in architecture as a discipline and as a practice. Emphasis is on inquiry into contemporary problems of architectural design and practice in the US and around the world.

The SMArchS program is inquiry-oriented and is shaped around topics of direct interest to faculty and students. These include such topics as design at the urban scale, study of the form of cities, investigations of architectural theory and design methodology, the exploration of the potential of computation, and study of the relationships between architecture form and culture. Areas of special study include housing and settlement forms in developing countries, and design in non-Western cultures.

The SMArchS program may be pursued in one of six areas: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Architecture and Urbanism Architectural Design (new in 2012-13) Building Technology Design and Computation History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture

ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM

Faculty Michael Dennis, Professor Julian Beinart, Professor Alexander D’Hooghe, Associate Professor

Staff Sasha Goldman

Architecture&Urbanism Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism

URB URB History Theory & Criticism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The program aims to nurture well-versed, intellectually grounded and historically conscious architects, who understand the relationship between architecture and urbanism – not merely as a question of taste and fashion, but as form with meaning. The program emphasizes both design and scholarship, and students are unique in their capacity to relate to both.

AKPIA

Architecture and Urbanism is for students interested in the development of critical urban design, as well as its history, and theory. Consciously locating itself in the contemporary debate about what constitutes good city form, the program encourages the development of intellectually articulated and grounded positions. Students question and/or defend current views in order to explore critical alternatives to existing paradigms of urbanism. The assumption is that design is an intellectual act embodying both a critique and alternative possibilities.

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HISTORY, THEORY & CRITICISM OF ARCHITECTURE & ART Faculty Caroline Jones, Professor, Head of Discipline Group David Friedman, Associate Professor Stanford Anderson, Professor Arindam Dutta, Associate Professor, Director of SMArchS Mark Jarzombek, Professor, Associate Dean of SA+P Kristel Smentek, Assistant Professor

Staff Kathaleen Brearley Anne Deveau

Architecture & Urbanism

URB HistoryTheory&Criticism History Theory & Criticism HistoryTheory&Criticism

HTC HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

HTC is a unique program in American education. Its location within the oldest school of architecture in the U.S. focuses attention on interdisciplinary issues in contemporary practice and distinguishes it from the art history departments of universities. A number of the HTC faculty have professional degrees as well as academic ones and this contributes to the interaction of practice and scholarship that is unique to this environment. Alone among the graduate programs in architecture schools, HTC hosts a substantial curriculum in art history. Its theoretical and critical orientation constitutes an important part of the education of all the students in the program.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The goal of the HTC program is to prepare students for an intellectual life in universities, in architecture schools, and in architectural practice. Emphasis is placed simultaneously on critical method and historical substance. Students are encouraged to identify research projects that are relevant to their own concerns and allow them to reflect on contemporary issues. At the same time, the program demands rigorous historical scholarship. It is this combination, we believe, that leads to real change in the ways we think about art and architecture and write their history.

AKPIA

The History, Theory, and Criticism Program was founded in 1975 as one of the first to grant the PhD degree in a school of architecture. Its mission has been to generate advanced research within MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and to promote critical and theoretical reflection within the disciplines of architectural and art history. Students and faculty work in a variety of fields, covering diverse parts of the globe. Commitment to depth and diversity is an integral part of HTC’s identity and one of the reasons for the success of its students, who come to Cambridge from around the world. The recipients of the PhD and SMArchS degrees have gone on to teach in prominent universities and colleges worldwide. Unlike other architectural history departments in schools of architecture, HTC includes art historians on its permanent faculty and offers both a PhD and Master’s in art history as well as in architectural history. The core faculty is annually supplemented by distinguished visiting scholars who contribute significantly to the intellectual life of the program.

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DESIGN & COMPUTATION

Faculty Terry Knight, Professor Takehiko Nagakura, Associate Professor, Head of Discipline Group Lawrence Sass, Associate Professor Dennis Shelden, Associate Professor of the Practice George Stiny, Professor

Staff Daniela Stoudenkova

Architecture & Urbanism

URB History Theory & Criticism

HTC Design&Computation Design Design&&Computation Computation

DCG COMP

This work benefits from the perspective of architectural practice as well as a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives including mathematics, computer science, cognitive science, philosophy, history, and art. Students are encouraged to take advantage of the interdisciplinary environment of MIT, and to take subjects and participate in research across different MIT departments to support their work. Rigorous critical reflection on the implications and potentials of computation for contemporary design practice is emphasized.

Building Technology

Visualization, video and animation Rapid prototyping and CAD/CAM technologies Shape representation and shape synthesis Building information modeling (BIM) Generative and parametric design Critical studies of digital and information technologies Software/hardware development of advanced tools for spatial design Application of design technology to real world design problems

BT

• • • • • • • •

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

AKPIA

The Computation discipline group inquires into methods of architectural design, and challenges the limits of current technology, as well as conventional design teaching and practice. It focuses on the development of innovative computational tools, design processes and theories, and applying these in creative, socially meaningful responses to challenging design problems. Faculty, research staff, and students work in diverse and mutually supportive areas including:

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BUILDING TECHNOLOGY

Faculty John Fernandez, Associate Professor, Head of Discipline Group Leon Glicksman, Professor Leslie Norford, Professor, Associate Department Head John Ochsendorf, Associate Professor Christoph Reinhart, Associate Professor

Staff Alexandra Golledge Kathleen Ross

Architecture&Urbanism

URB HistoryTheory&Criticism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP BuildingTechnology

BT

Building Technology includes teaching and applications of the fundamentals of technology as well as research in technology for the next generation of buildings. Areas of focus include building structures, materials, industrialized building systems, energy and lighting in buildings, air quality control, and building simulation. Subjects include fundamentals of technology, applications to buildings, design studios, laboratories, and independent research projects. Research facilities include the Energy Efficient Buildings and Systems Program and the Climate Chamber. Research facilities of other departments such as Mechanical and Civil and Environmental Engineering are also used in joint research projects.

AgaKhanProgramforIslamicArchitecture

The MIT Building Technology Program is an interdisciplinary program jointly sponsored by the Department of Architecture (home department), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

AKPIA

The building industry represents one of the largest enterprises in the country. For example, roughly one quarter of the assets of large U.S. corporations are tied up in buildings and land. About one third of all investment in the U.S. is for construction of commercial and residential buildings and more than one third of the total energy consumed in the U.S. is used in the building sector.

Many of these problems are being met both in the U.S. and internationally by innovations in building technology. These innovations, for example, apply recent advances in the fields of materials, manufacturing and thermo-fluid sciences to the construction of new buildings, to the retrofit or rehabitation of existing buildings and to the efficient operation of buildings.

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THE AGA KHAN PROGRAM FOR ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE Faculty Nasser Rabbat, Professor, Director of AKPIA James Wescoat, Professor

Staff Jose Luis Arguello

Architecture&Urbanism

• To provide an extensive base of information about architecture in the Islamic world and to share it with scholars, teachers, and practitioners from everywhere.

Along with the focus on improving the teaching of Islamic art and architecture and setting excellence as the standard in professional research, AKPIA also continually strives to promote the visibility of pan-Islamic cultural heritage.

COMP

Design & Computation

HTC

HistoryTheory&Criticism

URB • To explore approaches to architecture that respond critically and thoughtfully to contemporary conditions, aspirations, and beliefs in the Islamic world.

BuildingTechnology

• To support research at the forefront of the field in areas of history, theory and criticism of architecture and urbanism.

BT

• To enhance the understanding of Islamic architecture and urbanism in light of critical, theoretical and developmental issues.

AgaKhanProgramforIslamicArchitecture

The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at MIT is dedicated to the study of Islamic architecture, urbanism, visual culture and conservation, in an effort to respond to the cultural and educational needs of a diverse constituency drawn from all over the world. The aim of the program is to concentrate its teaching and research activities in the following directions:

AKPIA

Established in 1979, the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at Harvard University and MIT is supported by an endowment from His Highness The Aga Khan. The program is recognized today as a leader in the study of architecture and urbanism in the Islamic world. A considerable number of graduates are teaching in leading universities in various parts of the Islamic world and in the West, while a few are curators in major museums, and most are either self-employed as designers or employed in architectural and construction firms.

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STUDENTS

Masoud Akbarzadeh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

COMP

Allison Albericci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

URB

Amna Ansari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

URB

Chelsea Behle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

HTC

Maria Antonia Botero. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

URB

Justin Burnham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

URB

Ian Caine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

URB

Daniele Cappelletti. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

URB

Jennifer Chuong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

HTC

Timothy Cooke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

BT

Kathleen Dahlberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

URB

Joshua Ingram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

COMP

Andrew Ferentinos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

URB

Yeon Wha Hong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

URB

Sarah Hovsepian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

COMP

Allison Hu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

URB

Moritz Kassner & William Patera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

COMP

Carl Lostritto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

COMP

Marcus Martinez. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

URB

Saki Mizuguchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

URB

Prassanna Raman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

AKPIA

Hanna Rutkouskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63

AKPIA

Zahraa Saiyed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

BT

Carolina Soto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

COMP

Summer Sutton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

AKPIA

Song-Ching Tai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

COMP

Theodora Vardouli. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

COMP

Amanda Webb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

BT

Alexander Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

HTC

Ekaterina Zolotovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

COMP 15

SPECIAL THANKS

to the many people who made this possible

THESIS ADVISORS Julian Beinart Alexander D’Hooghe Diane Davis Michael Dennis Arindam Dutta John Fernandez Mark Jarzombek Caroline Jones

Shun Kanda Terry Knight Takehiko Nagakura Brent Ryan Anne Spirn George Stiny Nader Tehrani James Wescoat

THESIS READERS Sergio Araya Laura Adams Alan Berger Mary Boyce Antonio Di Mambro Dennis Frenchman Neil Gershenfeld Lorna Gibson Annette Kim Joel Lamere Stephen Luoni

Una-May O’Reilly Dennis Pieprz Christoph Reinhart Anjali Sastry Rebecca Sheehan Dennis Shelden Kristel Smentek Kalyan Veeramachaneni Evelyn Wang Patrick Winston

REVIEWERS Anna Dyson Rodolphe el-Khoury Axel Kilian Barbara Littenberg Steven Peterson Hashim Sarkis Alessandra Segantini

STAFF Sasha Goldman Cynthia Stewart Annette Horne-Williams

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Plan Drawing of the ow pattern

Three Dimensional representation of possible roof or landscape which corresponds to the original plan drawings

Section of multiple layers of drainage geometry

Plan drawing of each area of drainage which result in the original ow pattern

MASOUD AKBARZADEH READERS

ADVISOR TAKEHIKO NAGAKURA DENNIS SHELDEN & JOEL LAMERE

Architecture & Urbanism

COMP Building Technology

AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

BT

The main goal of this research is to invent a tool for architects and designers to draw based on hydrological concepts. This tool allows designers to design large scale roofs, sheds or landscapes based on the idea of water flow on them.

The main difference between this type of drawing and a common architectural drawing is in the definition of the line. The line in this tool represents the pathway of water and the spatial geometry is the function of this performance. At the end the result is not just a spatial geometry, but a performative surface which has been generated based on the idea of flow. Other outcomes of this research is the process of translation of a three dimensional geometry into linear elements which in turn might be considered as a possible structural solution for these surfaces in practice.

Design Design&&Computation Computation

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

DESIGNING PERFORMATIVE SURFACES Generating Topography Using Two-Dimensional Water Flow Drawings

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pu bli ca Re sd e la ns or e

22 Poniente

Dia go na lD efe

20 Poniente

18 Poniente

16 Poniente

14 Poniente

12 Poniente

8 Poniente

6 Poniente

4 Poniente

2 Poniente

11 Norte

13 Norte

15 Norte

19 Norte

21 Norte

23 Norte

25 Norte

Avenida Reforma

3 Poniente

ALLISON ALBERICCI ADVISOR

MICHAEL DENNIS

& DENNIS FRENCHMAN

READERS

JOHN FERNANDEZ & DENNIS PIEPRZ

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism

URB URB History Theory & Criticism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

What is the present role of technical change – particularly change in integrated Information-Communication Technology (ICT) – in facilitating sustainable urbanism in the developing world? Technological advancements are altering consumer demand and behavior, transforming the products, services, entertainment and information consumed as well processes related to consumption. Technical change is further altering the production processes of goods, services, entertainment and information, and therefore the spaces of those processes, allowing industry to be reintroduced into the city. As the first two points suggest, technical change thus alters the use of urban space, eroding traditionally ‘suitable’ adjacencies or separations, public/private distinctions, and the conventions of the public realm. Collectively , these and other trends are most apparent in ‘New Century City’ (NCC) Projects, where technological innovation as industry, as method, as place-maker and as way of life are being fused to create a new type of urban experience. This project surveys current discourses in sustainable urbanism and international development, using lessons learned from several NCC projects to derive a flexible model for advanced industry cluster development in second tier Mexican cities. This prototype is demonstrated via a projective proposal for Ciudad del Diseño (the City of Design), a development initiative recently launched by the city of Puebla. The objective is to use design to develop and demonstrate principles for catalytic, sustainable development in the mid-sized cities of Mexico, and Latin America more broadly.

AKPIA

THE DIGITAL CREATIVE CITY AND THE NEW URBAN REVOLUTON: Conceptualizing Catalytic Sustainable Development in Mexico’s Second Tier

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AMNA ANSARI ADVISORS ARINDAM

DUTTA ALEXANDER D’HOOGHE READER JULIAN BEINART

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

This thesis articulates the representation of the last democratic space in America, post 9-11, as a critique based proposal that challenges our current and future negotiations with power in the built environment. Recognizing the challenge of a formal intervention upon a contradictory site, the National Mall will serve as the stage for a critique based democratic space. While the Mall cannot be upheld as an egalitarian field, objects however can capture a democratic field within. This thesis justifies a form necessary to represent such a space, investigating compromised symbols that can be appropriated and redefined to provide functions and representation of conditions the National Mall distorts.

The proposal infuses within the program all major impositions of public spaces as a critique based response to the shifting conditions of democracy sited on frictions.

AKPIA

America’s classically inspired symbols of governance for democratic institutions, such as the ubiquitous state capitols and state capitol malls, are in contradiction to our evolving dialogue with democracy as they are subject to laws of ‘proper’ use and extreme security. The National Mall as a symbol of democratic values, has been reduced to a synthetic image of stability built upon a preserved image that masks the underlying issues of a compromised territory of, unstable boundaries governed by ad-hoc laws, and privatized overtones that distort the otherwise democratic message embodied by these symbols of governance. Throughout American cities these same conditions are stifling otherwise democratic public spaces.

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

ABSURD MACHINE Project on the National Mall

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CHELSEA BEHLE ADVISOR CAROLINE JONES READERS KRISTEL SMENTEK & REBECCA SHEEHAN

Architecture & Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The core of this thesis frames Wallace Berman’s film Aleph as both a transmission and an unfinished, unstable document. The form and content of Aleph enact the process of transmission and represent transmission itself. However, since the film is unfinished, abandoned and left with excess fragments, it possesses unstable meaning. This thesis will not substantiate a stable art object; rather, it will frame a process – transmission – through which multiple meanings are carried, and through which the unfinished, unstable film object operates as a catalyst towards one possible unity of message: “Art is Love is God.”

AKPIA

In 1956 in Los Angeles, California, Wallace Berman, a Beat assemblage artist, poet and founder of Semina magazine, began to make a film. Over ten years, the film now known as Aleph became Berman’s personal record, documenting family, friends, Verifax collage artwork and inspirations from popular culture. Paint and Letraset were applied across the film celluloid, creating a palimpsest of code and gesture. Aleph is also delineated with Hebrew letters, representing Berman’s interest in the Jewish mystical Cabala. Translated as “tradition,” “reception” or “transmission,” the Cabala ascribes the word of God with hidden meaning, creating a channel from the divine to the human – a transmission of secret codes.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism HistoryTheory&Criticism

URB

“ART IS LOVE IS GOD” Wallace Berman and the Transmission of Aleph, 1956-66

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The aim of this project is to propose a new urban typology for city growth, based on new living space design and in tune with the trends suggested herewith.

1 Dietz and Siniavskaia, Ph.D. 2011 2 Dietz and Siniavskaia, Ph.D. 2011 3 Emrath, Ph.D and Siniavskaia, Ph.D. 2009 4 Dietz and Siniavskaia, Ph.D. 2011

MARIA ANTONIA BOTERO ADVISOR NADER TEHRANI READER MICHAEL DENNIS

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

According to the 2010 census, most people no longer live in nuclear families.

About 90% of single-family households are comprised of four or less people and more than half of those households are only made up of one or two people, suggesting that most people are either living alone, with a partner or spouse or are single parents.4 This means that the greatest need in the future of housing is mostly for one or two-person households and reduced yet still significant for three and at most four-person homes. Despite that families have become less numerous and that people need less living space, housing sizes have not decreased enough to reflect these changes.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

In 2009, there was a major change in the trend of growing single-family home sizes and although it may be a “recession-related phenomenon,” there are other factors like the desire to keep energy costs down, tightening credit standards and less emphasis on purchasing a home purely for investment purposes, which point to this size-reduction as a more permanent tendency.2 3 Aside from housing size trends, recent demographic changes and advances in technology have changed the way we live and have expanded the possibilities for the way we design and build our homes.

AKPIA

The majority of the U.S. population lives in the “urban suburbs” within metropolitan statistical areas (MSA).1 These “urban suburbs” are the area immediately adjacent to the most dense city centers, and are mostly commonly comprised of single family homes.

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

DENSIFYING THE SUBURBS: A Single-Family Alternative for Tropical Living in Coral Gables, FL

27

JUSTIN BURNHAM ADVISOR MICHAEL DENNIS READER DENNIS FRENCHMAN

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

This thesis offers a design proposal for a new food technologies cluster that includes multifunctional programmatic components for: research, production, and marketing (as well as new residential communities.) The goal is to formulate a design solution that selectively packages existing elements (railroad, warehouses, workforce) with new buildings, infrastructure, and public spaces – to build a flexible urban network that will reconnect to the larger square-mile Chicago grid. To do so the study draws upon original analytical studies and numerous precedents that convert decommissioned industrial land. The design product will provide reflection upon the past as it presents a scenario for the future.

AKPIA

This thesis examines the latent potential of Chicago’s former Union Stock Yard, which consequentially draws attention to the polarities of industrial food production. The Union Stock Yard was once symbolic of an era where urban progress was equated with efficiency and growth. Today, the site is facing an identity crisis; it is characterized predominantly by under utilized warehousing, however, innovative closed-loop food producers (such as The Plant and the Iron Street Farm) are indicative of an emerging narrative that focuses on sustainability, health, and taste.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

THE NEW FOOD-TECH CITY: Adapting Chicago’s Back Yard Urbanism

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Ultimately, a re-designed right-of-way will leverage contemporary growth patterns, bringing the design of civil infrastructure back into the public fold while streamlining the redundancy that results from uncoordinated private development. By critically embracing the logic of big box retail, a re-imagined Walton Boulevard can emerge as a new and robust public node in the city, reclaiming Walmart street and Walmart town for the people of Bentonville.

IAN CAINE READERS

ADVISOR ALEXANDER D’HOOGHE ALAN BERGER & STEPHEN LUONI

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism

URB URB History Theory & Criticism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

The proposed mechanism for implementing the Amendments is a Bentonville Public Works Project, to be designed and administered at the municipal level.

The project contends that the massive tax subsidies provided to Walmart by local municipalities--subsidies intended to cover site infrastructure costs--constitute the license for a contemporary public works project. The proposal therefore re-imagines the site of the Walmart Home Office, and specifically the legal rightof-way along Sam Walton Boulevard, as an expanded physical and legal armature for civic and commercial life in Bentonville.

BT

This thesis asserts that the environment associated with one of these developments—the Walmart Home Office and Supercenter—is underperforming the citizens of Bentonville in eight critical ways. The project seeks to redress the physical crisis associated with this development by proposing eight corresponding amendments to the Bentonville City Charter. These amendments are collectively known as The Big Box Bill of Rights and cover eight topics: Money, Commerce, Passage, Program, Legibility, Parking, Water, and Speech.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

On May 9, 1950, a fledgling businessman named Sam Walton bought a main street storefront in Bentonville, Arkansas and opened a discount variety store called Walton’s 5 & 10. Business was good. By 2011, Walton’s 5 & 10 had spawned 10,130 additional locations in 27 countries and converted a sleepy Ozark mountain town into home of the world’s largest retailer: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. The ascendance of Walmart and similar big box developers during the latter part of the twentieth century instigated a profound transformation of Bentonville’s city fabric, one that paralleled a larger makeover of the suburban landscape in North America.

AKPIA

THE BIG BOX BILL OF RIGHTS

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ADVISOR MICHAEL DENNIS READERS JULIAN BEINART &

DAVID FRIEDMAN

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

DANIELE CAPPELLETTI

AKPIA

The aim of this dissertation is to explore the evolution of both architecture and urban space, in terms of mutual relationship between solids and voids, with a particular attention to a couple of distinct transitional moments of ancient and modern history: the Hellenistic and Baroque periods. This study is the result of the consideration that in determined periods, at least in western history, there is a clear predominance of either interior or exterior space in relation to architecture. If on one hand external space seems to predominate in Greek and modern architecture, interior space is prevalent between the Roman and the Renaissance periods. The hypothesis is that both the Hellenistic and Baroque periods represent intermediate phases in the historical transition between interior and exterior space and that this transition is manifested, through the transformations of the urban fabric, in the enclosed civic spaces of forums and squares. The methodological approach can be more easily described defining what this analysis is not meant to be: this examination is neither intended to be an urban theory nor a historical study. The intention is to interrelate theory and history, remaining distant from the necessary abstraction of urban design theory and, at the same time, avoiding the indispensable specificity and attention to details required by architecture history.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

BETWEEN EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL SPACE: An Urban Transition

33

JENNIFER CHUONG ADVISORS ARINDAM DUTTA & MARK JARZOMBEK READER KRISTEL SMENTEK

Architecture & Urbanism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

Sometimes called “the father of American architecture,” the British-born Latrobe (1764-1820) has generally been recognized for his large, nineteenth-century projects. Focusing on his financial and technical struggles around works like the US Capitol and the Baltimore Exchange, the prevailing historical narrative has emphasized the disjunct between the immigrant Latrobe’s professional ambitions and the capabilities of the young American nation. In this thesis, I argue that an emphasis on Latrobe’s embattled practice tells us little about the conceptual field that drove his work. More importantly, it ignores the ways in which a larger discursive and physical context transformed the architect’s own understanding of his discipline and its function in a new democratic society.

AKPIA

This thesis suggests that architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s engagement with American scientific discourses gave rise to a transitional aesthetics that transformed his European-derived notions of art and architecture. Looking at a range of works by Latrobe—a selection of theoretical writings, the Essay on Landscape (a watercolor instruction manual, 1799), and the Philadelphia Waterworks (1801)—I analyze his magpie borrowings of climate, geology, and natural history. These borrowings are often awkward and by no means uniformly successful; however, Latrobe’s persistence in the face of failure underscores the importance he accorded to establishing, by any means possible, the naturalization of societal and aesthetic change.

History Theory & Criticism HistoryTheory&Criticism

URB

“ART IS A HARDY PLANT” Benjamin Latrobe and the Cultivation of a Transitional Aesthetics

35

TIMOTHY COOKE ADVISOR JOHN FERNANDEZ READER LORNA GIBSON

Architecture & Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology BuildingTechnology

BT AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

This research focuses on the intersection between material composition and form in the development of a new type of concrete. As concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, innovation in this material has more potential to effect change in our built environment than innovation in any other.

With the objective of minimizing raw material consumption and energy use, this work attempts to develop methods for creating a cellular lightweight concrete with variable density that can be cured at room temperature. Aerated concretes traditionally require high temperature and high pressure curing; the goal of this research is to create a lower embodied energy product through the use of room temperature curing, while at the same time maximizing performance through variation of the density of the material through its section–essentially locating stronger material where it is needed. This more durable and versatile concrete product will be able to compete with traditional lightweight concretes, which provide benefits such as insulation, as well as normal-weight concrete, which is harder and stronger. This research aims to capitalize on the inherent heterogeneity of the material by producing a substance whose internal properties can be varied based on the needs of a specific part of a building.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

LIGHTWEIGHT CONCRETE Investigations into the Production of Variable Density Cellular Materials

37

KATHLEEN DAHLBERG SHUN KUNDA BRENT RYAN READER ALAN BERGER

ADVISORS

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The experience of Springfield is one of pronounced spatial contrasts weaving the open land into a generic grid of strips and squares. Thus the city form implies Springfield’s casual and ongoing pastoral thesis: an ideal wilderness is offered in place of an ideal city. The ensuing project explores the deeply nuanced relationship between culture and landscape—the terrain as a set of limits, cultural production, and space of collective desire; the city a negotiation between global economic development and local specificity. In looking at a “generic” and undefined city type, a second question is asked—how can urban design respond to a place beyond the normative ideal of a good city and what methods will allow one to enter into a place, to understand its deep structure as a foundation for a projective city vision that extends and reinvents its own process? To explore this question the research has engaged a range of methods, overlaying theory, field observations, and spatial analysis (drawing) to produce a critical reading of city form. Ultimately a series of “fourth landscapes” are offered, representing the spatial capacities of the city which double as projective concepts for design.

AKPIA

Using Springfield Missouri as a case study, this thesis is explores both the typical mid-size American city (a city with no theory) and methods for urban design.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE IDEAL WILDERNESS: Concepts and methods for engaging the generic Specificity of the American Town in Springfield, Missouri

39

ANDREW FERENTINOS ADVISOR ALEXANDER D’HOOGHE READERS MARK JARZOMBEK

& ANTONIO DI MAMBRO

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

Airports and intermodal hubs typically follow corridic logic. An airport/intermodal hub that is anti-­corridic disperses all spaces into a field of options whereby individuals with different itineraries can perceive and move through a field of spatial choices resulting in ideally perceived and desired spatial constellations.

This thesis proposes a prototype for an anti-­corridic airport/intermodal hub.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The space of corridors is linear: rooms are perceived and passed in a fixed sequence of one space following another. The space of anti-­corridors is non-­ linear: rooms are dispersed into a field. Many spaces can be perceived at once and one can pass through them in any order. Desired constellations can emerge.

AKPIA

To perceive the many stars in the sky, corridic logic would force one to view one star at a time, one after the other in a linear order. An anti-­corridic logic, on the other hand, is non-­linear and permits constellations to emerge: many stars can be perceived at once and the imagination can link them into any desired figure.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

CONSTELLATIONS AND ANTI-­CORRIDORS

41

YEON WHA HONG ADVISOR JULIAN BEINART READER ARINDAM DUTTA

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

If design can be an instrument of governmentality to propagate exclusion, fear, and resistance to difference in contemporary cities, then it must also have the power to accomplish the opposite. This thesis proposes a series of design interventions to the existing L.A. transportation system, ranging from the furniture to the urban scale, with the aim to open up a new micro-public realm. These new urban spaces of encounter, eroticism, and exposure to othernesses in Los Angeles can push this city to a more urban, more inclusive future.

BT

The global city is the privileged site of “repositioning … citizenship in practice,” where traditional notions of identity and citizenship are being radically reconstructed. This thesis examines contemporary Los Angeles as such a site, a heterotopia built on difference, without a coherent civic identity. In this context, the region’s transportation system emerges as both a form of governmentality and the “strategic terrain for a whole series of conflicts and contradictions.”

The system itself is a space of contestation, where the struggle to claim the Lefebvrian “right to the city” in the form of mobility is currently being played out.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

L.A. MICRO-PUBLICS: Expanding the Seams of the Transportation System

43

ADVISORS TERRY KNIGHT & NEIL GERSHENFELD READER JEFFREY HOFFMAN

Architecture & Urbanism

DCG COMP Building Technology

AKPIA

SARAH HOVSEPIAN

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

BT

This thesis presents digital material skins as the future materials for industries creating functional, lightweight, high strength, low cost, reusable, recyclable and reversible materials and processes for skins. Digital material skins will transform industries and the future of fabrication, to rethink our current material choices and methods for fabricating materials selected. It proposes not only a new way to think about our functional structures, but a new way to manufacture and assemble a skin. How can traditionally continuous pressure vessel skins for gas or propellant storage be designed out of discrete units that allow for assembly and disassembly for another application at the end of the tank lifecycle? Key objective of the research is to develop a working prototype by using existing digital manufacturing technologies to develop a new capability to manufacture the lightest and strongest pressure vessels out of a new digital material and process which considers the entire tank lifecycle.

Design&Computation Design Design&&Computation Computation

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

DIGITAL MATERIAL SKINS: A Reversible Pressure Vessel Skin

45

ALLISON HU ADVISOR ANNE WHISTON SPIRN READERS BRENT RYAN & JULIAN BEINART

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

It investigates the controversial ascent of a half-square mile in Buenos Aires.

Paralleling Argentina’s economic reforms in the early 90s, the fair of La Salada emerges as a small enterprise, evolving into a regional commercial hub absorbing a sizeable labor force. Like a city within the periphery, it delivers public services, gives rise to transnational festivals and serves as an important knowledgesharing space for migrants-- even as questionable practices overshadow the legitimacy of the site. While many focus on its unfair extra-legal advantages, there is little knowledge of the spatial factors that contribute to the settlement’s success. At the heart of this case study, the thesis unearths potent lessons about location, form, and process. Shaped by these insights and critiques, a design proposal imagines a future for the local factory-market ecology. A game analogy compresses an incremental formation process, presents a method for collective evaluation, and clarifies the role of design.

AKPIA

This thesis seeks to expand the potential role of urban design for informal places under the process of formalization.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

FAIR GAME: Learning from La Salada

47

READER

ADVISORS TERRY KNIGHT & UNA-MAY O’REILLY

KALYAN VEERAMACHANENI

Architecture & Urbanism Design&Computation Design Design&&Computation Computation

DCG COMP Building Technology

AKPIA

JOSHUA INGRAM

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

BT

There have been numerous studies demonstrating optimization’s use in architecture, yet it has not been adopted in the field, especially in the early stages of design. As buildings become more complex, the use of optimization in design becomes more relevant. Still, there is a gap between the way architects work and the role optimization plays in the design process. This work presents a new methodology, IDEA (interactive diversity-driven evolutionary algorithm), for designers to engage optimization in the early stages of design. IDEA is designed to work in a manner that is comfortable to the designer and easily implemented into the design process. By focusing on similarity and difference of form, designers sort design options into clusters. The clusters are used to develop a diversity-metric that IDEA uses to generate design options that satisfy the objective and that are visually different. IDEA provides designers with a range of good solutions that are visually different. This work demonstrates a novel approach to interaction to better assist in early stages design.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

[A]SORTED SELECTION: IMPROVING BUILDING PERFORMANCE AND DIVERSITY USING A NEW FORM OF INTERACTIVE EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM

49

MORITZ KASSNER & WILLIAM PATERA ADVISORS TERRY KNIGHT & PATRICK WINSTON

Architecture & Urbanism

HTC Design&Computation Design Design&&Computation Computation

DCG COMP AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

This thesis proposes contributions directly to the disciplines of spatial design (architecture) as well as the humanities and social sciences by providing an extendible platform of tools and method of inquiry that allows for new insights into the relationships between humans and their environment.

Building Technology

In this thesis, we introduce a theoretical framework by examining the history of physiological and psychological studies of vision, in the specific context of eye movement studies. We develop a library of hardware and software tools to capture and analyze patterns of visual attention in three dimensional space.

These tools capture how one attends to an environment, visually and aurally. Our methods of inquiry and analysis reveal how an environment is constructed from patterns of visual attention. We believe these tools and methods will ultimately lead toward novel design decisions.

BT

This thesis explores the nature of human experience in constructed environments through a primary inquiry into human vision and a secondary inquiry into human audition and speech. If we want to develop designs that address the richness of human relationships with environments, then we will require new tools and methods of inquiry.

History Theory & Criticism

URB

PUPIL: Constructing the Space of Visual Attention

51

CARL LOSRITTO ADVISOR GEORGE STINY READER NADER TEHRANI

Architecture & Urbanism Design Design&&Computation Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

A range of computational methods for representing line and making drawing are documented and implemented. A set of 32 drawings are framed in terms related to their making, and then evaluated in terms of their implications for architectural representation.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

This project explores a method for computing drawing (and the converse, drawing computing) by programing a vintage pen plotter. An apparatus that spans from the computational to the material allows for the incorporation of the desirable qualities of the “hand” drawing into a digital process. The same limitations that led to the obsolescence of the pen plotter lead to an integrated relationship between process and project. Pen plotters demand linear (rather than pixel) information.

Imperfections resulting from ink-filled pens making contact with paper at various speeds mandate the consideration of time.

AKPIA

The drawn artifact and the act of drawing are uniquely suited for design thinking.

Specifically, drawings that were traditionally crafted “by hand” are prone to qualities that promote a productive multiplicity of interpretations. These qualities are often incompletely characterized using terms such as “fuzzy” or “loose.” Digital output, however, is biased toward the notion of re-production. Representation in design, as a result, has become image-centric.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

COMPUTING/ DRAWING: Programming a Vintage Pen Plotter

53

MARCUS MARTINEZ ADVISOR

ALEXANDER D’HOOGHE READER MICHAEL DENNIS

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism

COMP AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

BT

This thesis speculates upon the parking garage typology as an instrument of urban legibility and future growth. When limited to the efficiencies of disciplinary conventions garages are distinct facilitative structures that are site adapted anywhere and predictably limited to the function of vehicle storage. Yet by focussing on the immense scale, the garage can be reconfigured as an urban mechanism that can serve beyond the needs of the vehicle to extract higher functioning roles for greater urban spaces.

Building Technology

No typology has suppressed urban space more than the parking garage. In fact, the city of Houston’s parking contingent practice has a resulted in a garage on 30% of the downtown district. The range from a few underground floors to 15 stories above ground make the garage both a defining contextual attribute and a testament to independently functioning sites.

Design & Computation

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

URBAN MECHANICS: The Parking Garage as an Instrument for Legibility

55

SAKI MIZUGUCHI ADVISOR SHUN KANDA READER JULIAN BEINART

Architecture & Urbanism Architecture&Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

The design starts with the inherited urban fabric of the HDLR site, and proposes an individual renewal process of houses that collectively metamorphosize into an environment with greater sharing of public and private space. This neighborhood will continue to evolve as the population and lifestyles of residents change in the future

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The aim of this thesis is to propose a housing development strategy that nourishes these qualities of the HDLR residential environment. The proposal seeks to provide an alternative to prevailing high-rise developments, to allow for more flexibility between public and private spaces. This thesis is a hypothetical and academic exercise, which builds up on premises based on current statistics and characteristics of the project site.

AKPIA

This thesis starts with the interest in the undefined open spaces of high-density low-rise (HDLR) residential areas in Tokyo. In these spaces, one can witness numerous examples of overlapping public and private uses. For example, public streets are often appropriated as private gardens by a subtle but prominent gesture by residents to place many potted plantations on the street. These phenomenons contribute to the vitality and safety of the neighborhood, as well as reflecting an effective use of space in a limited inner-city environment.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB URB

COLLECTIVE RENOVATION Study of the Public/Private Relationship in High-density, Low-rise Residential Areas of Central Tokyo

57

Source: OPP-RTI

PRASSANNA RAMAN ADVISORS DIANE DAVIS & JAMES WESCOAT

Architecture & Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture AgaKhanProgramforIslamicArchitecture

The Urban Resilience and Chronic Violence project at MIT extends the mathematical concept of resilience to the analysis of chronic conflict. This thesis tests the usefulness of the socio-spatial capital resilience model when examining cities confronting persistent violence, and proposes alternative strategies of thinking about a violence-resistant city. Does the formation of social capital in a community reduce chronic violence? What is the relationship between spatial capital and violence? The first test of the model is through the analysis of resilience theory – how does the definition of resilience change in each discipline? The second test of the model is the examination of violence in Karachi. Using the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) as a strategy of resilience, the Karachi case study seeks to understand the relationship between the expansion of the OPP in the last 20 years and the levels and type of violence in Orangi, an informal settlement in Karachi. Lyari, which also suffers from violence and poor access to sanitation, is its comparison – are the levels and types of violence in Lyari different from the situation in Orangi? This thesis concludes by proposing that the field of conflict transformation may be better suited to the study of chronic violence than resilience theory.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

EXPLORING URBAN RESILIENCE: Violence and Infrastructure Provision in Karachi

59

V.A. Arhangel’skiy, ed. Tashkent – Gorod Bratstva. Tashkent: ZK KP Uzbekistan Publishing, 1969.

Architecture & Urbanism

HTC

HANNA RUTKOUSKAYA ADVISOR JAMES WESCOAT READER LAURA L. ADAMS

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture AgaKhanProgramforIslamicArchitecture

BT

Building Technology

COMP

Design & Computation

This thesis focuses on how Bukhara’s architectural heritage was interpreted and redefined by local architectural professionals mainly based in Tashkent between 1965 and 1991, a period characterized by heightened interest in historical heritage as a result of strengthening Uzbek national identity as part of the Soviet nation-building process. Architectural professionals criticized the earlier Soviet “nihilist” treatment of architectural heritage and framed their work during this period as an attempt to correct earlier mistakes. This thesis analyzes restoration and architectural projects proposed for Bukhara through an examination of images and text available in the professional Uzbek SSR architectural journal, Architecture and Construction in Uzbekistan. Using these journals, this thesis illustrates how architectural professionals engaged in creating new meaningful relationships with Bukhara’s urban environment as part of the larger project of identity construction. Increasingly alienated from the Soviet center, local professionals developed their own understanding of Bukhara’s urban heritage in the 1970s. Marked by utopian excitement, these projects sought to recreate the “atmosphere of the past” and reimagine Bukhara as an ethnographic museum and a tourist site. With tourism finally possible in the 1980s, historical monuments were further objectified as legacies of the national past and made available for the new construct of self as a modern and legitimate nation that belonged on the global scale.

AKPIA

History Theory & Criticism

URB

REDEFINING HISTORICAL BUKHARA: Professional Architectural Vision of National Heritage in Late Soviet Uzbekistan (1965 – 1991)

61

Debris Generated in San Francisco, 1906 Source: Associated Press

ADVISOR JOHN FERNANDEZ READERS JAMES WESCOAT

& ANJALI SASTRY

Architecture & Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology BuildingTechnology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

ZAHRAA SAIYED

AKPIA

This thesis investigates the potential effects of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in San Francisco, particularly the implications on the City’s residential housing stock and impacts on the construction and demolition waste stream. The study uses System Dynamics methodology to analyze the feasibility of recycling disaster debris as new construction material to rebuild the diminished housing stock. A meta-analysis identifies capacity requirements for transporting and processing material, and seeks to project a time frame for refurbishing lost housing. Simulated scenarios of specified policy measures provide the basis for recommendations on improving San Francisco’s post-disaster recovery as related to debris handing and reoccupation of housing. Results show that an increased use of recycled content products delays overall recovery by two years, yet diverts upwards of 1.6 million tons of debris from landfill. Under this hypothesis, and considering residential housing recovery as a proxy for holistic city-wide recovery, the effects of a large-scale earthquake would require an estimated recovery time of 6.8 years.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

DISASTER DEBRIS MANAGEMENT AND RECOVERY OF HOUSING STOCK IN SAN FRANCISCO, CA

63

CAROLINA SOTO ADVISOR TAKEHIKO NAGAKURA READER DENNIS SHELDEN

Architecture & Urbanism

URB Design Design&&Computation Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

Applying the User Innovation theory as the framework of analysis, the thesis examines whether and how BIM users are adapting the tools to respond to their requirements through user innovation. Studying eight specific BIM user innovation cases, from different contexts of use, the thesis presents and analyzes the processes underlying BIM user innovation, from the starting motivation, to the final distribution of the actual innovation. This analysis has two main objectives, first, to recognize whether there is user innovation in the case of BIM tools, and second, to understand how that innovation is developed. Finally, the thesis extracts patterns of innovation, and examines whether these user innovation cases fit the model described by User Innovation theories.

AKPIA

The use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools is increasing across the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. In fact, this technology is being adopted in many different countries, in a wide range of types of projects, and by professionals from different disciplines. In other words, these tools are being applied in many different contexts of use. Consequently, the requirements of BIM users grow heterogeneously, and this heterogeneity hinders the development of BIM tools that can satisfy all possible user requirements.

Instead, tools are developed to satisfy more broad, general, and generic needs of the AEC industry.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

USER INNOVATION IN DIGITAL DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION Dialectical Relations Between Standard BIM Tools and Specific User Requirements

65

SUMMER SUTTON ADVISOR JAMES WESCOAT READERS ANNETTE KIM & JOOST BONSEN

Architecture & Urbanism

HTC Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

Through research in riad development as well as an investigation of the physical conditions of locally owned property in Fez, this thesis has identified the unfolding implications and opportunities of the current riad restoration movements in the city and has evaluated a non-profit alternative for architectural conservation. The outcome of this research has established the basis for ARCHeritage, a non-profit organization aimed to direct the future development of the city by providing incentives for the renovation of locally owned property in order to help local businesses keep up with the modern forces of development in Fez.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture AgaKhanProgramforIslamicArchitecture

The result of this preservation strategy is a paradoxical urban fabric of enhancement and atrophy made apparent in the architectural disparity between modern developments by foreign investors and the often dilapidated locally owned riads. This mixture of urban divergences also adds a special character to the city but the identity and sustainability of the heritage city is being endangered.

AKPIA

Many countries whose modern history has its origins in an outside hegemonic power tend to be ambivalent towards the impact of the colonizer’s continued presence in the contemporary culture. Morocco, for example, has grown to embrace the foreign interest in its exotic world and now encourages the oriental depictions of its country in order to increase foreign private investment, ultimately to preserve the historic heritage of the city.

History Theory & Criticism

URB

IMPLICATIONS OF "NEO-ORIENTALIST" CONSERVATION IN FEZ, MOROCCO: Need for an Innovative Non-Profit Alternative

67

ALAN SONG-CHING TAI ADVISORS TAKEHIKO NAGAKURA READER DENNIS SHELDEN

Architecture & Urbanism

HTC Design Design&&Computation Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

The proposed tool uses the genetic algorithm and various graph searching algorithms to find optimized notching configurations that guarantee an assembly sequence. It can analyze various types of assemblies defined by planar surface contact constraints, and has a potential for further development into a versatile, automated 4D simulation tool.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

An interlocking frame is a system that consists of short members spanning on a large surface where members lock each other at their mid-spans by simple notches. Such a system should be designed with the consideration of its assembly sequence, as a static interlocking form may be described but impossible to assemble in any sequence. Given a three dimensional digital model of an interlocking frame, the feasibility of the disassembly sequence can be assessed by analyzing the geometric contact constraints between each member. The assembly sequence can then be obtained by reversing the disassembly sequence, and helps a designer to evaluate different options in the earlier stage of design.

AKPIA

This thesis explores the computational process of generating and constructing interlocking frames. Its outcome delivers a sophisticated software tool that creates a three dimensional interlocking pattern, analyzes the intersecting conditions between members, and immediately provides instruction of its assembly sequence in animated visualization.

History Theory & Criticism

URB

DESIGN FOR ASSEMBLY: A Computational Approach to Construct Interlocking Wooden Frames

69

THEODORA VARDOULI ADVISOR GEORGE STINY READERS TERRY KNIGHT & ARINDAM DUTTA

Architecture & Urbanism

HTC Design Design&&Computation Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT

Through this inquiry I aim to contribute to present discussions of design “democratization”, by first, partially illuminating the historical and cultural origins of the enterprise, second, exposing rigorous theoretical framings of the problem of design-for-empowerment-for-design, and third, problematizing persistent computational metaphors and hinting toward alternative computational avenues.

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

The main body of this thesis is a critical comparative analysis of two computational systems, designed by Yona Friedman and Nicholas Negroponte in the early 1970s, with the intention to empower future users to express their needs and desires in design without the paternalism of the architect-middleman. In this thesis I abstract the mathematical representations and interaction protocols of the two systems and explore their discursive role in the authors’ arguments about the non-paternalistic character of their proposals. I discuss how ideas such as the “infrastructure”, the “interface” and the “graph” bridge the authors’ positivist impulses with their emancipatory proclamations.

AKPIA

The vision of computational tools for user empowerment in design is currently recast under the influences of the open source culture and the latest advancements in design, fabrication and communication technologies. In this thesis I propose that in order to critically evaluate this reemerging technological optimism and to conceive new computational agendas promoting user empowerment and design “democratization”, inquiry into the first encounters of computation and participatory architecture is essential.

History Theory & Criticism

URB

DESIGN - FOR - EMPOWERMENT - FOR - DESIGN: Computational Structures for Design Democratization

71

ADVISORS JOHN FERNANDEZ READERS EVELYN WANG

& CHRISTOPH REINHART

Architecture & Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology BuildingTechnology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

AMANDA WEBB

AKPIA

Our thermal experience is never neutral. Whether standing near a cold window in the winter, or under a shade on a sunny day, we are constantly experiencing a rich set of thermal stimuli. Yet, many of the tools used in professional practice to analyze and design thermal environments in buildings do not account for the richness of our thermal experience. This disconnect between our analysis tools and our experience can lead to spaces that use more energy than they should, and that leave occupants dissatisfied with their thermal environment.

This thesis seeks to bridge the gap between our thermal experience and our building analysis methods. A unique methodology has been developed that produces mapping of thermal comfort parameters in all three spatial dimensions, as well as over time. Both heat balance and adaptive comfort standards are incorporated into the methodology. Critically, this new methodology is built on top of existing energy analysis software, allowing it to fit easily within existing analysis workflows in professional practice.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

MAPPING COMFORT: An Analysis Method for Understanding Diversity in the Thermal Environment

73

IBM Systems/360 Model 67, MIT Information Processing Services Center, 1968. Courtesy of MIT Museum.

ALEXANDER WOOD ADVISOR CAROLINE JONES READER ARINDAM DUTTA

Architecture & Urbanism Design & Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT AKPIA

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

In this thesis I investigate the search for a scientific urban strategy in late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States at the Urban Systems Laboratory (USL), established in 1968 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Using computationally intensive methods, behavioral models and the techniques of the information sciences, the USL’s initial goals emphasized not just rebuilding the city but the invention of new mechanisms of the management of space and the distribution of social service provisions. In particular I explore the work of MIT Professor of Management Jay W. Forrester. Using the IBM Systems/360 Model 67 installed at the USL, Forrester built one of the first large-scale, interactive, computational models of the city to explore the specific social consequences of the liberal social policy of the period and more generally the consequences of the systematic social engineering of complex social systems in a postindustrial society. Insofar as he sought to insulate the process of decision making from the severe political polarizations of the period, this vision of expertise struggled to secure its legitimacy in the early 1970s, as the design, development and deployment of complex scientific methods in urbanism ignored the underlying political transformations of the period.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism HistoryTheory&Criticism

URB

THE ENGINEERS AND THE URBAN SYSTEM, 1968-1974

75

KATIA ZOLOTOVSKY ADVISOR TERRY KNIGHT READERS MARY BOYCE

& SERGIO ARAYA

Architecture & Urbanism Design Design&&Computation Computation

COMP Building Technology

BT Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

This thesis presents two projects with different approaches on how biological systems can inform design. The Polypterus project is about the translation of a biological material system to a parametric design method. It examines the unique design principles of the armor of an ancient fish and ways to apply those principles to the design of synthetic protective and flexible applications. This design process integrates functional diversity and a material-based approach into parametric design methodology. The Xylinum project focuses on the adaptation of a material process to a fabrication process. It presents experiments with bacteria that produce cellulose on a glucose-rich medium. This project looks into ways to manipulate material growth as a novel way of fabrication with biomaterials.

AKPIA

The development of CAD and CAM technologies have privileged a focus on shape and geometry in architectural thinking and design methodologies. In nature, from the molecular scale to the scale of an organism, shape and material work together to create one functional entity (organism/structure). By understanding the design principles of natural systems, it is possible to develop new design methodologies that combine material-based and geometry-based strategies.

Furthermore, it is possible to control the growth process of materials as a novel method of fabrication.

HTC

History Theory & Criticism

URB

A CHUNK OF MATTER: Translation for Design and Adaptation for BioFabrication of Natural Material Systems

77