2024 Projects /Master of Architecture Thesis
/CoAD
A Hostile City, Inequitable Privatization of Public Spaces
Student: Bailey Berdan
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Edward Orlowski
Hostile architecture is a term used to describe design strategies that are intended to deter certain groups of people or behaviors in public spaces. While bench dividers and ground spikes are widely recognized examples of hostile architecture, its impact goes beyond these small-scale designs. Hostile architecture is pervasive in areas such as policy, law, and privatization, and it can have serious negative consequences on a community's economy, walkability, and overall environment. To address this issue, one potential solution is parasitic architecture, which is a practice that is not commonly used but is often employed as a response to dysfunctional conditions. Parasitic architecture involves the creation of structures that are attached to or embedded within existing buildings or infrastructure, utilizing underutilized or overlooked spaces. This approach has the potential to combat hostile architecture and empower communities to reclaim their right to public spaces. By repurposing underused spaces, parasitic architecture has the potential to increase the availability of public spaces, reduce the costs of new construction, and foster a sense of community ownership and engagement. Additionally, these structures can be designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing them to evolve and respond to changing community needs over time. Overall, parasitic architecture represents a promising approach to combat hostile architecture and create more inclusive, accessible, and vibrant public spaces. By empowering communities to collaborate and take ownership of their public spaces, parasitic architecture has the potential to create more livable, sustainable, and equitable cities.
Building Biodiversity: Architectural Interventions for Mangrove Restoration and Community Engagement
Student: Emily Bigelow
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Dan Faoro, Masataka Yoshikawa, Kurt Neiswender
Biodiverse ecosystems play a critical role in maintaining the health of the world. They help to combat climate change, prevent natural disasters, and mitigate the spread of diseases among other benefits. Mangrove ecosystems are biodiverse habitats that provide more important benefits including carbon sequestration, water filtration, and coastal erosion mitigation.
However, these habitats are frequently threatened by human development and construction practices that prioritize speed and profit over sustainability. Current conservation strategies, which involve regional-scale coexistence, struggle to address this issue because the demand for more human settlements remains higher than the demand for wildlife preservation. As more ecosystems are compromised by urban landscapes, the regional balance between the two shifts in favor of humans at the expense of the environment.
These problems are worsened by the imposition of building strategies that are foreign to a climate region. This practice not only reduces occupant comfort and increases energy demands, but also disrupts natural processes like the flow of water and predation patterns. Vernacular architecture, on the other hand, has an intimate relationship with the surrounding environment and has been adapted to provide comfort within the given conditions. These practices can provide insider knowledge of the local climate and ecosystem to produce new developments that aid in restorative projects rather than harming them.
This thesis seeks to find a symbiotic development strategy, wherein architectural interventions benefit biodiverse ecosystems along with human constituents. It explores innovative and indigenous strategies for urban integration with mangrove ecosystems which reduce habitat destruction and promote restoration. This project recommends a transformative strategy for urban development that makes use of indigenous building techniques and ecological principles to guarantee a symbiotic coexistence of mangrove ecosystems and human infrastructure.
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QUEER(+AR)
Fostering Healthy Queer Communities Through Augmented-Reality-Infused Hybridized Event Spaces
Student: James Brosius
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Edward Orlowski, Laura Walker
In the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic, the dynamics of queer space have undergone a profound shift, with conventional physical queer spaces shifting to digital forums. This transition, exacerbated by anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rising heteronormative ideals of the United States suburban landscape, has compelled the queer community to embrace an almost exclusively online presence. This shift has left an outstanding amount of the community in the dark with very minimal physical space left to exist as their true self, begging to return to some form of anchored physicality for connection. To comprehend and contextualize this discussion of queer space’s current issue, drawing reference to the idea of “event-spaces,” (Bernard Tschumi, 1994-2010) helps to understand this shift in the nature of queer space. Event space ideals helps navigate the conversation around the challenges and opportunities presented by this new paradigm, emphasizing the adoption of event spaces as queer space going forward.
The transition to online platforms appears as a reaction in accordance with event-space concepts – as queer space can happen anywhere now instead of holding noteworthy scenes for assemblage. This shift has simultaneously challenged the sense of community and connection, specifically in the suburban context. Due to this shift, these specific queer communities have been left in a state of isolation and uncertainty. Being online completely challenges community mental health, wellbeing, and identity, especially when constant discrimination forces a community to reside there (Abreu, R. L., et al., 2023)(Graham, M., et al., 2023).
As both a dwindled physical and fully digital environment has shown to not keep queer communities together without issue, this investigation proposes the idea of hybridized environments to ignite a new form of connection to make up for the downfalls of each respectively. Recognizing the historical proclivity for the queer community to adopt new technologies for refuge in hostile environments such as heteronormative suburbia, hybridized environments aided by new and emerging tech aligns well with the nature of evolving queer space, with the potential of founding healthy queer communities in the long run (Miles, 2018)(Human Rights Campaign, 2023). To investigate this concern, this thesis will test the implementation of augmented reality in existing fully-physical spaces that used to be queer as an ingredient in the manifestation of post-Covid queer space, acting as a promising avenue for insight in how to re-ignite queer connections and community.
Turning Tree Forks into Structures: An Experimental Analysis of a Minimally Processed Material within the Age of Standardization
Student: Zac Chartrand
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Eric Ward, Anirban Adhya
Since the Industrial Revolution, the building industry has dedicated enormous energy to developing processes that can take raw, idiosyncratic materials and produce highly controlled, specifiable products. This has served the building industry well for years. Material standardization allows for standardized structural details and procedures that can be easily followed by the common builder to produce structures that can be analyzed and designed based on the uniform properties of the building product. Unfortunately, this process rejects those materials that do not meet the uniformity required, regardless of their unique structural potential.
Recent advancements in digital analysis allow for the ability to identify unique qualities within raw materials. Advancements in computational technology allow for the optimization of a structural design to accommodate for these idiosyncratic properties. The development of a platform, involving digital analysis and computational design, would make this method of design available to the common builder and architect. The development of a process, using common construction techniques, would allow the common builder to build structures using these idiosyncratic pieces. The development of this platform for design, and system of construction, would demonstrate that advancements in technology can initiate a movement towards more sustainable architecture by reducing the amount of processing necessary to use raw materials in a structural capacity.
This will be studied by obtaining an inventory of tree forks and scanning them into a digital inventory. A script will then be developed that optimizes fork fitment to different assembly logics for shell structures. Next, a joinery system and system of construction will be developed that processes the forks based on data outputs from the script. Success will be measured in joint precision and structural rigidity.
Suburban Symbiosis: Balancing Ecology and Economics in Suburban Development
Student: Diego Courtney
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Anirban Adhya, Eric Ward
Following World War II, a mass exodus from cities to suburbs necessitated new building patterns that prioritized economics and speed over environmental considerations, changing landscapes and having a negative influence on ecosystems. This growth, we now know as sprawl, combined with profit-driven motives have led to an emphasis on quick, low-cost construction methods like stick framing, which frequently ignore the impact on the local environment and result in significant waste. In the profit-driven model, the residential development process begins with street layout, then lot/parcel maximization, with ecological and landscaping considerations as afterthoughts. This foregrounds the concerns of the car over the environment, prompting developers to sterilize the environment, resulting in fragmented habitats and homogeneous ecosystems that are detrimental to regional biodiversity. The consequences of this uncontained sprawl, which are already significant, will be exposed by the inevitable natural disasters, which are anticipated to become more frequent as a result of climate change. The current suburban development pattern is flawed and outdated, and unprepared for these environmental changes which we must contend with as architects.
To investigate this concern, this thesis will investigate an alternative development pattern, tested within the parameters of a neighborhood located within the rapidly sprawling city of Austin, Texas. This development strategy is intended to balance economic needs with environmental sustainability, with the goal of establishing a widely adopted, US-based model that corresponds with current economic proformas while regenerating and preserving the surrounding ecology. This thesis aims to address the concerns of both profit and environment by attempting to achieve symbiosis with the environment at the suburban scale using the Living Building Challenge.
The Future of 1950’s Suburbia: Why We Need a Suburban Architectural Reformation
Student: Megan Kaminski
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Anirban Adhya, Eric Ward
The original 1950’s boom of suburbanization was a result of a range of factors, such as a need for increased housing for returning veterans as well as to support a growing automotive industry. This led to the creation of what is currently interpreted for ‘suburbs’ to be: repeating residential developments that emphasize automobile use, single-use zoning and private ownership. Additionally, this phenomenon has sparked the continuation of what is now known as ‘suburban sprawl’ in which suburbs are no longer merely defined as the ‘residential outskirts’ of a city but rather as the ever-growing prolongation of them. However, these original ‘purposes’ of the suburbs in conjunction with their exponential sprawl now exacerbates the growing issue of suburban decay on a national scale. As individuals- especially higher income individuals- continue to sprawl outwards, extending the ‘outskirt’ line farther out, the aging progenitor suburbs of the 1950’s are increasingly at risk of decay as redevelopment opportunities similarly move away. Not only this, but since these suburbs were initially designed for higher to middle income individuals, suburbs remain critically dependent on automobiles, single-use zoning and privatization and thus are unable to adapt as new socioeconomic shifts further demonstrate how these suburbs are built impractically and unethically. As such, current Suburban Renewal efforts face unique difficulties in suburbs as existing conditions and regulations continue to limit suburbs from adapting and changing from their original, restrictive, and now deteriorating states. In response to this emergent crisis, suburbs and especially the original 1950’s suburbs are in desperate need of a new Architectural Reformation that takes a phased approach.
To test this claim, this thesis proposes to reimagine a ‘reaction-based’ framework of applying suburban renewal strategies on a larger and more practical scale. To test this claim, a suburban site outside of Detroit will be used as a case study and a basis for existing conditions, code, and public engagement.
Speculative Transit Oriented Developments: A look at Ai Image Generation and Social Media General Interest Surveying in Architecture and Plural Planning to Aid the Multidisciplinary Study of Transit Oriented Developments.
Student: John Lucente
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Dan Faoro, Kurt Nieswender, Masataka Yoshikawa
There has been a rapid evolution, implementation, and commercialization of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) technology over the past several years. Beginning with the partnership of OpenAi and Microsoft in 2019, early adopters have grown exponentially in its use. In architecture specifically, the first exhibition of Ai was held in 2019, and a growing list of progressive architectural firms have incorporated it into their practice since (Leach 2022). Leach described Ai’s strength is in its ability to reduce mundane or repetitive tasks, thus allowing the architect to concentrate efforts elsewhere.
As Ai implementation continues to grow, Social Media Platforms’ (SMPs) adoption seem to have matured with SMPs engaging with almost every aspect of our everyday lives. One area that has gone critically under researched however, are the ways that SMPs can aid in public opinion research, even though as Lian & Dong have highlighted, “...social media can yield a better and more comprehensive understanding of public perceptions of special topics in a more scientific manner.” (Dong and Lian 2021) Coinciding with SMPs potential ability to better survey public opinion is the need for Advocacy Planning and Plural Planning approaches. As Vibhuti Raina explains; “Advocacy planning occurs due to differences in the opinions of public and government... If there would not have been groups opposing the singular public plan, plural plans and advocate planners to advocate them would not have been born.” (Raina 2018). And as Paul Davidoff explained back in 1965; often times in plural planning advocacy, groups lack the resources necessary to propose alternative plans and thus an unbalance of power is derived (Davidoff 1965).
Therefore, this thesis’ primary objective to investigate how Ai image generation can provide a means to reduce resources required when conducting plural planning advocacy design. And as an additional outcome, hypothesize the potential efficacy of SMPs in estimating public opinion on plural planning designs. As a vehicle for this investigation, this thesis provides a plural planning design proposal for a speculative Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in Downtown Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Urban Nightlife: The Role of Architecture in Building Cooperation Between Bats and Humans
Student: Matthew Ruiter
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Masataka Yoshikawa, Kurt Neiswender
As cities grow in footprint and population, rural habitat is destroyed, and wildlife species are forced to find a new home: the urban environment. This increased proximity between humans and wildlife leads to an increased potential for conflicts, though the perceived risks from wildlife are often greater than the actual threats (Hadidian 2015; Soulsbury & White, 2015).
Bats are one group of mammal that have found habitat within the built environment, as the use of human-made structures and maternity roosts and hibernacula is well-known (Johnson et al. 2019; House 2023). Despite the misconceptions surrounding them, bats are vital to ecosystems (Gannon & Bovard 2016) and provide more direct benefits to human populations, including the reduction of crop pests (Boyles et al. 2011) and biting insects including disease vectors (Wray 2018). However, this close proximity also results in risks to bats and humans alike.
Examining the role of bats in the built environment provides an excellent case study on how architecture can positively impact urban wildlife. The role of architecture and infrastructure as bat habitat can be seen in past works such as Joyce Hwang’s Bat Tower (2010) or the local popularity of the bat colony at the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas (Image 1). These and similar case studies of urban and suburban bat populations can reveal how architecture can house not only house bats, but provide for their conservation in the face of population declines and eliminate risks to humans and bats alike.
Respecting Rats: Creating Healthy Cities for Humans, and the Rats They Inevitably Attract
Student: Mackenzie Wilson
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Masataka Yoshikawa, Kurt Neiswender
Historically, rats have followed human settlement. Whether it be in cites, suburbs, or rural areas, rats tend to follow humans. Current human habitats inadvertently create ideal conditions for rats, leading to their ability to thrive in these spaces. These adaptable creatures are especially drawn to dense urban areas because of their ample availability of resources such as food, water, and shelter. Due to this ability of rats to adapt to human environments, designs should be developed to peacefully coexist in shared urban spaces.
The current methods for managing rat populations—such as using traps, rodenticides, and free-ranging cats—do not achieve the desired results. These methods not only fail to control the population of rats, but they can also result in unintentionally encouraging the growth of diseased and more violent rat colonies. The very methods used to control rat populations actually achieve the opposite effect.
The built environment should adapt to accommodate the inevitable presence of rats, using their natural behaviors to guide architectural modifications for a balanced coexistence between humans and rats. Rats are densely populated in almost every large city. Chicago specifically was named the “Rattiest City” in the United States, which is where this investigation will take place (Robledo 2023). By examining resource availability and detection methods (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile) for both rats and humans, this research seeks innovative strategies to integrate rat populations into human environments, reducing conflicts and promoting mutual cohabitation.
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