Thesis (S.M. in Architecture Studies)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Page 121 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-120). / A transnational index of contemporary art, documenta in its current form is known in the art world for its scale, site-specificity and rotating Artistic Directors, each with their own theme and agenda. On a unique schedule, the expansive show is displayed in Kassel, Germany from June to September every five years. The origins of the exhibition-event are embedded in the postwar reconstruction of West Germany and a regenerative national Garden Show. This thesis focuses on the architectural condition of the first documenta in 1955, which I argue has ultimately shaped the nomadic and parceled form of documenta as it evolved. In a liminal space between a violent, isolated history and a hopeful, democratic future, the organizers of documenta appropriated the damaged, but centrally located Museum Fridericianum as shelter for an exhibition of modern art. I trace the early history of the siting and architecture of the Museum Fridericianum and central urban plaza, the Friedrichsplatz, to unfold the urban planning schemes and controversies of the 1940s and 50s. In the midst of re-planning, the national Garden Show- the Bundesgartenschau, a catalyst for economic regeneration as a tourist attraction and proponent of urban parks, offered the support needed for the germinating plans for an art show that would be called documenta. Arnold Bode, a designer, painter and professor at the Art Academy in Kassel took advantage of the Bundesgartenschau exposure and funding to install an exhibition of modern art in the damaged neoclassical Museum Fridericianum. Although the details of the building's restoration are often overlooked, the thesis examines the built conditions of Bode's Fridericianum in an attempt to reposition documenta in the history of architecture. I argue for the influence of Kassel's urban and landscape history on the staging of documenta, and in turn, the exhibition's dialogue with the form and ideology of the Bundesgartenschau. In displaying the architecture as part of the exhibition, Bode resurrected the Enlightenment ideology that birthed the building and reinterpreted it for a postwar message. Now one among many biennial format global exhibitions, documenta offers a unique and compelling confluence between the subject's relationship with landscape, urban design, architecture, exhibition design and art, based on its inception in 1955 in the Museum Fridericianum. / by Mariel A. Villeré. / S.M.in Architecture Studies

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-55). / As we begin to comprehend the ways we interact with the data/information/knowledge structures which construct our individual perception of reality, we see a shift from the dyadic Cartesian method of reading our environment, to a triadic, or Systems View, which accounts for individual perceptual readings and individual realities. This shift in thinking relates that we are dynamic, self-organizing, complex systems which form an individual perception of our environment based on the relationships we identify between ourselves and the interrelated systems of data/information around us. Recognizing this shift, the research project associated with this thesis, utilizes interactive digital multimedia, or hypermedia, in the design of a set of tools with which to identify and illustrate these interrelated systems. It is the author's belief that once identified, these dynamic relationships will provide an ideal source of user-defined navigation of the group of interrelated objects. The dynamic qualities of hypermedia, which provide the author different modes of linking information of many different data types to one another, making it an ideal venue for the illustration and navigation of systemic relationships. Employing two and three dimensional methods of visual and spatial representation, integrated with in various combinations of graphic organizational models, the product of th is thesis will provide the user an information-rich environment in which to identify and navigate the associative relationships found amongst a group of physical objects, in th is case furniture of modern design. The thesis also looks ahead to speculate on the impact of emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Tangible User Interfaces, on the design of information knowledge "spaces". The author will propose a future implementation of these technologies in relation to the current subject of illustration. / by Andrew F. Miller. / S.M.

Thesis (M.Arch.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture, 1956. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / Includes bibliographies. / by John I. Schlossman. / M.Arch.

Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 83). / "We were searching for ourselves in each other." - Sergei Parajanov Straddling the border between the continents of Europe and Asia, the South Caucasus, the name referring to the geographical region that stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian has played an important role in connecting peoples. Traversed by a great chain of mountains rising to a height of 18,000 feet, it was used by merchants as the only way to reach the Middle East from Europe by land [Kilyakov]. Today, we know the South Caucasus as a collection of three nations: Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Former Soviet socialist republics, the three neighbors have been engrossed in conflict since the 1990s thereby ushering perpetual instability in the region. But was there a time of mutual understanding? Perhaps the answer could be found in the poetry and songs of Sayat Nova, an 18th-century Armenian ashough who wrote in the three major languages of the Caucasus: Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani. The poet provides us with the realization that the cultures of the Caucasus were once intertwined to an extent that is virtually a distant memory today. Sayat Nova would later become the central character in filmmaker Sergei Parajanov's 1968 masterpiece 'The Color of Pomegranates,' a film which attempts to depict the poet's life through a sequence of active tableaux. This thesis attempts to analyze and employ the formal techniques used by Parajanov, in order to create an architecture framing and framed around the poems and songs written by the famous ashough. Sited at the tripoint where the three countries meet, it aspires to serve as a point of convergence between the three neighboring nations of the South Caucasus. A place of retreat, contemplation, and celebration. To remember what once was and dream of what again could be. / by Robert Panossian. / M. Arch.

Thesis (S.B. in Art and Design)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 37). / The purpose of this thesis was to conduct a survey that would determine the source of MIT Department of Architecture undergraduate dissatisfaction with the Bachelor of Science in Art and Design (BSAD) degree program. It was the hope of the author that this investigation would lead to a well informed proposal for improvements to be made to the overall curriculum and to the undergraduate experience. In order to develop a thorough proposal for changes to the program, the specific expectations and frustrations of the BSAD undergraduates needed to be learned. It was determined that the best way to do so was to distribute a survey via e-mail to both current students of the Department of Architecture, as well as to-recent alumni. This survey would elicit information from those polled that would be used towards the development of a proposal for improvements to the undergraduate program. Of the 96 BSAD alumni and 63 registered Course 4 undergraduates polled, 28 responded to the evaluation, a response rate of 18%. This response produced some 100 pages worth of vital and telling information with regards to which classes students found most and least enjoyable, most and least significant, most disappointing, or most needed. They also shared a number of comments with regards to the Department of Architecture in general. Many of the opinions expressed via the survey results differed greatly from one another, thus making it impossible to propose an easy fix-all for the program. Nonetheless, the information shared was very helpful towards the formation of a comprehensive series of suggestions for improvement to the undergraduate BSAD experience at MIT. / by Jennifer L. Most. / S.B.in Art and Design

Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1906. / by John J. Donovan. / B.S.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Design and Computation)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-159 (i.e. [190]-[194])). / Remote design comes with significant challenges. A major barrier to designing in remote regions is the lack of communication between designers and users. As a result, the lack of information flow leads to assumptions about the community's needs- an inherent weakness in the design process. This study examines the role that mobile phones play as a mode of communication between designers of products for communities in developing countries and the users within the communities themselves, in order to provide a better sense of context and environment. This study focused on the use of a communication software called mSurvey and its ability to create accessible feedback flows, that would otherwise be difficult to achieve within remote areas. The investigation uses three case studies as examples. These case studies differ in location, design team, and distance. The first case study took place in Trinidad and Tobago and had software engineers as the design team. The second case study, in Nairobi, Kenya, consisted of architects, engineers, and Masters of Business Administration (MBAs) as the design team. The third case study, in Tanzania, consisted of a company of over 160 employees, whose job titles ranged from designers and engineers, to supply chain strategists. The findings illustrate that, although each design task was different, there are similar challenges when designing for remote regions, specifically, developing countries. The solution to some of these challenges is the increased use of mobile technologies between designers and communities. / by Kenfield Allistair Griffith. / Ph.D.in Design and Computation

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-97). / This thesis proposes the direct building of physical-spatial continuities with a generous range of sizes, from site size down to human size, producing an environment of multi-optional use. The work is partially reaction to certain modem tendencies in architecture that reduce the built landscape to closed, object-like, discrete physical elements. The disparity in the range of sizes from large to small intensifies the discontinuity in contemporary, mid-to-high density urban environments. The design exploration entails the transformation of an abandoned series of packed cylindrical grain containers to a structure habitable as a mid-rise (10-12 stories) three dimensional built landscape. References describe select problems and examples of: the circle as a geometric construct and some of its intrinsic behaviors the circle-cylinder in architecture built landscape transformations. / by Daniel S. Krynytzky. / M.Arch.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 279-295). / Founded by the art critic Georg Fuchs and built by the architect Max Littmann in 1908, the Munich Artists' Theater is famous for its shallow "relief stage." Reworking the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner in the service of the emerging mass audience, Fuchs advocated "the stage of the future," but created one embedded in its historical moment. Eliciting reactions from major figures in theater, architecture, and the visual arts, it provoked debate over the nature of spectatorship and crystallizes the complex relationship between empathy and abstraction, foundational concepts in modernist aesthetic discourse and artistic production. The relief stage embodied the modernist discourse of flatness; the performances it presented may be allied to the contemporaneous birth of abstraction in Munich. Evoking the newly popular film screen, it faced an amphitheatrical auditorium suitable for the emerging mass audience. The publication that year in Munich of Wilhelm Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy, which articulated the "urge to abstraction," a universal, visceral response to art, registered the spectator's changing status in aesthetic discourse. But Fuchs was inspired by the discussion of relief sculpture presented in 1893 by the sculptor and visual theorist Adolf von Hildebrand. Through Hildebrand, he absorbed the theory of empathy, developed in late nineteenth-century aesthetic philosophy, psychology, and visual theory to describe the spectator's experience as a form of active and embodied vision. Fuchs attempted both to create and serve the mass audience, but he relied on an outmoded aesthetic model while abstraction was brewing in Munich. Ignoring Worringer's displacement of theoretical allegiances from empathy to abstraction, he never linked the relief stage to the aesthetic theory being embraced by the Munich avant-garde. His political leanings were equally conservative; he valued theater's ability to mold a group of individual spectators into the unified audience that he considered necessary for the creation of a strong German state. The promotion and reception of the Artists' Theater in 1908 present a turning point between the solitary bourgeois viewer of the nineteenth century implied by empathy and the mass audience of the 1920s, often described in terms of abstraction, distraction, and estrangement. / by Juliet Koss. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121). / by Jae Ha Chong. / M.Arch.