Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1972. M.Arch.A.S. / MICROFICHE COPY ALSO AVAILABLE IN ROTCH LIBRARY. / Bibliography: leaves 109-112. / M.Arch.A.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-147). / Rapid urbanization in Egypt has brought on excessive demand for urban housing . The government agencies' attempt to satisfy this demand by the conventional means of public housing since the early 1960's has a mounted only to less than 7% of the urban housing stock. In contrast to this, the informal sector has been efficient in providing housing for those who are caught between the public housing projects and the expensive private sector market. It is estimated that the population of the informal settlements doubles every ten years and that informal housing constitutes 75% of the urban housing stock in Egypt. This thesis will concentrate on a documentation of the evolution of informal settlements, broken down into items and illustrated by narratives reconstructed from interviews. Then the process documented will be compared with the public housing policies in order to identify the gaps between those policies and the role the informal sector plays, outlining the feet that broad, generalized policies are, at most, inadequate, and that future policies should pay more attention to the specific characteristics of the informal sector. Those characteristics may differ according to context. The results of this comparison can be the basis for future recommendations and can also be integrated into established housing practices. / by Moustafa Abdel Khalek Mourad. / M.S.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 40). / How may design address the conditions of change and creativity in today's workplace environment? Increasingly there is the recognition that in order to develop effective workplaces, the design not only needs to respond to functional requirements but also increase the role of the individual users and suppliers in the ongoing evolution of the office space. Expanding the level of participation in the design and decision-making process increases the level of complexity and requires the re-evaluation of existing design conventions. If the design team chooses to meaningfully engage in these matters, then issues such as the relationship between individual identity and organizational culture, coordination and distribution of resources, and consideration of perceptions and changing behaviors necessarily need to be addressed. The assessment and formulation of these issues generates the basis for th is architectural investigation on a collaborative design process in the workplace. The investigation begins by examining conventional design paradigms in order to articulate some of the limitations in the design process as currently practiced by architects and designers. In particular, design processes that clearly delineate the providers (manufacturers, designers, consultants) from the users (organizations and the employees) are seen as problematic due to the fact that the end users themselves are often excluded from important decision-making transactions. What is needed is an alternative design approach that can engage individual users to continuously shape their office needs and environments with in parameters of a negotiated framework. Despite the added complexity, it is argued that this direction is critical in providing an ongoing and systematic process to accommodate for user interventions and design innovation in today's networked office. / Luke Yeung. / M.Arch.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1969. M.Arch. / Bibliography: leaf 61. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1962. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 54). / by Ronald R. Williams. / M.Arch

Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 129). / The town halt as a type of architecture has become so prevalent that the term has been used to describe the activities that go on inside - namely, social gatherings of the public for purposes of discussion, question, and feedback to the governing body. The archetypes of the town hall, in the 12th century Italy, or 17th century New England, functioned not only as the municipal headquarters with offices and courts, but also in some cases included markets, church, warehouse, museum, pub, etc. Most importantly, it functioned as a meeting place for the public. However, as an architecture typology, the town hall does not scale as the municipality expands. The administrative parts of the town hall can grow or multiply proportionally with the population, but the public functions that were originally embedded in the architecture were either pushed out into the large plaza outside of the city hall, or disappeared entirely. This thesis project seeks to re-establish the ideologies of democracy manifested through the architectural typology of the town hall in New York City's Civic Center through creating small spaces for social discourse. / by Shiyu Wei. / M. Arch.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-128). / Artificial intelligence is substituting human intelligence and robots are replacing human workers. Instead of settling for this competitive relationship between humans and machines, this thesis proposes a novel framework in which humans and machines work together to solve the complex problems of design-scripting education, problems which humans or machines alone cannot easily solve. In design education, there are few clear guides and pedagogies that can effectively teach students with diverse educational and professional backgrounds, some of who may need individualized tutoring. This thesis specifically explores applications of artificial intelligence (machine learning and computer vision algorithms) in which humans and machines mutually improve their learning performance. Humans can increase a machine's performance by providing training-data sets that can be a foundation for intelligent decision-making. Machines, on the other hand, can improve humans' learning performance by analyzing human study patterns and providing mass-customized instructions. This thesis illustrates that the developed Synthetic Tutor provides novice students with architectural precedents by analyzing their drawings and documents and effectively teaches these students introductory computer programming skills in the context of architectural design. Therefore, this human-machine collaboration has proven an effective framework to solve these ill-structured problems. / by Ju Hong Park. / Ph. D.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-153). / by Wael M. Al-Masri. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-132). / Many animal behaviors consist of using special patterns of motion for communication, with certain types of movements appearing widely across animal species. Oscillatory motions in particular are quite prevalent, where many of these repetitive movements can be characterized by a simple sinusoidal model with very specific and limited parameter values. We develop a computational model of categorical perception of these motion patterns based on their inherent structural regularity. The model proposes the initial construction of a hierarchical ordering of the model parameters to partition them into sub-categorical specializations. This organization is then used to specify the types and layout of localized computations required for the corresponding visual recognition system. The goal here is to do away with ad hoc motion recognition methods of computer vision, and instead exploit the underlying structural description for a motion category as a motivating mechanism for recognition. We implement this framework and present an analysis of the approach with synthetic and real oscillatory motions, and demonstrate its applicability within an interactive artificial life environment. With this categorical foundation for the description and recognition of related motions, we gain insight into the basis and development of a machine vision system designed to recognize these patterns. / by James W. Davis. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 45). / This thesis explores the way in which color and light change the way we understand our built environment. The site for this thesis is at the west end of the Esplanade. The Esplanade is a recreational park along the Boston side of the Charles River in Massachusetts. The park has built facilities for sailing, concerts, and eating that detour off to one side or the other of the park's system of paths. The topography of the site is quite flat. Movement through the park is seemingly timeless as one walks parallel to the water, past unremarkable landmarks. The west end of the Esplanade is a long, narrow strip of land between the Charles River and a small lagoon. Through the exploration of color and light, this thesis tries to recover a sense of time at both a large and small scale as one moves through the site. The sense of time is revealed through the constantly changing interaction between light and materials as the sun moves from east to west. It also tries to introduce a new spacial understanding of the site by breaking away from the existing parallel movement both physically and visually. The vehicle for this exploration is a proposal for a recreational building that includes a swimming pool with changing facilities, cafe and community art gallery. / by Deirdre A. Terzian. / M.Arch.