Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-248). / When human listeners are confronted with musical sounds, they rapidly and automatically orient themselves in the music. Even musically untrained listeners have an exceptional ability to make rapid judgments about music from very short examples, such as determining the music's style, performer, beat, complexity, and emotional impact. However, there are presently no theories of music perception that can explain this behavior, and it has proven very difficult to build computer music-analysis tools with similar capabilities. This dissertation examines the psychoacoustic origins of the early stages of music listening in humans, using both experimental and computer-modeling approaches. The results of this research enable the construction of automatic machine-listening systems that can make human-like judgments about short musical stimuli. New models are presented that explain the perception of musical tempo, the perceived segmentation of sound scenes into multiple auditory images, and the extraction of musical features from complex musical sounds. These models are implemented as signal-processing and pattern-recognition computer programs, using the principle of understanding without separation. Two experiments with human listeners study the rapid assignment of high-level judgments to musical stimuli, and it is demonstrated that many of the experimental results can be explained with a multiple-regression model on the extracted musical features. From a theoretical standpoint, the thesis shows how theories of music perception can be grounded in a principled way upon psychoacoustic models in a computational-auditory-scene-analysis framework. Further, the perceptual theory presented is more relevant to everyday listeners and situations than are previous cognitive-structuralist approaches to music perception and cognition. From a practical standpoint, the various models form a set of computer signal-processing and pattern-recognition tools that can mimic human perceptual abilities on a variety of musical tasks such as tapping along with the beat, parsing music into sections, making semantic judgments about musical examples, and estimating the similarity of two pieces of music. / Eric D. Scheirer. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-33). / Hypodensity/Hyperdensity is a reaction to the paradoxical modern urban condition of emptiness: the 'ring of drek,' left like a smear around Boston by post-industrial deflation. This area is close to both the crowded city center and the crowded suburbs but possesses a hefty inertia in a reputation of crime and ugliness. The land itself is virtually useless; most of the earth is reclaimed (unwanted fill from elsewhere), and any hopes of plant life are quashed by road/rail sprawl, ceaseless paving, and a blanketing of low-rise warehouses. In short, this area claims all the ailments of the inner city and none of its triumphs. Connecting modes of transportation allows an assembly of physical form as a paradigmatic juxtaposition. The site, currently empty and infertile, will contain an ideal urban condition of high-density living and the ideal rural construct of an orchard. These two polar opposite conditions are symbiotic in the site, creating a completely unique mode of living that is not isolated from the existing fabric of the surrounding area. / by Gabriel Cira. / S.B.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1958. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-58). / by Charles A. Blondheim, Jr. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 107). / This thesis is intended as a continuation of an MIT design studio. The class proposed an alternative approach to building in the city. It seeks to address some of the following issues: continuity, collective form, range of sizes, territoriality, power, and context. A design exploration is undertaken utilizing this approach on a site in the Back Bay of Boston. The work is organized into five parts: The introduction begins with an overview of the approach. Goals are stated which it seeks to attain: decentralization of control, range of sizes, reduced construction costs, clarity in expression of building parts, vertical zoning, and adaptability. Towards the realization of these goals, some working assumptions are identified: The construction of the building will be divided into two layers. First, an infrastructure that will provide the primary structure, public access and utilities. Second, zones of approximately five thousand square feet that are allowed to develop independent of the infrastructure will provide the infill partitions, internal access, plumbing, mechanical, and electrical service as required by the occupants. The section continues with a comparison of the approach to a building currently under construction on the thesis site. Documentation of a previous design exploration that utilized the same approach is included. The section concludes with an overview of the organization of the thesis document. Part two looks at the Back Bay of Boston, the site of the design exploration. Its beginning as a land fill of the original tidal basin is discussed. The lot sizes and various building types are documented along with zoning ordinances. Finally, the specific site is illustrated and discussed along with its adjacent context. Part three begins the initial design exploration with the introduction of the structural system. A diagram for the site is evolved from an original Back Bay plan type for this size site. The first layer of construction or 'infrastructure' is illustrated and then tested by a group of students. A discussion of problems identified by the students and further testing by the author concludes this section. Part four seeks to address some of the problems uncovered by the testing done in part three. A new structural system emerges and is deployed through the use of a grid of zones and margins. Documentation of the resultant changes in the infrastructure concludes this part. Part five contains the refinement of the design which is illustrated with drawings and a model. Some suggestions are offered for modification of the approach as it relates to a site of this size. Finally, a discussion follows which outlines the original issues of the "alternate approach" and how they were addressed by the design. / by Gregory Faulkner. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.Arch.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture, 1957. / ACCOMPANYING drawings held by MIT Museum. / Bibliography: leaf 61. / by Donald D. Hanson. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-193). / The making of a place is an important theoretical issue in occidental architecture, especially when it addresses the creation of places meant for communities. Architects working in that field are confronted with a number of issues. They come from the existence of legal and administrative norms, and from the very status of the architect in the western world - from his/her ambiguous position between state, power and society. These issues, explicitly or not, limit the field of his/her practice. Squatter settlements in the developing world are built in totally different circumstances. Created under illegal conditions, they provide us with an opportunity to observe the creation of new environments located outside of our legal and ideological spheres. Comparing the way they appear with the way places are created in our societies can allow us to locate and to explore the boundaries of our field of action, and to investigate unexpected ways of making new collective places. This thesis is an exploration of the role that squatter settlements can play in the creation of future urban environments. The first chapter introduces the reader to the problems inherent in the creation of new places by architects, through works by different authors. The concepts of smooth space and striated space, which are used all along this thesis, are described. The work of the French architect Henri Gaudin is presented. While having theoretically the potential to create urban and collective environments which allow the development of a community life, Gaudin's work confronts the issues mentioned above when it comes to practice. This chapter ends by stating the interest the study of places which are not submitted to official normative systems holds for architects. The second chapter presents the concept of squatter settlement, through a critical reading of seven surveys of these environments. These surveys are intended first to provide the reader with the information necessary to the argument of the next chapters, and second to look at the different lenses through which squatter settlements are observed from the occidental world. A constant appears: surveys which are made for exploration purpose do not reduce the environment to a set of parameters, which is the case with surveys aiming directly at a future intervention. The third chapter is the presentation of a squatter settlement in Bombay which I personally surveyed during a two weeks fieldwork, in May-June 1987. As opposed to the purposive surveys described in chapter II, my approach was an attempt to find in the settlements images and qualities which go beyond its immediate reality, and to get an image of its possible future. The application of this approach to a reality as harsh as a squatter settlement is not easy, but is worth wile. Unexpected connections are more likely to appear, and the qualities of the environment are easier to find. "Reduction can always occur later through science or critique". Finding qualities in a squatter settlement leads to an argument in favor of their preservation. By doing so, are we not at the same time validating the processes which led to their creation at the end of the XXe century - that is, an exploitive and disruptive development? The answer is by no way easy, and calls for an exploration of these processes. The fourth chapter deals with this question . While it is true that squatter settlements find their origin in development, the same can be said for the official cities in the developing world. From this, considerations on the concept of structure of space, introduced through Harvey's and Castells' works, allow us to describe the squatter settlement as a unique opportunity for official cities to create contextual urban environments, and to counterbalance the importation of market-exchange oriented theories of urbanism. The fifth chapter is a conclusive one. This exploration of squatter settlements, through their representations , their socio-spatial reality, their local characteristics and a global view of the squatter phenomenon, allows us to redefine our position towards them. How do they answer the issue of creating a place? What do they tell us about the limits of our own practice? How can the qualities found in them be adapted to an official practice of architecture? These conclusions are presented side-by-side in what is called a "conclusive territory". / by Nicholas Reeves. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-178). / Traditionally in computer graphics, a scene is represented by geometric primitives composed of various materials and a collection of lights. Recently, techniques for modeling and rendering scenes from a set of pre-acquired images have emerged as an alternative approach, known as image-based modeling and rendering. Much of the research in this field has focused on reconstructing and rerendering from a set of photographs, while little work has been done to address the problem of editing and modifying these scenes. On the other hand, photo-editing systems, such as Adobe Photoshop, provide a powerful, intuitive, and practical means to edit images. However, these systems are limited by their two-dimensional nature. In this thesis, we present a system that extends photo editing to 3D. Starting from a single input image, the system enables the user to reconstruct a 3D representation of the captured scene, and edit it with the ease and versatility of 2D photo editing. The scene is represented as layers of images with depth, where each layer is an image that encodes both color and depth. A suite of user-assisted tools are employed, based on a painting metaphor, to extract layers and assign depths. The system enables editing from different viewpoints, extracting and grouping of image-based objects, and modifying the shape, color, and illumination of these objects. As part of the system, we introduce three powerful new editing tools. These include two new clone brushing tools: the non-distorted clone brush and the structure-preserving clone brush. They permit copying of parts of an image to another via a brush interface, but alleviate distortions due to perspective foreshortening and object geometry. / (cont.) The non-distorted clone brush works on arbitrary 3D geometry, while the structure-preserving clone brush, a 2D version, assumes a planar surface, but has the added advantage of working directly in 2D photo-editing systems that lack depth information. The third tool, a texture-illuminance decoupling filter, discounts the effect of illumination on uniformly textured areas by decoupling large- and small-scale features via bilateral filtering. This tool is crucial for relighting and changing the materials of the scene. There are many applications for such a system, for example architectural, lighting and landscape design, entertainment and special effects, games, and virtual TV sets. The system allows the user to superimpose scaled architectural models into real environments, or to quickly paint a desired lighting scheme of an interior, while being able to navigate within the scene for a fully immersive 3D experience. We present examples and results of complex architectural scenes, 360-degree panoramas, and even paintings, where the user can change viewpoints, edit the geometry and materials, and relight the environment. / by Byong Mok Oh. / Ph.D.

Thesis (B.Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1941. / MIT copy bound with: Cooperative farming and the independent home / Myron Dean Phillips. 1941. Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [30]-[31]). / by Norton Polivnick. / B.Arch

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-94). / The essay is an analysis Tafuri's theory on historiography;. it traces his methodological sources: the theories, and their mode of reception, that have directly influenced his thought. The period examined starts with Theories and History of Architecture, first published in 1968 and ends with "The Historical 'Project"', the introductory essay of The Sphere and the Labyrinth, published in 1980 The first chapter outlines the intertwining of the two neo-idealist and Marxist components of Tafuri's thought, combined with the early familiarity with the writings of the Nouvelle Critique. Subsequently, it identifies the points that, in Theories and History, represent Tafuri's original contribution to architectural history: the identification of architecture as ideology and the consequent demystifying role that the historian must play; consequently, the formulation of the specific notions that will serve as the instruments for this task of the historian; the identity of history and criticism; the complete separation of the design process from the 'reading' process (Le. history writing) of a building; the logical consequence of this: the 'futility' of history and theory in design; and, finally, the obsoleteness of the mode of criticism termed "operative criticism". The second chapter tackles the problem posed by the contradictory coexistence, in Tafuri's later writings, of Marxist and neo-avant-garde positions. It analyzes in detail what neo-avant-garde ideas were, what they implied and what theoretical and methodological purposes they served. The analysis centers on the strong impact of Foucault's theories on Tafuri, and his equally strong criticism of them. Most importantly, however, it outlines the profound impact of Walter Benjamin's notion of history, particularly as exposed in "The Theses on the Philosophy of History", on Tafuri. In the last chapter, are drawn some partial conclusions on the epistemological implications of Tafuri's theory. / by Carla Keyvanian. / M.S.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-198). / Adaptability of the built form has for a long time been the concern of many designers. Driven by different motives such as the accommodation of "uncertainty," the pursue of an "economical space", the restoration of the user's "control" over the form, and the pursue of "fit," designers and scholars have proposed various formal means in order to achieve an architecture that would provide for change. The purpose of this thesis is to add to this discussion, proposing particular design strategies. In order to do this, transformations are documented and measured in the Main Buildings of the MIT Campus, which have often been cited for their ability to accommodate change. The thesis hypothesizes that the buildings in question contained in their body a certain DNA that enabled them to transform easily and effectively. Through the analysis of the original system of buildings and its transformations, which are divided into the two categories of growth and internal change, this DNA is exposed and juxtaposed to the formal means that have been suggested in the ideas of designers and scholars. / (cont.) The DNA is argued to consist of stems, knuckles, "unit-sections," courts, add-on facades and an underlying circulation system. The result of this thesis is a tested, in terms of effectiveness, series of specific formal means, comprised of MIT's DNA and the other designers' propositions, which can be outlined as three general strategies; provision of extra space, "open- endedness" and delineation of a comprehensive framework along which transformations can take place. At the same time, a physical history of the early years of the Cambridge Campus is produced, ranging from 1912 to 1933. / by Maria Zafeiriadou. / S.M.