Thesis (B.Arch.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture, 1957. / MIT copy bound with: An industrial bakery / Richard Melville Langendorf. 1957. / Bibliography: leaf 31. / by Kyu Lee. / B.Arch.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 76). / The common urban waterfront is hardly approachable, much less swimmable, encrusted with wharves, switching yards, sewage out-jalls and other barnacles. It is the true civic outcast, the ghetto of ghettos, familiar only to longshoremen, sanitary engineers and carp. -- THE WATERFRONT. After World War II, a number of factors came together to affect the urban waterfront. Subsequently, these factors lead to the demise, and later the waterfront redevelopment phenomena of our time. In the 1940's, the United States led the world in a series of technological innovations in Port design and industry. Most pertinent to the urban waterfront was the introduction of the container system which revolutionized the shipping industry, much to the expense of the urban waterfront. Soon after its introduction, the container system became the benchmark system in Port technology rendering the traditional "break bulk" dock facilities obsolete. With this systemic change also came a set of infra structural requirements. Container ports require large, new spaces, plus more acreage for backup space as well as deeper and wider channels for the ships. In addition, they also require access to transportation and infrastructure, rendering the existing industrial warehouses and their waterfront rail networks useless. As a result, many urban waterfronts became deserted industrial compounds functioning neither as a viable port for industry nor as a waterfront to the city. At approximately the same time, America's entire pattern of settlement began to shift in the 1950's away from central cities to suburban sprawl. Consequently, vast amounts of urban waterfront land became available, relatively cheaply without dislocating current users. One of the first uses for these abandoned shoreline areas was to aid the burgeoning highway system. As the highway system took hold in the city's infrastructure, the city and the waterfront became alienated entities. Since the formation of the city as an inhabitable entity, the waterfront has played a key role in its development and its sustenance. Within the context of urban life the waterfront can become a pause or reconnection to serenity, vital to restoring a sense calm to the city's inhabitants. Modem waterfronts should become a "center" of sorts favoring public interests over industry and private enterprise. In this arena, the task of urban design is to provide the necessary interface between the city's core and its periphery therefore engaging the life of the city of the pulse of the people. With respect to this philosophy, this Thesis attempts to provide an interface between the city's core and its periphery. / by Darren David Brathwaite. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1990. / Supervised by Lawrence Vale. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-78). / The development of architectural CAD systems implies a trend of using a comprehensive building model as the storage space for all relevant data about one design project. Instead of a set of drawing files, a building is represented as a collection of building object data and their relationships. In order to create and manipulate this complex organizational structure, we have to empower the CAD system with a more sophiSticated manipulating tool than it now possess. Hypermedia, as an associative way of organizing and presenting information, is able to support the practical requirements of designers. The thesis approaches the idea from two aspects: one is to represent a building model in a data structure, based on hypermedIa nodes and links. During this authoring process, we should create a hypermedia structure which can not only cope with the original building data structure but also provide the structural basis we can use in inquiring for buIlding data in the design process. The second aspect is to browse for building information in a model embedded in a hypermedia structure. The possibilities it provides can go far beyond the constraints of conventional organizational methods. The way we access building data can be greatly broadened. The flexibility and interactivity of hypermedia are leading us to better desIgn environments, with more machine power and intelligence being brought to architectural CAD systems. From the viewpoint of system analysis, the ideas and methods, together with the potential problems the thesis discusses will be of value to the real practice of creating and managing this kind of data structure in future architectural CAD systems. / by Jian Zhao. / M.S.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1985. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-85). / A system for the capture and combination of video images is proposed as a prototype for a future personal computer that allows free manipulation and intermixing of information from the computer, video, and photography domains. The benefits in power, flexibility, and applicability to each area from combining with the others are explored. The history and development of the three media contributing to the work is briefly examined, as are the techniques usable in moving between and combining them. The "Moviecliptool" system is described. Moviecliptool's purpose is to allow the generation of high quality stills from a recorded video sequence; that is, moving from the video to the photography domain via the computer. It allows the user to capture a sequence of frames from conventional video equipment into the computer. the frames are brought up on an interactive display where the user can select among them, view them in detail, and, more importantly, begin to combine them to his taste. Moviecliptool provides tools for image enhancements to try to alleviate the noise problems inherent in the video medium, as well as interactive tools for manipulating the content of the images, either by direct modification or by selective combination of the images. The environment supporting moviecliptool is extensively described, as it has helped shape the design of the system. Future developments and directions for similar systems are discussed. The appearance in the commercial world of relevant systems is seen as heralding a promising future for tools which transcend media boundaries. / by Leo Hourvitz. / M.S.V.S.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-58). / Physical fitness and athletics are far more important at MIT than the outsider might imagine. Exercising brings together the MIT community, not only the students but also the faculty and support staff. But the architecture of the existing facilities neither accurately symbolizes nor promotes the energy and significance of the athletic community to the campus as a whole. This thesis proposes a built extension of the Infinite Corridor in the West Campus. The extension, an elevated walkway, supports campus activities, including athletics, becoming the connection between academics and athletics. The goal in building the walkway on the campus organizational axis is to reinforce athletics as part of campus life. The actual elevated experience and machine-like form of the pier and the curved roofs and exposed structure of the various design elements -- all characteristics unique to the MIT campus -- further highlights the importance of athletics to the campus. / by Michael L. Charney. / M.Arch.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008. / "September 2008." / Includes bibliographical references (p. [511]-535). / This dissertation examines a period around World War II when the prospect of widespread destruction provoked a profound re-evaluation of Europe's landmarks, their material value, and their ethical significance. Between 1932 and 1964, works once known as artistic and historic monuments-from buildings to bridges, paintings to shrines, ruins to colossi-acquired a "cultural" value as belonging to the "universal heritage of mankind." Promoted as didactic objects of international understanding, they became subjects of a new brand of international law. I trace the origins of this international valuation to a political movement, identified as Cultural Internationalism, whose main tenet was that the transnational circulation of knowledge constitutes an antidote to war. This ideal fueled the birth of organizations that brandished the autonomy of intellectual work as a weapon against nationalisms: most visibly, the League of Nations' Institut International de Coop&ation Intellectuelle (IICI, 1924-1941), its successor the United Nations Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization (UNESCO, 1946-), and the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic Monuments in War Area (Roberts Commission, 1943-46). Despite the continued role of this institutional lineage in cultural production worldwide, there has not been a study of its contribution to 20th-Century aesthetics. / (cont.) The dissertation explores the modernist aesthetics of monuments that arose from this milieu and unfolded in three related fields: the bombed cities of the Allies' war, the architecture of the European reconstruction, and the heritage missions of the decolonization. A broad network of intellectuals, art historians, architects, and archaeologists was enlisted to show that monuments gave iconic weight to cultural autonomy in a new world order. I follow these experts' attempts to effect this autonomy: working in conferences and as field experts, spawning an intricate network of civilian and military committees, caring for a growing collection of monuments, and encountering the shifting winds of a massive geo-political realignment. / by Lucia Allais. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-55). / This thesis is an investigation into the design and ideology of public space in the historical core of Dresden, more specifically, public space as it is related to history, commerce, and the monumental in architecture. The design of cities and buildings is always ideological, and the spaces within within which they sit and which they design- various physical, textual, electronic, media, and cyberspaces-are always marked and tainted by this ideology. In the West, the design of cities is also linked to violence, and their construction always also represents their destruction. An astute awareness of this fact can produce Architectures and Spaces that can communicate some of what is invisible in any ideological action and representation, as architecture is both. An essential part of this thesis is the research into the history of Dresden in Saxony in the former East Germany. After an intense investigation into the changing and evolving spatial and architectural makeup of the city, a site was chosen that was a locus for all the issues addressed. The final component of the thesis is a programmatic theme that revolves around functions of the market space and the monument in cities. Historically, they both serve many different functions for al l aspects of life in a city. The investigation will involve a design in which its conception, functions, and form are the direct result of and responses to the various types of spaces that cities occupy. / by Carter Johnson. / M.Arch.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-94). / Economic constraints to the professional design practice limit customized solutions to the very wealthy, and thus most of the kitchens in current development housing projects are still generic. With aging baby boomers and an increasing number of survivors of disability, diversified user needs require professional housing design to accommodate all different individuals, which challenges current design standards. Based on universal design principles, a user-oriented tool for universal home design provides more than a few homebuyers with a chance to take advantage of professional design. Kitchen layout design is taken as the starting point of the home design, since the kitchen has the most complex functional requirements and the most difficult barriers of any room in the house. The tool takes user needs as the design motivation and professional best design practice as the database. For the majority of lay people, this tool makes it possible for them to orient their own kitchen design through a guided searching of proper design strategies according to the user needs and preferences. It highlights the needs of particular users at different ages and physical conditions according to the universal design principles. A direct typological conversion is implemented to link user needs with design strategies. This paper is also the documentation of the universal home design tool project in the House_n Consortium at MIT. The paper takes the project as the main example for stating the possibility and feasibility of the new design methodology. / by Xiaoyi Ma. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-62). / We understand the world through our senses. What we see, hear, touch-what we experience--is a construct of a reality that is individual, flexible and in motion. Our thoughts and behavior and the quality of our existence rests on perception of ourselves and our environments. We experience the world personally with the ability to 'edit' our experiences by denying, ignoring, enhancing or changing what we see. Technical developments have made it possible to experience environments that are already altered when they reach one's senses. Modem society is being shaped by the designed, pre-pakaged environment. Visual realities are now pre-fabricated, canned for consumption for an audience increasingly dependent on information fed by others. This thesis, plus its accompanying installation, is based on the premise that images shape thought and that the creative process of image-making can be used to learn about the living environment through video and computer graphics representations. The written part of the thesis examines the changing role of the individual and the artist in a world increasingly shaped by mass media. It proposes an alternate visual communications system for investigating and sharing living environments. The accompanying installation demonstrates the system's educational and creative potential through a visual exploration that plays with the notion of the reliability of perception. It opens a window on the creative process, transforming the artist's studio into a box of illusions and simulations that reflect the illusive nature of art. / by Iris N. Oliveras. / M.S.V.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-113). / The common perception of maps as 'scientific' images and objective records of topographic features has undermined the role of ideology in their evolving form and use. This thesis contends that the structuring of maps and map content is not only a function of available technique and existing topography, but is also related to prevailing social and political values in the city that motivate its form of development. The thesis rests on the premise that maps are not value free representations but deliberate interpretations through selective representation. In reading maps as plans, it seeks to uncover a latent socio-political intention in the very act of map making. The relationship between maps and the city is explored in the specific historical context of Delhi from the seventeenth century to the present. The development of the cartographic representation of the city is looked at in parallel with the development of the city. This simultaneous analysis is an attempt to correlate cartographic fact with the context within which it was produced. It is an exploratory research on the influence of the city on maps and map making, and the potential influence of map knowledge on the city. The nature of the interaction between map and context that emerges from this study verifies the thesis that transformations in the form and content of maps can be attributed to changing values in the city as much as to its changing morphology. Without intending to be an explicit symbol or metaphor, a map -- even in its 'scientific' documentary role -- can represent social and political inclinations of society, encode prevailing theories of urban form, and -- through its instrumentality -- become a participant in future developments in the city. / by Sowmya Parthasarathy. / M.S.