no abstract provided by author / Master of Science

A vertical world The connection between worlds is a layer of time The city contains many of its vessels The vision, the vessel, a tall building / Master of Architecture

Part of the struggle of making architecture is reconciling its various realities; as it exists as pure idea and its transformation into a ‘thing’ existing in the world. Modern times pose a new challenge as well. As Jacob Bronowski has said, the dilemma is no longer to find structure for material but to find material for structure. Therefore, the ‘imposed idea’ is important as an impetus for Architecture to exist. In this project the imposed idea was the use of a series of parallel walls, vertical planes, that delimit the place for dwelling. In the first drawings, an attempt was made to use color as the substantiation or realization of space. The line drawing remains as a descriptive adjunct to the expressive drawing. They <i>become</i> together; the idea vs. its realization each describing the ‘thing’ in its <i>evolving</i> reality. / Master of Architecture

The pattern of American institution building through private funding began in metropolises of all sizes soon after the nation's founding. But by 1840, Manhattan's geographical location and great natural harbor had made it America's preeminent commercial and communications center and the undisputed capital of finance. Thus, as the largest and richest city in the United States, unsurprisingly, some of the most ambitious cultural institutions would rise there, and would lead the way in the creation of a distinctly American model of high culture. This dissertation describes New York City's cultural transformation between 1840 and 1940, and focuses on three of its enduring monuments, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Opera. It seeks to demonstrate how trustees and financial supporters drove the foundational ideas, day-to-day operations, and self-conceptions of the organizations, even as their institutional agendas enhanced and galvanized the inherently boosterish spirit of the Empire City. Many board members were animated by the dual impulses of charity and obligation, and by their own lofty edifying ambitions for their philanthropies, their metropolis, and their country. Others also combined their cultural interests with more vain desires for social status. Although cohesive, often overlapping social groups founded and led most elite institutions, important moments of change in leadership in the twentieth century often were precipitated by the breakdown of a social order once restricted to Protestant white males. By the 1920s and 1930s, the old culture of exclusion--of Jews, of women, of ethnic minorities in general--was no longer an accepted assumption, nor was it necessarily good business. In general, institutions that embraced the notion of diversity and adapted to forces of historical change tended to thrive. Those that held fast to the paradigms of the past did not. Typically, when we consider the history and development of such major institutions, the focus often has been on the personalities and plans of the paid directors and curatorial programs. This study, however, redirects some of the attention towards those who created the institutions and hired and fired the leaders. While a common view is that membership on a board was coveted for social status, many persons who led these efforts had little abiding interest in Manhattan's social scene. Rather, they demanded more of their boards and expected their fellow-trustees to participate in more ways than financially. As the twentieth century beckoned, rising diversity in the population mirrored the emerging multiplicity in thought and culture; boards of trustees were hardly exempt from this progression. This dissertation also examines the subtle interplay of the multi-valenced definition of "public" along with the contrasting notion of "private." In the early 1800s, a public institution was not typically government funded, and more often functioned independent of the state, supported by private individuals. "Public," instead, meant for the people. Long before the income tax and charitable deductions for donations, there was a full range of voluntary organizations supported by private contributions in the United States. This dissertation argues that in a privatist spirit, New York elites seized a leadership role, both individually and collectively, to become cultural arbiters for the city and the nation.

No description available.

Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Universiẗat, Diss., 2006.

This thesis focuses on a few of the different possibilities for an infill housing project. The site is located in Queens, New York, adjacent to the East River. The site is an old railroad yard. The surrounding neighborhood is a mixture of commercial and residential areas. The linear axis of the site offers the possibility for a strong horizontal object for the city. / Master of Architecture

This thesis explores an alternate typology for a residential high rise in the Hudson Square neighborhood in Manhattan. The units that make up the building are organized with stairs and corridors placed along the interior perimeter of the unit which both bound the central floor space and expose it, creating a layered vertical circulation space around a central, permeable core. The collective organization of units within the building recapitulate their interior organization to form the building object creating a whole that is governed by the same organizational rules as the parts. The building is created as an object in the city meant to frame the duality between transparency and reflection, between lines and surfaces and ultimately between exhibition and anonymity. / Master of Architecture

This dissertation uses quantitative data on city cinematography and the morphological study of filming locations to identify how differences in ways of seeing cities, as shaped by cinematographic choices, are anchored both in differences in what is physically present as well as in differences in frameworks and expectations about what might be interesting or important to see. Four films are evaluated that are set in Los Angeles and New York, two cities recognized as paradigms in American urbanism: The Naked City (1948), The Long Goodbye (1970), Goodfellas (1990), and Pulp Fiction (1994). In general, the New York movies suggest the embeddedness of the individual in the city and its social life in ways tied closely to urban form, with the visual presentation of the street acting as an index to the position of the individual within the narrative. Los Angeles, by contrast, presents the city as a series of enclaves linked by infrastructure. The street as a sociologically relevant entity hardly exists, with the exception of a handful of chase scenes, as though only crisis can catalyze direct encounters with the streets of Los Angeles. Within individual movies, the depiction of city form reveals directorial idioms in the presentation of the narrative. The Naked City exploits corner shots to impart greater visual interest to the presentation of activity in the streets. The Long Goodbye shows the degradation of the distinction between public and private space as concurrent with a city form and culture that resists decoding. Goodfellas develops a grammar of views on the street that corresponds to the relationships of individual characters to overlapping social groups over time. Pulp Fiction mainly presents city locations as decontextualized to focus on dialogue and relationships, to sculpt urban form to meet the exigencies of the narrative, and to all the more powerfully introduce surprise. In the concluding chapter, the qualities of the city as presented in Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction and both of the cities are diagrammed and discussed relative to architectural precedents and ideas that might inform architectural design.

Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att undersöka alkoholvanornas betydelse för människors inskrivning vid fattighus i New York state i USA. Den tidsperiod som behandlas i uppsatsen är år 1892. De faktorer som ligger till grund för jämförelsen är etniska och socioekonomiska faktorer. För att undersöka detta har inskrivningskort från fattighusen i staten New York använts och sedan har det gjorts en kvantitativ undersökning. De resultat som visar sig i denna uppsats är att alkohol- vanorna för svenskfödda och infödda faktiskt skiljde sig. Det var vanligare att de som var födda i Amerika hade alkoholproblem som påverkat deras situation, än vad det var för de svenskfödda. Re- sultatet visar även på att den sociala mobiliteten varierade mellan de valda fattighusen som under- söktes. Dock var det vanligare i alla fattighusen att de inskrivna hade sjunkit i kategorier av yrken och i de sociala rummen.