This project was an exercise in aligning my intuition, community experience, and design sensitivities under the pretext of an architectural expression. My desire was to work endogenously, or out of my home environment, on a project that had no clear programmatic or formal requirements or limitations. I began by assessing a prevalent issue in my home town (a connection between the river and the town center) both from the top down and the bottom up. Throughout, I sought to challenge my preconceived notions of what might be, and allow a design process to emerge out of the layers of information I had absorbed as a participant in this holistic landscape. Inflection and change became a driving force in this pared down design process, and through them came a working territory that framed the programmatic and formal specificities of the South River P.O.R.T.

Mining is the primary method through which modern society obtains the minerals needed to fuel the global economy, provide for modern energy requirements, and support the built environment. Presently, mining accounts for nearly 1% of the global ice-free land surface, with a dramatic increase anticipated in the coming decades. Mining permanently changes and often destroys the pre-existing topography, hydrology, and ecology of the ground, and efforts to reclaim mining landscapes—with the aim of encouraging reforestation and soil replenishment—are often unsuccessful, rendering the land of abandoned mines both unusable and uninhabitable. This thesis addresses the current state of mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and focuses specifically on a cobalt and copper mining complex within and adjacent to the town of Kolwezi. This is a complex site that is crucial for the global transition to renewable energy, and yet contains many of the climate and social injustices currently implicit with mining. This research formulates a novel model of mine reclamation for the landscapes of Kolwezi, and, in the process, introduces new options for the symbiosis of extraction and inhabitation: the results of which will challenge many of the existing narratives within architecture. This model is guided by concepts of geologic and deep time, with an emphasis on long-term holistic solutions and uses the opportunity of building in terraformed land as a practice to invert traditional relationships of vertical space and hierarchy. Finally, this thesis works to create an alternative design for living, one that accounts for our outsized impact on planetary ecologies, ultimately redesigning and restructuring our relationships to our sacred ground.

In the years 1920-80 the Mormon Church developed, expanded and refined an architectural program based on the concept of the standard plan. Standard plan buildings were selected, individualized and built for local ward units under the direction of the Church Building Department which created uniform standards of quality and appearance across the worldwide Church and created a tangible link between foreign members and the central Church.Although functional and financial considerations directed virtually all design decisions and formed the operative basis of the program other elements also determined the nature of the Mormon approach to building. Growth, in the membership, more than any other single factor, affected the nature of building in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The mid-century emphasis on the accelerated missionary program, internationalization of the Church, and the emphasis on global uniformity of Church programs led to the use of the standard plan as the exclusive method of new construction in 1980.

The centuries-old neocolonial relationship between the United States and Latin America is marked by acts of silencing, either directly in the hands of U.S. foreign affairs organizations or by proxy governments economically supported by the United States. These attempts to de-memorialize the atrocities of the past consolidate the power dynamic between the inheritors of colonial rule, and those who were colonized. U.S. interventionist policies––borne of corporate interests, the safeguarding of capitalism, and a skewed sense of national security––have created mass and enduring violence in Latin America, resulting in waves of migration north, where the journeys of the displaced are often denied, erased, and forgotten. This thesis began as an exploration of the U.S -Mexico border wall, understanding it as a flagship banner of propaganda, and has developed into the analysis of a state of surveillance across the Mexican territory. By analyzing and interpreting migratory paths through the states of Chiapas, Guanajuato and Chihuahua, the thesis centers, validates, and upholds the multiplicity and variability of the phenomenon of migration. This proposal takes a critical stance towards the current state of refuge and safety throughout Mexico for migrants. Currently, humanitarian efforts deny the permanence of human mobility in the Americas by only affording provisional housing. Focusing on migration by foot, the thesis envisions a network of hyper-visible, and thus invisible, spaces of shelter that are permanent and rely on communal action in defiance of xenophobic laws. Nested within an already existing network of community chapels and working within the language of contemporary vernacular architecture, the spaces of shelter provide respite, information, as well as legal and medical services, and dismantle centralized approaches to humanitarian aid. Their existence as permanent structures memorialize migration, signify resistance, and attempt to provide dignity and power to those migrating through the Mexican territory towards a promised land.

The dogtrot house type is an important type of vernacular architecture in the American landscape, particularly in rural areas of the southern United States. Little is formally written or known about the dogtrot type houses in New Orleans, which appear to be a unique evolution of the rural dogtrot form specifically adapted for the urban environment. This thesis examines the existing literature regarding the dogtrot house type and analyzes the architectural history of the remaining dogtrot type homes in New Orleans in order to establish that they are correctly classified, and also to investigate any possible links with rural dogtrots. The findings promotes awareness of the dogtrot house type in the urban setting, and contribute to the larger picture of vernacular architectural adaptation in the United States. Further, this thesis lays the foundation for landmarking the 16 remaining dogtrots in New Orleans.

The town of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and its rich geographic history, can offer insight into the early history of the State of Louisiana and the establishment of the United States as a country, as well as the study of the formation of barrier islands and methods of land use with such areas. The following thesis presents a geographic, as well as a historical, analysis of Grand Isle’s history. It attempts to answer the following questions: What is the shape, form, and origin of the physical landscape of Grand Isle? How have humans interacted with the land and surrounding areas of Grand Isle? And what impacts, if any, have these interactions had on the island and its landscape? These questions include research into both the built environment and the natural environment.

The research presented in this thesis is intended to reveal the layers of social and cultural meaning invested in a building conventionally regarded as a work of abstract aesthetic modernism, and one which has been evaluated, within the framework of a national heritage preservation policy, as an architectural landmark of the post-war era of urban reconstruction. By combining the research methods of architectural history (archival) and of anthropology (ethnographic) I have located and interpreted the architecture of the Brunswick within a larger social story that demonstrates how the lived experience of a particular environment exists in parallel with the more objective official discourse that invests a work of architecture or art with cultural significance. The thesis traces the architectural inception and complex evolution of the building, its critical reception, and the proposals for redevelopment that culminated in a major refurbishment and transformation of the shopping precinct in 2006. It goes on to present an ethnographic account of the Brunswick as a social, as much as an architectural space, and an anthropological interpretation of the relationship between identity and place in terms of the specific qualities of the built environment. It shows that the material environment becomes real and vivid to people as an embodiment of the social dimensions of their lives, and that the boundaries between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ – the private space of the home, and the layered sequence of public spaces extending through the building to the city beyond - are not objectively fixed, but subjectively perceived and negotiated in different ways. Although the Brunswick exerts considerable power as a unique architectural image, its boundaries do not define an integrated social space, nor a unified experience of the place as a living environment. Nevertheless, repeated interaction and sensory experience make it a tangible architectural framework for everyday and domestic life which evidently shapes the view from the inside looking out. The research aims to make a significant contribution to knowledge at a meeting-point between anthropology and architecture, which might help to inform future understanding of the interaction between people and the built habitat in modern urban societies.

Transportation is a discussion of the utmost concern in Los Angeles. The automobile poses great detriment to the environment, people’s economic stability, and the health and safety of the community. A conversation that has, however, been absent from the discussion on transportation is the particular cultural and historical significance and value of the automobile to Los Angeles; it has been seldom discussed that the automobile has been extremely influential to the physical character of the city deems it an object worth preserving. Unlike the literature that exists, this thesis specifies and details ways in which the automobile has influenced and continues to influence the urban context and architecture of Los Angeles. Simultaneously, this thesis discusses the means by which the automobile can be preserved and repurposed into an object contributory to the city’s plans for a sustainable future. By the reevaluation and reinterpretation of the car and car culture, the city would be in effect capable of reclaiming its title as the model future city, a title it achieved and also eventually lost during the 20th century in large part because of the automobile. This thesis further contributes to the greater comprehension of the context of Los Angeles and revives a conversation about the city’s potential to be a precedent for other cities.

This paper explores Alexanderplatz during the Weimar Period in Berlin. It is looked at from three different perspectives: historical urban plans, Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1980's film adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Through these three mediums, an argument forms that Alexanderplatz functioned as both a major transit space for movement of transportation and pedestrians, but also the transit space for the movement of ideas and information.

Materiality has been one of the most frequent topics of discussion for generations of architecture researchers, and also in the area of architectural history study. Numerous researchers are fascinated by the idea of development (or evolution) of architecture in order to understand how architecture has changed from ancient to “contemporary” for them. This discussion can trace back from Vitruvius, through Marc-Antoine Laugier, Banister Fletcher, Auguste Choisy, Karl Bötticher, John Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Gottfried Semper, and it is still a meaningful topic for contemporary scholars to study architectural history. As the basic substance of architecture, the issue of building materials has been an unavoidable question in the evolution of architecture. This thesis approaches Taiwanese architecture from the perspective of one building material – brick. It explores the development of brick and its tectonics in Taiwan, between 1624 and 1945, through four different architectural culture periods - Dutch (1624-1662), Min-nan Chinese (1662-1895), Western (1860-1895), and Japanese culture period (1895-1945) -to understand the process of brick from being an “imported” building material to becoming a “local’ one. This thesis adopted the perspective that both building materials and tectonics are the products of human thought. With this perspective, this study started by identifying the relative “agents”, including material manufacturers, builders, designers, patrons, and ruling authorities The thesis showed that often the ruling authority played an important role, even as the game changer. Thus, it argued that the evolution of architecture tectonics and building materials was not a process but rather the result of actions of key participants in the case of Taiwan. Otherwise, this thesis is also the first research to construct a Taiwanese architectural history by connecting the building material – brick -, the tectonics of architecture, and identifying key influencing events and persons in a relatively large time scope, between 1624 and 1945, passing through four architectural cultural periods. It attempts to present a coherent overview approach to Taiwanese architectural history starting from a single building material, and aims to contribute to enhancing our understanding of the development of architecture and construction history up to the modern period, especially in the context of East Asia.