Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-193). / Ford purchased property in 1923 in Sudbury, Massachusetts in order to preserve an historic inn associated with the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Over the next twenty years, his mission expanded to create an idealized New England landscape and a way of living on the land representative of an American identity. This study will demonstrate that this change of intention is one which elevates a notion of collective memory over that of heroic history. It will also show that Ford's endeavor at the Wayside Inn represented not only his own private dialogue with a cultural landscape, but also was emblematic of a broader public engagement with the crafting of what it meant to be American in the early twentieth century. Finally, this investigation will illuminate Ford's collection of the American experience as an attempt to grapple with how to make an American community (both physical and social) that embraced American traditions and technological innovations without the latter obliterating the former. / by Brooke D. Wortham. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1985. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 373-393. / by Martha D. Pollack. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-146). / This thesis is focused on the visual perception evaluation of colors within an environment of a highly automated lighting control strategy. Digitally controlled lighting systems equipped with light emitting diodes, LEDs, can produce a range of different qualities of light, adjustable to users' requirements. In this context of unparalleled controllability, a novel energy-saving lighting control concept inspired this research: strategic control of Red, Yellow, Green & Blue LEDs forming white light can further increase energy efficiency. The resulting (more efficient) white light, however, would have decreased "color rendering" (i.e. the ability of accurately reproduce the colors of illuminated objects). The notable point is that while color rendering is necessarily affected, the appearance and light levels of the white light can stay the same. But how objects' distorted colors are perceived within a real life architectural context is a key, ensuing question. This research investigated the hypothesis that a significant range of color distortions would be unnoticeable under a dynamically controlled LED system, when operating outside of users' main field of view. If successful, such control technique could minimize peak hours lighting energy waste, and potentially enable up to 25% of power reduction. / (cont.) Three incremental series of psychophysical experiments were performed based on subjective assessment of color changes under continuously modulated color rendering from white LEDs. Visual tests were carried out for central and peripheral vision on a full scale mockup of an architectural scenario. Results confirmed the fundamental hypothesis, showing that the majority of subjects did not detect the color changes in their periphery while the same color changes were noticeable with direct observation. The conclusion chapter provides fundamental guidelines for how to extrapolate the experimental results into real life and apply the data to architectural settings. Hypothetical architectural scenarios are presented and the potential for energy savings is discussed. / by Maria do Rosário Thompson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-274). / In this study, we investigated the multiple steady state behavior, an important observation in numerical and experimental studies in natural ventilation systems. The-oretical models are developed and their applications in numerical simulations and ventilation controls are presented. In a system with multiple steady states, how the system reaches different steady states is determined by the initial values of the systems and the dynamical system characteristics of the system. Mathematical models are developed to model the dynamical system behavior of a series of ventilation systems, ranging from simple single-zone systems to complex systems with thermal mass. More importantly, we found that the system can transform from one steady state to another under sufficient perturbations (disturbances) when multiple steady states exist. A successful transition is determined by both the magnitudes and durations of the perturbations. The transition dynamics are found to be important in theoretical, computational, and control applications. For example, the actual stability of a mathematically (or locally) stable steady state is highly correlated to the minimum perturbation requirements for a state transition. If two indicative parameters-the minimum perturbation time and the minimum perturbation magnitude-are small for the system to transit from one steady state to another, a mathematically stable steady state can be unstable in actual conditions, where stochastic disturbances exist as "strong perturbations". Further, building thermal mass is also found to have significant impacts on the state transitions between the multiple steady states. With thermal mass, the state transition becomes more difficult to occur. The state transition dynamics can also be applied to numerical simulations. / (cont.) We have developed a convenient dynamical simulation method to identify the possible steady states in buildings with complex geometries and test the stabilities of the obtained steady states. The method can determine nearly all the possible steady state the system may reach in a feasible range using different search methods; whether the steady states obtained are stable in an actual environment can also be determined by a disturbance test based on the transition dynamics between the multiple steady states.Further, the state transition dynamics can be strategically applied in hybrid ventilation controls. In the past, designers and engineers have viewed the multiple steady states as negative aspect of ventilation design and have been trying to avoid the multiple steady states as much as possible. In this study, we have developed positive applications of multiple steady states based on a dynamic state transition in real-time to enhance the ventilation efficiency of a hybrid ventilation system and to reduce the energy usage in buildings. A coupled multi-zone airflow and thermal program for transient entire building simulations is also developed in parallel with the study. With the understanding on the multiple steady state issues, the developed program has overcome a few non-trivial numerical problems reported in other similar simulation programs and has shown good numerical performance in coupled airflow and thermal analysis. The program is also used as a tool for identifying the multiple steady states in buildings with complex geometries and for testing the actual stabilities of the obtained steady states in real conditions. / by Jinchao Yuan. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-182). / With the rapid growth of digital art, the temporal dimension is becoming a more and more important aspect of visual creations. This thesis is an effort to contribute to the construction of a disciplined basis for the composition of visual creations along the temporal dimension. It studies new perceptual phenomena and compositional issues introduced by temporal visual composition; it proposes and develops a set theory-based composition approach; it also presents the applications of this approach in compositional experiments at different levels of abstraction. As another aspect of contributing to the temporal visual composition research, this thesis designs and develops a temporal visual composition interface and a system for color generation and manipulation based on spectral information. This interface and system serve as an indispensable support for the composition experiments in this study. They also present to artists a new level of control over both graphical materials and the composition process. Furthermore, they suggest new creative potentials in temporal art. / by Xiaohua Sun. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-282). / In the mythic construct of the West, nature, for a considerable era, has served as a seminal broker in basal underpinning discourse. This is despite nature's commutative, convertible and contradictory disclosures. As the antithesis of socio-culture, nature has been the arena of the given, of necessity and compulsion, and a zone of constraint. As "Nature" it has worked as the precipitate of humanity and ministered as the model for human activity. To violate the norms of nature, to be unnatural, has been considered unhealthy, amoral and illegal.Following the Second World War, constructs of nature, socio-culture and norms were altered in design education and practice. Postwar, an emerging discourse of computer-related technologies contributed to reconfiguring representations of architecture, engineering, product and urban planning in the US and UK. The collective driving these changes became known as the Design Methods movement. Together with trajectories of thought in psychology and psychiatry, discourses materializing from such fields as cybernetics, operations research, information theory and computers altered design processes and education.This dissertation ranges from examining the politics of funding surrounding an urban planning research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts to elucidating conferences concerning, architecture, engineering, urban planning and product design in the UK. Taking from media theorist Friedrich Kittler that technologically possible manipulations condition what can become a discourse, this dissertation is structured around two threads. / (cont.) One thread concerns how computer-related technologies configured a re-conceptualization of nature and socio-culture in design practice and education. A second thread examines how psychology and psychoanalytic concerns were reworked for design through a lens of computer related technologies. A line between the natural and the normative is questioned concerning concepts of abnormality and deviation. / by Alise Upitis. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 306-328). / The institutionalized separation between form, structure and material, deeply embedded in modernist design theory, paralleled by a methodological partitioning between modeling, analysis and fabrication, resulted in geometric-driven form generation. Such prioritization of form over material was carried into the development and design logic of CAD. Today, under the imperatives and growing recognition of the failures and environmental liabilities of this approach, modern design culture is experiencing a shift to material aware design. Inspired by Nature's strategies where form generation is driven by maximal performance with minimal resources through local material property variation, the research reviews, proposes and develops models and processes for a material-based approach in computationally enabled form-generation. Material-based Design Computation is developed and proposed as a set of computational strategies supporting the integration of form, material and structure by incorporating physical form-finding strategies with digital analysis and fabrication. In this approach, material precedes shape, and it is the structuring of material properties as a function of structural and environmental performance that generates design form. The thesis proposes a unique approach to computationally-enabled form-finding procedures, and experimentally investigates how such processes contribute to novel ways of creating, distributing and depositing material forms. Variable Property Design is investigated as a theoretical and technical framework by which to model, analyze and fabricate objects with graduated properties designed to correspond to multiple and continuously varied functional constraints. The following methods were developed as the enabling mechanisms of Material Computation: Tiling Behavior & Digital Anisotropy, Finite Element Synthesis, and Material Pixels. In order to implement this approach as a fabrication process, a novel fabrication technology, termed Variable Property Rapid Prototyping has been developed, designed and patented. Among the potential contributions is the achievement of a high degree of customization through material heterogeneity as compared to conventional design of components and assemblies. Experimental designs employing suggested theoretical and technical frameworks, methods and techniques are presented, discussed and demonstrated. They support product customization, rapid augmentation and variable property fabrication. Developed as approximations of natural formation processes, these design experiments demonstrate the contribution and the potential future of a new design and research field. / by Neri Oxman. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, February 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-288). / This dissertation considers a new ontology of vision brought on by the advent of human flight. It focuses on the project that best reflects this new vision: the Futurama, an exhibit designed by the American industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes for the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Futurama's status as the cause celebre of the 1939 World's Fair derived largely from its theatrical technique of seeing: spectators literally gazed down upon an American utopia as if they were aviators in a low-flying airplane. My analysis contextualizes Bel Geddes's Futurama within a utopian vision prevalent among urbanists, architects, artists, novelists, and science-fiction writers during the 1920s and 1930s. This "golden age" of American aviation was marked by the fantasy that the vision of the world from above would usher in new spatial dynamics from which would emerge the city of the future. I argue that Bel Geddes's method of seeing the Futurama from a simulated airplane revealed as much about a culturally valorized aviator hero as it did about the utopia itself. By demonstrating how the Futurama spectator's aerial viewing became enmeshed in broader 20th-century modernist visuality, my study reveals the crucial presence of an aesthetics of ascension in the avant-garde imagination. The Futurama was one of those modernist utopias that ideologues like Nietzsche, Wells, and arch-modernist Le Corbusier visualized through the eyes of an ascending protagonist. Histories of modernism have often overlooked the exalted presence of this protagonist in favor of focusing on the aesthetic object itself. / (cont.) This protagonist's aesthetic experience of altitude appealed to the encyclopedic ambition of modernist planners, particularly in light of modernism's prescriptions of rationality, clarity, and order as a panacea for human problems. The Futurama's aesthetics of ascension offers a new context for understanding interwar modernism's redemptive aspirations. On one hand, an innocent self-assurance tinged the Futurama and the grand (re)vision of America that it promised to its spectators. On the other hand, the Futurama was a crucial cultural artifact that revealed a surprising affiliation between aviation and modernism's logic of looking at the world. The self-aggrandizing, detached gaze of the modernist planner masquerading as the Futurama's spectator worked to dispel the anxieties of the 1930s; at the same time, this gaze also rendered most effective the fantasy of an ideal world of tomorrow. The heightened expectations that underpinned the Futurama's heroic gaze offered a populist analogue to modernist promises of cultural renewal. / by Adnan Morshed. / Ph.D.

Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2017. / Page 106 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 103). / Within the generic playground, an obsession with safety has stifled play. The common elements (the slide, swing, seesaw) have become prescribed to where it has abandoned a major aspect that is important for play as a means of development - curiosity. This thesis proposes a reconsideration of playspaces, which embodies ideals that encourage play through self directed exploration, investigation and risk. The goal is to integrate these ideals of play and create a curious procession between the object and the path. Through the act of wayfinding, the risk of losing one's way may lead to something equally rewarding. Therefore, the project relies on two gestures: the meandering path and the curious object as a landmark or goal to approach. Through a series of paths, with no prescribed route or set sequence of approach, the playspace offers a maze of tactile environments. Thresholds along these paths at times form more intimate pockets of play as further distractions or challenges to encounter. Varying degrees of transparency mask and reveal curious objects on approach and serve as a means to both entice and distract. Changes in sloped surfaces and material each suggests different ways of play, encountering risk or engaging in tactile investigation. Through exploration, investigation and risk, each child can establish a sense of ownership and achievement as an individual or as a part of a larger cooperative as routes intersect and reveal larger play areas. Within a playground that contains no swings or slides, there is no right or wrong way to play, navigate or explore. There is no prescribed path or sequence of how to play, what to play on, around or with. Instead, the solution provides an abundance of visual, tactile and auditory elements that suggest open exploration and investigation, regardless of ability. / by Steven Patrick Albert. / M. Arch.

Thesis: Ph. D. in Architecture: Design and Computation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 122-127). / Despite advances in digital design and fabrication technologies, creative design practices still follow Alberti's separation of the design phase from the construction phase. This separation causes a reliance on digital fabrication machines that pushes human agency to the periphery of the making process. The interfaces of these technologies and their linear process of production create cognitive and perceptual obstacles, making it difficult for non-experts to create and improvise independently. Design and the ability to make are often thought to be intuitive, yet significant research has suggested that intuition is developed through skilled practice, interaction with materials, tools, and machines. Existing pedagogical approaches to design focus on outcomes and instructors' feedback to the students, neglecting the importance of the tools and the process itself. How, then, do we learn to make something? What are the potential roles of computational tools, theories, and practices in understanding, describing, and enriching the making and learning process? What can we learn from machines, and what can machines learn from us? Finally, what do we learn from making? Here, I introduce l³, a computational making methodology that enables emerging designers and makers to improvise and create on their own. I call this method F for its three-layer operation of Imitation, Iteration and Improvisation. Drawing upon research from other fields, this methodology for human-machine making and learning is based on a recursive process of embodied, situated interaction between learners, machines, materials, and the things-in-the-making. I describe the continuous process of developing and testing 1³ through experiments I conducted during the teaching of three courses for graduate and undergraduate students. The qualitative research I conducted shows that through using the 1³ methodology, students develop their spatial reasoning and decision-making skills while at the same time learning to use digital technologies as design companions. / by Dina Ezz ElDin El-Zanfaly. / Ph. D. in Architecture: Design and Computation