This thesis examines the relationship between meaning in architecture and its role in defining urban space. The definition of meaning as it applies to this thesis is a designation for those essential qualities of the man-made environment which produce in man a cognition of place. Without meaning man has no point of reference or orientation for his world. The individual act of construction that occurs within the larger framework that we call city has a responsibility to that institution of man. The city is the manifestation of man’s aspiration for order in a mutable world. Architecture as a primary element in the urban environment makes the city comprehensible to man and through architecture man carries out his intentions in the world. / Master of Architecture

Insecurity is mostly a myth; it does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. -Helen Keller / Master of Architecture

The following is a proposal for stables to be located in Galesburg, Illinois. It will house a maximum of twenty four standard bred horses, which are to be raced at local race tracks. / Master of Architecture

“It would be something if everything we made encouraged people to become more closely acquainted with their surroundings, with each other and with themselves… so that the world, in so far as it is amenable to our influence, becomes less alien, less hard and abstract, a warmer, friendlier, more welcoming and appropriate place; in short a world that is relevant to its inhabitants.” Herman Hertzberger The purpose of this thesis is to create a mixed income housing community in Old Town Alexandria. While people who share similar lifestyles tend to cluster together, this project encourages people of difference to find a common ground. The community will be the size of a residential Old Town block to encourage a fulfilling amount of human interaction. The interior of the block will be subdivided into a variety of places: places that provide the opportunity for people to sit in quiet contemplation, another place for children to play, other places that encourage people to interact with one another, and places where one can passively observe the surrounding activity with the option to participate or not. The houses have a variety of living spaces in response to the diverse social groups that will inhabit the blocks. These houses follow the language of Old Town in terms of materials, details, rhythm, and the way in which they meet the street, and so connect this community with the larger order of the town. This project maintains the privacy of the individual houses, encourages human interaction in the public areas, and at the same time recognizes the responsibility of designing these houses using the same structure and patterns that are inherent in Old Town. / Master of Architecture

“The spaces were life occurs are places. A place is a space which has a distinct character. Since ancient times the genius loci, or “spirit of place”, has been recognized as the concrete reality man has to face and come to terms with in his daily life. Architecture means to visualize the genius loci, and the task of the architect is to create meaningful places, whereby he helps man to dwell.” “...a totally made up of concrete things having material substance, shape, texture and colour. Together these things determine an “environmental character”, which is the essence of place.” -C. Norberg-Schulz / Master of Architecture

I remember with clarity the day Dennis Kilper and Donna Dunay shared with us their awareness of a site in downtown Blacksburg bound by College Avenue, Draper Road, Roanoke Street and Otey Street. The sight is a locus of interface between the university and the town. A place rich in contextual nuance, movement, rhythm, axis and history interact to create a powerful synergy waiting to be expressed. When the time came to choose a subject for my master's thesis, I found the challenge I was looking for in the puzzle of what to do with such a special opportunity. My design proposal (multi–use in nature) for the above site is a quadrangle made from the repetition of a square-based brick tower in concert with the development of an axis in the field of the quadrangle. The brick tower transforms itself in response to context, as does the pre-existing interior axis. / Master of Architecture

The purpose of this thesis was to create a structure that is a result of a hyperbolic paraboloid shell (hypar). As a result of this, a certain order evolved which dictated the form, the structure, and the environmental aspects of the two buildings designed. Through the design of the hypar walls, came the opportunity and/or need for daylighting. This is the conscious design of a building form to use direct sunlight for illumination and thermal benefit. Buildings so designed respond both to direct sunlight and to sunlight modified through diffusion or reflection by the sky vault, clouds, natural or man—made elements of the landscape, and the buildings, themselves. The workers occupying these buildings spend a major portion of their day in a place that could have psychological and physiological effects. Sunlight gives reassuring orientation to time, a place, and weather, as well as producing interior environments that are comfortable, delightful, and productive. / Master of Architecture

The thesis is an exploration of architectural ideas. An exploration which is still ongoing. It is learning how the ideas are realized in terms of materiality and structure. It is how the ideas become the structural, visual language of the building. The thesis is also the study of the institution of school. It is how the school, through its architecture, becomes a place. A place to provide inspiration. / Master of Architecture

This thesis explores structure as a visual and literal framework for a building. The relationships or connections of discreet pieces to the framework, whether on the scale of a handrail or the brick cylinder is the basic structure of the project. The structural grid establishes an order. It defines the boundaries of the house. The enclosure and spaces within the grid of columns and beams can then respond to other temporal considerations. / Master of Architecture

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the role and influence imagination plays on a building for the arts. The American Film Institute is considered to be a building for the production and study as well as the presentation of film. Because imagination is the most important tool the film maker possesses and is that which the general audience becomes a part of, this thesis strives to produce a building which enhances this tool. Steel and glass have been chosen as two of the three primary materials in the film institute for their reflective properties as well as their specific properties to distort reflections. Concrete was chosen as the third primary material not only for its compressive strength, but for its many possible finishes and its compatibility (being non-reflective) with the other two primary materials. The institute will be created in such a way that even in their permanence they will provide for a changing space which will make for a re-occurring newness each time it is visited, thus sparking the imagination. To the user of the institute, the space will each time be new. It takes on this characteristic as its users encounter their own reflection as well as the reflections - sometimes distorted - of others. This is enhanced as movement occurs not always in a straight line nor only at one level. Shade and shadow from stationary light, as further enhance the imagination. “The spatial area, whatever it may be—room, stage, garden, street—is the screen; the moving objects and people are the picture-in-solution reconstituted as a transient entity in time and space.”³ / Master of Architecture