The following exploration represents a search for clarity and meaning in the formative work of a young architectural designer. Solving the design problem to create a viable community of elders integrated into the chosen site was merely the ostensible goal. The deeper task was to become more literate with the materials and tools of the architect's trade and develop a confidence with the language and grammar of architecture. I wanted to develop an understanding of not just a single building type or a particular site condition, but to grow in more fundamental terms toward learning a way of building. This desire may be inherent in every good design, but I wanted to bring the idea of it to the surface and focus on the principles behind the architectural decisions. I believe the confidence and vitality which the architect combines with the philosophical, technical and pragmatic constraints of a project to make great architecture are products of a thorough understanding of one's personal beliefs. My own attempt to organize thoughts and attitudes into a body of reference toward an understanding of that belief structure follows on the remaining pages. In the process as well as in the final result I have moved closer to a literacy in architecture, if only by gaining insight into the motivations which have guided my hand. / Master of Architecture

I think of a book as an act of human generosity. In its offerings are the treasures of a mind. The architecture of a library should celebrate the presentation of the book. In celebrating its presence, the library becomes a museum of books. IN THE ORDER OF THE CIRCLE GEOMETRY WARM GARDEN COLD GARDEN GREEN GARDEN STONE GARDEN IN THE NATURE OE THE WALL HOW TO FINISH THE LAND AT THE WATER’S EDGE / Master of Architecture

The work involves an architectural design for a facility located on The Mall in Washington, District of Columbia. The Museum of American Immigrants is a proposed facility for housing the exhibits regarding immigration sequences and their development that make up the United States of America. The ethnographic nature of the work, its artifacts, their collection, exhibition, preservation, and mutations is seen as a means to nurture our better understanding of the on-going struggle with the experiment called America. With reference to current theories of museum architecture, examples of other similar museum buildings, site constraints, and programming, the work strives towards the integration of architecture and purpose. The building is expected to provide layers of experience in both spatial and ethnic terms. The precise geometry defines the spaces and voids, while the way the exhibits are organized defines the building as a framework of displays. The design method used in developing the building called The Museum of American Immigrants has involved a personal understanding in working with the contemporary design Vocabulary and programmatic concerns to create a learning environment for the Visitors while making every effort to achieve contextual balance and harmony required by the surroundings. / Master of Architecture

The fresh new approach taken by today's children's museums offers great potential for an equally fresh approach to the architecture which houses these special places. Just as the "exhibits" at the children's museums invite a new relationship between the visitor and the museum collection, so too should the architecture encourage a new interaction between the individual and the built structure, between the institution and the urban environment. The new Children's Discovery Museum proposed for Washington, D.C. takes the theme of interaction as its basis. The design aims to promote a new level of participation between the people, the building, and the city. In this way, the attitude which is central in making children's museums so special was adapted to form an architectural framework: that all children -- regardless of age -- might discover a more meaningful connectedness to the built world around them. / Master of Architecture

On the following pages are images of an architecture which pushes the limits of design. Conceived as an amalgamation of semiautonomous fragments, the thesis project strives to decompose into complete disarray. At the verge of structural (compositional) collapse, the building asks the question 'where does structure break down, and chaos begin?'. A table I have designed and built is an experiment in spontaneity, and questions the validity of traditional ways of building furniture. Building analysis drawings I have included at the end of the book are compositional exercises and have, from a graphic perspective, some of the density and formal complexity of the images of the thesis. While I have relied upon Deconstructionist terminology to describe the building represented, I must admit that the building is not truly Deconstructed. It is fragmented. Some visual continuity between design elements remains. If I were to produce a deconstructed building, I would have to go beyond playing formal games and question what forms signify. Then, perhaps, I could find alternative significations; I might also be able to make a new link between the signifier and the signified. I think I would be searching for a new conception of form, one free of convention, of precondition. / Master of Architecture

The title of this thesis is more a convenience than a description. It is borrowed from some recent housing projects in Berlin, which, like the project presented here, are urban structures which contain more than one residence, though seldom more than six. The project here contains four. The residences are of different sizes and spatial configurations. It is intended to be a place for individuals as well as families. It is an attempt to gather, to shelter - to provide and enrich. / Master of Architecture

In the past two decades the increase in passengers and frequency of flights has caused commercial air transportation to suffer. The system in current use was designed to satisfy different needs than the contemporary ones. Airports have failed to keep up with increased demands. Movement of passengers and aircraft have not kept pace with advances in technology. Many aircraft arriving and departing simultaneously create unnecessary delays and monetary loss to commercial airlines. The present solutions were based on new additions to existing airports as well as the creation of new airports so that metropolitan flights could arrive to different locations, e.g. JFK, La Guardia and Newark in the New York area; National and Dulles in the Washington D.C. area. The concept of the traditional airport is obsolete and needs to be completely rethought, not modified. / Master of Architecture

This project consisted of the design and presentation of a monastery in Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C. The scheme developed consisted of a church, library, refectory(kitchen and dining space), campanile(bell tower), four chapels, individual cells and gardens, and exterior connecting spaces including a central and sub-plaza. The monastery design was developed in terms of the circulation of the monks from their individual cells to the various communal centers at the top of the hill. Both visual and topographical means were examined in this development. This volume includes the completed monastery as well as some of the stages reached in the development of the finished design. / Master of Architecture

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light. Louis I. Kahn¹ I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is inherent in art. Robert Venturi² / Master of Architecture

"Beyond the Veil of the Secret City: New Negro Representation in Washington, D.C., 1919-1935" examines Black Washingtonians' multiple, and often competing, articulations of the New Negro. In addition to addressing the New Negro as a cultural trope that reinforces ideas about black progress, my dissertation also analyzes the term's material manifestation in the nation's capital. My dissertation builds on recent New Negro era scholarship including Chicago's New Negroes (2007) by Davarian Baldwin and Prove It On Me (2012) by Erin Chapman. These studies have conceptually decentered Harlem as the primary site in which New Negro identity flourished. These studies have also foregrounded the significance of black consumerism and leisure to New Negro identity. My study situates Washington, D.C. within this discussion by demonstrating how Black Washington used New Negro ideology as a warrant for social policing, an impetus for remaking literary and theatrical representation; and an economic activist ideology. Utilizing a rich assemblage of archival sources, I examine Black Washington's negotiation of New Negro identity in a 1919 obscenity trial, Edward Christopher Williams' epistolary novel "Letters of Davy Carr" (now published as When Washington Was in Vogue), Georgia Douglas Johnson's play William and Ellen Craft (1935), and the New Negro Alliance's newspaper New Negro Opinion. "Beyond the Veil of the Secret City" ultimately presents the New Negro was more than a literary trope used to combat racist representations. It was the ideological imperative animating Black Washington's ongoing struggle to realize racial progress in the public sphere.