Sitting in a pub in Dublin, I tried to understand the architectural qualities of my so-called watering hole. The stylish wood and spatial divisions were pleasant but were not the full reasons behind why I loved being apart of the place. I started to think why architecture is not valued through our sensibilities? Or a better question, how can architecture be valued through our sensibilities? Our emotions are developed through our experiences. The movement through the pub, my actions within the space, and the senses being formed from my surroundings helped my understanding of why I enjoyed the pub. There was a function, a process, and an interpretation of senses. Our senses are developed from our immediate environments. We know ourselves in relation to other things. We know how certain things make us feel. Things have histories and we evaluate these things in relation to our own timeline. When these relationships and feelings meet we understand our surroundings through placement. Here is where we dwell in a place. Place is the building, within the building, and around the building. Place and dwelling are more cognitive than physically inhabiting within a location. Our understanding of how we love a building starts with place. How do you design a place? How do things and people belong to these places? Can a bar and brewery become one of these things on the banks of the Potomac in Old Town Alexandria? And, will it make a new and better place? Will it be loved? / Master of Architecture

The site is in Old Town Alexandria which lies outside of the metropolitan area of Washington DC in northern Virginia. The project is a church, and it sits looking over the Potomac River on Union and Queen Streets in the historic district of Alexandria. My initial idea was that a church can relate to nature because an individual's memory is commonly related to the elements of nature and is associated with familiar patterns. Building designs formed by patterns in nature are sensitive to what the users have previously experienced. The user can then understand the language created by the architect. The means for achieving this idea was through a study of the structure for the church, the rhythm of the structure, and how it relates to Old Town. It is this order that now provides the church's relationship to nature and allows the users to feel as if they are within a garden. / 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

<i>Mortal Limit by Robert Penn Warren I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming. It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming Of dream spectral light above the last purity of snow-snags. There-west-were the Tetons. Snow peaks would soon be In dark profile to break constellations. Beyond what height Hands now the black spec? Beyond what range will gold eyes see New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light? Or, having tasted that atmosphere’s thinness, does it Hang motionless in dying vision before It knows it will accept the mortal limit, And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore The breath of earth? Of rock? Of rot? Of other such Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch?</i> This is an endeavour in learning about architecture. The project, a competition on Charles Bulfinch’s Old Jail Site in Old Town Alexandria, to make Townhouses, serves as a vehicle towards that end. / Master of Architecture

This study set out with the premise that many urban alleys have the potential to become city open space assets. The project was designed to develop a process by which alley characteristics may be evaluated for their effect on alley open space potential. The alleys of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia were the inspiration for this study. Old Town is an 18th century city which was established as a settlement on the Potomac River in 1749. For nearly 100 years it flourished as a seaport town. As the town grew, property owners created alleys through the blocks providing rear access to their homes and businesses. The alleys bustled with activity, and became a circulation subsystem to the street and sidewalk circulation. This paper follows the process used to discover alley open space potential in Old Town. However, it is not the findings for Old Town that are most important. It is the process which is the true result of this study. This process can be used as a model by any city or town where there is a desire to better use alley spaces. The four tasks which were found to be important in discovering this open space potential are outlined below. Task One: Evolution of Alley Spaces The purpose of this task is to understand the part the alleys play in the city's circulation system. To know the history of their development and the way they have been used in the past is to learn what makes them important and distinct from other circulation systems in the city. Task Two: Evaluate the Alley Paths The elements that create the"floor, ceiling, and walls" of the alley paths are defined and evaluated for their potentially positive or negative impact on the alley as it is refurbished for pedestrian open space use. Task Three: Alley Potential Use Task three looks at the way different land uses use their alleys. Knowing present alley use allows the development of an alley typology from which decisions concerning potential use can be made. Task Four: Design Proposals Finally, the first three tasks are brought together in the form of design proposals. The proposals become a pallet with which to refurbish the alleys in a way that is sensitive to their history, their character, and their particular open space potential. The project teaches that all urban alleyways are not the same. Each has its own story, and its own particular combination of characteristics. In knowing the alleys as individual, their design as viable open spaces becomes more imaginative. / Master of Landscape Architecture

The design of a mixed-use market, three axes of influence was studied on a site at the end of King Street in Alexandria, VA. A semicircular form was developed that terminated the main circulation axis down King Street, continued the free form edge of the Potomac, and acted as a visual beginning to the "new world" of Washington, DC across the river. While the marketplace still remains as an enduring and appealing image of the city, it has diminished in recent years. Climate controlled indoor malls and shopping centers sprawl across the . country, and many of the real marketplaces have fallen into disrepair, physically and symbolically losing their traditional role as a forum for the people. There has, however, been a resurgence of interest in the markets in the past decade. As people grow tired of impersonal service, the poor quality of goods and produce, and the often nondescript atmosphere, many of the older markets are being re-inhabited by farmers, artists and others seeking to sell their products. Around many urban centers, people are rediscovering the simple premise of the market which serves as a canvas for the explosion of colors, sights, sounds and smells it contains. / Master of Architecture

The prosperity of the human species is based upon the existence of communal behavior. Some individuals provide food, while others are freed from the search for food to do other things: to chip flint arrowheads, to make pottery, to write symphonies. In large cities, individuals may be vaguely conscious of their larger social community, but often they recognize few of the faces of the other individuals who belong to the same large community. In an urban setting, the social behavior of individuals is defined by the built environment. The built environment has a responsibility to encourage the formation of communities of individuals, as well as to recognize and strengthen the wider community of mankind, in order that the species may flourish and prosper. A Food Market for Alexandria is a proposition for a place in Old Town Alexandria Virginia, where the growth of responsible communities may occur in an architectural setting which is a responsive member of the collection of buildings that house the human city. / Master of Architecture

The investigation of the Spirit of a historic place, Alexandria, Virginia to acquire an understanding of it’s identity; the unique patterns, language, structure, rhythm, and character, which has led to its development as a meaningful place. To respect the Spirit of this place through the design of a place to dwell within Alexandria which is sensitive to, and evolves from, this living tradition. An architecture which achieves meaning through its relation to, and reinterpretation, transformation, and revelation of the inherent qualities of the historic artifact. / Master of Architecture

It is the intention of this thesis to present not only a visual exploration of a design problem, but also an explanation of a particular design process. It is fashionable these days for a designer to make statements about his design philosophy as a way of legitimizing his architectural intentions. My aim is to avoid this kind of justification by instead presenting the project as a process description. This description will make my beliefs and intentions both evident and understandable to those unfamiliar with my work as well as provide a personal record of the project’s development. To date my architecture education has been shaped in different countries, through different educational systems, and with different teachers and students. This thesis stands as a record of my accumulated experiences and as a description of a personal approach to working with architectural problems. I believe the most important part of an architecture education is the development of one‘s own design process. This exposition represents a beginning. / Master of Architecture

The aim of this design thesis was to look carefully at the historical environment of the chosen site, and with the understanding developed from this exploration, to design a group of houses that would answer to the desires of the individual and the needs of the collective, or simply: to create places where people would wish to dwell. "Houses must be special places within places, separately the center of the world for their inhabitants, yet carefully related to the larger place in which they belong."¹ / Master of Architecture