In a time of increased admissions at State Colleges and Universities students are at risk for various concerning factors including decreased academic performance, feelings of isolation and alienation from faculty, staff and their peers, and other issues of mental health. Intentional architectural programming, primarily the public spaces within residence halls, can help to alleviate these issues for students and ensure that they are connected to their residential community not only academically but personally. This thesis will discuss how the increase in college admissions has affected residence hall communities and the personal development of students attending large academic institutions. It will analyze current residence hall spaces and propose a renovation for the Southwest Residential Area towers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst which house at least 580 students per tower. Issues of crowding, stress and over stimulation as a result of the built environment will be assessed and discussed to illuminate the need for renovation in the Southwest Residential Area towers, the largest halls on the UMass campus. The proposed renovation focuses on providing students who live in towers with public spaces that connect the community. This renovation reflects the original design intent of Hugh Stubbins, the complex’s architect, who designed the towers to consist of three vertically stacked houses. Each house, consisting of seven floors in the tower will be connected with a series of atria that feature small study and social spaces along their main circulation. The main public space floor of the residence hall, located at the center of the 7-floor vertically stacked house, will undergo the largest renovation of all the floors and will feature centralized service spaces such as mail, laundry and cooking facilities in addition to a large community gathering space and study spaces. The students’ personal spaces have also been renovated to maximize sunlight, reduce roommate viii conflicts, and provide personalized intermediary space that will architecturally draw students towards their public spaces.

This diploma thesis is focused on the everyday life of the inhabitants of tower apartment buildings in Kladno - Rozdělov. The houses designed by architect Josef Havlíček were built in the second half of the 1950s. Due to their uniqueness, both the external buildings and the timeless interiors and equipment they were listed as among the cultural sights. Using the method of oral history, I tried to capture the normal course of houses, the lives of individuals and entire families. The work is supported by a source base consisting of interviews with witnesses, archival materials, period legislation and research literature. It is divided into three basic parts - methodological, historical-contextual and empirical. On a general level, the thesis focuses on the system of housing allocation in the former Czechoslovakia and life on housing estates. Furthermore, I specifically describe the daily operation of the house, the figure of the caretaker who supervised maintenance of order, the use of common areas such as laundries, terraces or entrance halls, the area around the house, but also the daily life and leisure of "ordinary people" who lived there. A separate chapter is also devoted to the political propaganda of the time, which was part of the daily life of individuals and the whole society.

We carry out non-invasive ambient noise investigation of rock structures in Bohemian Paradise (Bohemian Cretaceous Basin, Czech Republic). The study is focused on two key topics: 1) An in-situ elastic moduli estimate of competent, horizontally deposited sandstone layers. This is done by performing an ambient noise array measurement. The recording is processed with f-k array analysis, from which frequency-dependent Love and Rayleigh wave dispersion curves as well as the Rayleigh wave ellipticity are retrieved. The data are inverted for P- and S-wave velocity profiles, from which the Young's and shear modulus are successfully estimated. 2) Study of local response of Kapelník rock tower. We analyse a dataset of ambient noise recordings from the top of the tower and from its foot. Information about tower oscillation frequencies and directions, together with amplification ratios, are retrieved from particle motion polarisation analysis and from site-to-reference spectral ratios. The Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is finally used to interpret the measured data using the elastic moduli estimated from the noise array measurement. Keywords: Bohemian Paradise, rock tower, seismic ambient noise, seismic surface waves

New Prague Gate in Znojmo – One House, Two squares New building of „CAFÉ BRÁNA“ is ment to be a substitution of a medieval town wall with an watchtower, which was a part of a northen barbican gate. The house will create an missing ending of a small square at the same time. The mass of building is rather sculptural. The position on the edge of the old town and new (lets call it new, because no surrounding building can be named „modern“ or quality) build-up area designates a special look of the building, becauce it has no backside. Two main facades (southern, northen) are created in different style to reflect different situations. An object of Café forms, with a lately designed urban structure two squrares, which lay-out is a part of this work.

Wood is often perceived as a flawed material. When painted, technologically treated or sealed, in a pursuit to make it more predictable and durable, some of its most important qualities are mislaid. This project explores the aesthetic, material and constructional possibilities of wood, and suggests the possibility of a wood brutalism architecture. The project includes a written manifesto for the benefits of wood in the human habitat, proposes a CO₂ based economic strategy for our built environment and promotes massive wood buildings as our carbon savings account. To find out what a wood brutalism of today might be, the project includes an analysis of the relationship between the material concrete, Betón-brut and the zeitgeist of the 60´s and 70´s. In the application of the manifesto and Bois-brut on a case study housing project in Östberga, Stockholm, the Trellick tower has acted as a brutalist mirror reference. Vernacular timber buildings have provided clues in the search for the essence of wood.

Football is a much loved sport in the United States. Unfortunately, it is also hard on the players and puts them at very high risk of concussion. To combat this an inventor in Santa Barbara brought a new design to Cal Poly to be tested. The design was tested in small scale first in order to make some preliminary conclusions about the design. In order to fully test the helmet design; however, full scale testing was required. In order to carry out this testing a drop tower was built based on National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, NOCSAE, specification. The drop tower designed for Cal Poly is a lower cost and highly portable version of the standard NOCSAE design. Using this drop tower and a 3D printed prototype the new design was tested in full scale.

Structural dynamics is at the center of wind turbine tower design - excessive vibrations can be caused by a wide range of environmental and mechanical sources and can lead to reduced component life due to fatigue, noise, and impaired public perception of system integrity. Furthermore, periodic turbulent wind conditions can cause system resonance resulting in significantly increased structural loads. Structural vibration issues may become exacerbated in small wind applications where the analytical and experimental resources for system verification and optimization are scarce. This study combines several structural analysis techniques and packages them into a novel and integrated form that can be readily used by the small wind community/designer to gain insight into tower/rotor dynamic interaction, system modal characteristics, and to optimize the design for reduced tower loads and cost. The finite element method is used to model the tower structure and can accommodate various configurations including fixed monopole towers, guy-wire supported towers, and gin-pole and strut supported towers. The turbine rotor is modeled using the Equivalent Hinge-Offset blade model and coupled to the tower structure through the use of Lagrange’s Equations. Standard IEC Aeroelastic load cases are evaluated and transient solutions developed using the Modal Superposition Method and Runge-Kutta 4th order numerical integration. Validation is performed through comparisons to theoretical closed form solutions, physical laboratory test results, and peer studies. Finally a case study is performed by using the tool to simulate the Cal Poly Wind Power Research Center Wind Turbine and Tower System. Included in the case study is an optimization for hypothetical guy-wire placement to minimize tower stresses and maximize the tower’s natural frequency.

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Among the founders of the science of town planning at the beginning of the twentieth century, Scotsman Patrick Geddes introduced methods of investigation commensurate with other sciences. A biologist, trained by Thomas Huxley, Geddes borrowed the practices of the microscopical laboratory in creating the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, Scotland which served as a model for an approach to the study of cities. His method was like that of a field botanist studying a species, and assumed an interdependent relationship between place, work and folk. Embracing the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, Geddes proposed subtle town planning interventions as a means by which cities could adaptively respond to change over time. He advocated the employ of a graphic device, which he called his "thinking machines," and which served as a paradigmatic strategy to forge new relationships within sets of ideas. Such an approach aligned him with the taxonomic strategies in practice in the formation of museum collections and display of the nineteenth century. This work examines the archival evidence of the principles underlying Geddes' methods in the hope that they may be recovered in contemporary town planning. / Ph. D.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Frank C. Tracz / This document was submitted to the Graduate School of Kansas State University as a partial requirement for the Master’s of Music Education degree. It contains information about music education philosophy, what defines quality literature, theoretical and historical analyses, and rehearsal plans for each of the three pieces that were performed on the Graduate Student Conducting Recital on Wednesday, March 11, 2009. Selections performed on the recital included in the document’s analysis portion include Four Scottish Dances by Malcolm Arnold, arranged by John Paynter, Mosaic, Op. 30 by Mario Gaetano, and Celebration Fanfare from “Stepping Stones” by Joan Tower, arranged by Jack Stamp. The analytical methods employed in this document and the rehearsal techniques listed are based on the Blocker/Miles unit studies and macro-micro-macro concepts from the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band book series.