published_or_final_version / abstract / Conservation / Master / Master of Science in Conservation

Most valued literature on the Nepali built environment draws our attention to the easily definable extremes of vernacular buildings and architecture. These categories are considered pure and exclusive: architecture is considered modern, designed and executed by professionals. Vernacular buildings are built by ordinary people without the help of formal experts such as architects. Vernacular strictly belongs to the place, to its past and untouched by foreign influences, while modern architecture can help transform traditional societies into modern societies that resemble the advanced-west. While these concepts may hold true at the extremes –or in regard to their core values-- most of the built environment belongs to the “gray” area or the liminal space in-between these, and are hybrids with multiple influences. This thesis concerns the production of spaces and building practices by ordinary people, particularly in rural Nepal who are increasingly influenced by western and other modernity. This thesis is an investigation into this ordinary architecture, the “in-between.” It asks what people build, how they build and why? The study, which follows these broad questions, is an inquiry into the lives of the ordinary people in a rural setting and it investigates the nature of ordinary building practices. It attempts to understand how people and their lives connect to the built environment and how the local is connected to the global and other places outside local and national boundaries. / Department of Architecture

Although a sizable subcategory of the nonprofit museum sector, historic house museums have received limited attention in discussions of best practices, most notably in topics of administration, funding, and risk management. Historic house museums serve as a cornerstone of American and international cultural tourism for their accessibility and low, or free, attendance costs. This research argues for historic house museum operations, rather than its period of restorative preservation, as the focus of inquiry. The subjects of this research are three sites that were the products of late nineteenth-century industrialization in the American Midwest, a region under-studied in current literature. Past scholarship on historic houses has been dedicated to preservation methodology and interpretation. No study of house museums attends to business and legal concerns as well as architectural history and preservation. Utilizing archives, interviews, and financial documents in the analysis of three case studies, I argue that historic house museums provide an illuminating lens onto issues of professional practice facing museums in the twenty-first century. This dissertation focuses on three historic house museums constructed after the 1876 Centennial and before the turn of the twentieth century. Chapter One offers the history of the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee, a German Renaissance Revival structure built in 1892 for brewing magnate Captain Frederick Pabst, and provides a discussion of community funding and post-recession heritage tourism. Chapter Two details the story of the Driehaus Museum in Chicago, a Renaissance Revival mansion built in 1883 for banker Samuel Nickerson and now funded primarily by investor Richard Driehaus. This chapter illuminates the issues of single-donor funding, the problematization of definitions of the historic house museum, and modern development of private art collections. Chapter Three is dedicated to the Samuel Cupples House in St. Louis, a Richardsonian Romanesque residence constructed in 1890 for manufacturing magnate Samuel Cupples and now owned by Saint Louis University, and delves into topics of institutional stewardship and university management of cultural resources. The conclusion proposes a diversification of scholarship concerning historic house museums that embraces financial management to ensure operational sustainability.

Não é possível fazer uma avaliação do patrimônio histórico somente por meio de valores estéticos; o desenho e os símbolos da cidade também se tornam memória na medida em que adquirem uma dimensão coletiva: é necessário considerar a importância da edificação como característica de um processo de reconhecimento do lugar e não da capacidade do seu autor. A cidade resulta das relações que cada elemento estabelece com todos os outros, da existência de traçados históricos e de edificações capazes de manter e traduzir a memória histórica do lugar, também e principalmente com aqueles espaços imateriais, como os vazios urbanos, ou com edifícios industriais, pois eles marcam o território. Técnicas de expansão urbana foram substituídas na Europa por práticas de recuperação e remodelação fundamentadas na história, por meio de significados coletivos, intrínsecos e estratificados, ou seja, baseados nas tradições regionais e pertencentes à cultura popular. Esta se manifesta de modo muito diferente em cada região, em função de suas raízes, costumes e identidade. Para exemplificar esse fenômeno, foram selecionadas duas situações de recuperação arquitetônica em Milão que se desenvolvem em duas escalas de interferência urbana diferentes, considerando em ambos os casos os efeitos de re-equilíbrio e impacto no entorno; um edifício de arquitetura vernacular com fortes relações com o entorno, cuja localização é central, e uma área extensa de obsolescência industrial de forte impacto urbano localizada em área periférica. / It is not possible to make an assessment of the historical patrimony only by means of esthetical values; the design and the symbols of a city also become part of its memory as they acquire a collective dimension; it is necessary to consider the importance of the buildings as a characteristic of a process of knowing the place and not the skill of its author. The city is the result of the relationships that each element establishes with all the others, of the existence of a historical heritage and of buildings able to maintain and translate the historical memory of the place, also and mainly with those immaterial spaces, as the urban emptiness, or with industrial buildings, because they mark the territory. Urban expansion techniques were substituted in Europe by recuperation and remodeling practices based on History, by means of collective, intrinsic and stratified meanings; that is, based on the regional and collective traditions belonging to popular culture. This culture manifests itself in very different ways in each region, as a function of its roots, habits and identity. To exemplify this phenomena, two situations of architectural recuperation in Milan were selected that develop in two different scales of urban interference. In both cases the effects of re-equilibrium and impact on their surroundings were considered; a building of vernacular architecture with strong relationships with its surroundings in a central location, and a large area of industrial obsolescence with a strong urban impact situated in a peripheral area.

Jali screens are traditional window treatments in vernacular buildings throughout South Asia and the Middle East. Contemporary builders are starting to incorporate Jali screens as decorative façade elements; however, architects and scholars have largely ignored the impact of Jali screens on overall building energy and day-lighting performance. This research evaluates the effect of Jali screens, across a range of perforation ratios, on energy utilization and day-lighting quality in contemporary office buildings. The data collection and analysis is through fieldwork in Lahore, Pakistan, as well as through computational energy modeling. Results demonstrate that Jali screens have a promising positive impact on cooling loads and may improve visual comfort. The findings suggest a holistic perspective combining traditional architecture and performance enhancement by architects and designers.

Thesis (M.H.P.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Rebecca J. Sheppard, School of Urban Affairs & Public Policy. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 89-98.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

No description available.

The Msinga magisterial district, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa is notable because it has for many years been regarded socially as a pariah region by residents of the Province. Over the decades it has been a 'dumping ground' for people and cultures, an infertile land where gun-running, the illegal cultivation of marijuana, and continuous stock theft has relieved some of the abject poverty, but has also exacerbated the local incidence of faction fighting. However, the people of the area have responded to this ongoing social submission by reacting with creativity and colour in their clothing, cultural goods and homesteads. The cultural material of the district is, in my opinion, unsurpassed anywhere else in the Province, from the traditional interpretation of the Msinga dolls to the exuberant architecture of the contemporary homestead. The layout and elevational resolution of any type of vernacular homestead, defined by Oliver in the first chapter, is a result of a broad number of factors, most importantly resources in terms of materials, economy, climate and culture. The response of the people of Msinga in the Tugela Valley embraces all of these factors to produce a surprising resolution that distills a fresh response to the architectural depiction of a social emergence from the peasantry. The internationally acknowledged prominent form of Zulu architecture, the beehive hut, has been adequately documented in the past. Biermann, Walton and Knuffel carried out different levels of work on this building type from the 1950s onwards. Nowadays, dwindling natural resources in KwaZulu-Natal have resulted in the creation of a new set of vernacular architectures, responding to the environment and resources available, and reflecting the specific needs of the builders, from the expression of social and economic values, to the pragmatic reality of protection from 'political strife. On the one hand, the buildings. in the Msinga Valley are changing rapidly with the natural life course of each building. However, on the other, the development of new architectural styles with the continual building of new units within homesteads demonstrates a dynamic architectural and decorative tradition. The co-existence of the material cultures of Msinga and their architectural expression has to be documented and an attempt made at analysis. The threat of indigenous vemacular traditions disappearing at the expense of development is visible on the horizon. Regional planning initiatives are pressured to deliver houses and services on a large scale, which would be severely detrimental to the continuance of a vernacular architectural tradition. The architectural culture, although currently dynamic, is at risk, and thus begs for documentation. I aim to present the unique decorative tradition of Msinga as an architecture within the contexts of place and extant material culture. Adopting anything but a broad socio-cultural perspective in this case is both short-sighted and ill-focussed. The architecture of rural areas is a material culture that is embedded in the history, social and political struggles, and economic strife. Yet, in contrast with these negative influences, it demonstrates an exuberance that is continued in the other material cultures in Msinga. I begin with an overview, pull out the thread of Msinga as an area, then distil the material culture and, ultimately, the architecture and the decoration. / Thesis (M.Arch.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.