Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163). / Born out of a concern for the world, this philosophy of artifact makes a case for a particular way of making. It is a search for things which mediate between ourselves and the earth. It is a search for those things which allow us to dwell, for things that anchor our belonging. It is a search for things which are formed from a principle which is a cultural, a historical, formed from something deep within us. Moreover it is an explanation, better still a belief about what we are about. I am not going to talk about poetry or literature per se. I will be talking about poetry as the springing point from which 1 will talk about our works. I will look at the nature of things. the things we make mediate between the earth and ourselves in some way. In each things we make we can read our relationship to the earth, or non-relationship as the case may be in our present alienating world. These things gather the earth and ourselves together and make sense by our willing. For anything to be born into the void, the distance between us and the earth there must be an idea, a thought. We concertize those images in the thing, to be anchored and made real. In creating these things we have the power to bring to the thing values we consider worthwhile. This essay will be a case for those values which allow belonging to occur, which makes dwelling possible. To return to poetry, or rather the poetic let us look at language for a time. In ordinary language we use naming to make the world understandable and precise. We can begin to communicate reality through this naming. Thus language anchors our existence and is tied to the things by this act of naming. Poetry, however, transcends this connection. It brings about meaning through the juxtaposition of different things. It creates its meaning by association and by metaphor (translation), bringing it alive in another way. It becomes a thing in itself. It stands on its own, outside of ordinary language, it mediates between reality and us. It is not tied to a thing as a name is, rather it brings earth and humanity together, it mediates just as a thing does. It becomes a living thing in its own right revealing for us the earth and us to the earth. And so to architecture that is truth, an architecture that echoes and mirrors reality, illuminates its existence and allows for dwelling. In a way this is a search for truth via the artifact. Dwelling depends on belonging which in turn depends on reality and our knowing of it, particularly as truth. I hope to show a way which lies beneath our false constructions to achieve that which has been elusive, a sense of belonging in order that I might find ground upon which I can truly build. / by Noel Jonathan Brady. / M.S.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1966. M.Arch. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / Bibliography: leaf [28]. / M.Arch.

Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2017. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. Page 171 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (pages [166]-170). / This thesis seeks to investigate the role of architecture in staging, broadcasting, and promoting political and social ideologies, especially as new political regimes come to power and are confronted with the monuments and built artifacts of their predecessors. This thesis is interested in how the optimistic promises of any nascent government are staged in buildings and in the city. What sites remain, are transformed, or are torn down? The story of Havana's growth in the twentieth century is directly tied to the political motivations of its leaders. While the country was free from the Spanish but not quite independent, the city grew up. Casinos, high-rise apartments and hotels captured coastal real estate through which money could be funneled to the upper echelons of the Batista regime. Along with Fidel Castro came a promise of utopia. For a brief moment, the revolution sponsored a new, experimental architectural form. The US Embargo and the fall of the Soviet Union halted Havana's growth and urbanization abruptly. This history suggests three key attitudes towards architecture as a site of politics: augmentation through additional construction, erasure of buildings in order to re-write history, and inhabitation of a building in order to reuse its infrastructure while simultaneously changing its function and image. In order to test these strategies, this thesis inserts itself in a future moment of crisis and revolution in Cuba, a moment akin to Cuba's fight for independence and to the time of Castro's rise to power. It questions the inevitability of a wave of capitalism washing over the island in the post-Castro years and instead imagines a new state-sponsored project to make Cuba 100 percent food-independent. In this future, the state witnesses the political turmoil and instability around the globe and realizes it cannot rely on foreign aid and imports to feed its people; it designs a return to its agrarian past. This thesis argues for an alternate ending to the story of Cuba's experiment with socialism. While construction was cut short due to political contingencies in the early 1960s, could there be a new experiment for the Havana of today? Can the aspiration for a collective urbanity be revived? Where will the future sites of production exist in the city? In Havana, there are pockets of vibrant life, notably in the Old City, along La Rampa, or along the Malecón. Here, glimpses of the promised socialist dream may still be visible. This thesis asks if these few social islands (or social condensers in the words of O.M. Ungers) can be saved, if they can become sites of non-capitalist production and education, and if they can help sustain Cuba into our unknown future. / by Jessica Jorge. / M. Arch.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53). / The Kulturpalast is located in the middle of Dresden's historic core, the result of socialist expressions of monumentality and modernity. It has served as a major congress center in Dresden for more than thirty years. As Dresden's new congress center rises up on the bank of the Elbe between Marienbrucke bridge and the Saxon Parliament Buildings by the year 2000, Kulturpalast will be converted into a concert hall and house Dresden's Philharmonic Orchestra. This thesis focuses on the design of a new Kulturpalast as an activator of two public spaces of Dresden - Altmarkt and Neuemarkl. This is an inquiry into how this building should be shaped by its urban context, and how it should contribute to the urban character of these neighboring public spaces. Cultural activities should be brought towards the building's periphery to bring new meaning to these public spaces and to create an architectural coherence. The urban and architectural design of the concert hall complex is guided by three design principles. First, the complex attempts to construct a pedestrian transition between the neighboring Altmarkt and Neuemarkl. Secondly, the complex represents a hybrid as it meshes the object-like concert hall into a continuous urban fabric. And third, the complex aims to invent and frame new visual relationships of its urban surroundings. / by Ho-Jeong Kim. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-105). / The purpose of this thesis is to investigate modern fashion as an urban phenomenon since the 19th century. Through the study of the fashion market and its formation, the intent is to explore how fashion has developed in relation to other structural changes appearing in the city. it will discuss the specific characteristics of the relationship between fashion and the city in regard to other innovations of the modern era, such as technological change and mechanization. Fashion has always been studied through its dichotomy between the material and the symbolic. In this study , I will look at the factors that helped to shape fashion as an autonomous field of knowledge, as an economic reality, and as an independent profession. I will also investigate its role in the aesthetic realm. Fashion affected the social and cultural formations appearing during industrialization after the French Revolution, beyond its obvious function in the production and distribution of clothing. In this thesis, I will focus on how, where, and when fashion's influence on social habits and design aesthetics occurred. as well as the consequences of this growing influences in the context of the city. In exploring this issue I will consider not only how cultural and social forms (i.e . class formation) have affected the fashion market, but also how fashion itself has had an impact on the development of cultural industries such as media. / by Beatrice Bernier. / M.S.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1972. M.Arch. / Bibliography: leaf 64. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2011. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 220-221). / The Canadian Arctic is facing a set of compounding crises that will drastically impact the future of its coastal frontier. At a time when climate change is having a detrimental impact on the Arctic landscape, Northern communities are on the frontline of resource development where industrial money promises major territorial and social change. In this way, the Inuvialuit population of Tuktoyaktuk will find opportunity in crisis as they strategically manipulate both the agendas of the petroleum industry as well as the federal government's own incentive for Northern development in order to construct a new coastal frontier and secure a post-oil economy defended from the rising sea. This form of oil urbanization provides an architectural and infrastructural imperative for this thesis, as change will occur rapidly and at a much larger scale than these communities could spark or manage on their own. The Tuktoyaktuk landscape will undoubtedly become transformed by the creation of occupiable, defensive infrastructure that secures new land on which to reimagine the arctic dwelling and its temporal interface with a rising sea and a changing economy. Mobilized by the demands and goals of the Inuvialuit population, this thesis examines Tuktoyaktuk as an exemplary model for strategic modernization and development of remote Arctic communities on the frontline of industrialization. The goal of designing this enhanced urban structure is to make use of the finite economic opportunity to set up the framework from which the community will thrive and grow upon the retreat of the oil operations. By maximizing the opportunities that emerge from these complexities of place, we begin to unveil a unique and timely moment for architectural and infrastructural innovation. / by Pamela Ritchot. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129). / This thesis is an investigation of the natural or bodily-based meaning of architecture, understood in terms of the inherent qualities and relationships that arise out of movement within built environment, and based in a contemporary understanding of the relationship between man and world. This work. attempts a fundamental grounding of discussions of architectural meaning, through the rigorous application of our ever expansive knowledge base onto the realities of building and basic human understanding. Taking from environmental and perceptual psychology, and the cognitive sciences, the intent is to evolve a dialectic between science and contemporary theory that can advance our knowledge for architecture. This investigation of embodied experience revolves around two primary focal points. First, the increasing emphasis on vision and abstract objectivity has limited the range of the meaningful, and has led to a focus on abstract, intellectual meaning; this work. Attempts to demonstrate the potential that an interactive and complementary juxtaposition of kinesthetic signification could have. Second, architecture's greatest potency arises when it is considered in terms of the experience of both space and time -- specifically movement and the relationships between spaces that result from this movement. The body may be seen as a "paradigmatic ruler," a measuring tool for spatial experience, which in fact measures the spatially implicit meaning in bodily experience. Thus, this thesis is about trying to resolve the difficult juxtaposition of the transcendent qualities of embodied meaning with issues of time and movement, in order to derive an architecture fundamentally grounded in the body. The thesis surveys a cross-section of research and theory loosely categorized into three realms: embodied understanding, embodied meaning in architecture, and aesthetic issues of time and movement. The intent is to give direction to possible theories of architecture grounded in embodiment. This consideration of embodied meaning does not attempt to suggest an alternative to conscious, culturally-based meaning, nor to perpetuate the mind body split; rather the intent is to offer another frame of emphasis within our consciousness, and indicate the possibilities of the interaction and integral relationship between the intellectual and embodied realms, in designing for the modern world. Thesis Supervisor: / by J. Chris Evans. / M.S.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103). / This thesis is a study of change and constancy -- planning for incremental growth in a manner that will give emphasis to the whole and not the increments. The Nantahala Outdoor Center is a center for white water activities in western North Carolina. A portion of each seasons revenues is channeled into improved and new (3000-5000 square feet) facilities. Determining what to build and where is done on a season-by-season basis relative to available finances and current need. As might be expected, this years projections do not always match those of last; time frequently reveals new factors for consideration and demands a flexible strategy for mapping the future. Expansion problems have been accommodated up to now by taking the path of least resistance, siting each new structure independently of other structures, one building for each need, eliminating considerations of connection between old and new. But at some point, this system has its breaking point and the result becomes similar to what happens in the typical suburb -- discrete bits of building consume the landscape in a uniform fashion, eradicating significant differences between one place and the next. The solution is not in building more at one time, but in careful consideration of how one assembles the pieces. This thesis is the study of that assemblage, looking to maintain the ease and flexibility of building each piece independently without compromising the meaning and quality of the whole. Additional considerations and influences include building with self-help (Raft Guide Construction Company), employees of the Nantahala Outdoor Center, people with building experience but who are not builders by trade. A further concern is building in naturally pristine areas -- harmonizing the man-made with the natural. / by Christopher Cole Larson. / M.Arch.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-103). / Computer hand-held devices have the potential to revolutionize the methods of communication in the construction process. The compelling feature of hand-held computers is their ability to integrate GPS, video cameras, magnetometers and other sensors with an array of construction-relevant data layers in a highly portable form factor. This technology has the capacity to locate people in space, give them information relevant to who they are and where they are as well as allow them to input information into the system on the go. Through extensive research and interviews conducted with architects, construction managers and foremen, this thesis will assess problems inherent in the construction process and propose a new vision for methods of communication. This vision will be expressed through the design of a new hand-held application prototype. / by Adela Kalenja. / S.M.