Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1896. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / by Marion L. Lewis. / B.S.

Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 126-127). / Utopias have historically been perceived as instruments of societal change, while prior manifestations have normally been attributed to emerging cultural conditions or evolving ethical views, however one of the most pertinent agendas relevant to our field would be the rapidly shifting state of our environment. Human environmental impact is frequently looked at a local or regional scale, with large international protocol, remaining largely ineffective and mired through process. The summation of this altered climate includes effects like rising surface and atmospheric temperatures, rising sea levels, ozone depletion, and reduced cloud formation. And nowhere are these environmental consequences more seen than in Antarctica. Claimed as a global commons, Antarctica is ungoverned, yet under the international protection and afforded the combined preservatory efforts of these bodies of power. Despite our concerted efforts, its current deterioration is due directly to an individual and universal, detrimental contribution. This thesis aims to generate an awareness and visibility to the oscillating physical and atmospheric ephemera of this continent, while using the internal and external extrema of a research installation as a performative bridge between architecture and environment. Through granting a variety of sensorial experiences, this station will help instill strong desires to change decision making processes of individuals and other political bodies, while raising questions of personal and institutional responsibility / by Eric Randall Morris. / M. Arch.

Thesis (M. Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1963. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-34). / Dragoljub GJ. Vukovic. / M.Arch

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2009. / Most text printed 23 x 29 cm. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-91). / The possibility of becoming lost is always present, as far away as another country or as close as your own body. When truly lost, there is at first, an examining of the unfamiliar, then a quick check-in with what we know. In a way, becoming lost is a way of finding what we know. It seems that when we are off-course, we become hyper-aware of our surroundings, scanning to find out what appears to be going on. We ask, why is this happening in this way, and how is it different from what I know? Leaving the realms of what we know by going to unfamiliar spaces allows us to become more present in our immediate situation. In my work I am searching for ways of inviting this condition. Looking for a Landscape, my final work at MIT, takes as its site an ordinary object from an urban space. The work is about exposing what we do not see in our everyday lives to provide an opening for participation and dialogue through the creation of unfamiliar visions of our environment. Through seeing the city in a different way we can suddenly become lost and find opportunities for discovery. The original housing of Looking for a Landscape is a standard city utility box with a concrete base, painted and graffitied like all of the other utility boxes in the city. The doors are modified so that they do not open like a normal utility box, but are hinged at the bottom and pull down, cantilevering like a drawbridge, to create two large platforms on either side on which to sit. / (cont.) Each of these platforms is upholstered with a gold-trimmed, maroon colored pillow that covers the entire surface. Binoculars, the same kind used for sightseeing at the entire surface. Binoculars, the same kind used for sightseeing at scenic locations, are mounted at eye-level on top of a post at the center of each pillow. These binoculars point out into the city, becoming a viewing station of the everyday. The entire structure is on retractable wheels embedded inside the concrete base. When the wheels are up, the utility box looks like a stationary, permanent part of the city. When the wheels are brought down, by a cranking mechanism inside the base, they make contact with the ground allowing Looking for a Landscape to be moved to the next location of the city. In this thesis, I will discuss Looking For a Landscape as a vehicle for both getting lost and finding direction. I will map out different aspects of "getting lost" through experiences in my life including: intentionally getting lost as a means to finding a new way; understanding the concept of place and social spaces and the grounding relationships we have with them; playing with what is familiar through our senses and the environment around us; and introducing objects and opportunities for opening up social layers within the spaces in which we live. / by Matthew Mazzotta. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-98). / by Randy Galbreath Nichols. / M.S.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1966. M.Arch. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / M.Arch.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 152-155). / Upon arrival in Memphis by air, a sign welcomes passengers to "Memphis - America's Distribution Center", a reflection of one's place in the city, and the country. Rather than a romantic reflection of the cultural heritage of the city with Elvis Presley and B.B. King, the statement places passengers not at the destination of their travels, vis a vis a "welcome to", but en route somewhere else. Memphis International Airport, identified via its aviation code "MEM", is not a place of arrival-a terminal, from "terminus", the end-but a location to be passed through-a state of being in transit or colloquially "passing through". Few passengers and goods conclude their travel here; MEM's raison d'etre is as a layover, as travelers are being distributed elsewhere as a result of the efficiency of the hub-and-spoke model of aviation. As a result, MEM is the world's busiest cargo airport. At its peak, an upwards of six flights arriving a minute carrying Apple computers, Mickey Mouse plush toys, cooking items from William-Sonoma, and the variety of other goods to and from all corners of the world destined for FedEx's so-called SuperHub. Because of the presence of such a facility, MEM has arisen as an economic capital in an improbably location within the interior of the United States replete with its own sprawling developments. MEM, as an airport city, challenges the social and cultural norms of what one considers a traditional city, as its reasons for being is the economy of moving goods and founded on the way we do business and not the way we live. This thesis proposes an urban form for MEM's surrounding city that serves as a means of regeneration of the surrounding, decaying area as well as accepts the condition of being in transit for goods and people as a primary condition of existence. In Brophy's character's words, it is an urbanism that "[perpetually remains] in the present moment, in at least semi-sempiternal transit between departure from the past and arrival in the future" and is more appropriate than the status quo within the context of MEM with regard to the transitory nature of goods, passengers and employees. The urban logic is thus a metaphor of FedEx in the transposition of technological logics, such as the flow of bodies and the interface of machine, the parcel, and the human occupant. / by Anthony P. Vanky. / S.M.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1986. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: p. 157-160. / by William Fenn Roslansky. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1962. / Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-28). / by Yusing Yiu-Sing Jung. / M.Arch

Thesis: S.M. in Art, Culture and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2014. / 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 (pages 62-65). / This thesis concerns the body as it faces the computer. While it is informed by theories of embodiment, it argues against a retreat to the "human" in the face of new sensations that may result from the body's willing incorporation into the computer as an avatar. At the same time, the processes of self-virtualization enabled by computation are subject to question. Extending from the author's practice as an artist working in interactive media, digital video, sound, and writing, this work posits that both human and computer compete for agency in the active construction of meaning. Rather than locate this construction in either a perceptual or an algorithmic process, the encounter with the computer is described as a vibration. This allows both human and computer to be considered as affective bodies prior to signification. The vibration between these bodies is a form of movement opened by interrupting the process of signification that occurs when the computer renders code; the user responds to the computer's output; and rendering, response, and interaction are all read discursively. Both interruption and vibration are theorized here in relation to Merleau-Ponty, Virilio, Lyotard, Goodman, Hansen, Barthes, Beckett, Cézanne, Plato, and other theorists and practitioners. / by Ryan Kuo. / S.M. in Art, Culture and Technology