Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1972. M.Arch.A.S. / MICROFICHE COPY ALSO AVAILABLE IN ROTCH LIBRARY. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.Arch.A.S.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-103). / Historical control of the thermal environment was a deeply cultural activity: fireplaces distributed throughout buildings needed to be fed to keep burning, drafts needed to be stopped by hanging heavy tapestries. The industrial revolution filled the air with toxic exhaust, but modernist architects promised to seal the building envelope hermetically, keeping dirty air at bay. Thermal control came to depend on the very same centralized technologies responsible for the toxic storm outside. Pumping climates throughout a building from centralized machine rooms turned the modernist building into a human vivarium: a glass box containing a strange, displaced performance of life in some consistently tempered time and place. Industrialized city-dwellers no longer seek refuge from the outside air, and the vivarium's appetite for energy has proven more than we can sustainably produce. The design project imagines shifts in attitude for architecture after the vivarium. It is a rhetorical project which proposes three main avenues of change from contemporary assumptions. First, it envisions space in which valuable "waste" heat from exhaust, occupants' bodies, and appliances is harvested to provide imperfect and limited thermal control. Secondly, it suggests cultural shifts in clothing, activity levels, and space use that would fluctuate according to season and the availability of thermal controls. Thirdly, it proposes an attitude towards the building skin which eliminates glass in favor of a greyer zone of thermal division between indoors and out. Together these strategies replace centralized and resource-hungry mechanical climate systems with a new kind of cultural acclimatization. The resulting building embraces thermal control as a new kind of luxury good: a problem worthy not only of technical concern, but also of cultural interest. / by Philip Seaton. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1988. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Kenneth Andres Elias. / M.S.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1987. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 123). / Skyscrapers do not destroy cities; they make them look different and they make the urban space more crowded, but they have not yet put an end to the urban environment. Many of the problems with the early tall buildings have been resolved. For example, we now know how to make structures of great height. This thesis turns its attention and design focus toward the integration of more conventional architectural concerns of skyscraper design and towards the elaboration of the high density framework that follows from it. For the tall building to make a positive contribution to urbanism, it must be responsive to the multitude of variations that exist within the complex urban environment, not merely a neutral background or an exclusively self-defined structure. Among designers, there are differing attitudes towards physical definition. This thesis provides frameworks for speculation and research about the future of physical form, style and spacial organization in buildings of this type. These frameworks, ranging from the primary structure to closure and detail, will provide the existing urbanism with a mechanism to accommodate growth and change. The work is divided into three sections. The first section, The Project, is a design proposal for a specific site in downtown Boston. While these studies do not aim at producing an actual proposal for the extensive site, they do propose a new formal organization and diagramatic transformation of the existing fabric. Architectural Comparables, section two, examines some tall buildings in the urban environment and identifies positive compatibilities between common design intent and built physical reality. The final section, Observations, examines implementation strategies, adaptability, and feasibility for the design proposal. / by David J. Nelson. / M.Arch.

Thesis (S.M. in Art, Culture and Technology)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [174]-181). / These texts can be understood as potential documentation of my activities from 2002-2012. They can also be read as a constellation of theoretical statements relating to: art, music, thinking, economy, being, governance, psychology, music cognition, audio, diagrammatics, speculation, technology, governance, models of utility, logics of construction, systems theory, utopianism, sound studies, multiplicity, animal communication, pseudo-science, correlationism, theories of body, sound art, learning, everythingism, form, musicology, philosophy, poetry, philosophy of science These texts can also be understood in relation to productions documented on the Internet's World Wide Web and accessible via a browser/ compiler at: http://www.nophones.org / by Micah Silver. / S.M.in Art, Culture and Technology

Thesis (M.C.P.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture, 1956. / Bibliography: leaves 52-54. / by Udemezue Obidigwe Atuanya. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-108). / by Didier Bardon. / M.S.V.S.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-189). / Form-making is the purposeful arrangement of forms for a specific objective. This includes selecting forms and establishing spatial relations among these forms. Since form making is not a random act, ~here are rules that it must follow. These rules determine the result of the design, or they prescribe the process of designing. There are two types of rules: form rules and procedural rules. Form rules are the main interest of this thesis. Wright once wrote: "Style is important. A style is not. There is all the difference when we work with a style and not for a style." Working with a style is to choose a set of rules with which one works. The choice of the rules is not incidental. Form rules select forms and prescribe the probable relations among them. These rules must subscribe to a particular perspective. The choosing of these rules is a subscription to this specific view-point. This thesis intends to establish some principles of formal behavior, from the "associative built form language," as form rules. It will identify each of the principles and describe the nature of the principles. It will explore the capacity of these principles as working rules. It will also establish the bounds of applicability of these principles for choosing the appropriate principles in each particular problem/context. In accepting these principles, there is the presumption that form making should be committed to reinforcing/ intensifying the associative environment. The nature of this associative built environment therefore must be described. The goal of this thesis is to formalize the principles of formal behavior as form rules. It demonstrates the applications of these rules for describing forms, and for making associative built-form. The form rules are applied to selected design problems as part of a form-making process. / by Chuenfung Lin. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.C.P.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture, 1957. / Bibliography: leaf 99. / by MacDonald Barr. / M.C.P.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121,123). / In an increasingly networked environment, time has become synonymous with place. The amount of time allocated to an activity serves as the boundary between one space and another. So that where we once had places called home and work, now we have times that define that boundary. Within this context an architectural study of temporal events and the means of representing them is critical. What Is the architecture of a temporal event? How can one describe it, inquire into it, design for it? This thesis looks into the possibility of using the medium as a method for addressing these questions. Three mediums, the narrative, the video camera, and computation have been chosen to develop techniques for studying a dynamic phenomenon. All three have time as a distinct component of their expression. The event is "a woman watering a plant", which has a time lapse of 19 seconds. The media and their techniques were the means to represent it, study it and re-fabricate it. / by Omar Khan. / S.M.