Thesis: S.M. in Art, Culture, and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 92-94). / The rapid expansion of new media technologies is exacerbating inherent flaws embedded in the common multimedia display, or screen. As of 2015 the average American spends more time perceptually engaged with virtual content via screens than with the real world, with adverse effects. The current landscape of engagement with the virtual world, and virtual engagement with each other has lead to increased mediation, isolation, and dissociation that threatens how society functions. To counteract this trend, we should be making more of an effort to integrate the virtual into our natural, shared environment, and to create multimedia experiences that physically bring people together. Architecture is particularly well situated to tackle the integration of the virtual into the built environment. Such an endeavor constitutes a new subcategory of architecture: media architecture, which synthesizes physical design, content design, and communication theory. This subject matter is explored with the aid of various video based experimentations and artistic explorations. As a result of these experiments and explorations this thesis also proposes a number of design strategies for creating integrated media, including a materialist approach for creating virtual content that is more tethered to reality. Throughout, this thesis seeks to interrogate the eternal rift between the world in our heads, and the world in which we find ourselves, between imagination and reality. / by Joshuah Howard. / S.M. in Art, Culture, and Technology

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 86). / "Seeing the Future, Speaking to the Past" is a collective documentation of the projects which I produced during the time at MIT. Through my experiences as a foreigner, I have become interested in global nomadic behavior and it's effect on the socio-psychological experiences of individuals and the development of new social formations. In my projects, I attempt to address the issues of alienation, disorientation, and cultural marginality by using video images of performative activities and the deployment of prosthetic devices. Repetition and absurdity are elements that I utilize to encounter the boundaries between detachment and social engagement, perception and imagining, announcement and silence, interrogation and defiance. Through my experiences as a global nomad, I create new vehicles that bridge the disparate cultures I encounter. / by Hiroharu Mori. / S.M.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-256). / This thesis examines the role of the architect in practice, specifically the architect's relationship with a health maintenance organization faced with the challenge of designing a model teaching practice. The primary goal of the project is to design a workplace that fosters communication and learning through interior architecture, work processes and organizational structure. In the study presented here, the architect becomes a researcher and explores a multiplicity of tools and techniques from various disciplines when engaging with participants of the professional community to learn about their space, work processes and organization . The participants are considered the experts of their workplace. Given this assumption, the architect listens to them, watches how they work, and interprets daily events in a personal log. In addition, the architect seeks for qualitative and quantitative data and prepares exercises that permit the participants to voice their ideas. The various forms of inquiry assist the designer in the reflective analysis and in the formulation of a conceptual framework for interior architecture, work processes, and organizational structure. Once completed, the designer creates a knowledge based design prototype that fosters the goals of the organization. This approach requires the architect to be multi-faceted. In addition to the traditional role as designer and consultant; the architect must act as a coach, analyst and synthesizer. One of my thesis goals is to demonstrate the potential for enriching the architectural design process through the application of various inquiry techniques coupled with reflection and discussion. The inquiry methods I employ include participatory observation, informal interviews, participant generated drawings and workbooks, and communication mapping. Using these environmental-behavior research tools reveals the paradoxes and inherent contradictions that exist within the organization and within the workplace. Once the conflicts are identified, a language or conceptual framework is developed which presents solutions to the problems. Finally, a proposal for a prototype is presented. / by Arlene A. Kisiel. / M.Arch.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-143). / This thesis demonstrates the necessity of looking at cities as a component part of "nature." It seeks a common denominator for sustainable design in three simplified principles and outlines a method for evaluating the built environment according to these principles. And it suggests how community gardens may begin to serve as both, a productive metaphor which integrates cities and "nature," and a model for sustainable design. In order to view cities within "nature," it is necessary to discard popular idealizations of "nature." The pastoral ideal is particularly prevalent in America and represents a common mythos which constructs an idealized middle landscape between city and "nature," isolating both. Community gardens present us with a productive way of seeing "nature" and cities together and the gardens gives us a metaphor which can facilitate the sustainable design of our built environment. The criteria and priorities of sustainable design frameworks vary, but they all contain components which can be broadly defined under three interrelated principles. 1) Create environments which sustain ecosystems. 2) Create environments which sustain communities. 3) Create environments which sustain people. Indicators give us a good measure of the extent to which a particular environment is sustainable. Ecological indicators reflect the regenerative processes of ecosystems. Community indicators measure the capability of environments and the processes they engender to sustain human society. Personal indicators reflect the extent to which environments can heal and restore well-being to body and mind. The community gardens in the Dudley Street neighborhood of Roxbury and Dorchester in Boston are evaluated and an outline is presented of how the gardens begin to realize the principles of sustainable design and suggest a new integrated and productive metaphor for building. A sustainable environment can only be achieved through an integrated consideration of ecological systems, social and cultural fabrics and individual human supports. / by John M. Seitz. / M.S.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1984. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 113-115. / by Tyler Peppel. / M.S.V.S.

Thesis (M. Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1960. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68). / John Richard Stopfel. / M.Arch

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54). / This thesis investigates the use of handheld mobile devices as exploratory personalized tools for dynamic navigation of the cityscape that go beyond cartographic limitations and yellow-page directory services. One needs to capture the hidden information patterns of the city in order to experience it in a meaningful way. The volatile, unpredictable randomness of the city life and its ever-changing patterns need dynamic navigational means. Unfortunately, existing devices and their applications do not fully address the impelling potential of realtime interactivity generated by Wireless and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). This study proposes a tool, which encourages personal perception and collective experience of cities by providing a dynamic information space that overlaps the city with individual users, both spatially and temporally. The tool is characterized by a three-tier structure of Personal Filtering, Social Networking and Information Layering. It filters the information through personalization, shares the personal perception through social networks and layers the information with collective, thereby creating a regenerative system that allows for the creation of new patterns and interpretations. / by Aradhana Goel. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-61). / by Laura Hallie Robin. / M.S.V.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-79). / The incomplete Temple of Didyma appeared in modern times as a constructed image, as an affirmation of the representative Greek temple. By the turn of the century the remains of the classical Didyma were rediscovered, the temple was redrawn and the site was literally and metaphorically "enframed." Reconstruction of the remains of classical antiquity provided beholders with the physical and aesthetic immediacy of a far distant past. Hence, the immediacy and tangibility of reconstructed images helped to differentiate between the world of the "original" configuration of the remains and that of their later existence. Given that the construction of architectural knowledge has rarely been questioned at Didyma, this study inquires into the codification of the remains of antiquity into the domain of the discipline of architecture, which ultimately differentiated the architectural product of a certain "golden age" from the historical processes in which it accumulated its meaning. The 1895-1896 "Beaux Arts" excavations and reconstruction seem to be the most representative example of such a codification. By the end of the 19th century reconstruction drawings represented the "unfinished" temple of Didyma in a complete form that has never been "achieved" in antiquity, while the excavations physically demolished the contemporary village surrounding the temple. Culminating with Hausoullier's and Pontremoli's representations, the reconstruction work metaphorically restarted the building at the point where it was interrupted in the late 4th century AD and transformed it into a finished, framed picture. Therefore, central to this study is a questioning of a 19th century scientific methodology in the uncovering and reassembling of architectural fragments which would ultimately take their place in the construction of an a priori image. But the study equally raises a more general question about the "framing" of the historical sites for "understanding" architecture and how this understanding might obscure the impetus of other historical and contextual concerns. In terms of historical interpretation, we have to clarify that the "modern" temple of Didyma exists today in the way it is represented. Just as the construction of the ideal image of Didyma has its historicity, the interpretation undertaken by this study is also bound by our own temporal world and takes a position vis-a.-vis the Beaux-Arts reconstruction. Beyond the aim of an "objective" reconstruction, this study intends to put the fragments of historical evidence together with later representations. Its aim, in other words, is to contribute to a "fusion" of discourses and interpretations in Western Anatolia. It is an attempt to claim the importance of site-specific concerns as opposed to all-encompassing, culture deterministic theories; an attempt for specificity without closure and inclusiveness without dispersion. / by Selami Mesut Can Bilsel. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-130). / This dissertation examines the epistemological significance of "truth," "rationality," and the "aesthetic" first in the nineteenth-century definitions of the nature of Gothic and, then in more recent twentieth-century debates about objectivity. My study links the Aristotelian notion of practical reasoning to aesthetic cognition, and brings to surface the scientific, moral, and ethical arguments, which have been ignored by contemporary architectural criticism. The theoretical foundation of my argument lies in the work of analytic philosophers and literary theorists such as Hilary Putnam, Nelson Goodman and Satya P. Mohanty. These writers emphasize the rational and affective nature of our aesthetic experience and our aesthetic values and judgments, and propose a sophisticated account of objectivity by reexamining the actual nature of the "hard" sciences, interpreting them as complex, coordinated social practices. By drawing upon this understanding of objectivity, particularly as it relates to politics, I hope to bring to light a theoretical alternative to post-modernism in architecture that can enable us to explain the relationship of architecture to political power without abandoning the values of aesthetics, truth or rationality. My dissertation mediates between the disciplines of philosophy, literary theory, and architecture and tries to create space for inquiry wherein the epistemological, the theoretical, and the historical are interconnected. / by Ritu Bhatt. / Ph.D.