This study of a furniture showroom demonstrates the expression of the relationships of two basic forms of art: furniture and architecture. The geometric form of the work of architecture stands in both harmony and tension with and against its furnishings. Harmony is present through the union of solid forms and the hollows of the rooms and its parts. Through the union of cylindrical, conical, helical and cubic forms, static and dynamic relations activate moments of rest the fluid movement. The furniture stands against this harmonic background and expresses tension through its own form and arrangement. / Master of Architecture

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is dependent on desalination of seawater to provide new water supplies for the future. Desalination is expensive and it is very important to reduce the cost and lower the energy consumption. Most seawater reverse osmosis facilities use open-ocean intakes, which require extensive pre-treatment processes to remove particulate and biological materials that cause operating problems. An alternative intake is the subsurface system which utilizes the concept of riverbank filtration using wells or galleries and provides natural filtration to improve the quality of feedwater before it enters the desalination plant. This reduces operating cost and lowers energy consumption. Research was focused on evaluating gallery-type intakes (beach and seabed galleries) that could be used along the Northern Red Sea shoreline to provide a better quality feedwater for desalination. The geological characteristics of the visited sites were favorable for the development of seabed filter systems (offshore), but not for beach gallery intakes. The low wave energy along the shoreline and the presence of mud or rocky coasts made beach galleries infeasible. One of the potentially favorable sites for a seabed filter was located in the nearshore area at King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC). This site has a predominantly sandy offshore bottom with shallow water depths, and a low tide range. In addition, the bottom is always covered with water and contains soft limestone unit below the sand mantle that could be easy excavated to facilitate the construction of a seabed filter. About 50 sediment samples were collected from the site and laboratory measurements were performed on them. Grain size distribution, porosity and hydraulic conductivity measurements were performed on the sediment samples. In addition, six statistical methods were used to estimate the hydraulic conductivity values. Based on results of lab measurements, field observations, tide ranges and sediment types, it is concluded that the geological conditions and characteristics of KAEC site are feasible for design and construction of a seabed filtration system. A conservatively designed cell with dimensions of 100 by 50 m would produce about 25,000 m3/day of filtered seawater and seven cells could support a 60,000 m3/day (permeate) seawater RO plant.

Friedrich Nietzsche classified all precepts which were imposed upon us by human intervention as idols; his aim was to instigate “a revaluation of all values”, through the irrefutable sounding out of these idols. Armed with a tuning fork, his intention was to strike them so as to illicit a hollow reverberation. With a mischievous contentment he declared, “. . . that which would like to stay silent has to become audible.” Our faith in technology, consumption and our economic system, like our faith in the gods of the past, has facilitated and encouraged our adoption of destructive behaviours which position cultural ideals at war with nature. In the pursuit of profit and growth disguised as a commitment to progress, we have built a manufactured landscape which denies its connection or responsibility to our natural environment. Since the consequences of our disregard for nature have become undeniable, it is now necessary to reassess the hollow foundations of our cultural practices. The thesis imagines a narrative series of four underground rooms constructed to house four video installations. Each piece attempts to provoke an internal revolution, a reinstatement of our mental faculties through a shifting of perception both within the work and through paralleling the conditions of its installation with our own elaborately manufactured reality. The four galleries juxtapose the generative video pieces with corresponding case studies and stories that echo the themes of each piece. Through the study of unique practices in Slavjansk, Ukraine, the history of the North American lawn, current construction efforts in Dubai, UAE and Walt Disney World, USA, recent developments in China, and the past civilizations of Easter Island and the Greenland Norse, the thesis attempts to expose, through irony and juxtaposition, the absurd tragedy of our delusions. 1 . Nietzsche, Frederich. Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Toronto: Penguin Books Canada Ltd. 2003. p 31.

Friedrich Nietzsche classified all precepts which were imposed upon us by human intervention as idols; his aim was to instigate “a revaluation of all values”, through the irrefutable sounding out of these idols. Armed with a tuning fork, his intention was to strike them so as to illicit a hollow reverberation. With a mischievous contentment he declared, “. . . that which would like to stay silent has to become audible.” Our faith in technology, consumption and our economic system, like our faith in the gods of the past, has facilitated and encouraged our adoption of destructive behaviours which position cultural ideals at war with nature. In the pursuit of profit and growth disguised as a commitment to progress, we have built a manufactured landscape which denies its connection or responsibility to our natural environment. Since the consequences of our disregard for nature have become undeniable, it is now necessary to reassess the hollow foundations of our cultural practices. The thesis imagines a narrative series of four underground rooms constructed to house four video installations. Each piece attempts to provoke an internal revolution, a reinstatement of our mental faculties through a shifting of perception both within the work and through paralleling the conditions of its installation with our own elaborately manufactured reality. The four galleries juxtapose the generative video pieces with corresponding case studies and stories that echo the themes of each piece. Through the study of unique practices in Slavjansk, Ukraine, the history of the North American lawn, current construction efforts in Dubai, UAE and Walt Disney World, USA, recent developments in China, and the past civilizations of Easter Island and the Greenland Norse, the thesis attempts to expose, through irony and juxtaposition, the absurd tragedy of our delusions. 1 . Nietzsche, Frederich. Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Toronto: Penguin Books Canada Ltd. 2003. p 31.

This thesis presents the development of a refractometric sensor based on quantum dot-embedded polystyrene microspheres. The technique uses optical resonances within a microsphere, known as Whispering-Gallery Modes (WGMs), which produce narrow spectral peaks. The basic theory of WGMs is reviewed and specifically discussed for biosensing application. The spectral shifts of WGM peaks are sensitive to changes in the local refractive index. In the experiments, two-photon excited luminescence from the quantum dots couples into several WGMs within the microresonator. By optimizing the detection area, the spectral visibility of the WGMs is improved. The spectral shifts are measured as the surrounding index of refraction changes. The experimental sensitivity is about five times greater than that predicted by Mie theory. The sensor element is based on commercially available dielectric microspheres with a diameter about 10 μm. Thus, the technique is more economic and suitable for sensing applications, compared to microspheres of 100 μm in size which can only be made in the laboratory.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University Dept. of Art.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University Dept. of Art. / Electronic thesis. Also available in print ed.

"Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts. Buildings are witnesses to the human ability to construct concrete things. I believe that the real core of all architectural work lies in the art of construction. At the point in time when concrete materials are assembled and erected, the architecture we have been looking for becomes part of the real world." -Peter Zumthor The human experience of construction is the subject of this thesis. Through study of the materials, methods and tools of constructing, this work aims to reveal the nature of building through form, materials and detail. / Master of Architecture

Energy consumption of large commercial buildings has become higher than before, and a major part of the energy is on their lighting systems. This thesis aims at reducing the energy consumption of a building's lighting system. Our solution is to minimize the total number of necessary light fixtures in a commercial building, and thus we formulate the Constrained Light Deployment Problem (CLDP). The CLDP problem is tightly related to the Art Gallery Problem (AGP), a classical problem in computational geometry that finds the minimum number of guards to monitor a polygon area. Unlike the traditional AGP, however, our problem poses a new challenge that the illuminance of any spot in the building must be higher than a required threshold. To address the new challenge, we first propose an algorithm based on polygon partition and iteratively remove redundant light fixtures to obtain a tighter upper bound on the necessary number of light fixtures. We further improve the algorithm with clustering and binary search to reduce the number of light fixtures. Our algorithm can return the locations of resulted light fixtures, which are not necessarily the vertices of the orthogonal polygon. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm is fast and effective. / Graduate

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