Every year the United States corrections system costs tax payers $52 billion. The failures of the prison system are both tangible and intangible. This Thesis research builds on existing literature to seek out a solution to the high rate of recidivism post release. Can design be employed as a tool with the potential to reduce rates of recidivism in the prison population? The City of Springfield, in Western Massachusetts, acts as a test case to examine the inter-relationships of social science, neuroscience, and architecture. Initial research identified the primary obstacles individuals face after prison that contribute to keeping recidivism rates high. This is not intended to oversimplify the issues or suggest there is an easy solution, but to provide a starting point to try something new. Ultimately, this thesis deals with how architecture can provide a concrete solution to the deep set, less tangible roadblocks to successful reintegration. Residents often lack a sense of self-worth, personal responsibility and stable social ties. In addition to designing a building to provide the physical support system that released prisoners often lack, such as housing, access to transportation, and access to services, the project will explore techniques to serve a much greater purpose and provide a model for a re-imagined process of incarceration, release, healing and growth.

Historically, a disconnect has existed between the education and practice of architecture. Architectural education has long prided itself on the value of creative problem-solving, research, and the fine arts. In contrast, the practice of architecture has evolved to emphasize technical knowledge, specialization, communication, business, and collaboration. This disconnect has led education to miss opportunities to teach students business skills and knowledge required for the workplace, and allowed practice to lose sight of the importance of artistry and research. Architecture educators, students, and practitioners each have a unique set of knowledge and skills to offer the other, and a corresponding set of need and challenges which must be addressed for the profession’s continued success. By analyzing history, current debates in the field, and case studies of current innovative practices and educational models, this thesis addresses these issues with a new model of architectural synergy, embodied through a facility for lifelong learning in architecture. The primary goal of this building is to inspire integrative and collaborative processes between students, researchers, educators, and practitioners to address the current disconnect between them. Through this facility, each group will have the opportunity to leverage their unique strengths and successes to help the others. This collaborative model will allow each role mutually beneficial opportunities for lifelong learning through the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and processes between different groups.

This written thesis, transit, accompanies an exhibition by the same name and serves to contextualize the exhibit. The written portion begins with an inquiry into the nature of the contextualization itself, questioning the nature of the relationship between the written thesis, the exhibit, and the University which explicitly requires and connects the two, especially the ways that the written word as granted authority through an institution of higher education might undermine the exhibit’s intent to provoke thought into other forms of knowledge and other avenues of legitimacy than those presented by this institution. The thesis discusses the philosophic question sometimes called “the problem of reference” (how a word comes to refer to something in the world) as well as to the mystery of knowledge (how a human comes to know something). I discuss my own development of the artistic and poetic methods and concepts used in transit. I also inquire into the relationship between the conflicts in the cultures of the region, particularly during the time of the arrival of written language and capitalistic practices from Europe, and my struggle to understand and represent the ways that colonial concepts continue to dominate and frame our culture, even exhibits of art, such as transit, that work to cause thought, emotion, and reflection on other understandings of words, concepts, and knowledge through a physical de-stabilization of text and words.

The very foundation of transportation relies on its ability to efficiently move people and goods through a transitional space. Transportation hubs are key to achieving this goal. However, many transit terminals are outdated or poorly designed to fit the needs of the modern world. At the core of this thesis are two overarching questions. First, how do we design intermodal transit terminals so that they successfully integrate into an existing urban fabric? Second, how do we design for innovative modes of transportation, such as hyperloop technology? This thesis explores how architectural design can recover existing transit connections within an urban context and provide new modes of transportation for a faster and more efficient user experience. Exploring the current issues within the transit sector today was a major focus of this research as well as selecting a site within an active city center. Furthermore, research into the emergence of new modes of transportation, like hyperloop technology and autonomous vehicles helped to identify potential transit solutions. Much of this research investigated the history of transit centers in addition to studying several important case studies that facilitated a solution to improving transit connections. Several design options were explored through this research and a selected design was integrated into a final design solution to help lay the path for a more efficient future in transit architecture.

In 2020, the meatpacking district of Stockholm (Slakthusområdet) is at the beginning of a period of change. A lot of its buildings are being demolished, or at least gutted, to transform a historical area of industry into a more urban district of housing, offices, trade, and services along with new parks and squares (Stockholms Stad, 2020). This thesis project is specifically about the first building that was torn down as part of the development of the area, Sandhagen 2. We should consider our condemned buildings a precious resource and extract from them rather than from the earth. In every house there is invested energy which is lost the day it is demolished but there is also something else that is lost other than precious resources. The research aims to highlight the importance of reuse not from the more obvious sustainability point of view, but as something that can be aesthetically motivated. The method involves a dissection of Sandhagen 2, extracting interior architectural elements without excessive alterations, and making an organized taxonomy. The taxonomy is then rearranged into a new spatial composition. How can a space be created from a taxonomy defined by an interior architect? How does a material’s earlier life add or take away potential in its future life?  The proposal is a strange space where the tension created by reuse is completely between the elements themselves, a result of having to become the conventional parts of architecture that complete a space; steps, something to sit on, floor, partitions.

Le sujet se concentre sur un cycle majeur de l’Histoire de l’art et du design français d’après-guerre, pourtant largement méconnu. Durant cette période de croissance plus communément appelée Trente Glorieuses, une lignée de onze jeunes designers français s’impose ainsi dans le paysage de la création de modèles de série. Cette génération s’attachera à promouvoir le design dès la sortie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, se basant sur la doctrine du fonctionnalisme social défendue plus tôt par Francis Jourdain, père du mobilier de série français et membre de l’UAM, puis par ses disciples René Gabriel et Marcel Gascoin. Leur formation commune au sein des meilleures écoles ou des bureaux d’études de leurs aînés, la similitude des parcours professionnels et l’existence d’affinités personnelles nous permettent ici d’avancer l’hypothèse d’un phénomène générationnel encore jamais identifié en tant que tel. Ensemble et séparément, ces designers s’attachent donc à défendre le rationalisme à la française et une production dépouillée de tout artifice, mais plus largement l’alliance du créateur et de l’industriel pour des formes justes et l’affirmation du beau dans l’utile. En outre, avec eux apparaît le statut de designer qui doit concevoir mobilier et aménagements d’intérieur de qualité, fonctionnel et accessible à tous. Cette génération fondatrice, pourtant reléguée au second plan de l’histoire du design, mérite à ce titre d’être inscrite dans la genèse d’une profession et d’une discipline dont nous tirons encore aujourd’hui les enseignements. / The topic is focused on a main period of the history of art and French post-war design but which is though largely unknown. During this period of growth also called « Trente Glorieuses », a line of eleven young French designers impose their self in the landscape of the model’s creation. This generation tries hard to promote the design from the end of the Second World War by basing on the social functionalism’s doctrine which is defended before by Francis Jourdain, father of the French serial furniture and member of the UAM, and then by his disciples René Gabriel and Marcel Gascoin. Their communal training in the best schools or in the design offices of their eldests, the similarity of their careers and the existence of personal affinities may allow us to claim the possibility of a generational phenomenon never identified in itself yet. Together or separately, this designers desire to defend the French rationalism and a production without any artifice, but above all the collaboration of the creator and the manufacturer for relevant forms and the proclamation of the beauty in the utility. Moreover, it is with them that appears the designer status who has to conceive furniture and interior organisations of quality and which is functional and reachable for everyone. This pioneer generation, relegated at the middle ground of the design history, deserves to have their place in the genesis of a profession and a discipline from which we still learn lessons.

Considérant qu'un bâtiment « clos et couvert » ne représente encore qu'un « potentiel d'habitation », en quoi la qualification de l'intérieur a-t-elle affaire à l'architecture ? Appartient-elle ou non, in fine, au projet architectural ? Il s'agit, pour commencer, de fonder une histoire qui n'existe pas, au croisement de l'architecture, de la décoration et du design, de définir les termes en jeu dans l'« habiter», ses métiers, la notion d' « architecture intérieure », une typologie de relations entre l'architecture et ses espaces intérieurs. L'intégration de l'habiter au projet architectural, considérée comme légitime et revendiquée par la majorité des architectes contemporains, est en réalité le fruit d'un lent processus historique, qui s'étend de l'invention de l'architecture comme art libéral à partir du XVe siècle jusqu'à la « synthèse des arts » Moderne, qui, après les premières Gesamtkunstwerk de la fin du XIXe, en représente l'aboutissement idéologique au début du XXe. La période 1949-1972 correspond à un retournement de cette situation, processus inverse de « décrochement des murs », rupture historique en même temps que retour cyclique aux origines d'une architecture-abri dont l'habitabilité est fondée par l'objet. Au milieu du XXe siècle, l'autonomie originelle de l'intérieur, n'allant plus de soi, doit être redécouverte et, désormais, conceptuellement fondée. La thèse met en évidence les mécanismes qui aboutissent finalement, à la fin des années 1960, à réinventer théoriquement cette indépendance de l'intérieur vis-à-vis du bâti. / Considering that an “enclosed and covered" building represents only the ''potential of inhabiting," what does the concept of the interior have to do with architecture? Does it or does it not belong, in the end, to the architectural project? It is a matter, to start, to construct an historical narrative that doesn't exist, one that is at the crossroads of architecture, decoration and design, to define the terms at play in the word "inhabit": its arts and trades, the notion of "interior architecture," a typology of relationships between architecture and its interior spaces. The integration of inhabited space into the architectural project, considered legitimate and acknowledged by most contemporary architects, is in reality the fruit of a slow historical process that stretches from the invention of architecture as a liberal art in the 15th century up to the Modern "synthesis of the arts" that, following the first Gesamtkunstwerks of the late 19th century, represents that process's ideological completion in the early 20th. The period from 1949 to 1972 corresponds to a reversal of this synthesis, an inverse process of dissociating from walls. It is an historic rupture at the same time as a cyclic return to the origins of a shelter-architecture for which habitability is based on the object. In the mid-20th century, the original autonomy of the interior, no longer self-evident, must be rediscovered and, henceforth, established conceptually. The thesis reveals the mechanisms that culminate, in the late 1960s, in the theoretical reinvention of the independence of the interior relative to the structure.

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As the greatest considerations in health-care design have traditionally been functional —hygiene, efficiency, and flexibility for changing technology— hospitals have evolved to become dehumanizing spaces. In this thesis two specific groups of chronically ill children who have among the longest inpatient stays are studied: cancer and organ transplant patients. Being under immunosuppressive drugs, these children are physically vulnerable thus are kept completely isolated. These long stays and isolation can be very depressing for them. This thesis undertakes the challenge of designing a fully isolated space that doesn’t feel like one or in other words “a micro-town within a bubble”. The author intends to achieve this goal through strong visual connections, natural lighting, and creative space planning.

Attefall-house: Greater than the sum of its parts? I am exploring how to create a small scale space which is more than just a functional space, a space that also provides an architectural experience. I am using the Swedish Attefall-house as a case study. This small, permit-free construction comes with a frame and it has clearly defined rules and limitations. The smallness of it allows for experimentation and in the normally hard-regulated Swedish building climate, it provides an opportunity to try out ideas without having to be too serious. I am trying to create this sensory experience by fusing function and context together with selected architects’ and artists’ ideas. What happens when these seemingly disparate ingredients combine? Will the whole be greater than the sum of its parts? / Attefallshus: Större än summan av delarna? Jag utforskar hur man kan skapa ett rum i liten skala som är mer än bara ett funktionellt rum, ett rum som också är en arkitektonisk upplevelse. Jag använder mig av Attefallshuset som fallstudie. Denna lilla, bygglovsbefriade, konstruktion kommer med en ram, den har tydligt definierade regler och begränsningar. Dess storlek tillåter experimenterande och, i det normalt hårt reglerade svenska bygglovsklimatet, erbjuder en möjlighet att testa idéer utan att behöva vara för allvarlig. Jag försöker skapa denna sensoriska upplevelse genom en fusion av funktion och kontext tillsammans med ett urval av arkitekters och konstnärers idéer. Vad händer när dessa till synes disparata ingredienser kombineras? Blir helheten större än summan av delarna?