Architecture exists through human experience. As the product of the relationship between a building and a person, architecture gains meaning when it is viewed and contemplated by an individual moving throughout a building. Architecture simultaneously engages the body and mind of one who experiences it, and its intentions become visible through a continuous weaving of motion through situations that constitute a place. My thesis examines the interplay between architecture and human action. Manifest in the following thesis are explorations of the institution of the museum. From its earliest forms to its present day forms, the museum has undergone many changes due to a number of influences. In this thesis I will look at the cultural dynamics that shape museums. Specifically, my critique will be through the lens of its cultural history, my own culturally based observations, and through a design: the demonstration. One objective of this thesis is to revive the idea of the museum as a place of the muses, where the muses inspire those people who experience the place. I have selected Charleston and its historic setting for the project location of a Museum. This is a place where one might participate in a journey of initiation, education, and cultivation. Through design, I demonstrate a museum, which aims to initiate and encourage self-cultivation by one's experience of the objects in the museum and the space that surrounds the objects. It is perhaps through a perusal of objects contained without authoritative concepts applied that one may acquire knowledge and become inspired. / Master of Architecture

Eldora, Neethi and Seraphina are three young women who work as science interpreters at a large metropolitan museum. Each woman began her tenure at the age of 15, as part of an employment program for low-income and minority youth, and have since grown to become leaders within the program. Using autoethnography (Ellis, 2004) and portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman Davis, 1997), I explore the rich cultures and histories that each woman brings to her work, present stories that counter the dominant deficit narratives around diversity in informal science education, and reflect on connections to my own practice. Through a critical pedagogy framework (McLaren, 2009; Kincheloe, 2008), I analyze power and privilege within the institution, and the roles that race, language, and culture play in the dynamics of the workplace. This includes examination of workplace microaggressions, physical barriers to cross-cultural interaction, and technocratic ideologies that limit advancement and sense of belonging. From facing subtle acts of racism to taking on life-changing opportunities for growth, I examine the complex relationships that the women have with the institution, and explore ways that they are becoming agents of change. / Ph. D.

The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation. / Master of Arts / The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation.

The Maritime Museum finds its home in a corner of the Baltimore harbor near the intersection of Boston Street and Clinton Street in Canton. As an institution focusing on the historical context of Baltimore, I chose to align the building with Fort McHenry; a National Monument and Historic Shrine as well as a place that I have enjoyed visiting since childhood. The site itself, is an area that my family used frequently. Afternoons were spent in the small park located not far from a public works building and parking lot. The city keeps most of their unused equipment and vehicles behind that building and it creates the only unpleasant corner of an otherwise well-developed intersection. This corner is also a focal point for commuters driving into the city along Boston Street. I always thought of the great potential the corner had and how it could be helped. If I were to take away the public works building and the refuse surrounding it and replace it with an extended green space and a building that people would enjoy using, I believe it could revitalize the area and bring visitors from the city center and into a neighborhood that is only used by residents and passers-by. The museum will include offices, archives, a restoration lab, small exhibition spaces as well as the main gallery; an enclosed dry-dock which displays a skipjack, Kathryn. During the design process, I searched for many historical ships and felt as though it was essential for the ship to be of Maryland origin. I chose Kathryn because of her reasonable size and history. She was built in 1901 and endured many years of service in the oyster-dredging industry before undergoing extensive reconstruction in 1954. Over the past few decades, Kathryn has become a National Historic Landmark and she is currently being restored in Tilghman Island, Maryland. In theory, The Maritime Museum of Baltimore would offer a home to the newly restored Kathryn. The materials, form, and construction were chosen to reference the craft of ship-building. Engineered wood is used as the main structure and is exposed in the main exhibition areas of the building. This approach would create a thoughtful connection between the artifacts and an environment similar to those they previously existed within. As for the central space of the museum, the roofof the dry-dock gallery is designed to resemble the formwork used in ship construction. The curvature changes from bay to bay eventually ending at its highest peak over the harbor. The form conveys a gesture of the building opening itself toward the water and welcoming the view of the historic fort across the harbor; thus creating a special transitional moment where the water meets the land. Working on this project has been an absolutely enjoyable experience. I was able to work with a meaningful site and create a proposition that I have thought about for a long time. From this project, I would take away the sense of detail and how the construction of a building can have a direct relationship to its program as well as the sensibility of designing a project that is not only site specific but also finds context within the city. / Master of Architecture

Master of Architecture

The intention of this thesis is to study both architecture and landscape architecture and to find the "common ground" between the two. By understanding nature and how the man-made environment can express and complement nature, strong and meaningful places can be created. The project for this thesis is a competition. "A Museum on the Shore of a Lake," in which a museum, winter garden, health club, shops and restaurants, parking and a marina are to be incorporated onto a nine acre urban waterfront site. / Master of Architecture

Door of Return Museum symbolizes a synthesis of environmental building systems (EBS) and extends Senegal's cultural fingerprint along the Atlantic shoreline. Benefits of EBS technologies include ecologic imperatives, coexistence with nature, and transcultural synergies to name a few. Architecturally speaking EBS is the purposeful integration of environmental systems in a harmonious manner that maximizes passive energy solutions to the fullest extent possible. When doing so problems exist both environmental and contextual yet resolutions can be rewarding to the client, community, and most important the end-user. Overcoming problematic challenges maintains sensitivity towards nature, cultural history and vernacular typology. Design methodology mitigates natural systems such as thermal heat transfer, daylight control, natural ventilation and thermal lag prior to incorporating mechanical systems. The paramount result is a contemporary museum that educates via its collection and economized performance systems. / Master of Architecture

As taxidermy increased in prominence in American natural history museums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the idea of trying to replicate nature through mounts and displays became increasingly central. Crude practices of overstuffing skins gave way to a focus on the artistic modelling of animal skins over a sculpted plaster and papier-mâché form to create scientifically accurate and aesthetically pleasing mounts, a technique largely developed at Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York. Many of Ward's taxidermists utilized their authority in taxidermy practices as they formally organized into the short-lived Society of American Taxidermists (1880-1883) before moving into positions in natural history museums across the United States. Through examinations of published and archival museum materials, as well as historic mounts, I argue that taxidermists at these museums reached an unspoken consensus concerning how their mounts would balance pleasing aesthetics with scientific accuracy, while adjusting their practices as they considered the priorities of numerous stakeholders. Taxidermists negotiated through administrative priorities, legacies of prominent craftsmen, and a battery of instructive materials, all claiming some authority as to what proper taxidermy could—and should—be. The shifts in taxidermy authority revealed truths about what taxidermy could mean, questions of how taxidermists identified themselves within the profession and to outsiders, practices for presenting taxidermy to museum visitors, and techniques for representing nature. This project traces the paths of consensus for developing techniques to construct museum taxidermy from the 1883 end of the S.A.T until the founding of the Technical Section of the American Association of Museums (AAM) in 1929. Two critics who book-end this project—Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an army doctor, naturalist, and museum critic, and Lawrence Vail Coleman, director of preparation and exhibition, American Museum of Natural History, and director of the American Association of Museums—identified similar characteristics that suggest a like-minded approach as to what constituted proper museum taxidermy among museum taxidermists. Museum taxidermy carried with it a set of characteristics: accuracy and a pleasing aesthetic for Shufeldt; feeling, unity, action, balance, reality, and size for Coleman. These two sets of criteria complemented each other as they reified consensus. What complicated this finding was that taxidermists themselves did not acknowledge them specifically, only relating to them in passing, if at all. Regardless, taxidermic practice seemed to be consistent across these decades. This study complicates the nature of scientific representation, in that it focuses a great deal on its artistry. Museum taxidermy is supposed to be an instructional tool, guiding museum visitors in the way they approach nature, and especially how they see animals, and focusing on teaching the science of animal behavior, biodiversity, and habitat, to name a few. It is a scientific object, representing the most up-to-date research in the field, but consensus surrounding it is not scientifically measurable. Instead, taxidermy consensus happened in hallways and back rooms (both literal and metaphorical), with little written down, and the mounts as the most substantial evidence that is had been achieved. Nevertheless, taxidermists negotiated the array of stakeholders present—museum administrators, naturalists, collectors, and the public—as they fashioned mounts that were both accurate and aesthetically pleasing representations of animal lives. / Doctor of Philosophy / In this project I look at museum taxidermy in United States natural history museums, from the 1880s to 1930s. In that 50-year span, taxidermy practices coalesced around a primary technique for mounting animal skins, using a wooden form and papier-mâché as the structure for stretching the skin over it. But there was more to this consensus than using the same techniques, as two critics who book-end this project—Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an army doctor, naturalist, museum critic, etc., and Lawrence Vail Coleman, director of preparation and exhibition, American Museum of Natural History, and director of the American Association of Museums—identified similar characteristics that suggest a like-minded approach as to what constituted proper museum taxidermy among museum taxidermists. I argue in this project that taxidermists reached an unspoken consensus around their craft that balanced scientific accuracy with a pleasing aesthetic, to achieve mounts that would be both scientifically meaningful and not off-putting to museum visitors. Museum taxidermy carried with it a set of characteristics: accuracy and a pleasing aesthetic for Shufeldt; feeling, unity, action, balance, reality, and size for Coleman. And these two complement each other as they reify consensus. What complicated this finding was that taxidermists themselves did not acknowledge them specifically, only relating to them in passing, if at all. Regardless, taxidermy seemed to be consistent across these decades. This study complicates the nature of scientific representation, in that it focuses a great deal on its artistic nature. Museum taxidermy is supposed to be an instructional tool, guiding museum visitors in the way they approach nature, and especially how they see animals. Museum taxidermy generally shies away from terrifying visitors with animal size and ferocity, focusing instead on teaching the science of animal behavior, biodiversity, and habitat, to name a few. In this sense, it is a scientific object, representing the most up-to-date research in the field. Consensus in the realm of taxidermy, and in scientific representation more broadly, is not scientific consensus, but more consistent with an artistic approach, like a posteriori recognitions of characteristics unique to artists or artistic movements. Taxidermy consensus happened in hallways and back rooms, with little written down, and the mounts as the most substantial evidence. Nevertheless, taxidermists negotiated the array of stakeholders present—museum administrators, naturalists, collectors, and the public—as they consistently made these mounts both accurate and aesthetically pleasing. And they still make sense when we see them, as they can be repurposed to tell new stories consistent with current understandings of animal lives.

Architecture has always been about connection since its primary purpose of building a shelter for humans. Among many other things, it provides connections between people, and connections between people and the natural and built environment. The design and building process is about connection as well. We design in the present, relying on the past to build in the future. In this context, time is the strongest connection that is present in most of the built environment around us. I consider museums to be a good building type that connects people with objects and materials of historical, religious, and cultural importance through preservation and presentation for the public. Since a very young age, I used to admire the buildings while walking the streets of Casablanca, where I was born. A city that is a combination of traditional Islamic influenced design and the European style of construction brought by the colonizers. My goal in this thesis is to explore, in an architectural setting, connecting the old city to the new city, and present this story to the general public. / Master of Architecture / Museums connect people with objects and materials of historical, religious, and cultural importance through preservation and presentation to the public. This thesis is an exploration of an architectural setting in which the person would go on a journey in the past to learn and discover how the city of Casablanca came to what it is today. Located in the heart of the city, the site helps orient the visitors by allowing them to have a visual of parts of both the old and new city. That will strongly show the connection between both the Islamic and European architectural styles.

Washington, D.C. is a city that is designed to serve an entire nation; yet, as a result of this, its own history and people can seem to be lost in the shadow of the federal city. With an abundance of museums throughout the city, the museum that is needed, but no longer exists, is one for the District itself. This omissionleaves a tremendous gap in historical knowledge and no representation focused on the character of the city itself. How can we fulfill this need in a way that is unique to this specific city and would provide more than an exhibit by allowing people to be surrounded by and contribute to the accumulated evolution of their history? Adaptive reuse encourages the gradual unearthing of historical inspiration, which allows representation of existing and past local populations. For my thesis, I sought to fulfill this need by turning to the existing fabric of the city, learning from it, and eventually employing adaptive reuse techniques to unify the existing framework with the new program. / Master of Architecture / In a city such as Washington, D.C., which is filled with history and which focuses on historical knowledge and representation, the history and fabric of the city itself can seem to be overshadowed. By looking at the existing character of D.C. and its architecture as the foundation and using adaptive reuse techniques, the neighborhoods could be brought to the forefront and the true backbone of D.C. could shine. This would better represent a city that has been much more than a tourist attraction, but a home, and thus represent the people who have created this rich history. The people within the District need an outlet to regain ownership of their history, create a place to learn about their city, and share what makes the larger District so unique. For my thesis, I sought to explore this history and provide this outlet by repurposing an existing building within the city.