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The buildings people inhabit everyday frame their existence and provide a backdrop for life. This relationship is inextricable and, as such, begs the question as to whether buildings can function as more than mere containers for life or whether they, at some point or in some capacity, can begin to bare influence over the life or quality of life of their patrons. This project is an intention to explore this qualitative, unquantifiable aspect of building. Through a manipulation of volume and mass, constriction and expansion, solid and void, light and shadow, and the qualities of interiority and exteriority an occupied space will begin to impress itself upon the user. The main objective of this project is to use these architectural properties to create a place that fosters introspection through self awareness. By choosing presence over practicality and content over convention, the construct proposed in this thesis attempts to create spaces that are imposing and unfamiliar yet somehow emotionally reminiscent. Confronted by these contradictions and juxtapositions, this building will stand as an object, in opposition to the occupant, and through that opposition inspire and promote a greater awareness of, and possibly a reflection upon, normally unconscious thought processes. / Master of Architecture

My Polish background and upbringing have had a profound influence on the way I look at architecture. Growing up I was always fascinated by the interplay of new things that were around me, dancing with the old objects and way of life that were still present. How can these two worlds co-exist? Does the rise of one signify the death of the other? My thesis project explores this dichotomy of old and new and how they interact with each other. The site is near Dupont Circle in Northwest Washington DC. I thought it beautifully poetic the idea of a homeless shelter rising above the ruins of a burned out church. A place for spiritual salvation would now morph into a haven for corporeal redemption. The transformation the space demanded was basically cosmetic; it would remain a place for human beings to rediscover themselves. The lingering eminence of the space made me fall in love with it, and the possibility of what it could become, of what it could turn into, drove my desire. / Master of Architecture

What is a Cultural Collage? It is what is happening in Jordan today; different people from different backgrounds come to one piece of land looking for any refuge and hope. I wanted to create a building for this phenomenon. This is a building where people could come to and meet at to drink coffee and smoke hookah and share their stories. The characters that played the role in the Surrealist Movement in Paris in the 20s were my inspiration to design this building. The Artists came together in a time of war. The first World War was in action and yet, they met at a small coffee shop in Paris to discuss what they felt like discussing and at the end of the day an art movement was born. Storytelling. In these small rooms, the meeting rooms, or even the coffee house on the first level, people meet. As they order their coffee and move into the next room they can sit and socialize, tell stories and make art. As they move up to the next level the spaces become bigger and more open. The whole building starts telling a story. / Master of Architecture

Ruins have always fascinated me. These eerie, abandoned, man made buildings, hold you in awe. Buildings no longer in use, tell their story through whatever remains. What does one do with the ruins? Preserve, destroy or reinterpret? How do you build with ruins? How much do you destroy? How much do you retain? How do you build anew? One such ruin is that of McMillan Sand Filtration Plant in Washington DC. A completely utilitarian structure, with a huge grid of columns covered with a roof spread over 25 acres of land. What appears from the eye level as a 25 acre lawn with a grid of manholes, interspersed with two rows of gigantic concrete towers, is actually a water purification plant that used a slow sand filtration process (purifying water by passing it through sand and gravel) to supply potable drinking water. The grids (of columns and manholes) are the most striking features. When the manhole covers are opened, they cast a pattern of light on the floor. The manhole grid itself can be interpreted as a grid of skylights. Furthermore, there are various extents of deterioration this purification plant has undergone, due to which the grids are presented in a variety of ways: As a grid of columns with the roof of manholes (structure intact); As a grid of columns without the roof (columns not strong enough to hold the roof); As a collapsed structure/ mass of earth (complete state of deterioration). Though water was the essence, the very reason why this plant was in existence, today this piece of land lies parched and thirsty. Much was happening on this seemingly calm piece of land. I wanted to bring out its essence, reveal its grids, the unending array of columns, the play of light and shade they caused and most importantly, I wanted to bring water back to where it belonged. This thesis also explores the possibility of building on/with the 'old' in a strong existing context by introducing a shift/rotation in the grid and with the help of material and texture. / Master of Architecture

With historic ruins as a project vehicle, this thesis investigates connections to an existing structure through materials and spatial relationships. The proposed intervention, guided by design elements and preservation methods, reflects a sensitive approach and provides a transition between our built heritage and an adapted form of architecture. / Master of Architecture

This project explores two main lines of inquiry concerning representations of ruins in Paris. I first identify a turning point in the evolution of the ruin leitmotif beyond Romanticism in its transfer into a new context: modern Paris. The analysis demonstrates the correlation between this leitmotif and urban environment in transformation, and their influence on aesthetics, leading to the renewal of modes of representation in literary and visual discourse. Unconventional ruins, recently created by demolition during Haussmannisation (1853-70) or war (1870-71) challenge conceptions about space (inside/outside, up/down, visible/invisible), time, and the individual in relation to the city. In view of tracing the transformation of the ruin ethos in relation to modern sensibilities towards the city and its modes of representation, a chronological approach concentrates on two main periods divided into four chapters. The first interval extends from 1848 throughout the Second Empire and the second spans the 1870-1871 conflagration and the Third Republic. An interdisciplinary and dialogic approach reveals the exchanges between different media (literature, journalism, painting, photography) aiming to convey the paradoxes of Paris's modern ruins. Moreover, close reading and comparisons of authors' and artists' depictions across media and genres nuance, correct or disprove critical appraisals, re-establishing artistic authority (e.g. photographers Charles Marville and Bruno Braquehais). The second line of inquiry posits that representations of ruins reflect on the relationship of Parisians with their city during systematisation and wartime destruction. Research reveals that individual initiatives of representing urban ruins attest to a new sensibility towards the city, preceding the Second Empire's (1853-1870) apparatus of historical and topographic documentation to preserve the appearance of spaces before intervention. Thus, during Paris's systematisation, private and artistically-minded projects become the tools of patrimonial preservation. By comparison, aesthetic approaches to ruins in 1871 mark a new appreciation of modern architecture, while engaging with war trauma.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Arizona, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Orientador: Regina Helena Pereira Johas / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-14T02:46:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Guggisberg_Sonia_M.pdf: 11666335 bytes, checksum: 6bfc87a8530c1655436b849a08858897 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: A presente dissertação de mestrado reúne a pesquisa, a reflexão e o registro do Projeto Bolhas Urbanas realizado entre 2006 e 2007.A série Bolhas Urbanas nasceu da necessidade de sair dos espaços internos destinados à arte. Passei a considerar a cidade como um campo possível para realizações e a mapeá-la, identificando as ruínas do início do século como locais para intervenções. Buscando gerar uma relação com as marcas do tempo e do descaso físico e social, os objetos infláveis, passageiros e frágeis, foram instalados portanto em locais históricos e deteriorados. Amorfas e prontas a assumir novas formas, as Bolhas se apresentaram às geografias dos diferentes espaços como elementos vivos. Propondo um olhar sobre o fim do objeto sólido, estável e durável, elas tendiam a se potencializar justamente pela impermanência. / Abstract: This master's thesis brings together the research, reflection and record of Urban Bubbles Project conducted between 2006 and 2007.The series "Bolhas Urbanas" (Urban Bubbles) emerged from my necessity to move outside the indoor spaces conventionally destined for art. I began to look at the city as a possible field upon which I could act, and to chart turn-of-the-century ruins as potential places for my interventions. In an attempt to establish a relationship with marks of time and of physical and social neglect, I installed ephemeral and fragile inflatable objects in decayed historical sites. Therefore, ready as they were to take on new shapes, the amorphous Bubbles presented themselves to the geography of different sites as live organisms. While proposing an inquiry on the end of the solid, stable and durable object, these Bubbles tended to become potent precisely on account of their impermanence. / Mestrado / Artes Plásticas / Mestre em Artes

The Gaza Strip may be the world’s most relentless conflict zone. After decades of destruction and resistance, it is hard to imagine a different reality. But before the Gaza Strip, there was Gaza—a gateway city within an eponymous region with a much-neglected history. Stripped is an exploration of the Gaza borderland that aims to salvage Gaza’s past from the conceptual and historiographic shackles imposed by the current reality of the Gaza Strip, as well as to render imaginable a horizon for Gaza beyond this reality. The work is the first to methodologically depart from the common understanding of the Gaza Strip as purely a consequence of the 1948 war. Instead, Stripped situates Gaza within a century-long history of the Eastern Mediterranean’s integration into the global market economy, the Ottoman-British quest for imperial sovereignty over the Sinai-Palestine-Hijaz desert corridor, and the Palestinian struggle to overcome the urban and environmental destruction of World War I in the face of British and Zionist colonialism. Relying on little-studied sources in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Hebrew, English, and French, the dissertation explores how the Gaza region adapted to Ottoman agrarian reforms and gravitated into British economic orbit in the Mediterranean. As a result of these processes, Gaza of the late nineteenth century reoriented its economy from land to sea and turned to fully rely on exporting its locally cultivated barley to the British beer-brewing industry overseas. While generating promising growth for some two decades, global demand for grains diversified widely in the early twentieth century, leading to an abrupt collapse of Gaza’s new financial base. Concurrently, the very trade Gaza relied upon sliced this historic borderland into separate zones of imperial domination, turning it into a frontier between the Ottomans and the British. Gaza thus became one of the Middle East’s most devastating battlefronts during the First World War. When Palestine was made a formal political unit under the British Mandate, Gaza was both financially and physically in ruins, forced into a slower, more convoluted historical trajectory than other parts of the country. Ruins and their meanings, therefore, are central to the dissertation’s inquiry, as they turned in the interwar period into a contested ground in the struggle for Gaza’s recovery. Dwelling among the physical debris of their former city, Gazans had to marshal waqf regulations and Ottoman land legislation to restore their urban and agricultural environments against British antiquities preservation and land development schemes. Navigating often contradictory reconstruction initiatives, the people of Gaza toiled to carve themselves a space within the emerging Palestinian national collective as well. However, after a century-long “stripping” of its previous economic, social, and political centrality, Gaza could only remain peripheral to the political upheavals of the Mandate period and finally even remote from the battlefields of the 1948 war. It thus almost naturally emerged as a safe temporary shelter for wartime Palestinian refugees, around which the Israeli and Egyptian armies demarcated the Gaza Strip.