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Urban sea(m): Repairing the coastal edge of Veracruz
This project analyzes the waterfront of Veracruz, the first European-founded settlement in the continental Americas. Its geographic location by the water and proximity to the geopolitical center of Mexico have long defined the formation, growth, and importance of this territory. Throughout its history, living by the water has acquired different meanings: an entry point for power dispute, overseas commercial exchange, a destination for tourism, and a cultural reference point. Today, the main urban center is subject to two important pressures. The coastal edge is threatened by erosive phenomena and sea level rise, with the waterfront slowly decreasing in size. Opposingly, the speculative need for urban expansion is promoting infill of the sea and depletion of other natural systems. By blurring the existing edges, “Urban Sea(m)” addresses the complexity of a transitional seafront and redefines life by the water for post-anthropocentric coastal cities in the face of climate change.
Narrative Carpentry: A Study on Conservation Organisations for Traditional Chinese Timber Structures
This research focuses on the conservation of historic timber structural buildings in China. Specifically, it examines the various methods, organisations, histories, and approaches to architectural conservation aimed at countering the obsolescence of traditional wooden construction, particularly in terms of its physical characteristics. It also explores geographic adaptation and misadaptation, alongside the craftsmanship and institutional arrangements of conservation. Though relatively scarce, traditional timber structures hold critical importance for modern China. As observed globally, conservation for physically deteriorated buildings is not unique to China, yet in contemporary times, it has become crucial to this nation's identity, cultural heritage, global standing, and economic well-being. Traditional Chinese timber architecture embodies two distinct construction thinkings: one is the object-oriented approach, which emphasises the buildings' forms and appearances, predominantly observed in official architecture, characterised by a uniformity of form across provinces and strict hierarchical distinctions by function. The other is the process-oriented approach, primarily evident in vernacular architecture, emphasising regional adaptability and the construction process itself. In the pre-industrial era, the forms of both official and vernacular buildings were indirectly produced through carpenters' calculations and manual construction. Moreover, the construction and conservation of buildings are integral to the evolutionary process of architectural forms. Carpenters, pivotal in traditional architectural engineering, established specific social groups around carpentry teams, known in academic circles as 'jiangpai', representing a guild system of apprenticeships, schools of thought, or ideological families. Over the past century, with the advent of modern architecture in China, traditional timber structures have been progressively supplanted by modern constructions. Modern architectural professionals have largely overshadowed traditional 'jiangpai', though small fractions persist along China's southeastern coast. Regarding wooden structure conservation, traditional artisans and modern architects diverge significantly; the former concentrates on the hands-on construction and maintenance process, while the latter focuses more on representing historic architectural imagery. This research centres on one official artisan collective and two grassroots artisan groups. It investigates the histories, organisational structures, distinctive building techniques, and the transmission of knowledge among these jiangpai. Additionally, the study contrasts modern architects and scholars in the architectural field with traditional artisans, analysing disparities in conservation approaches through specific case studies. The research finds that conservation strategies centred on representing historical information in heritage buildings, typically advocated by contemporary architects, are prevalent in government-led conservation initiatives. In contrast, process-driven conservation practices, espoused by traditional artisan groups, are more common in community-led construction and conservation projects. There is increasing interaction and convergence between these two groups of practitioners. The co-existence of design-led and process-led conservation methods is evident in contemporary conservation practice. Moreover, traditional building techniques remain valuable for future conservation efforts.
Decision-Making Support in Early Design Stage for High Performance Naturally Ventilated Buildings
While a lack of design decision-making support for natural ventilation evaluation in the early stage is noticeable, the interest in high performance naturally ventilated buildings has been rapidly growing in recent years. As a response, the target of this dissertation was to develop a design decision-making support system, including a new index and a calculation procedure, to help designers make better informed decisions in the early stage by taking natural ventilation into account. To achieve this goal, the objective of this research had to be defined first. This meant defining the index to be used when evaluating natural ventilation in the early design stage. The study began by reviewing current practices of natural ventilation evaluation in the literature and identifying the problems of current indices. Considering the precision criterion was special for this stage and the available design information was limited, a new index had to be developed. A Design-Based Natural Ventilation Potential was proposed as the evaluation index of natural ventilation, especially for the early design stage. After defining the objective, a procedure for calculating the natural ventilation evaluation index was developed. The calculation procedure study consisted of two main parts, outdoor wind environment simulation and indoor natural ventilation calculation. For the outdoor wind environment simulation, an automatic process of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation was suggested to provide a wind pressure coefficient database on the facade, including the influence of weather conditions and the urban context. Results would be used as boundary conditions for the indoor natural ventilation calculation. For the indoor calculation, a simplified calculation method was proposed as the solution to complete a quick natural ventilation evaluation during the early design stage. To achieve the simplified calculation method, similarity analysis was conducted, and then CFD simulation was employed to perform numerical experiments. Simplified calculation equations were built by regression of the numerical experiment results and were validated. The equations provided similar results to CFD simulation, but with much less time. Cross-ventilation was used to illustrate development of the simplified calculation method. In the end, a practical way to evaluate the Design-Based Natural Ventilation Potential was found using the automatic outdoor wind environment simulation and the simplified indoor natural ventilation calculation. Lastly, a case study was employed to illustrate the possibility of this decision-making support system for natural ventilation evaluation in the early design stage. The design decision-making support system was embedded in the architectural modeling software to provide quick feedback on the design. Scripts were developed to carry out the natural ventilation evaluation calculations in Grasshopper. A building form optimization study was conducted based on the potential for natural ventilation evaluation in the early design stage, showing the advantages of this support system for designers. In conclusion, a comprehensive and practical natural ventilation evaluation to help with decision-making in the early phase of design was developed in this research. This innovation enables better informed design decisions early in the design process.
Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The Case of West African Cocoa
In this master’s level thesis, I look at supply chains as a medium for design and examine the concept of supply chain design within global political economy. Focusing on cocoa grown and harvested in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, I consider how each country has used cocoa to pursue developmental and political agendas as part of their own world-making project in a post-colonial context. Facing market liberalization pressures, both countries have loosened aspects of the regulatory systems in their cocoa supply chains, however infrastructural chokepoints and the structures of these supply chains challenge traceability of cocoa beans from farm to export, at times obscuring information on the origin and production processes of cocoa beans, such as fair trade and organic certified beans. With pressures increasing to ensure that cocoa beans do not originate on deforested protected land or through illegal labor practices, I look at how spaces of friction emerge in the current arrangement of cocoa supply chains as different agendas of national governments, multinational corporations, Western regulators, and West African communities conflict. I conclude considering the possibility of design interventions along these cocoa supply chains and opportunities for bottom-up initiatives originating in Ghanaian and Ivorian cocoa communities to shape their own futures.
As Found The Museum of Ordinary Forms in Los Angeles
In his series of paintings, Course of Empire, the artist Ed Ruscha narrates the perpetual flux of warehouses in Los Angeles. Pairs of canvases, the first created in 1992 and the second in 2005, show the rise and decline of various box-like buildings, which house familiar and mundane functions: the trade school, the factory, the tire store, and the telephone booth. In Ruscha’s work, the ubiquity of ordinary architecture in Los Angeles becomes revelatory; the banal is seen as if never before. This thesis embraces the utility of the industrial shed and considers it to be the ideal incubator for a new type of cultural institution, one which weaves together spaces for consuming, producing, and learning about art. Situated in a stretch of the Los Angeles River with a dearth of nearby museums, this edge connects distant areas of the city, north and south, and anticipates new connections, east and west, with a newly proposed Gehry/OLIN designed platform park, over the river, bridging a new point of confluence in the city. Repurposing a set of known and recurring dimensions for local light industrial buildings and creating interiors based on existing plans, a new type of production space is generated as an arts campus. A table-like canopy above the shed structures allows for a vast zone of in-between spaces which promote novel heterogeneity and mingling of constituents. Sectional variation allows for the shed to evolve while still maintaining its tried and true appearance of prosaic consistency. Citing Alison Smithson, who coined the term ‘mat building,’ this project anticipates a “new and shuffled order, based on interconnection, close-knit patterns of association, and possibilities for growth, diminution and change.”
Controlling Wind Pressure Around Buildings: Using Automated Multi-Angle Ventilation Louvers for Higher Natural Ventilation Potential
Natural ventilation (NV) is an effective means of reducing building energy consumption and enhancing indoor air quality (IAQ) by conveying outdoor air into space. Recently, rising concern of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic arouse interest in utilizing NV. However, the uncertainty of airflow and the complexity of controlling windows that often rely on the occupants prevent achieving higher NV potential. This research proposes an automated multi-angle ventilation louver that can provide a stable airflow into space by controlling the axis position and opening angle, leading to higher NV potential. The performance of the louver was tested on multiple cases of wind condition and louver configurations by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The data set collected from the CFD simulations showed that the louver generates higher NV potential compared to the opening without the louvers. Based on the data set, this research introduces a simulation tool developed in Rhinoceros and Grasshopper. The tool assists users in exploring the potential of NV in cases utilizing the louvers at different locations, building programs, and building configurations. The tool further indicates louver control and coordination on an hourly basis that can achieve maximized NV potential. Overall, this research expands the applicability of NV in both new and existing buildings by introducing an automated multi-angle ventilation louver. The louver can be further developed to apply a real-time control system that could accommodate variations of indoor environments and building surrounding conditions.
Spatial Interfaces: An Architectural Recontextualization
This thesis proposes a series of speculative spatial interactions leveraging the input modality of gestures, the medium of mixed reality, and paradigms from architectural design. It is situated at a time when the disciplinary boundaries between Architecture and human-computer interaction (HCI) are increasingly overlapped yet not converged. The subject of this thesis is timely and relevant because spatial computing is entering the mass market, and technology companies are carrying paradigms from 2D interface design to the third dimension. Spatializing interfaces necessarily introduces fundamental clashes between HCI and Architecture due to different priorities, concerns, and philosophical propensities. Architects have the opportunity to partake and take ownership of how we design spatial interfaces. This thesis attempts to create a proto-framework by enumerating paradigmatic conflicts between the two disciplines and proposing design concepts that negotiate these conflicts.
Designing the Middle Scale: Post-Industrial Cities as Living Hubs
Urban shrinkage has been a topic that shadows many cities not only in the US, but also around the globe for years, and post-industrial as a typology specifically stimulates interest for this thesis. For the industrial cities that depend on certain resources or locations, the question is what their future is, and how can urban design help them transform under contemporary context. In response, the thesis is proposing solutions at two scales: a regional plan that connects cities with different characteristics, and an urban scale ring that re-activates the infrastructure residues from the industrial era. Building upon the existing theories and practices, the thesis is advocating for multi-scale solutions that transform the city based on life qualities instead of purely economic-driven development.
THE MIDDLE GROUND: Photography and Architectural Preservation in the Era of Social Media
Both photography and preservation represent a state of the non-present image and try to freeze time and places in their original stage or appearance. The thesis aims to explore the relationship between photography and architecture preservation. A typical block of Shanghai's historic typology- Lilong, is selected as an experiment.
If You Build It, Will They Innovate? Investigating the Design and Operation of Higher Education Innovation Centers
This dissertation examines how design teams have created and users have occupied spaces intended to support interdisciplinary collaboration, connections to the community, and innovation activity on higher education academic campuses. It combines several forms of investigation, including a review of academic and professional literature, an inventory of existing buildings, an evaluation of building assessments, and a case study of an exemplar innovation center using interviews with 50 occupants and design team members to evaluate the design and operation of the emerging postsecondary innovation center typology. Through these investigations, three themes emerged. First, although proponents of innovation centers suggest that “if you build it [an innovation center], they will innovate”, most occupants already had begun to innovate prior to visiting the innovation center. Second, occupants did report that the design of the case study innovation center did aid many of their innovation activities, particularly their informal collaborations with peers and mentors. Third, contextual factors can increase or reduce the extent to which occupants find innovation center buildings useful, including building location, occupant characteristics, tensions between design team goals and user needs (e.g., transparency vs. privacy), and a lack of a universal design approach. Based on these findings, a series of considerations are proposed to support future postsecondary innovation center design team members.
Stacked Daydreams: Ceiling-scape for the Neglected (Hong Kong Factory Adaptive-Reuse for Elderly Care)
This thesis operates at the intersection of three domains of neglect: 1. In the realm of building elements, the ceiling is often considered as an afterthought in the design process. 2. Across building types, the vertical factory sits abandoned and anachronistic to its surroundings. It spiraled into disuse due to Hong Kong’s shifting economic focus. 3. In society, the elderly is often subjected to social neglect, seen as a financial burden, and forced toward the fringes of society. These parts experience obsolescence that led to indifference, and subsequently to boredom. I intend to draw the parallel of deterioration between the body of the elderly and the body of the vertical factory. Using a set of ceiling parts in the manner of prosthetics to reactivate the spaces into elderly care facilities, revert boredom to daydreams, and re-imagine the concept of elderhood as an experimental second stage of life.
Commoning the Seed: Ritual and Preservation as Practice for the Modern Monastery
Characterized by strict organizations of time, rules, and divisions of space, the monastery has provided the ideal set of conditions for early religious practice. While monastic practice has been categorized as increasingly anachronistic, it is precisely these rules that have allowed possibilities for freedom of thought throughout the centuries. Situated upon the site of a former monastery complex now left as a public open ground, this thesis proposes a contemporary renewal in the form of a commons within the city. By adapting to a world of shifting cultures and climates, it seeks to strengthen what may be shared for all communities. The assemblage of spaces and discrete elements shape attitudes upon the individual, the collective, as well as the public by framing and choreographing ways of communing at various scales. Specifically, the proposal calls attention to the growing seed crisis amid the roots of capitalism and sees potential in the monastery as a closed-loop ecosystem for preservation through practices of ecological and cultural commoning today.
The Magic Carpet
The “Persian Carpet” and the “Persian Miniature” painting have served as representation tools for the “Persian Garden” and the idea of paradise in Persian culture since antiquity. The word “paradise” derives from the Persian word “pari-daeza” meaning walled enclosure. The garden is always walled and stands in opposition to its landscape. It is experienced as much in terms of what it is not as what it is. This thesis investigates the idea of a contemporary image of paradise in the Iranian imagination by using carpets and miniature paintings as a tool for designing architecture. The garden with its profound associations provided a world of metaphor for the classical mystic poets. One of the manuscripts describing the Persian garden is called the “Haft Paykar” known as the “Seven Domes” written by the 12th century Persian poet called Nizami. These types of manuscripts were made for Persian kings and contain within them miniature paintings and poetry describing battles, romances, tragedies and triumphs that compromises Iran’s mythical and pre-Islamic history. Through the process of copying, the “Seven Domes” has been repeatedly reinterpreted and recreated as a contemporary object filled with contemporary fashions and ideals of beauty. The carpet is the repeating object in the miniature paintings of the manuscript. This thesis deconstructs the carpet in seven ways in order to digitally reconstruct the miniature paintings of the “Seven Domes” and the image of paradise with new techniques.
Between the Past and Future: The Transformation of the Pearl River Delta
Between the Past and Future: The Transformation of the Pearl River Delta examines the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and its spatial transformation from 1370 to present. It unravels the complex evolution of the Pearl River Delta in five distinct stages and probes the proposition of the region as a changing urban concept through a methodology that is the aggregation of the important maps, plans and critical mappings. Through the objective interpretations and spatial analysis on the urban reality of the Pearl River Delta, the dissertation challenges whether or not the most recent blueprint of the central government of making it into the Greater Bay Area as a consolidated singularity is in fact viable or achievable. It brings the scholarship on the Pearl River Delta a new dimension, which contains different and special meaning compared with the previous studies on the Pearl River Delta from the geographical and social-economic standpoints. The dissertation offers certain abstract models and conclusive remarks generated from different stages of the PRD’s development, puts forward the vital implications of these observations, and conclude with six different spatial models of the Pearl River Delta across the history. The main body of the dissertation is structured in six chapters: a geography with three distinct cities (1370s-1900s), developing into territorial regions (1900s-1980s), constructing a territorial chain of twin-cities (1980s – 2000s), experimenting with new districts (2000s-2010s), the new infrastructure of the Pearl River Delta (2010s-present), and towards a polycentric megalopolis. The central finding of the reading on the Pearl River Delta is the presence of its sheer diversity issue regardless of infrastructure and other attempts to consolidate connectivity. It consists of a diverse set of parts, principally centered at Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Dongguan, and Zhongshan. The dissertation concludes with a critical review of the current scheme of the Greater Bay Area through six lenses including built-up area, population, economic pattern, accessibility, administrative complexity and cultural multitude to scan the “conditions” of the urban reality of the Pearl River Delta. The outcome indicates the importance of vive-la-différence that the Pearl River Delta as a polycentric megalopolitan aggregation should respect, nurture and when necessary even amplify the differences of the eight PRD cities in order to reach a long-term regional prosperity.
HOW TO MOVE STUFF WITHOUT A CAR: Designing municipal services that provide the means for moving and storing our things without trunks, hatchbacks, glove compartments, or passenger seats
Cars are not just devices that move people from A to B. They are also tools that we use to move heavy objects like groceries or bags of potting soil. They provide us with storage anywhere we go. They facilitate spontaneity, flexibility, and emergency preparedness by making it easy to bring extra warm clothes, equipment, or almost anything else that we might want or need. Cars serve many functions, but we don’t have good substitutes in American cities for most of these roles. This thesis argues that if we want to build more equitable cities and reduce our reliance on cars, we need to pay attention to the ways that people move and stash their possessions while they navigate through their day. This thesis uses Cambridge and Somerville as a site to explore a suite of design interventions that would make it easier to transport, store, and access objects without needing cars.
Anticipatory Architecture
Contemporary architects are often excluded from the project of the city. Handed a plot of land and predetermined boundary conditions, architects lack the agency to shape the future development of the city. However, before disciplinary specialization, architects have historically tackled more than the design of the object building. They possessed a broad skill set ranging from geographical to territorial organization. Today, sites in the American city are increasingly hybrid and leftover - between architecture, landscape, and infrastructure. There is a necessity to transform less than ideal existing conditions. This thesis explores an alternative process in which given conditions of the city can be revitalized through the framework of anticipation. An anticipatory architecture eagerly expects. When applied to an urban strategy, it prepares the land for what is to come while being malleable to accommodate change over time. Rather than the masterplan, ideas for development and event are conceived incrementally through a close reading of the as found.
Au Milieu [Becoming/In Between] Spaces: Repurposing Protocol for Advocating Rights to the City
The study aims to identify and establish ways in which abandoned structures and buildings can be repurposed to generate the spatial places and infrastructures to meet existing and anticipated threats to free democratic life, such as terrorism, pandemics, and climate change. In terms of studying the specific typologies of repurposing projects, the abandonments once had their incentives for their existence, and justifications for their escape from eventual demise. Two ways of improving the old structure in response to new threats include preemptively generating as many plans as possible before the threats become real, and the second is to get a more adaptable spatial structure. The parking garage was propagated around the world in response to industrial and technological revolutions, but is going to be abandoned due to severe environmental problems such as the climate crisis. The repurposing of this typology ensures the environmental, cultural, and economic benefits of the country, such as reduction of energy consumption and carbon emission. After a series of assumptions about non-linear temporality, the consequence is the extrapolation of a space-the type that is event-oriented, risk-resistant, and resilient. Although the design process was based on the study of current housing typologies, in order to distinguish the newly introduced resilient space from existing architectural typologies such as social housing or affordable housing, I tentatively name this space “Au Milieu”, a french word describing the bothe of the situations: “in between” and “becoming”, which is a good illustration of the characteristic that resilient space should obtain. As an experimental field, I propose Tokyo, a critical city with a complicated and risky environment to launch the “Au Milieu”, thus becoming the pioneer of advocating the inhabitants’ right to the city.
A School with Room for Queerness
The thesis is an exploration of what is experienced in the learning sphere from a queer perspective. Traditional schools in Japan have followed a very regimented plan, with linear corridors leading into highly standardized classrooms – here, “straightness” is literally engineered into the architecture of the school building. This thesis explores a school that leaves room for queerness, fluidity and ambiguity. The proposed school is on Nakanoshima, Osaka, where commercial mega buildings live as discrete objects on the island in the center of the city – an antithesis to the dense, intimate gay districts in Japan. Studying queer spaces in Japan is especially relevant today because the social climate on LGBT acceptance is shifting. Queer spaces like the gay district in Shinjuku Ni-chome are becoming more “normalized” and even transforming into tourist destinations. However, because “queerness” is still not legally accepted nor protected, there is still a need for safe queer spaces to exist. Queer spaces have typically occupied residual spaces, many of them hidden. This includes gay and lesbian bars which are considered spaces for adults and are in some cases sexualized. This thesis is not about gay bars and other queer spaces that we may typically think of. Rather, it explores queer architecture for youth who are still in their adolescence and beginning to explore their identities, especially in a country like Japan where an outdated legal system largely ignores the existence of the queer population and where the pressure to conform is high.
Graphitecture:Utilizing AI and Graph Theory in the Architecture Design Process
This thesis investigates a graph-based generative AI model for architectural design, transforming abstract graph representations into detailed architectural forms. It addresses a crucial gap in computer-aided design research, overcoming the limitations of traditional image-based methods in capturing architectural compositions. In this model, nodes represent programs and edges denote adjacency, facilitating the creation of diverse domestic structures and their grouping into clusters through graph similarity analysis. The model also showcases the ability to explore extensive design possibilities from a single input graph, thus inspiring the design process. The methodology is demonstrated through the design of collective housing communities, employing a multi-scaled graph system and various graph algorithms. The objective is to create vibrant living spaces characterized by social diversity and architectural variety, thereby activating urban environments. Ultimately, this thesis harmonizes the dichotomy between functional rationality and aesthetic integrity in architectural forms, advancing design exploration by integrating computational techniques with deep learning.
Insurgent Geology: Mineral matters in the arctic
“Insurgent Geology” is about oil, fossils, power, and people. It is about blowing up pipelines and taking care of the soil. Shifting from deep time to speculative near future, it calls for both insurrection and geo-poetics for environmental and social justice in the Arctic. Projected in 2051, “Insurgent Geology” unearths past land trauma, speculates on the post-oil landscapes of Alaska, and investigates alternative geo-social practices and mineral kinships. It critiques geology as an extractive, neocolonial discipline and practice, where a novel geo-social classification and geo-ethics is proposed and alternative geo-aesthetics is explored through the design of “mineral gardens.” “Insurgent Geology” reinterprets the concept of the Site and Non-Site. A counter-exhibition is designed (the non-site), paired with a pilgrimage through the extractive landscapes of Alaska. Following the oil, the pilgrimage is connected by site-specific interventions designed along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (the sites).
Governance Capacity Towards Floods: the provision and social impacts of FEMA grants
In this thesis, I consider the effect of climate change related flooding threats on relations between national, state, and local governments. I examine the relationship between previous FEMA claims of property losses experienced by Massachusetts cities and towns and the future fiscal dependence of such local governments on FEMA. I also examine how more or less fiscal dependence on FEMA and other federal funding may result in more or less use of local exclusionary land use regulations. My thesis finds that property losses from previous floods increase the local government’s financial dependence on FEMA and generally the federal government, and this increased dependence has bifurcated results regarding local exclusionary land use regulations.
The Obituary of Aral Sea- Balancing aesthetics and performance in the Anthropocene
If the extinction of a place is irreversible, how do we design the slow, beautiful death of a place? With the Aral Sea’s desiccation as a site for landscape design intervention, this thesis highlights ecological markers to create a range of instructional encounters of Aral Sea’s slow demise. In the face of irreversible anthropogenic extinction, the markers signal to future generations the effects of human activities such as extractive water diversion, cotton plantation, fisheries, and open-air bioweapon testing. This thesis includes five ecological marker events that provide an alternative to restoring the hydrological system. They include salt narratives of the brine pool, rapid decay of a shipwreck, tillage mounds of resistance, sand accumulating machines, and growing a licorice corridor. Working with nonhuman entities such as sand, salt, and licorice, these markers slow down desiccation processes, promote the coexistence of nonhuman agencies, and form new ecological relationships.
Transit-Oriented Development or Development-Oriented Transit: Measuring the Effect of Proximity to LA Metro Rail on Residential Construction
The expansion of Los Angeles Metro’s rail network in recent decades presents a meaningful opportunity to understand how land use and transportation planning interact. This relationship is critically important to planning decisions about both land use policy and major transportation infrastructure investments. Using multivariate logistic regression on parcel-level data, I explore the factors that influence where and when transit-oriented development occurs across the region. By examining temporal components of these interactions, I determine how different project milestones—plan approval, groundbreaking, or service start dates—correspond with changes in the built environment. There is some evidence that residential development is more likely to occur on parcels near newly constructed rail transit at all project phases, with the most significant effect visible following the start of construction. However, when considering whether the development that takes place is at densities high enough to support transit use, the results are less conclusive. These dynamics provide useful information for planning practice about whether barriers to transit-oriented development exist in Greater Los Angeles, or alternatively, for evaluating choices related to rail rapid transit route selection.
Art for Kmart: A Very Long Opera House
The production of an opera is as much an act of world building as an act of music. The operatic interior expands outward, carried by its audience and practitioners into a blended universe consisting of opera's constructed worlds and daily life. In the earliest era of opera, Baroque houses used flat scenography with forced perspective conveying the infinite. Technological systems and the operatic form evolved in tandem, resulting in the complex fly systems and acoustical engineering now associated with the opera house. Opera has struggled to adapt to the 21st century; perceived as an inaccessible art form, experimental models are slowly emerging, but new opera has not found easy footing in the US. Simultaneously, economic precarity has further removed rural regions of the US from cultural capitals, eroding the relationship of the arts with everyday life. This thesis imagines a future for opera in the United States where a new vision for the art form affirms community life through an intimate relationship with a quotidian typology. To house the new opera, the thesis converts an empty Kmart in rural Ohio, building drama through procession and reinventing the experience of opera. By exploring the unending flatness of the midwestern fieldscape, the project discovers the latent potential of the big box to host horizontally infinite artistic spectacle in the spirit of Versailles.
Cities Through a Closing Window: Indigenous and Insurgent Climate Planning
The International Panel on Climate Change released the Sixth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, in early 2023, describing our current historical moment as within a “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all”. The report emphasizes the significance of sub-national and urban adaptations in inclusive planning for infrastructure, land use, and coordinated resource consumption to avoid climate collapse. This thesis examines these three points of intervention through the lens of Insurgent Planning and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, arguing that both are necessary to meaningfully accomplish the goals articulated by the IPCC. This thesis outlines frameworks for an “urban mycorrhiza” composed of a Civic Climate Corps (CCC), a Climate Adaptation Planning (CAP) process, a Climate Optimization Modeling Program (COMPanion), and a New England Climate Accords. Such a “mycorrhiza” would use democratically articulated community priorities and ecological constraints to algorithmically optimize tax structures, financial incentives, and land use planning. These frameworks are situated in the New England context due to the projected inflows of people and capital and attempts to answer the existential question of how we shift urban metabolism towards one based in a critical climate consciousness.