The aim of this study is to explore the subtle yet ever present relationship between Dwelling and Dweller, so as to magnify this condition and procure a more acute sense of how are physical surroundings impact our daily rituals and respond to our individual identity. The work will utilize myself as both the investigator and the investigated, with my current residence (59 Englewood Avenue) acting as the site and instigator of the research. Broader subjects expected to be confronted through this experiment will be topics such as Routines/Habits, Familiarity/Nostalgia, Self-Awareness, Surrealism, and Utility/Functionality.

Investigations into this relationship will be conducted via extensive reading, writing, documentation, and drawing. The media produced and discussed will piece together fragments of everyday life and their physical relation to home, so as to generate responses/events that engage these newly realized threads. As of now the proposed product of the research is a series of imagined interventions within the home itself that will engage both Dwelling and Dweller in curiously fantastic and pattern altering ways. Using the photo and video documentation, alongside highly detailed drawings of the home and interventions, collages will be crafted that embody the active spirit of the work. Narrative “fairytales” will then be drafted to accompany the drawn work and add new layers of meaning onto the product. It should be made clear that the proposals are not intended to enhance the quality of life for the resident or improve the buildings performance in any particular way. The purpose of the interventions are to manipulate habits, instill fascination, and generate self-awareness relative to the home.

The implications of this work should be  a more experiential understanding of our homes and the endless everyday relations that occur within them. How they shelter, provide, engage, respond, and in trance us; and how we maintain, interact, furbish, and sustain them.

“Shifts in Perception through Tactile Sensations”

Brandon Stone 

The bias that vision holds over the profession of architecture suppresses all of the other senses. In Greek antiquity, optical refinements were implemented to create the illusion that a structure was visually “perfect”. The hegemonic eye, with its ability to absorb information faster than any other sense, has allowed designers to create buildings that “look” good, but might not necessarily “feel” good. Pallasmaa once stated that “touch is a parent of our eyes, ears, nose and mouth.” Tactile sensations can affect a person’s social behavior, self-perception, enjoyment and comfort within a building. Tactility does not only refer to one’s sense of touch through material contact, but also touch through atmospheric conditions. Three dimensional space can be deceiving through our lens of vision. However, the tactile and haptic sensations that we experience do not misguide us. It is important to explore how tactility can be leveraged to enhance our perception of space, while diminishing the ocular-centric bias that we hold today.

Providing a context is important when determining how tactility plays an integral role to a user’s experience within a space. A thermae bath or natatorium leverages materiality to alter atmospheric and tactile conditions as a means of affecting one’s comfort. This provokes us to ask questions such as; “how does the foot interact with the ground?” and “how does the body react to changes in temperature?” Can edge and surface conditions become altered at multiple scales to potentially change one’s perception of space? Atmospheric conditions within a thermae vary greatly. Some spaces may be hot, while some are cold. Some may be humid while others dry. The advantage of a space like this is that the method by which one “touches” space is in solid, liquid and gas form. These three states of matter provide us with an opportunity to alter certain functions within a building to serve new purposes.

One approach might be to implement materials at different scales to suggest different programmatic functions. Could a material at one scale suggest a boundary condition around the edge of the bath, while a different but similarly scaled material invite one to sit upon it? Could a material at a certain scale provide stability for the foot when walking on a slippery surface, whereas at a different scale that material might serve as a warm entity for one to lay upon, assisting in drying off? The extrapolation of this idea demands that studies be done both at the material and programmatic level. The exploration of a material through different shifts in scale would allow one to experiment and allocate a certain programmatic function to each object being scaled.

The goal/result of this research is to ultimately create a space that does not rely on ones sense of sight as a major sensory component. The thermal bath is a program of pure function. It is focused on touch and one’s skin coming into direct contact with very warm or very cold elements. By transmuting materials and their scale, I hope to learn how one’s perception of space could become enhanced, or even completely changed purely through tactile sensations.

Centralized top down implementation of smart governance in the growing urbanization process, is now popular more than ever to help better decision making based on citizen engagement. While there are many indeterminacies about appropriateness of digital infrastructures, they are now the inseparable part of the city. Ubiquitous computing including transportation mobile apps, civic data gathering approaches and playful urban apps, has changed the behavior of citizens. The excitement of automation might conceal the true potential of using aforementioned platforms.

First set of question in this research is concerned with target group. The promise of tech companies on more efficiency, rarely addresses the marginalized citizens. How equity of accessibility to these platforms have been considered? What are the scenarios for marginalized people who are not connected to the digital urban network? Are they truly counted as citizen? Asking who is citizen, leads to the notion of citizenship itself. The other set of questions is concerned with implicit definitions of new citizenship and city and what they offer to each other. How ways of life and not merely lives are governed through these particular environmental distributions due to their modalities? What is measurable in a city and what is not measurable? What future cities offer or limit in terms of livability, joy and having new experiences? What is the potential of moving from desktop computing to urban computing for becoming a communicative city and forming new relations with other human beings? This investigation looks at examples of former automated governance systems and experiments with current successful mobile computing networks to understand how they are able to manipulate urban life; in addition, analyzes participatory urban projects to extract their effective elements. These studies joined with literature review of the subject, form a solid critical point of view.

The goal of the project is to engage technologists, designers, decision makers and public, effectively with this point of view through a speculative set of urban scenarios, digital platform and devices. The implication of this study is going to raise conversations about the developed critiques.

The importance of diagrams in architecture as a field of cultural-political plasticity

The architectural diagram can be used as a device that blurs the distinction between subject and object, bringing forth tensions of looking in and through, of being in and out. Jacques Derrida, a French continental philosopher primarily interested in deconstruction, has notably theorized the use of the architectural diagram, and an important idea the Derrida has raised was that of différance. Différance, for Derrida, means not only to ‘differ’ but also to ‘defer’ the meaning if anything, endlessly, because it is never total or finished. This open process of meaning is an obvious fact of cultures since they are historical and changing. For Derrida, an architectural diagram subverts the dominant oppositions and hierarchies currently constitutive of the discourse, and can be modes of becoming an emergence of différance. Architectural diagrams in this sense can operate as an abstract machine that describes the power relations and the narratives of the city of Buffalo, New York.

This thesis will analyze case studies of diagrams from architects such as Bernard Tschumi, AMO, Lateral Office, Archizoom, UNStudio, and Morphosis, that are research-focused, theoretical, experimental, and exhibit elements of clear communication, as outlined in Edward Tufte’s book, Envisioning Information. Architectural research diagrams tend to reveal the power relations in forms, hierarchies, and structures. Experimental and theoretical diagrams in architecture implement the ideas of Derrida for the emancipation and autonomization of the discipline, as seen in Peter Eisenman’s work, where he sought to achieve psychic autonomy and the “unmotivated sign” through his  use of diagrams. This thesis is concerned with clear communication design because the information that reveals relations of power should be made obvious.

From the case studies, the thesis will develop as diagrams that represent the narratives of Buffalo, that configure a role not to express an extant social structure, but to function as a tool for questioning and revising the structure. To represent Buffalo, ethnographic research and GIS analysis will be compressed into a series of visualizations that are experimental and theoretical in design and purpose. The use of diagrams in this way is important for questioning and revising the social structure, instead of simply re-iterating it. This use can be seen, for example, in the work of Bernard Tschumi who also framed his work with Derrida.

For some people, leaving home for the first time can be a challenging thing. It means starting a new life and stepping into a whole new world, especially upon entering college. Students go through a transition during those years of school. Without parents, students have to everything on their own and become more independent. This includes shopping, food, and finding balance between the schoolwork and relaxing. The transition can be less challenging with the correct environment within their school, more especially their housing. Student housing is considered to be one of the most important aspects of a university or college. It is where the student spends most of their time and is where they work, sleep, shower, relax, and sometimes eat. So, having a quality residence hall that satisfies the needs and comforts of students is essential. While this statement could mean something different to each student in regards to their satisfaction, there is no denying that there are common needs and wants for students in general.

The aim for this study is to find out what exactly are the needs and comforts students require and how it can be provided through architectural design. The way this will be done is through three methods: literary review, precedent study, and survey. Since the topic of what makes a good residential hall isn’t new, there are plenty of previous experiments and surveys that have been done on that works as well as student preferences, and their own psychological behavior. These will be analyzed for a literary study. For the precedent study, while a few exceptional dormitories will be looked at, it will primarily be on the colleges within Buffalo. Each campus that offers housing has its own different room styles and amenities. Lastly, a survey will be issued to students of the University at Buffalo asking them of their opinions of their on-campus housing and what can be changed. There is no better source of information than from the people who use these facilities.

All this material will result in the design of a university residence hall within the location of Buffalo, since that is where most of the approach is. The design will feature different styles of rooms and apartments for students of diverse demographics and personalities. This includes their own definition of privacy, community, and convenience. Additionally, the design will also have amenities that will help and benefit students and make their already busy lives a little easier. There are a couple questions that will be answered throughout this process: Basing on a variety of different students, what are the common needs and comforts that deem satisfaction within a university dormitory? What amenities are essential to have in the dormitory itself in regards to food, technology, community etc. as opposed to elsewhere on the campus?

The importance of diagrams in architecture as a field of cultural-political plasticity

The architectural diagram can be used as a device that blurs the distinction between subject and object, bringing forth tensions of looking in and through, of being in and out. Différance, for Derrida, means not only to ‘differ’ but also to ‘defer’ the meaning if anything, endlessly, because it is never total or finished. This open process of meaning is an obvious fact of cultures since they are historical and changing. For Derrida, an architectural diagram subverts the dominant oppositions and hierarchies currently constitutive of the discourse, and can be modes of becoming an emergence of différance. Architectural diagrams in this sense can operate as an abstract machine that describes the power relations and the narratives of the city of Buffalo, New York.

This thesis will analyze case studies of diagrams that are research-focused, theoretical, experimental, and exhibit elements of clear communication, as outlined in Edward Tufte’s book, Envisioning Information. Architectural research diagrams tend to reveal the power relations in forms, hierarchies, and structures. Experimental and theoretical diagrams in architecture implement the ideas of Derrida for the emancipation and autonomization of the discipline, as seen in Peter Eisenman’s work. This thesis is concerned with clear communication design because the information that reveals relations of power should be made obvious.

From the case studies, the thesis will develop as diagrams that represent the narratives of Buffalo, that configure a role not to express an extant social structure, but to function as a tool for questioning and revising the structure. To represent Buffalo, ethnographic research and GIS analysis will be compressed into a series of visualizations that are experiemental and theoretical in design and purpose. The use of diagrams in this way is important for questioning and revising the social structure, instead of simply re-iterating it. This use can be seen, for example, in the work of Bernard Tschumi who also framed his work with Derrida.

Centralized top down implementation of smart governance in the growing urbanization process, is now popular more than ever to help better decision making based on citizen engagement. While there are many indeterminacies about appropriateness of digital infrastructures, they are now the inseparable part of the city. Ubiquitous computing including transportation mobile apps, civic data gathering approaches and playful urban apps, has changed the behavior of citizens. The excitement of automation might conceal the true potential of using aforementioned platforms.

First set of question in this research is concerned with target group. The promise of tech companies on more efficiency, rarely addresses the marginalized citizens. How equity of accessibility to these platforms have been considered? What are the scenarios for marginalized people who are not connected to the digital urban network? Are they truly counted as citizen? Asking who is citizen, leads to the notion of citizenship itself. The other set of questions is concerned with implicit definitions of new citizenship and city and what they offer to each other. How ways of life and not merely lives are governed through these particular environmental distributions due to their modalities? What is measurable in a city and what is not measurable? What future cities offer or limit in terms of livability, joy and having new experiences? What is the potential of moving from desktop computing to urban computing for becoming a communicative city and forming new relations with other human beings?

This investigation looks at examples of former automated governance systems and experiments with current successful mobile computing networks to understand how they are able to manipulate urban life; in addition, analyzes participatory urban projects to extract their effective elements. These studies joined with literature review of the subject, form a solid critical point of view. The goal of the project is to engage technologists, designers, decision makers and public, effectively with this point of view through a speculative set of urban scenarios, digital platform and devices.

Draft of the abstract

The unpredictable crisis can happen suddenly and rapidly.  Millions of people are affected who forced to move out and who hosts the waves of displaced people. Refers to UNHCR, 65.3 million are affected, in a daily base 33.972 people obliged to escape their homes because of conflict or persecution and seek to resettle to have their basic needs such as food, house, and clothes. 21.3 million are registered as refugees, 16.1 million refugees under UNHCR Commission and UNRWA registered 5.2 million Palestinian refugees, over the half of them are under the age of 18.

The Jordanian social fabrics rapidly changed and still do due to the surrounding conflicts as a consequence, and it significantly reforms the cities and creates new genuine metropolitan.  Jordan hosts 2 million Palestinians, 130,911 Iraqis and 1,265,000 Syrians census result in Nov 2015, 657,422 registered as refugees as well as other nationalities. The population of Jordan is 9.5 million, over 35% are non-Jordanian. Historically; waves of Circassian, Chechen, Turkmen and Armenian resettled in Jordan and became Jordanian minorities.

The diversity shapes the Jordanians’ social networks where it can be found Palestinian grandmother, having a substantial Iraqi`s friend, and teaching Syrian students. The location of the research offers safe and secure settings by the conditions of the surroundings. The settings of the new existence for new social fabrics where the cities generate and uncertainty transformed due to these rapid changes. Within the current period, the challenges are unpredictable grown, and the waves are containing loads on the infrastructure and the resources as consequences many cities` disciplines are in its transitioned phases.

This method is exploring the multilayers of these condition by generating several maps and analyze photographic, statistics, interview and recorded videos for the settings in particular scales by analysis the disciplines that affected the transformation of the cities due to the refugee’s presents. The mapping will set a timeline for its period and will investigate the same sectors of refugee’s components of the needs of living in camp or settlement where the immediate support took a place to serve the impacted members.  The settings will be classified refers to the social aspect of refugees locations and the formation of the waves existence. A place of survival and hope which has intellectual power of forming refugees’ settlements and design applicable assumptions of how the host countries can respond to the rapid influx of refugees through resilient strategies, inclusive urban design and social changes management. This study will find the potentials and the gaps and reorient the cities towards a vision of responses to the rapid changes within its context by the refugees.

The study will understand the underlying of the cities practice by analysis these conditions of operations and reach the intersection of these hidden resilient components and spaces of possibilities and how to obtain a general comprehensive design plan as well as architectural and urban strategies.

Questions to ask:

Who is “Us” and who is “Other”?

What fixes boundaries of us and others? What constructs it?

Who has the power? Who is the audience?

The field of responsive architecture has explored many avenues of response, but has not directly addressed the tectonics of our built environment.  These tectonics will face a harsh change in a future where material efficiency, capability, and performance will increase, while the availability of materials will decrease.   This thesis will address issues of response through the exploration of delicate, branching, aggregate structures that inherently embody notions of “Liveliness”.

Using Wood for its embedded tensile properties, models will be developed that explore varying “precarious” branching typologies that are conducive to responsive environments.  These investigations will be used to inform digital simulations, and these simulations will then be used to study the material capabilities and possible structure aggregations.  Color will also be explored for its potential to register a visual liveliness and alter our perception of space.

Using the gained knowledge from the model studies and simulations, a full scale immersive installation will be built that embodies liveliness through its branching tectonics that explore part to whole relationships as well as the use of color to affect visual perception.

The goal of the research is to question typical notions of response through the development of a new lively tectonic that blurs the boundary between materiality and space, thus allowing use to design more immersive spaces and open a different dialogue on constructing for response.

Single Sentence:

This thesis seeks to alter notions of response through the exploration of a new “lively” tectonic that will allow us to blur the lines between materiality, performance, and space.

With everyone’s’ busy schedules and routine days, it is very easy to become restless, bored and eager to give ourselves a mental break. Especially in facilities such as office buildings and schools, a typical user would spend a good majority of their time indoors undertaking multiple tasks.  

“Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty half of the time”  

–Buckminster Fuller

People usually spend at least eight hours in a built environment, in  a detached and dispassionate environment. Many built environments tend to ignore the inbuilt human need for sensory variety. Considering the fact that the average human spends a majority of their time in their workplace, shouldn’t it be critical to design a space that harmonizes with the occupants, an affectionate space that sympathizes with the occupants? The concept of a biophilic environment exhibits the instinctive bond between human beings and living systems. Bringing natural elements indoors helps improve indoor air quality, evoke positive responses in people, and also offers sensory variation.

This study is intended to study the relationship of indoor biophilic environments and the beneficial social impacts on occupants within facilities. Through multiple series of interventions of placing indoor plants in designated area, the frequency of occupants that decide to utilize the space will be observed. The interventions would increase as weeks go by to help calibrate the amount of greenery the occupants would prefer. The interventions will be generated as passively as possible to remain unintrusive to the results. If the outcomes are deemed effective to the occupants, then interventions will be implemented within studios/office spaces as well. Surveys will be conducted to note the effects of botany in the spaces. (What kind of effects though?)

The results of these experiments will ideally help designers appreciate the benefits of a biophilic environments and a sensory conscious space. (What else?) Prodigy, social understanding of botany/biophilia, sense of community, increased appreciation, satisfaction?

For some people, leaving home for the first time can be a challenging thing. It is starting a new life and stepping into a whole new world, especially upon entering college. Students go through a transition during those years of school. Instead of having parents to help with everything, students have to do it on their own and become more independent. This includes shopping, food, and finding balance between the schoolwork and relaxing. The transition helps with the correct environment within their school, more especially their housing. Student housing is considered to be one of the most important aspects of a university or college. It is where the student spends most of their time. It’s where they work, sleep, shower, relax, and sometimes eat. So, having a quality residence hall that satisfies the needs and comforts of students is essential. While this statement could mean something different to each student in regards to their satisfaction, there is no denying that there are common needs and wants for various students.

The aim for this study is to find out what exactly are the needs and comforts students require and how to give it to them. The way this will be done is through three methods: literary review, precedent study, and survey. Since the topic of what makes a good residential hall isn’t new, there is plenty of material done on the subject that will be analyzed for a literary review. People have done their own experiments and surveys of what works, students preferences, and their own psychological behavior. For the precedent study, while a few exceptional dormitories will be looked at, it will primarily be on the colleges within Buffalo. Each one that has housing has its own different room styles and amenities. Lastly, a survey will be issued to students of the University at Buffalo asking them of their opinions of their on-campus housing and what can be changed. There is no better source of information than from the people who use these facilities.

All this material will result in the design of a university residence hall. The location would be in Buffalo since that is where most of the approach is. It will feature different styles of rooms and apartments for various students. It will also have amenities that will help and benefit students and add some more convenience to their already busy lives. There are a couple questions that will be answered throughout this process: Basing on a variety of different students, what are the common needs and comforts that deem satisfaction within a university dormitory? What amenities are essential to have in the dormitory itself in regards to food, technology, community etc. as opposed to elsewhere on the campus?

Valiasr Street Public Space (Tehran, Iran): Transition space to place

One of the major concerns of the architectural design is what features make a place meaningful. The raised question is what features can transform space to place, to make it meaningful in terms of encouraging social interaction among strangers. Tehran as a capital city of Iran, despite of having so many parks, restaurants, coffee houses and shopping mall centers, it still misses something; Real social interaction and passion. Unfortunately, with passage of time, the passion of people to go to the parks decreased because of safety issues and therefore enjoyability has decreased. Parks became places for homeless and addicted people. On the other hand, restaurants and coffee houses in Tehran are typically designed in a way that they do not engage people in social interactions. This can be due to different design characteristics; for example, furniture is arranged in a way that does not easily provide an opportunity for individuals to have informal dialogues with one another. In addition, furniture arrangement is mostly focused on separation of spaces, meaning that they provide a private space for groups of people and do not take into account the individuals. Also, in these kind of places there are no special events to provide a foundation for connecting people with different backgrounds, cultures and thoughts. So, you can usually see individuals enjoy their privacy for relaxing by having a snack or a meal or groups of people who usually have history in between them from before. Therefore, it is unlikely to see sparks among strangers.

The focus of this study is to explore new methods and information about features that will support social interaction in public spaces in one of the significant historical streets in Tehran. Valiasr street is a tree-lined street which divides this city into eastern and western parts, which makes it one of the major paths for both pedestrians and motorists. Even though it is one of the major attractions of Tehran, lack of a decent public space is sensed. Although it has a lots of common public spaces such as parks, restaurants and cafés, as a capital city of a developing country there is a lot of room for improvement. To achieve this goal, multiple methods of gathering data such as archival information, observation, surveys and crowdsourcing of social media will be used. A part of this study relies on social science to find trends and patterns in people’s behavior. Also historical research has to be used to study the past and present state of the area to develop a design for the future.

The result of this study would be coming up with design of small scaled places with specified boundaries or furniture arrangements that will make a dynamic environment to make people pause for a few moments from their daily routines and socialize. The outcome is mostly concerned with the experience of the users. The features of the surrounding should be in a way to encourage social interactions. There are some questions that need to be answered: What kind of experience makes people enthusiastic about social interactions? What factors of place can transform passive users to active ones? How is it possible to spark something among strangers who have no previous history with each other?