Browsing by Author "Brown, David P."
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Item A perceptual device: Locus Moment(2001) Hartmann, Gunnar; Brown, David P.As one travels about the Houston landscape, one is often bewildered by the rampant growth of spaces and their casual uses. Houston's growth over 100 years has produced a suburban metropolis that searches for its identity between temporary crowded spaces and empty lots. The traditional city remains in our minds as we experience a shriveled form of interior urbanism, primarily private and mostly exclusive. Rather than perceiving place as a physical environment, one encounters momentary conditions of place, the gathering of people. Stimulated by vacancies and remnants, Locus Moment acts as a perceptual device. Vital for a moment, this event attempts to shape our understanding of these vacancies. As Locus Moment remains in the mind as an afterimage, one is encouraged to search for the latent potential that exists within the Houston landscape.Item A sense of place architecture in the fiction of Toni Morrison(1997) Springer, Nicola Joy; Gammard, Elysabeth; Brown, David P.This thesis begins with a graphic exploration and analysis of Toni Morrison s fiction. It attempts to concretize the imagined spaces of the stories as well as map the unusual and idiosyncratic details of the architecture. There is an awareness that there is an origin for her architecture in real life, however what is recounted in the stories is a mutated architecture that is a product of Morrison s memory and imagination. Graphic and literary analysis look for the symbols and elements that are recurrent in the stories, as a way to grasp an idea of an architecture that is part of a particular and potent black fiction.Item Acoustic aesthetics: A material exploration(2004) Hartz, Eric Harry; Brown, David P.Sound as an architectural material is one of our most copious and yet systematically ignored design materials worthy of exploration. If it is addressed, architecture seeks to silence the sound it encounters: it blocks our aural connection to the next room, the next building, and the outside world. This project imagines what it would mean to listen through walls, to gather information about nearby spaces with our ears and finally what it would mean if that acoustic experience could be understood to be aesthetic.* *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Windows MediaPlayer or RealPlayer.Item Artifacts of nature(2004) Hoogland, Henry C. J., III; Brown, David P.Humans are inextricably linked to the ecosystems they inhabit. The making of artifacts in our environment invariably changes the trajectory of already mutable systems, affecting change in both nature and culture. This change is sometimes calculated and deliberate, at other times it is unintentional and unforeseen. Where humans have caused blight to ecosystems, restoration ecologists attempt to assuage human-induced losses by copying or even re- inventing nature. Copying or re-inventing nature is as natural as nature itself. Nature itself copies. Nature copies itself. Artifacts of Nature is an investigation into the vestiges of human making, the disposition of materials and (in) time, and the dynamic and ever-changing order that is nature. The design component for the project, a trout hatchery, is for the purpose of reintroducing an extirpated cutthroat species into 18 miles of native stream in east-central Nevada.Item At sign(2002) Lim, Jyonghwa; Brown, David P.This thesis is a mark-making as a praxis of architectural experiment, which could be a noise and a revolutionary line as well. Neither of them don't matter to me as much as what I've got through a series of trial and error. Composed of five related praxes, four preceding ones suggesting ideas of final praxis. The corpus of idea is driven by the nomadic nature of human body and its micro environments. As I titled, is rather a graphical metaphor of being, situating, existing in the environment. Due to its intimacy to the body, fabrics are chosen as materials. This attempt intended to sit in the blurred border line between the unavoidable image of hardness in architecture and structureless in garments (fashion). is also implying the potential development in subject matter "homelessness". Since this project mainly concerns to being "nomadic", many homeless life styles were referenced. At this point, this project could be a guideline or a pattern to build a nomadic shelter for the needs. With further surveys and studies, however, this project shall be developed one step ahead. is the environment which integrates the body and its surroundings into a closed space. is a garment providing comfort and protection that the nomadic nature of human body requires. is clothing that is extended layers enabling the creation of transient space. is mobile space using body media. is visual intervention rendering place and boundary. is instinctive human reaction to fit themselves to the environment.Item Big, bigger, vacant(2004) Jander, Jan Marlon; Brown, David P.This thesis searches to understand the impact of the big box through a reading of vacant ones. "No trespassing" and "no parking" signs surrounding parking lots of abandoned stores begin to tell the story of the big box. It has a changing lifecycle and many across the country have shifted out of their original retail cycles into dormant cycles that ban visitors. These closed stores no longer offer their ubiquitous, air-conditioned, windowless interiors and aisles of merchandise for shoppers. Instead, they are void spaces in our landscape. Some stores have been empty for more than ten years, while other stores have closed after being built only five years earlier. This thesis explores the extent of the big box's social, political, economic, and cultural influence, through its lifecycle as a retailer and as a dormant void, in cities and suburbs across our global landscape.Item Extreme architecture: building in the contemporary city(1997) Machicek, Gary; Wamble, Mark; Pope, Albert; Brown, David P.The contemporary city has evolved into an agglomeration of shopping malls, convenience stores, corporate offices, and single family houses that are linked by an intensive highway infrastructure and, as Andrew Kruse referred to it, "thinfrastructure" of fiber optic cables and satellites. This agglomeration, dubbed the "Generic City" by Koolhaas, is an organism dominated by " ... motion, time, and event" where process is more important than place. Architecture within the contemporary city has been reduced to a mere resultant of the economic forces that shape the city- a mere spectator within the dynamic matrix of the contemporary city. For architecture to regain any respect, it must shed this spectator mentality and become an active and aggressive force within the city. The intent of this thesis is to, through the study of Extreme Sports and several architectural precedents, to develop a methodology for the creation of an "Extremist Architecture" within the contemporary city. This architecture, much like the participants in extreme sports, will be obsessed with "discovering new potentials in existing conditions" by going beyond the norm and pushing the edge of the envelope. The vehicle for the development of this architecture will be the design of a downtown "superstop" for the city of Houston. The design focuses on three major issues. First, the concept of the void and its inverse within the city. Second, reevaluating the role of the curtain wall within the city. The curtain wall is no longer seen as a strict political line at the perimeter of the building but instead one inhabits it. The curtain wall in essences delaminates and becomes the building. Third, program is seen not as a static element but as a fluid element that continuously reconfigures itself through the passage of time. This method of understanding program was a way of fully incorporating the initial analysis of Extreme Sports.Item Garaging the house(2003) Reavis, Benjamin Thomas; Brown, David P.In today's suburbs the garage is the most visible space in the house. When open, it signals activity and provides a glimpse into the lives of the inhabitants. When closed, the house is lifeless. Only an orange glow through the mini-blinds represents a potential of movement within. Lifestyle, hobbies, habits, and obsessions are all displayed through the inhabitants' unique use of this 20&feet; x 20&feet; space. Today, the location of the garage relative to the house predetermines the lot size, neighborhood format and ultimately the value. Most institutions will not lend money for a house without protected parking for at least 2 cars. The garage is here to stay and getting bigger. While the SUV continues to reign supreme, a trip through a suburban development will show that the garage is busting at the seams. But the typical garage is not full of cars. In fact it is full of anything but the car. The garage is the one space that the inhabitants feel free to program as they see fit. It is a window into lives and the font door for many. These observations and qualities are the impetus of this project. A single-family house, on a typical 50&feet; x 100&feet; suburban lot, that examines the relationship between garage and house. In context, the relationships extend to neighbors and the yard. What emerges is a suburban type that is not solely based on the location of the garage. It is a type that extends the life of the garage beyond its prescribed envelope to include opportunities previously ignored.Item Gezi Park Kampanyasi: Resurfacing an urban park/Istanbul/2002--2006(2001) Durusoy, Cemre; Brown, David P.Open spaces, like urban parks in cities are impaired between the bureaucracy of the city government and the imperatives of commercialization. They are stagnant, unable to challenge the imagination. They melt into the background of a trancelike condition we live in. Design can jolt people out of this trance to act upon their environment, when liberated from providing prescriptive solutions to conflicts between pairs no longer categorizable as opposites: city + park, culture + nature, work + leisure, private + public. Gezi Park Kampanyasi is a design operation aiming to activate free spaces (or free active spaces) through a series of interventions. The interventions respond to existing formal temporal urban patterns interrupting and modifying their flows. These transient interruptions set off a chain reaction in the public realm out of which emerges an unpredictable urban space that is continuously changing.Item Hive systems: Explorations into the possibilities and consequences of behavioral programming in architectural spaces(2001) Ray, Logan Adrian; Brown, David P.A series of research projects were conducted into the possibilities of creating life-like intelligence within architectural spaces. Various methods for applying behaviors to physical environments are explored, culminating in the design and creation of a mutually interactive website and physical installation. This installation allows users of the physical space to affect the experience of those entering the space virtually, and vice versa. Custom programmed script allow web visitors to manipulate the atmosphere of the physical space, and experience the effects through multiple views of streaming video and audio. The installation attempts to give a glimpse into the future of integrating information systems with architecture.Item Issues in the development of a formal theme, or, "how to make a building look good"(2003) Brueggert, Daniel Stephen; Brown, David P.'Formal grammars' can be constructed from a body of designs. These grammars can be utilized as style guides, first by cataloguing and assessing the importance of certain redundant or novel formal attributes in a design/body-of-design-variations, and second by serving as a compositional 'rule-book' that facilitates the completion of designs-in-progress or allowing the extrapolation and therefore stylistic change in design variations. Here, the architecture of Rice University served as a context in which to analyze, construct, and deploy formal grammars. This work explored the descriptions and limits of style and typology, specifically with reference to the design and addition of future buildings. A central question was, how much novely/entropy (within a framework of order/familiarity) can a composition sustain before losing unity, before becoming a new type? Novelty and redundancy figured preeminently in the task of describing formal variations, and in the very assumption of a formal grammar.Item Manufacturing resiliency(1997) Machen, Chad J.; Wamble, Mark; Brown, David P.; Wall, AlexAs a forum for a prototypical form of education/manufacturing, this thesis enables manufacturing workers to learn how to adapt to differing situations in the workplace. By designing a resilient facility that allows for a change of production modes and processes, one may assist in empowering the manufacturing worker with the ability to remain employable. Upstate South Carolina has undergone a transformation over the last 40 years. The global economy has made itself readily apparent through increasing investment in the manufacturing base of this once agriculturally dominant pocket of the country. Population, demographics, real estate, and collective financial gain are but a few of the areas of life that have been directly impacted because of this addition to the area. With the ever-increasing rate of phasing in and out of products and processes, the industrial climate demands a flexible worker. Manufacturing workers need to be able to switch between modes of production in order to remain abreast with the industry. Collecting a pension at the end of a 25 to 30 year stint at one job is not the standard work experience anymore. The new reality is that at some point in the career of most workers a change will occur, be that of employer, position, or both. The ability to handle this change with poise, or career resiliency, can be achieved through early preparation and training. Industries are already taking measures to institute educational programs that aid their employees in acquiring new skills that may lead to subsequent employment once certain products or production modes are no longer needed. By forging partnerships between big business and education, a prototypical manufacturing facility can be created that will benefit local industry and the residents of the area. Employers are provided with a capable worker, and residents are given greater career opportunities.Item Off the wall: Exploring waterfront reciprocities of surface and space(2004) Painter, Jennifer Marie; Brown, David P.Off the Wall explores how Tampa's central business district sea wall may become more than a water/land boundary, functioning as an interactive surface and infrastructure mechanism that unifies, organizes, and defines public waterfront venues. Tampa's history, culture, and most significant community events share strong ties to interactions at water's edge. Wall is studied as an assembled surface with primary components and as a surface in transition. A register translates water/land surface conditions (tide fluctuations, water traffic wakes, shifts in land elevation) to a visible, mechanical response. Oriented perpendicular to the water's edge, the register changes form over the course of the wall from overhead condition to a less conspicuous marking of an implied margin edge. The register provides a framework for attachment of special event props or shading devices and a location for nighttime lighting.Item Riding the urban carpet building acts and performative strategies(1997) Dragna, Nick Charles Jr.; Casbarian, John J.; El-Dahdah, Fares; Brown, David P.Item Shifting the landscape: Preservation through projection(2004) Winstead, Sandra; Brown, David P.Since its 1865 conception, the small freedman's town of Princeville, North Carolina has been plagued with twenty floods from the nearby Tar River. Through the destruction of homes, businesses and archived documents, these sporadic floods have led to an inherent instability of Princeville's historical and cultural landscapes. Existing flood control measures have severed the town from its historical site and the river from its natural floodplain. This project proposes to stabilize (and vitalize) the town by shifting the physical landscape to respond to both ecological and communal needs. The river is reconnected to an altered floodplain, increasing flood storage capacity and allowing the resulting wetland to filter river pollutants. An existing dike spreads to become an inhabitable landform, allowing residents to return to the waterside. In contrast to the former dike, this shifted landscape offers opportunities for new town/wetland adjacencies while referencing historical conditions through specific moments in the landscape.Item Six houses(2001) Liu, Dongxiao; Brown, David P.The series of Six Houses projects offer choices rather than making improvements along the way. The reason for offering these choices is that one choice can not take the place of the other, but rather refers to another. A reference exists and creates a link. The many links among these houses build a net. This net becomes a self-contained system. Inside the system the study of its language and its grammar is possible. The process of design, or choice making constantly reveals the unconscious forms in conscious language. The choices should be considered as an understanding of the language so that each choice is also self-contained. The work is done through repetition. Even the texts should be considered as a repetition of the drawings.Item "Tactic" as a subverse act to the proper or "institutional"(2000) Lara, Jaime A.; Brown, David P.The thesis is the exploration of the urban vernacular and the "tactical" practices that redefine and reappropriate the "strategic", "proper", or institutional. The concern of the thesis lies in the "fringe", or "marginalized" areas of the city---the residual spaces that rely on "tactics" to attain a temporal, improvisational, and ephemeral quality. Hip hop culture, consisting of rap, break dancing and graffiti, is utilized as an illustration of the "tactics" that subvert the strategic. The emphasis of the project is to reappropriate and redefine the theatre as a community center that is made up of cultural and entrepreneurial programmatic elements. The design sets forth a set of architectural "tactics" that regard architecture as a "prop" for the "performances" that establish spatial form and relationships. A series of "tactics" that aim to create and redefine zones within an existing shell to denote and activate the "new" and old programmatic elements.Item The modern novel as a frame of orientation in fragmented social worlds: The individual in the postwar urban America of Saul Bellow(1997) Hill, Alison Hart; Brown, David P.The modern novel as an urban investigation reflects the tensions evolving between the individual and the urban environment. As the American urban experience becomes increasingly fragmented, the more these texts can be looked at as providing a framework for understanding contemporary social structure. Changes to the physical environment as well as the socio-political construct of the city have repercussions on the life of the urban individual. The postwar city has become fragmented by its own diversity as well as by the increasingly alienating experience of man's search for identity within the urban environment. Responding to his own perceptions of societal dissolution, Saul Bellow incorporates popular culture and recent history into his exploration of urban alienation and the postwar diminution of Self. These narratives lend comprehension to the chaotic and evolving relationship between modern man, American cultural identity and urban landscape.Item The sacred and the individual(2004) Mechaley, Christopher; Brown, David P.This thesis is an investigation of the relationship between the sacred and the individual, defining a private place for prayer, meditation and personal reflection. To examine what is sacred in our world today it is necessary to understand that advancements in science and technology have changed our attitude toward spirituality. A growing number of people have moved away from communal worship and no longer identify with one specific religion. This thesis is a response to this current condition seeking moments of intervention within the daily experience; defining places for transition and pause against the fast paced trajectories of our normalized daily routine. Short periods of pause, such as waiting, can provide the opportunity for personal inward reflection and allow people to center oneself within moment. This project is seeking a means of intervention within places of waiting such as transportation terminals, hospitals and other such institutions.Item There when hear: Sound, space, and chance(2000) Mahjouri, Ali Sabert; Brown, David P.Sound forms environment more pungently than what is normally called material space. Sound scapes, from Steve Reich's voice experiments, to John Cage's performances of "silence" engage the space they displace. It is given that there is a wide spectrum when speaking of space in terms of sounds as realized in Steve Reich's voice experiments and Cage's ideas of Silence. The flexibility of all the component members of an orchestra, if compared metaphorically to architecture, outflexes the fluidity of materials used in architecture. The musical version of a building is dull compared to the spatial implications of a musical composition. My driving interest is in the slips of cognitions that take place in space. The moments of recollection, reorientation, and the unsure moments of perception are design criteria to create a more fluid architecture. A way to free up architecture is to approach its creation as one creates musical composition.