R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Ingersoll, Richard"

Browsing by Author "Ingersoll, Richard"

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A reinvestigation of the modern shopping center : (The search for public space)
(1989) Emer, Stephen M.; Waldman, Peter; Pope, Albert; Ingersoll, Richard
This thesis uses the ancient model of the marketplace to re-investigate the potential for providing public space within the context of the decentralized urban landscapes of post-war America. It is proposed, herein, that the study of the modem shopping center, a product of twentieth century suburbanization, represents a potential reevaluation of the role of such a typology with regard to public life. Throughout history, the marketplace has been a catalyst for communal activity. As the marketplace evolved, it reflected the changing pattern of urban development and shifting attitudes towards community and recreation. In light of the recent trend of privatization that has become emblematic of American urbanism, it is clear that public interaction occurs less frequently, and in fewer places, than ever before. The modem shopping center, however, is one of the few prevalent catalysts of public activity in the suburban realm. Many shopping centers have, indeed, managed to foster a sense of community, in spite of the fact that within such confines, public life is actually controlled by private enterprise. As a result, the implicit rules of decorum that are established* ultimately serve to hinder the quality of public activity that may occur. Because of this deficiency inherent in the shopping center, it may be suggested that true public life in suburban America may yet be found in the outdoor realm of the public park. In terms of facilitating communal activity and recreation, the public park has often been compared to the traditional European square. By establishing nodes of open space carved out of dense urban fabric, squares and plazas represent exceptional places of social stability and civic pride. Similarly, the American park, as well as the shopping center both provide focal points of public order and interaction within an otherwise chaotic context. The Olmstedian tradition of the park as a representation of nature, was seen as a way of contrasting the filth and density of the industrial city with a pastoral landscape intended for public recreation. A suburban equivalent to the Olmstedian landscape is the neighborhood park, which preserves fragments of public recreational space amidst the continuous fabric of private dwellings. Like the neighborhood park, the shopping center supports a sense of public life, albeit, privately controlled, and also provides refuge from the suburban context of single-family residences and high speed thoroughfares. Such a parallel between the park and the shopping center suggests the potential for combining aspects of both in order to elevate the communal essence of public space in suburbia. In so doing, the relationship of building to landscape becomes an issue of primary concern. This is an issue that has been often overlooked within the model of the regional suburban shopping center. In many cases, the need for adequate parking tended to eclipse the potential for preserving or enhancing the natural landscape. In order to reevaluate the.role of the shopping center with regard to public life, this thesis proposes a more intimate relationship between building and landscape, by simultaneously acknowledging the external contextual conditions of the highway and the retail establishment, and the potential for providing well defined outdoor space, devoted to recreation, fitness and public interaction.
A study of environmental semiotics in the production of a mixed-income housing complex
(1996) Hall, Kelvin Brian; Ingersoll, Richard
Our present society does not actively promote ideas of segregation. We all confront one another at some point in time, regardless of race, sex, or financial status. However, the majority of designs for today's housing complexes does not reflect the balance of the societal structure. Residential segregation is plentiful. By disregarding present-day norms, and by analyzing different housing typologies with various densities and income statuses, a synthesis of ideas will produce a more financially-diverse housing complex. The concepts of private and public space, territory, boundary, extension, and interaction suggest spatial situations that will enhance the entire site in terms of design to maximize security, identity, and neighborly friendliness.
Appropriate housing solutions for the fast-growing middle class in Karachi
(1998) Lari, Mihail S.; Ingersoll, Richard
Fifty years after independence, Karachi, Pakistan's most important metropolis, continues to suffer from a widespread shortage of suitable housing and infrastructure. The recent growth of the newly empowered middle class has inflicted additional strains on this already overwhelmed megacity. While the rich are well-equipped to look after themselves, and the poor are best served with a 'sites and services' approach, the middle class has few accessible housing options. By looking at the development of Karachi, and its current urban form and infrastructure--in the context of patronage, planning and housing typology--this thesis reaches a better understanding of the issues, identifies appropriate housing solutions for the rising middle class, and proposes transformations of typology based on the target residents' social, cultural and economic needs.
Architectural space in postmodern America: A case study about the constitution of space in the course of history and its cultural condition
(1988) Gasperl, Roland; Ingersoll, Richard
The main concern of this thesis is the establishment of a conceptual framework for the investigation of architectural space. Despite the common negligence in popular critique, my observation of current architecture in America shows both its dependency on, and evolution from, traditional space concepts (premodern and modern space) as well as its significance as a primary means of current architectural expression. Based on the analysis of four museum projects (High Museum in Atlanta - Richard Meier, Aerospace Museum in Los Angeles - Frank Gehry, and two projects for the Ohio State University Center of Visual Arts; CVA - Peter Eisenman, and the CVA competition entry - Michael Graves) an attempt is made to extract common features that characterize present attitudes toward space. Finally, the spectrum of different interpretations which comprise a new, pluralistic system of ordering principles, is put in the context of broader cultural conditions. This correlation (spatial expression - social environment) gives evidence of the interdependence of architecture and common phenomena of the American culture.
Beyond Redemption: Houston's Super Churches
(Rice Design Alliance, 1990) Ingersoll, Richard
Bigger Than a Bread Box: The George R. Brown Convention Center
(Rice Design Alliance, 1988) Ingersoll, Richard
Citeations
(Rice Design Alliance, 1991) Fleck, Tim; Ingersoll, Richard; Fox, Stephen
Corpus Christi City Hall: The Ghost of the Texas Courthouse
(Rice Design Alliance, 1988) Ingersoll, Richard
Erich Mendelsohn and discontinuity of expression (Germany, Architecture)
(1988) Herman, Gregory Scott; Ingersoll, Richard
The problem of discontinuity in the work of the German architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887-1953) is redefined through a closer look at the biographical context and a critique of the established historiography. Mendelsohn's Jewish status, artistic background, and education are discussed as conditions in the transition to a more professional attitude. The role of the avant garde is considered for its spiritual and artistic influences, and Mendelsohn's sketches are analysed as a uniquely artistic method of composition. The Einsteinturm, the climax of his Expressionist period, is the point of departure for his subsequent buildings. The influence of the Neue Sachlichkeit and the importance of Richard Neutra are shown to be instrumental in Mendelsohn's metamorphosis. Historians have either embraced Mendelsohn and his early Expressionism, or rejected him completely, rather than trying to comprehend his transition to professionalism and his compromise with urban circumstances.
From Piazza to place royale: The evolution of an absolutist type (Italy, France)
(1989) Kirk, Dayna Katherine; Ingersoll, Richard
In Renaissance Italy and France, newly built urban plazas were conceived of as outdoor rooms with uniform elevations and a focused monument. The coordination of planning circumstances was usually the endeavor of an aristocratic or a monarchial patron. The coherency of a plaza became a direct expression of this patron's will to express his authority. Analyzing Piazza Ducale in Vigevano, Piazza SS. Annunziata in Florence, the Campidoglio in Rome, Piazza Ducale in Sabbioneta, Piazza Reale in Turin, and then the Places Royales in Bordeaux, Rouen, and Nancy reveals the shift from the concept to the convention of architectural representation of power. Architectural forms possess no intrinsic political qualities. Their accomplishment or level of resolution is, however, consistently related to the political processes that facilitate their construction.
HindCite: Preserving Modernism: A Rice Design Alliance Symposium
(Rice Design Alliance, 1995) Ingersoll, Richard
Houston wet
(1997) Albert, Larry; Pope, Albert; Ingersoll, Richard; Fox, Stephen
In place of an indigenous culture, Houston has gathered an industry devoted to deploying generic, understandable, manmade environments in places they otherwise might not seem to belong. This project is a website that attempts to link the history of Houston to recent major transformations in the American landscape: the seeming homogenization of urban, suburban, and exurban areas; the increasing isolation of people and buildings from their natural surroundings; the rise of generic approaches to specific problems. Two stories illustrate and mythologize this process: how Brownwood subdivision, a once-elite neighborhood just outside Houston city limits, slowly sunk into the surrounding bay, was abandoned, and turned into a marsh preserve; and how engineers altered and repackaged the American flag so that it could be planted on the moon. A short series of exhibits intersects with the stories and allows visitors to the website to trace their own paths between idea and narrative.
Houston's Academic Enclaves: Four Campuses in Three Acts
(Rice Design Alliance, 1996) Ingersoll, Richard
Knowledge, art, and architecture: Perceptual continuity in Hellenic Greece
(1989) Thurston, Torin Richard; Ingersoll, Richard
This thesis represents an investigation into a particular determinate of architectural form, perception. By perception, I mean the act of apprehension, understanding and awareness associated with an active search for meaning. I suggest that there exists a perceptual history that affords insight into the creation of architecture. The methodology for this investigation consists of three major components. The first defines a state of perception of a given culture based on that culture's philosophic and scientific investigation. Secondly, this temporal state is given visual meaning through a culture's artistic endeavors. The final section illustrates that a perceptual continuity between knowledge and art continues to influence the built environment and reasserts one's connection to a wholeness of experience. I have applied this methodology to the rise of Western thought and expression in Hellenic Greece. At a time when building form is predominately determined by egotism, ethnocentrism, and economic factors, existential determinates become overshadowed. It is to the degree that these determinates predominate that a timeless architecture is created.
Memory and imagination: A study of dressage as a paradigm for architecture
(1994) Law, Stephanie Dean; Ingersoll, Richard
The drive to engage the external environment, to create, is an essential aspect of our emotional and intellectual development. The built environment should recognize and express it's interdependence with the natural environment as being a holistic habitat. Because the horse can react immediately to our attempts to mold and form it, the poetics of dressage offer insight into the question of balance with concern to the issue of how much artifice we can place upon the natural state of things before we not only begin to destroy them, but endanger ourselves as well. The architect must strive to find balance and harmony between the memory and the imagination through poesis. The design problem is a facility located in Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia designed both to house the dressage events for the 1996 Olympics, and to then be transformed into a riding academy for the city of Atlanta.
Readings: Pride in Modesty
(Rice Design Alliance, 2010) Ingersoll, Richard
Reborn to Shop: River Center in San Antonio
(Rice Design Alliance, 1989) Ingersoll, Richard
Rhetoric, ruin and mapping topographic incidents :an architectural inquiry into the archaeology of memory
(1988) Wall, Scott Wheland; Ingersoll, Richard; Pope, Albert; Waldman, Peter
Sick City: Growing Pains at the Texas Medical Center
(Rice Design Alliance, 1989) Ingersoll, Richard
The architecture of MacKie and Kamrath (Karl Fred Kamrath, Fred James MacKie, Frank Lloyd Wright, Texas)
(1993) Miller, Scott Reagan; Ingersoll, Richard
The work of MacKie and Kamrath Architects is a testament to one individual's singular belief in the philosophy and principles of Frank Lloyd Wright. Though never a member of the Taliesin Fellowship, Karl Fred Kamrath faithfully explored the precepts of Organic Architecture as few disciples did. Kamrath, along with partner Fred James MacKie, introduced Wright's style of modernism to Houston during a period of intense urban growth in the 1940s and 50s. The breadth and quality of this work earned the firm numerous awards and extensive local and national recognition. Kamrath employed the vocabulary of 'Organic Architecture' with great skill and expanded its use to large and diverse buildings such as the M. D. Anderson Cancer and Research Hospital, Temple Emanu El, and First Pasedena State Bank. Their work, while relying heavily on the style established by Wright, succeeded in articulating the optimism and cultural imagination of post-war Houston.

Browsing by Author "Ingersoll, Richard"

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