Browsing by Author "Schaum, Troy"
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Item 37+(2015-04-21) Trotty, William M; Schaum, Troy; Wittenberg, Gordon; Colman, ScottWalls are edges between two distinct entities; urban forms that attempt to express neutrality as infrastructure while firmly rejecting interaction between opposing constituencies. Walls are usually contiguous lines; establishing absolute boundaries and absolute limits. Belfast, Northern Ireland is no stranger to walls. Over 100 currently exist in the city as peace-keeping mechanisms separating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. These highly visible urban forms create parallel communities with parallel services; producing redundant infrastructures and multiplying territorial subjectivities. The City of Belfast wants all the Interface Walls removed by 2020, but the citizens want them to stay. Of the 100 walls, it is estimated that 37 will remain. As Belfast struggles to create a new marketable image for world of a city moving forward, the interface walls spread out across the city remain a marker of its conflicted past. But there may be hope for reclaiming the city, and in turn, pushing Belfast into a more transnational urban landscape. Unlike the Berlin Wall, the walls in Belfast are non-contiguous boundaries between communities; navigating the city means commuting around and through the walls on a daily basis. The Interface Walls in Belfast do not act as literal walls dividing the city, but as symbolic walls. And as a symbol, the meaning and function of the walls can change. 37+ proposes creating this shift in the symbolic nature of the Interface Walls in Belfast by introducing more walls; a network of 221 insertions in the walls that house schools, clinics, pubs, and parks. These new lengths of Interface Walls create a datum in the city that redefines the symbol of the Interface Wall as a divisive edge; exacerbating the multiplication of infrastructures and subjects to a positive effect through serial deployment of shape, materiality, and program. This new urban identity for Belfast acknowledges and rejects the contentious territoriality extant in the city, converting urban forms dedicated to separating communities into attractors for the city that negotiate contentious space.Item A Framed Construct(2020-04-21) Miyajima, Shinji; Schaum, Troy; Finley, DawnThis thesis explores a new technique for design through perspective which produces a phenomenon that reorders our perception of the familiar effects of lightness, heaviness, flatness, and depth within the same framework. The methodology allows representation to become a design tool through which one’s understanding gets incessantly updated, escaping from a static framework of conventional construction techniques. Located in a dense urban environment of Chicago, where the synthesis between technical inventions and aesthetics has been exhibited in the modern history of architecture, the thesis demonstrates the technique and representation of its resulting effects with an office tower to challenge its typified organization and composition under functional constraints.Item Aero City(2018-04-17) Tu, Sidian; Schaum, Troy; Wittenberg, GordonAerocity is an imagination of urban interactive terminals, where the airport becomes an extension of the city and the city becomes part of the airport. The thesis focuses on the interface where infrastructure meets the urban fabric. Guided by an outlook of future technology, the thesis challenges the hard boundary of airport security line and its reflection in the city and the architecture. Instead of utilizing airport as a new town strategy towards the Aerotropolis model, Aerocity focuses on the revitalization of exiting fabric. Through a series of urban planning strategies, the thesis searches for the realm where industries, commerce, and people can coherently reside along the infrastructure. Aerocity foregrounds the transition between different cities and celebrates the seam line of air traveling. Through the juxtaposition of the old and new, the thesis proposes a new regional airport typology where its cultural identity is constructed through its context.Item Amplified encounters at high speed(2011) Sibley, Rebecca Marie; Pope, Albert; El-Dahdah, Fares; Schaum, TroyThis thesis expands upon the dialogue between speed and architecture, investigating how architecture reinterprets the linear city, originally defined by the continuous fabric of the freeway and more recently reconfigured by the high speed rail line. Using the linear city as a site of exploration and high speed rail as a ground to test new typologies of architectural insertions at amplified speed, this thesis produces an extended civic space along the proposed high speed rail line connecting Tampa and Orlando. Combining a series of performance and commercial programs, this new typology will make the obscured visual experience along the extended territory of the rail line legible, through a sequencing of specific architectural intersections, exploring how monumental civic space will be made and occupied in the sprawl of the American city.Item Architecture for Hiding People(2023-04-21) Weeks, Rebecca M; Schaum, Troy; Finley, DawnHiding is a crucial part of the architectural lineage of the oppressed – in particular, the act of hiding in plain sight. So, what is hiding? Is it always physical? Is it always centered around the act of going into hiding? Is it always domestic, focused on contortion and survival in someone else’s cellar or attic? The answer is overwhelmingly no. In the case of a violent group that hunts people based on their identity, hiding is an act that implies a sense of safety, of maintaining autonomy, of self-hood. It keeps you alive which is an act of both passive and active resistance. But our day to day life is not always one of active crisis. There are many other conditions that render people “hidden”, and they are overwhelmingly mundane. In this installment, Architecture for Hiding People focuses on the fictional institution, The New Center for Housing Equity, Palm Springs. Through defining spatial relationships and utilizing narrative creation, it explores the topics of institutional visibility and representation.Item Cincinnati Shuffle: Subhierarchies in the Stagnant Grid(2012-09-05) Westermeyer, Amy; Whiting, Sarah; Colman, Scott; Schaum, Troy; Wittenberg, GordonThis thesis investigates the use of an operational formal architectural strategy to reinvigorate instances of failing city fabric. By introducing hierarchy and nodal destination elements into the urban grid, the existing field is transformed into a network of catalytic centers. Frame is employed as a permeable mediator between the existing grid and insertion, creating a permeable superblock that is both contextual and stimulating. The Over-the-Rhine district in Cincinnati, Ohio, is one of these failing city fabrics. Directly adjacent to downtown, this once vibrant neighborhood has experienced massive depopulation and deterioration. It’s population has dropped from 45,000 to less than 5,000. Currently, 66% of the buildings in the area are vacant or have been demolished. Over-The-Rhine lies between downtown and the University of Cincinnati. There is potential in creating a growth corridor between these two poles through Over-The-Rhine, stimulating the stagnant grid. A nodal infrastructural transit corridor is inserted between Downtown and the University of Cincinnati. Stops along the corridor act as point insertions in the fabric, forming nodal hierarchy. Incision activates the existing context through connection, deploying both a top down and bottom up approach. It creates a large centralized entity framed by and connected to context. It creates a range of scales, allowing for programmatic variety, an urban characteristic that the enclave lacks. It is strategic in working with the fabric, mediating flows and taking advantage of the porous grid condition. Each incision, in order to successfully attract from both downtown and the university, contains programmatic elements from each pole. This integration creates a complex interaction of program, as well as new partnerships between Downtown and University entities. It is a new approach for both Downtown and the University to address the failing fabric between.Item Deeply Superficial(2013-09-16) Searcy, Christopher; Schaum, Troy; Colman, Scott; Wittenberg, GordonThrough an exploration of the architectural aperture, this thesis seeks to abandon a representational understanding of the image and restore a more performative one. Architecture’s imageability – its capacity to create vivid and operative mental images – oscillates between two tendencies: the need to reflect a contemporary world view, and the desire to produce altogether new ways of seeing. Architecture’s history could be summarized as an endless cycle of the latter’s ossification into the former. In general, our recent paradigm is in a rut of representation. Whether we are championing the discipline’s political efficacy or acquiescing to the forces of capital, the architectural image is either pushed so far into the background as to be insignificant, or it is fetishized into an icon. This thesis defines a performative image as one which engages the user in a conceptual flip from the experience of space to the perception of an image, where depth momentarily snaps into perceived flatness. By examining the architectural aperture and focusing it onto the quotidian aspects of our lives – collecting and collapsing the world into fragmentary and simultaneous images – Deeply Superficial seeks to blur the distinction between subject and object, and collapse the relationship between publicity and privacy.Item Disfigured Form(2017-05-10) Gange, Nathaniel Douglas; Schaum, TroyThrough the impression of entropic forces upon built form the residual effects of time erode at the taut crisp lines of facade. Contemporary architectural tectonics produce an image embedded with hygienic obsessiveness. This disdain for grit projects an over idealized conception of nature that denies its authority. All form weathers and decays. Through using a contemporary palette with an inclination to accept weathering, the image of a building becomes an object painted upon by environment instead of succumbing to it. The ambition of this thesis is to leverage opaqueness and whiteness as a canvas for weathering. In order to understand the terms/inputs to produce a set of studies investigating the aesthetic potentials of these. Then to deploy them to provide a commentary on the grid and line based architectural tectonics/facades, seeking contrast with the dominant contemporary methods of construction and representation characterized by their emissivity and glossiness and which themselves leverage line and transparency.Item Face Value(2019-04-15) Salman, Abe Walid; Schaum, Troy; Finley, DawnSociety must be dealt with today by the architect’s capacity to synthesize its ontology and bind its various co-inhabitants. The concept of society is no more a unitary whole defined by a singular motive but instead a plethora of different motives. This notion is delineated in various sociological facets involved with the theories of social atomism. In one case specifically, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has inquired, “If the phrase ‘Every man is an island’ has become virtually true for most of the population in the modern metropolis, how can we still think of ‘society’ as a concept?”. These provocations, and similar others, pose questions as to how we as architects are to resolve the evolution of society. This undoubtedly leads to the significance of the role of the architectural envelope; It is architecture’s most communicative element. Be it social, political, technological, aesthetics, environmental, etc., the envelope is the materialization of all or some of these concepts and has the potential to communicate them. “Face Value” will use the envelope as a methodology to exploit today’s atomized society.Item HOUrgbo : The Houston Constellation(2013-09-16) Austin, Matthew; Colman, Scott; Schaum, Troy; Wittenberg, GordonThe Houston Constellation is a type of architectural urbanism situated at the intersection of urban revision and projections for cultures yet unknown. The intent is to provide a template for refiguring new lines of sight and interaction within the contemporary city, between contingent forces, institutions, and a public in flux. The Houston Superdistrict: a heterogeneous collection of 20th Century urban paradigms packed loosely underneath a thick canopy. Institutions in medicine, the arts, education, and recreation make it a major hub for local and global populations. The area is undergoing a transformation, yet in contrast to its ambitious visions, current plans project investment that may drop more single objects into this static field. This project proposes an alternative. A constellation of form that slides across cold boundaries and catalyzes a new spatial consciousness to produce a newly legible environment. Encouraging creativity- the very hope for the district in the first place- begins with architectural performance and contextual interaction. Techniques and tactics of planametric alignment, visual continuity, and material cohesion provide the system a relational fitness, while establishing a larger counterform against context’s existing linear boulevards, axes, and grids. Four forms (R,G,B,O) based on site-specific conditions, constitute programmatic points with distinct characters. A complementary duality, the figures in the park (O & B) engage the spatial and airy quality of the city. While the institutional figures (R & G) embed themselves within the local form of their respective campuses. Producing new linkages between fabric and institution: the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Rice University link through a new space for the arts in the public realm. Hermann Park’s City Beautiful design is reawoken with a new spine and periphery.Item Involuted Matter(2012-09-05) Pierce, Jason; Schaum, Troy; Colman, Scott; Wittenberg, Gordon; Wamble, MarkRather than functioning as an icon, Involuted Matter dissolves into the background of commercial construction, conceals difference at the envelope, and orchestrates a succession of alternate environments. Accepting the unifying neutrality of a larger framework this project articulates difference at the individual site. But unlike iconic projects, the real force of this thesis unfolds through the interior. Identity is formed not at the level of district, but is centered on the individual occupation of a specific place. The program for this project is a jimjilbang or Korean Bath House. The jimjilbang has the potential to become a new form of collective space not typical of the American metropolis. The bath house is simultaneously an intimate and egalitarian public venue and a private center for personal well being. Immersed in the same waters and ambient environments, clothed in matching jimjilbang attire, a plurality of classes, age groups, and social values congregate around a common program.Item Mise-en-scène(2023-04-21) LaBarbera, Jessica Renee; Schaum, Troy; Finley, Dawn; Jimenez, CarlosMy thesis is interested in a hybrid approach to design and representation. How does the built environment we imagine through the existing architectural toolkit correspond to that of the lived experience? What phenomena do we find in our everyday wanderings that can be newly understood and sought after in practice? How is atmosphere achieved through the space we carve out, and what scenes do they inspire to play out? To address these questions and bridge the divide between what we draw and what we experience I am looking to techniques found in cinema, specifically the method of understanding space as determined by four types: deep, flat, limited, and ambiguous. In doing so, I hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of the control we have over the spaces we produce through both formal and atmospheric qualities. This thesis supposes that a new design methodology may illuminate hidden potentials in the built environment. It seeks to imagine a reciprocal design process utilizing an expanded toolkit of models, photographs, perspectives, and diagrams which emphasize a multiplicity of views rather than a single iconic image.Item Notes on: Materiality, Temporality, and the Interior(2021-04-29) Ragazzo, Matthew; Schaum, Troy; Finley, DawnAmerican building culture is readily available, easy to consume and digest. Typical construction methods uphold a ubiquitously and unequivocally standard image of American building culture today—predicated on fastness and cheapness, but with little regard to buildings’ lifespans. Many single family homes today, for instance, are not made to last longer than a generation. What if everyday materials merge with conventional building techniques to produce a familiar-yet-unfamiliar material expression for an architecture that embraces, rather than deceives, its lifespan? Inspired by camp sensibility as a "consistently aesthetic experience of the world," this project questions the simultaneous role of everyday materiality, architectural temporality, and the domestic interior in an age of material excess. Using paper pulp and cardboard, two end-of-stream waste products ripe for material reuse, the project proposes a material and temporal language—one that relies on artifice as a means of vernacular performance—for an architecture of living/consuming.Item Paradise Waiting: Shaping Experiences of Wait via Piraeus Port of Athens(2022-04-21) Li, Carrie; Schaum, Troy; Finley, Dawn; Geiser, RetoDesign of a multimodal transportation hub that engages with the phenomenon of waitingItem Ring-A-Round O' Roses(2018-04-20) Lee, Stephanie; Schaum, Troy; Wittenberg, GordonThe production system of Kenyan floriculture is a complex web of biological, mechanical and socioeconomic relationships. The former British Colony accounts for one third of all flower sales in the European Union. However, as 90 percent of the farm operations are foreign owned, these flowers represent a capitalist process of neo-colonial exploitation. The shear scale of mechanized agro-production has shifted the identity of an individual farmer to a ‘factory worker’. As a response to these existing imbalances, this project proposes a two-fold management strategy: A series of iconic civic-centers form a ‘loose’ regional infrastructure for labor unions, while a prototype farm is developed for individual farm cooperatives. Integrated farm networks will work in synthesis to turn closed systems of exploitation to an open-system based on process and access. RRR’s objective is to explore architectural agency in large-scale agricultural sectors of the Global South.Item Still Loops(2022-04-22) Najafpour Khadem, Pouya; Schaum, TroyAn Inquiry through the ontological state of furnitureItem Sugar, Lumber, Labor: Material Histories(2021-04-28) Scott, Emma; Schaum, Troy; Finley, Dawn; Geiser, RetoAt stake in this thesis is how architects engage with multiple histories, and the material expression of this entanglement. This thesis makes its design project out of an existing sugar union in Crockett, California. It draws upon the material histories of sugar, lumber, and labor embedded in this building to produce a generative relationship with the past. Ultimately, a material method is developed that can be applied to historic buildings beyond this project. By embracing multiple entangled histories, we as architects gain new rich possibilities to engage the histories of a place. Through unordinary material methods we can inspire public curiosity and provoke reflections, even re-evaluations of the historical foundations of our discipline. With such techniques, we can draw upon the many aspects of the past—not to preserve it, but to critically engage with how we got here and how we move forward.Item The Church Of The Otaku(2019-04-12) Chen, Zhiyi; Schaum, Troy; Colman, ScottThe thesis imagines a new church type under the post-secular condition, in which religion and secular seek to coexist and share equal importance. Through the establishment of a secularized church, the thesis intends to raised the awareness of the ongoing social phenomenon of secularized religion and its reflection upon architectural discipline. The design of the new church takes Otaku as the touchstone, from which a different type of cultural-social form emerges from the combination of the two elements, the frame as the exhausted form from the past and the soft contents that constantly negotiate within. Through the porosity of the armature and the interactive movement of the pneumatic bubbles, the thesis explores alternatives of church forms in its temporarity and sublimity, and therefore localizes religion back to the public realm.Item The continuous enclave: Strategies in bypass urbanism(2009) Ramos, Viktor; Schaum, TroyThis thesis takes a formal approach to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by studying mechanisms of control within the West Bank. It is only through the overlapping of two separate political geographies that they are able to inhabit the same landscape. The Oslo Accords have been integral to this process of division. By defining various control regimes, the Accords have created a fragmented landscape of isolated Palestinian enclaves and Israeli settlements. One feature of the Oslo Accords is the bypass road which links Israeli settlements to Israel, bypassing Palestinian areas in the process. These are essential to the freedom of movement for the Israeli settlers within the Occupied Territories. Extrapolating on the bypass, this thesis explores the ramifications of a continuous infrastructural network linking the fragmented landscape of Palestinian enclaves. In the process, a continuous form of urbanization has been developed to allow for the growth and expansion of the Palestinian state. Ultimately, this thesis questions the absurdity of partition strategies within the West Bank and Gaza Strip by attempting to realize them.Item Town, Interrupted(2015-04-23) Drouin-Le, Vy; Schaum, Troy; Wittenberg, Gordon; Colman, ScottTown, Interrupted breaks tyranny of place with an architecture of measured instability. It introduces a dynamic building with a new aesthetic and housing type in the stable and homogenous townscape of Marfa, Texas. Marfa In this remote desert town, a central border patrol facility operates alongside a vibrant art community. Marfa is simultaneously sophisticated and rough, constructed and raw. Reified into and art institution, it is becoming victim of its own success, editing out a rich diversity of lifestyles that is specific to the West Texas enclave. Marfa has an eclectic community, but the legacy of Donald Judd perpetuates an aesthetic orthodoxy of beige, symmetrical and bare boxes. With single family homes as the only housing type, the growth pattern of Marfa's urban fabric is also boxy and consistent. Interruption In Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660), Johannes Vermeer used interruption in the subject of his painting as a device to capture movement in a static form of representation. Town, Interrupted embeds movement in -inherently static- architecture, to produce formal and social associations that constantly fluctuate between the individual and the collective. A "disciplined play" on seriality destabilizes part-to-whole relationships. Six slightly rotated towers puncture a horizontal mass. From different perspectives, they merge and separate. The rotation opens up the form and creates dynamic circulation. Four distinct unit types are aggregated to shape courtyards and create interconnected sub-hierarchies. Enhanced by Marfa's dramatic light changes on reflective and translucent materials, the repeated misregistration of identical parts produces a flickering effect.