School of Architecture

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Browsing School of Architecture by Subject "Aesthetics"

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    Rural Datascapes: A Data Farm Network for Rural North Dakota
    (2012-09-05) Hieb, Sara; Wittenberg, Gordon; Hight, Christopher; Whiting, Sarah; Colman, Scott
    This thesis attempts to render architectural agency and aesthetics within the typological discussion of the data center in the rural American landscape. The disciplinary question of the role of architecture and aesthetics in data center design is related to earlier examples of factories and warehouses during modernity. The data center alters the traditional representative role of architecture; they are massive, horizontal buildings that are only conceivable from an aerial perspective, driven by logistics and efficiency. This thesis engages these issues by focusing on the point at which the architectural and programmatic problems of the data center converge, the building form and envelope. This thesis engages the building envelope as an expanded surface that considers not only logistical and environmental issues, but also engages the social and political architectural questions related to the identity of the data center in the rural landscape.
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    Unboxing Manhattan: An Architecture of Things
    (2016-04-22) Andrew, Jacob; Wittenberg, Gordon
    This thesis project elaborates upon the seemingly invisible urban space of online shopping. Through its necessity in delivering products to customers, online shopping has resulted in an intense physical occupation of the city streets by delivery trucks. These semi-permanent installations of delivery provide no benefit to the public realm and yet have become a very ubiquitous element of urban space. Architecture has the opportunity to provide the city with an alternative to the unending rows of delivery trucks by introducing a new form of infrastructural public space; the delivery station. As a point-based infrastructure, the delivery stations will be distributed throughout the city in order to accommodate neighborhoods and populations. While simultaneously offering a more convenient solution to the issues of delivery, these stations will become a part of the overall architectural language of the city. This thesis focuses on the particular architectural compositions and affects of the delivery stations by developing a catalogue of parts that can be deployed across the city and a system of tectonics that can be delivered to the site. Through the concepts of scalelessness and territoriality, this thesis proposes the development of an architectural type capable of producing a new public space around the delivery logistics of online shopping.