Organizational Unit:

School of Architecture

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70770

Parent Organization

Organizational Unit

College of Design

ArchiveSpace Name Record

https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1120

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 1358

"Benevolent Anarchy": Siting Marcel Janco, 1916-1966

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-07-27) Pavel, Carrie H.

Figuring in the indexes of an international, multidisciplinary array of anthologies, Marcel Janco (1895-1984) is known as a founding member of the Dada movement in Zurich, a pioneer of modern architecture in Romania, and a central member of the New Horizons group that conceived a national style of painting in Israel. Over the course of his remarkably prolific career, he produced hundreds of paintings, woodblock prints, plaster reliefs, sculptures, works of scenography, and designed over forty residential and institutional buildings. Yet his peripatetic career and diverse output complicate an integrated understanding of his oeuvre, which, crucially, comprised many experimental works that sought to occupy the often porous boundary between visual art and architecture. In scholarship, international borders suggest firm disciplinary distinctions—to Romanians, Janco is an architect; to Israelis, a painter—that belie the variety of forms and methods that characterized his interdisciplinary practice. This study seeks to integrate these multiple interpretations through a framework that allows comparative study between his art and architectural work, as well as between the disparate sites that hosted or promoted it. The biographical structure of this study is divided into three parts defined by an initial immigration—to Zurich in 1916, to Bucharest in 1921, and to Mandatory Palestine in 1941—that situate his work within national borders having distinct cultural implications and expectations. A central question raised concerns the separate, often unarticulated ways that distinct art forms are permitted to interpret or lay claim to cultural material. If the methods of the historical avant-garde were predicated on strategies that aimed to render material culture meaningless, what is the result when these strategies are deployed at an architectural scale? By eschewing disciplinary distinctions to locate Janco’s creative work along a continuum of scales, methods, and functions, this study ultimately seeks to clarify and confront the complex dynamics involved in the reception of his work.
A Design Case Study to Support the Inclusion of Temporal Factors in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF)

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-07-27) Liu, Yilin

Despite being the most comprehensive model so far for capturing the factors contributing to disability, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) developed by the World Health Organization does not recognize a set of time concepts that are relevant to activity engagement as contextual factors. The unrecognized time concepts (i.e., available time and required time) interact with one’s body functions and other ICF components (e.g., environmental factors) to affect one’s engagement in activities and participation. As a result, the ICF model failed to identify the challenges related to time that limit one’s activity engagement and could not facilitate the design of technologies that address those challenges for individuals with disabilities. This dissertation project presents a design case study about the design and evaluation of a travel planning mobile application named ALIGN 2.0. The design case study aims to provide primary research evidence to support the inclusion of temporal factors in the ICF model (i.e., the modified ICF model). The ALIGN 2.0 app was designed and evaluated according to the proposed modified ICF model to facilitate the management of time-related challenges faced by travelers with mobility impairments. Specifically, different types of travel information provided in ALIGN 2.0 were designed to reflect the various interactions/pathways between temporal factors and other ICF components and were evaluated for their effects on travel time allocations by travelers with mobility impairments. The evaluation outcome supported the existence of the pathways in the modified ICF model thus serves as evidence for supporting the inclusion of temporal factors in the ICF model. The direct outputs of this project are the designed ALIGN 2.0 app and the modified ICF model that includes temporal factors as additional contextual factors. The outcome of this project is the recognized role of time in activity engagement and its interactions with other components within the existing ICF model.
The Afterlife of Roman Amphitheaters in Italy And Their Role in Shaping the City

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-05-06) Toth, Anna

The amphitheater stands out as the most recognizable among all the Roman building types for public spectacles. Serving as a venue for gladiatorial contests, the amphitheater became a symbol of Roman entertainment and grandeur. Its colossal scale and innovative design distinguish it from other structures of its time, making it a cornerstone in understanding ancient Rome’s architectural expertise and cultural impact. These buildings of secular entertainment were significantly affected by the decline of the Roman Empire, leading to fundamental changes in social, religious, and cultural life in Italy and beyond. The fading tradition of public entertainment contributed to the deterioration of the buildings, often subjected to spoliation. In some contemporary cities, such as Rome or Verona, within the Roman Empire’s territory, we can easily identify these ancient structures, which still possess the monumental impact they once embodied. However, in cities like Florence, centuries of transformations have seemingly erased these constructions from the urban landscape. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of urban morphology can trace the lingering effects of the amphitheaters that used to adorn the most important Roman cities. In some cases, the gradual fragmentation of ruins, as seen in Lucca, was interrupted by the re-employment of the structure, providing it with a new function. The reactivation process visibly affected not only the building itself but also its surrounding area. This dissertation explores the relationship between the reutilization of Roman amphitheaters and the transformation of their urban context, emphasizing the evolution of architectural structure and the re-imagination of public space. Rather than treating amphitheaters as discrete objects, the analysis places them and the large voids they contained within the changing post-antique cityscape. It seeks to interpret their role in the dynamics of urban transformation. The presented case studies reveal how the evolution of this building type in various cities had different implications for the continued public vitality of the sites. The study goes beyond mere description, analyzing these urban artifacts to determine if they act as propelling or pathological elements in their urban context. The conclusions center on the architectural attributes, historical circumstances, and topological factors contributing to the amphitheater’s ongoing urban presence and public identity.
3D Heat Transfer Analysis in Architectural Modeling: A Case Study with OpenFOAM

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-04-29) Almaian, Maryam

As the global focus on sustainable building practices intensifies, architects face the challenge of designing structures that meet certain aesthetic and functional criteria while minimizing energy consumption. One critical aspect of achieving energy-efficient buildings is the selection of appropriate building materials with optimal thermal properties. The tools and software to simulate 2D heat transfer are available but often limited in their set of features and/or cost-prohibitive. The limitations of 2D heat transfer are the inability to simulate and explore complex geometry, corners, and full building envelope analysis. The integration of 3D thermal performance analysis into the architectural design process is an even more complex and underdeveloped area. This thesis aims to address this gap by exploring the use of OpenFOAM to develop a user-friendly tool to simulate building-related heat transfer problems. The outcomes of this thesis aim to empower architects to make informed decisions about material selection, and their impact on energy efficiency, by seamlessly embedding it into the Rhino Grasshopper CAD environment.
An explorative study of mobile buildings' impact on resilience: A case study of outdoor and indoor thermal comfort simulation for an underserved community

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-18) Doersam, Max

As temperatures are predicted to soar by 2.5°C by 2050 due to the advance of climate change, the provision of shaded spaces becomes increasingly vital for the well-being of communities and the environment. This thesis aims to investigate the potential impact of optimizing shaded and covered outdoor spaces on indoor thermal comfort, while also quantifying the benefits of creating movable building spaces that promote outdoor social interactions in underperforming communities. This research is focusing on a mobile learning lab which is part of a design build research project at Georgia Tech. The study will explore how this intervention can contribute to urban sustainability and improved social well-being, with a focus on communities and resilience. A simulation-based approach is employed to investigate direct sunlight, beneath the canopy, and inside the mobile structure to evaluate varying environmental conditions and the effectiveness of each in shelter provision and daylight exposure reduction. This methodology aims to enhance resilience by comprehensively understanding and assessing thermal comfort conditions. Critical metrics of outdoor and indoor thermal comfort are examined such as, Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, to investigate airspeed, and natural ventilation alongside adaptive thermal comfort iterations to provide guidelines when it comes to mobile structures and its shading performance in the near future. It undertakes an investigation using TMY and "morphed" weather files to assess current and future thermal conditions.
Sketches Count: The Mies Van Der Rohe’s Dirksen Courthouse Archive Redrawn

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-06) Park, James

Mies van der Rohe’s Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in Chicago built in 1964 is arguably one of the most significant buildings in the history of judicial architecture in the United States and abroad because of its transformative role in the formulation of the conventions underlying contemporary courthouse design. Archived in the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art New York, a significant resource associated with the design of the courthouse is the extensive documentation of the design process at the office of Mies. This body of work consists of 135 sketches, diagrams, and drawings, features alternative solutions, variational schemes, and sectional innovations, and provides an untapped resource to allow a closer look at the expressive range of the architectural language and the technical innovations proposed by one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. The research takes on the Mies van der Rohe Archive and begins to flesh out the implicit design possibilities that the preliminary representations from the design process of the Dirksen Courthouse present: Are all these possibilities parts of the final scheme that was promoted in the end? If not, are there common themes that pervade each one of them? How important are some design ideas that belong exclusively to some of them but did not appear in the final design? To speculate these in depth, how much effort would it take to complete each of the design variations outlined by the preliminary representations? Can they be completed given the clues in the final design? If not, is it because they are not productive or they are just not compliant with the final scheme? In the end, how significant is this design process to contemporary courthouse design? The work here attempts to address these questions through a formal specification of a shape grammar that foregrounds common characteristics and unique ideas presented in the set of preliminary representations. Ambitiously, the work proposes a formal reconstruction of the final courtroom floor plan of the Dirksen Courthouse and an automated completion of the preliminary representations of key courtroom floor design variations from the design process of the courthouse, materializing the unrealized possibilities embodied in them. More specifically, a generative description of Mies van der Rohe’s courthouse design language is presented in the form of a shape grammar designed and implemented in the Shape Machine, a pioneering recursive shape rewriting technology. The grammar is proposed as an open-ended set of shape rules that can be readily expanded to complete an increasing number of design variations documented in the archive and generate some hypothetical ones that can be, in principle, generated by this dynamic grammar. Significantly, at any moment, new shape rules can be introduced seamlessly, as an intrinsic part of the design process of the grammar, without requiring the reformatting of existing rules or advocating the design of a singular Miesian grammar. The work concludes with a critical assessment of the sequences of the rule applications for the generation of complete courtroom floor plans. The contributions of the dissertation are (a) a generative description of Mies van der Rohe’s courthouse design language in the form of a shape grammar that is designed based on the final design of the Dirksen Courthouse and its design process documented in the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art New York; (b) a formal reconstruction of the final courtroom floor plan of the courthouse; (c) an automated completion of the preliminary representations of key courtroom floor design variations from the design process of the courthouse; (d) a critical account on the significance of the design process of the courthouse in the contemporary courthouse design discourse with an emphasis on the innovative sectional idea of the courtrooms as an unrealized possibility in the making of the final courtroom floor plan, which still remains to be rediscovered in the designing of new courthouses; and (e) some speculations on the significance of the computational method developed for the research in the field of shape computation and on its potential role in bridging the gaps between sketching, diagramming, drafting, and modeling in the digital workflows of architects and designers.
Unraveling History: The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill from Past to Present

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-10-18) Elsas, Nina Caltabiano ; Henderson, Kirk ; Thompson, Jody ; Willkens, Danielle

An enlightening evening of exploration as we delve into the rich history of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill. This panel discussion, held in conjunction with the exhibit in the Library’s first-floor Price Gilbert Gallery, will shed light on the mill's significance, its symbiotic relationship with Georgia Tech, and its contemporary role as a unique educational resource. An iconic landmark looming over the history of both Georgia Tech and Atlanta, the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill stands as a testament to a bygone era and continues to influence the present. To fully grasp its significance as a symbol of Atlanta’s industrial prowess, we invite you to an engaging panel discussion featuring distinguished experts who will guide us through its past, its integration with Georgia Tech, and its relevance in modern education. After the panel, visitors are invited to explore the journey of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill from its beginnings as a cotton manufacturing powerhouse to its present-day significance in the exhibit. Discover the profound ways in which Georgia Tech and the mill have influenced each other, and witness how students are actively utilizing the mill's legacy to gain practical knowledge and insights in diverse fields.
Shape Machine: From software to practice

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-09-07) Economou, Athanassios

What would it mean if we could select any part (shape) of a CAD model and use it to find (⌘F) all its geometrical instances in the model (or other CAD models for that matter) – same size, larger, smaller, rotated, reflected or transformed in some way? What would it mean if we could edit this part and use it to replace (⌘R) all its geometrical instances in the model? Why is that the Find and Replace (⌘F/⌘R) operations that are so essential in Word or Excel have yet to be implemented in CAD? And what would happen if we could seamlessly use these shape-based Find and Replace (⌘F/⌘R) operations in a logical processing framework using states, loops, jumps and conditionals to literally write programming code by drawing shapes? How would this affect our current view of computation and what would it mean for design? The talk discusses the current state of the Shape Machine, a shape-rewrite computational system that features shape-based Find and Replace (⌘F/⌘R) operations for lines and arcs in 2D vector graphics and a logical processing framework including familiar control flow constructs (looping and branching), to allow write programming code by drawing shapes. Shape Machine is developed at the Shape Computation Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology and currently is integrated within Rhinoceros, a NURBS 2D/3D CAD software. Several applications drawn from architectural design, industrial design, game design, circuit design, mathematics and other fields showcase the potential impact of this new technology in various domains.
Data Governance and Control For Performance Based Design. An Aspect System for Data Reliability And Completeness

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-28) Panagoulia, Eleanna

Architecture is a discipline that is, ultimately, concerned with linking different systems of knowledge from diverse disciplines together to produce the artifacts of our built environment. Nowadays, the field is aspiring to augment this function with the aid of advances in technology and tools. This process would convert the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) industry to a digitally transformed field that would improve the working practice for architects and engineers and the quality of the data they produce and share. This digital transformation requires the ability to transform knowledge from one discipline to another seamlessly and interpreting information from multiple sources on demand. However, due to the high degree of federation amongst the disciplines that comprise the current AECO industry, knowledge and information are frequently lost or are miscommunicated between disciplines, which has impeded attempts at transformation and resulted in data siloing. The phenomenon of data siloing is exacerbated in some areas more than others, depending on the degree of ontological difference between systems of knowledge, such as is the case with performance-based design. Design and performance analytics are two domains that present a high degree of difference in the interpretation of building elements and functions. Hence the interface between them is challenged by information loss, both operationally, in attempts to communicate concepts or requirements, and technically, due to loss in data transformation and incomplete exchanges. These impediments impact the reliability of the process and undermine the quality of the outcome and limit the ability to mobilize information from various resources. The challenges in data operationalization stem from the lack of a governance and control framework to describe the design and performance aspects of buildings, leading to a reliance on experience and intuition as a means of representing, retrieving, and exchanging information. This research contributes to the field of performance-based design by providing a data governance and control framework for reducing the complexity involved in communicating, capturing, and validating the increasingly intricate demands placed on architectural design and engineering. The work seeks to develop an approach for data governance and control that can be adopted broadly to facilitate field in creating easier exchange processes, more consistent data that is ultimately more available and accessible. This is achieved by the proposal of a pair of frameworks, one for modeling data and a second establishing process control for management and transmission of data between distributed parties. The frameworks codify the requirements for stakeholders that would allow for implementations that, when adopted, would significantly improve the ways that can be computed, validated, and transmitted.
Curiosity, Memory, and the Place

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05-30) Nasiri, Simin

SUMMARY Abstract The study presented here is an empirical exploration of the effects of building layouts on affect and motivation of their visitors. It does so by investigating the issue in three parts: first, the association between a spatial environment’s organization and curiosity, second the effect of curiosity on spatial memory, and third the effect of spatial layout on memory. The investigation utilizes an experimental method in which participants are placed in immersive virtual environments with head-mounted devices (HMD) and set an exploration task. The virtual environments are designed as homes, similar in area and program, that exhibit three distinct design strategies—a traditional compartmentalized plan, a fully open plan with minimum visual and physical barriers, and a Miesian open-plan with a mixed strategy of open but private space. The general hypothesis is that the open-plan strategy will generate greater curiosity, trigger increased exploration and lead to better cognitive mapping of the environment. An additional hypothesis is that the open plan will be associated with positive affect, in line with what is described in architectural literature as a sense of flow and connection. To test our hypothesis accuracy, participants’ data are collected during their exploration to capture their paths of movement, time taken to explore, and their attentional foci as variables of curiosity and later recalling the environment by programming the Unity environment in C# and the Vive Pro Eye headset’s Tobii eye-tracking feature. Participants’ neural data is also recorded by fNIRS to compare to the behavioral data and find any potential patterns especially in brain’s dopaminergic area and hippocampus which is related to curiosity and memory. Additional data come from post-exploration questionnaire by asking participants to tag environments they have experienced and attribute adjectives to them. The study reported here is a preliminary study using four participants quantitative measures that compare behavioral data and morphological properties of layout like visual information and Isovist, as well as qualitative data from the interviews that is aimed to further sharpen the hypotheses. Results indicate that the Miesian mix strategy open plan, as called semi-open plan in this research, causes more “distributed curiosity”, is more memorable, and as people described more livable. On the other hand, the compartmentalized plan that provides the lowest visual information with the lowest isovist, was the most confusing for participants, least interesting, and least memorable. In general, we can expect that different levels and layers of openness, effects different types of curiosity, which I have called them “compacted” and “distributed” curiosity, as well as different levels of memorability depending on the amount of visual information they have received and been able to map the environment cognitively. This research will contribute to understanding the way humans relate to environment in order to help a healthier, more interesting, and memorable environments design.