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ItemOn the role that specific domain knowledge and procedural strategies play in defining the episodic nature of architectural design formulation(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-07-24) Soza Ruiz, Pedro AlejandroThis dissertation presents a study of design activity based on the analyses of fifty-six design processes taken from fourteen designers which were give four related architectural problems. The motivating interest was to investigate what is specifically distinctive about the architectural design process, with a focus on how the activity is organized or planned, and on how knowledge of different kind and external visual representations—sketches—are brought into play. These considerations and interests are derived from the assumption that the cognitive processes underlying the design activity are embodied and distributed throughout the materials and techniques used for the purpose. Findings reveal that the design activity is structured episodically, a feature that is not yet discussed adequately within extant literature on the topic. Episodes are described as forms of continuous activity grounded in specific forms of external representations and addressing a cluster of related sub-problems. Results also showed that unfamiliar tasks and settings generated larger number of episodes, which is conformity with the thesis that architects address novel design challenges by breaking up the overall design task into a number of smaller and more familiar sub-tasks, but that this restructuring emerges during the context of the design. Further findings concern the nature of these episodes. Episodes were found to fall into three main types, those concerned with issues of program and spatial organization, those concerned with site and physical context, and those with formulating broad goals. The quality of the designs depended not so much on the number of such episodes, or their order, but on their richness measured in terms of the number of design issues addressed within them and their variety.
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ItemSpatiotemporal occupancy in building settings(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-05-30) Gomez Zamora, Paula AndreaThis thesis presents an investigation of methods to capture and analyze spatiotemporal occupancy patterns of high resolution, demonstrating their value by measuring behavioral outcomes over time. Obtaining fine-grain occupancy patterns is particularly useful since it gives researchers an ability to study such patterns not just with respect to the geometry of the space in which they occur, but also to study how they change dynamically in time, in response to the behavior itself. This research has three parts: The first is a review of the traditional methods of behavioral mapping utilized in architecture research, as well as the existing indoor positioning systems, offering an assessment of their comparative potential, and a selection for the current scenario. The second is an implementation of scene analysis analyses using computer vision to capture occupancy patterns on one week of surveillance videos over twelve corridors in a hospital in Chile. The data outcome is occupancy in a set of hospital corridors at a resolution of one square foot per second. Due to the practical detection errors, a two-part statistical model was developed to compute the accuracy on recognition and precision of location, given certain scenario conditions. These error rates models can be then used to predict estimates of patterns of occupancy in an actual scenario. The third is a proof-of-concept study of the usefulness of a new spatiotemporal metric called the Isovist-minute, which describes the actual occupancy of an Isovist, over a specified period of time. Occupancy data obtained using scene-analyses, updated with error-rate models of the previous study, are used to compute Isovist-minute values per square feet. The Isovist-minute is shown to capture significant differences in the patient surveillance outcome in the same spatial layout, but different organizational schedule and program.
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ItemSeeing architectural photographs: space and time in the works of Julius Shulman and Ezra Stoller(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-11-15) Hyun, Myung SeokThis dissertation is about seeing architectural photographs. It begins by addressing a paradoxical aspect of some architectural photographs: they acquire a status as works of photographic art, yet are able to do so while ostensibly serving a documentary purpose – in fact, they take on their significance by virtue of presenting architectural content. This raises questions about the nature of architectural experience. In particular, what do we see of architecture, exactly, when we see an architectural photograph? I propose that what we see in some architectural photographs involves our visual construct of space and time, and bears upon our cognition of essential architectural qualities. To demonstrate this, I offer case studies of architectural photographs from mid-century America, the works by Julius Shulman and Ezra Stoller. The studies show how the photographers’ careful manipulation of technical variables and selective inclusion of secondary subject matter bring forth distinctive exemplificational architectural qualities from what appears to be objective presentation. In Shulman’s photographs of Richard Neutra’s houses, what is exemplified is the quality of a lived space, modulated by subtle depictive moves. In Stoller’s case, the secondary or peripheral subjects trigger various durations of seeing, against which the relative permanence of the building is made manifest. Ironically, these photographs offer the kind of seeing in question by obscuring key descriptive details of the photographed building, and letting seemingly incidental details acquire visual salience. They succeed by bringing forth the properties of the medium that exemplify those of architecture. The study thus offers telling insights into why visual representation matters to our experience of architecture.
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ItemConceptual expression and depictive opacity: Changing attitudes towards architectural drawings between 1960 and 1990(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-08-21) Kim, HoyoungThis dissertation is a study of a remarkable change that came about in the kind of drawings that architects used to present their work between the decades of 1960 and 1990. Drawings in this period, visually rich and compositionally complex, seemed to mark an entirely new sensibility towards their function; their goal seemed to be not so much to clearly depict the forms of a proposed building, but to instead focus on its conceptual aspects. In fact, in several cases, drawings seemed to be treated as graphic projects in their own right, over and above the work they presented. This trend was accompanied by two other developments. Around the same time, there was a sudden increase in theoretical interest in drawings within the architectural community leading to a flurry of published articles, essays and books on the topic. And all this happened to coincide with the time that the Postmodern movement came to dominate architecture. The study aims to understand the relationship between these trends, and to develop a better understanding of the reasons for these changes to have occurred. It does so by, first, developing a theoretical framework to help understand the nature and impact of the changes in drawings. Next, it presents a detailed historical account of these changes. This is followed by an in-depth study of a single architect, James Stirling, to show how the new types of drawings were not simply a means to present ideas, but played a formative role in design as well. Apart from developing a contextualized historical account of an important development in contemporary architectural history, the study also finds that the change in the drawing practice and the theoretical interests were not simply an outcome of Postmodern cultural theory of the period, but were instigated by concerns that arose from within architecture itself. It thus offers a useful case-study on how changes in disciplinary practice are brought about.
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ItemRethinking the work space(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-05-15) Duncan, RebeccaThe idea of the open plan workspace has been a popular model for office design since the 1960’s. The openness was thought to encourage collaboration and group thinking while also allowing for more supervision and a more flexible space overall. This model, however, is too instrumental. It neglects the fact that the modern workplace is a setting not just for work but where we spend a significant part of our public life. We enact presentations of self in the workplace, enter into planned and unplanned transactions, forge networks, create group identities, and at times withdraw from the public eye for contemplative work and for refuge. In the open-plan model, every activity becomes a ‘front stage’ activity where people always feel as if they are constantly putting on a performance. The model does not adequately address other needs. This holds particularly true in the creative professions where more seclusion is needed in order to produce innovative ideas. This thesis offers a new model to think about the workplace by taking the school of architecture as an example. The work is in two parts. The first, an analytical study of 10 schools, drawn from a larger sample of 26, shows that despite many innovations in form-making, schools of architecture have followed this model of the open plan workspace closely, particularly in the way studio spaces are designed. As a result activities like enactment of self, expression of identities, negotiation and encounters, and withdrawal from social life happen in ad hoc and re-purposed spaces. The second part offers a design response to this condition by proposing an intervention for one of the most well known schools of architecture and one that embodies a logically extreme version of the open plan idea, Crown Hall. This intervention, which proposes radical changes to the interior organization of Crown Hall while respecting its conceptual form and broad design intent, illustrates how a modern workplace can offer a space that allows the full complexity of the drama of daily life to enfold in a workplace setting.
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ItemGregarious space, uncertain grounds, undisciplined bodies the Soviet avant-garde and the 'crowd' design problem(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-04-05) Ziada, HazemThis thesis proposes a theoretical framework for spatial inquiry into conditions of radical social gregariousness, through probing the crowd design problem in the work of the Soviet Rationalist architects (1920s-30s) - particularly their submissions to the Palace of Soviets competition (Moscow 1931-3). Legitimizing the crowd construct as an index of collective consciousness, and examining the early-modern revolutionary crowd's struggles for proclaiming its self-consciousness, this thesis investigates the interwar political phenomenon of amassing large crowds within buildings as a device for constructing collective social relations. The research project is divided into two main parts. The first is concerned with the crowd design problem, identifying this problem not just as the technical task of accommodating large political crowds, but as the basis of the formulation a new kind of conceptual intent in architecture. Finding the competition brief inadequate to in-depth formulation, the thesis investigates three primary sources for the crowd design problem: mass-events, revolutionary-theatre and revolutionary-art. Four components comprise the Crowd Design Problem each seeking legitimacy in the mass of crowd-bodies: i) the problem of crowd configurations; ii) challenges from the kinesthetic-space conception evoked by theatrical director V.E. Meyerhold's Biomechanics; iii) the legitimacy of 'the object' within a spatial-field of intersubjectivity; and iv) the challenge of 'seeing' crowds from immersive viewpoints counteracting representational filters of class privilege. Part-II focuses on the response of the Rationalists--one of the groups participating in the competition--to the crowd design problem. The study unearths in their designs a logic of space-making founded in the construction of inter-subjective states of consciousness radically different from prevailing individualistic conceptions of social space. To explain this logic of space-making, it proposes the notion of Gregarious Space--a theoretical framework of inquiry into what Marx called "species-being", taking radical gregariousness as the primary, generative condition of society. Besides drawing on morphological principles, social theory, historical analyses, and philosophical reflections, the notion of Gregarious Space is found to be particularly amenable to design propositions. Within the proposed theoretical framework, the Rationalists' design-proposition of curved-grounds, dense notations, textured co-visibilities and empathetic graphic conventions - all comprise a founding spatial-principle trafficking in rhythmic fields between subjects and against non-commodified objects: a principle which challenges the material domain of Productivist Constructivism as well as Historical Materialism's canonical constructs of alienation. Moreover, its uncertain kinesthetics sustain dynamic, aleatory states of consciousness which subvert prevailing disciplinary techniques of Panopticon inspection.