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School of Architecture

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College of Design

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 349

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.
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.
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.
Microtransit and Microclimate-Oriented Redevelopment for Car-lite/Carfree Lifestyles

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05-05) Dunham-Jones, Ellen ; Rakha, Tarek ; Jassu, Joel ; Wang, Jun ; Almaian, Maryam ; Jimenez Chavez, Jose Miguel ; Doersam, Max ; Kadam, Anuradha ; Maharjan, Anu ; Mantripragada, Akansha ; Mamallan, Dhanya ; McDonald, Matthew ; Mohammadi, Negar ; Rajan, Subash Raj ; Rangel, Patricia ; Smith, Madalyn ; Wilson, Isaiah

This report documents the Spring 2023 studio class proposals to redevelop aging, car-oriented parts of Scottdale, GA to enable affordable, thermally comfortable, car-lite and carfree living. In partnership with DeKalb County Commissioners Terry and Bradshaw, the DeKalb County Planning Department, the Microlife Institute, MARTA and Via Transportation, the MS Urban Design, M.Architecture, and MS High Performance Building students four proposals illustrate various ways of integrating mobility hubs, microtransit, trails, mixed-uses, missing middle and workforce housing, to meet stormwater, energy, and social goals.
Exploring the Value of Multi-sensory Aids in Co-designing Assistive Home Devices for Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment

( 2023-05) Aflatoony, Leila ; DuBose, Jennifer ; Song, Fangli ; Machry, Herminia ; Burke, Maureen

In this study, we aimed to investigate the benefits of co-design prompts/aids in the development of assistive devices for and with older adults who have cognitive impairment (CI), with the goal of improving their ability to live independently at home. We conducted a series of co-design workshops and utilized eight sets of multi-sensory aids to explore their values and effectiveness in engaging older adults with CI in co-design processes. Our findings revealed that the co-design aids had several benefits, including: (1) increasing the exchange of knowledge and awareness between older adults and designers; (2) eliciting insightful information through multi-sensorial aids, and (3) generating novel assistive design solutions to support seniors’ independent living at home. We discuss our findings in relation to the multi-sensorial attributes of co-design aids, which empower older adults with CI to express their opinions and actively participate in co-designing assistive devices that meet their needs/expectations.
The Global Role and Impacts of Building Performance Diagnostics Under Climate Change Considerations

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-04-25) El Masri, Yasser

With climate change becoming an existential threat for all living beings, and a matter of national security for states around the world, urgent action is needed to meet the challenges it poses. Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions globally, therefore they present an important sector to target as part of a global strategy to address this problem. This work relates the field of building performance to modern-day challenges of climate change, international relations, and national and energy security policy. The goal of the dissertation is to develop a viable and applicable strategy that can ultimately address these issues through a novel approach. Initially, it will identify current issues with approaches to climate change strategies and national and energy security that are predominantly supply-focused, then help synthesize solutions to these problems through a shift to an energy demand-reduction focused approach for buildings. The research utilizes building energy modeling, non-destructive testing techniques, and computational tools to create workflows that can help policymakers assess the benefits, costs, and feasibility of applying such a strategy. The dissertation aims to bridge the gap between climate change, energy security policy, and building energy consumption on various scales and present it as a realistic solution that helps bypass many of the impediments to currently applied approaches.
Konrad Wachsmann’s Research Methodology: Designing a Contemporary Clip System

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-03) Andrzejewski, Elizabeth

As an architect and educator, Konrad Wachsmann’s life’s work demonstrates an architectural research methodology that uses prototyping and building as a means for testing ideas and theories in both his practice and teaching. In this paper, the author presents a methodological approach used to study the historical significance of Wachsmann’s work from the 1940s-1950s and apply the results to contemporary architectural developments. To construct this dialogue with Wachsmann’s work the author analyzed the Packaged House System and his theory of universality first in theoretical and historical context and then reconstructed the technical parameters that informed Wachsmann’s’ design process. Acting as the first part of a dialogue, this analysis of Wachsmann then informed the second part of the dialog where the author’s developed a new building system that made use of contemporary tools and fabrication technologies. prefabrication problems addressed by Wachsmann in his work, and then re-examine their potentials through the application of contemporary tools and fabrication technologies. Through building—as an active research methodology of discovery, analysis, articulation, and re-application—lessons learned from Wachsmann’s work create new scholarship, and can simultaneously be applied to prefabrication, building technologies, and systematic construction today. The essential dialog connecting historical search/analysis to informed making illustrates a methodology with the potential to further articulate and re-engage historical architectural works and practices through models/prototypes and simulations in ways that result in tactile and intellectual insight into contemporary architectural research projects.