Advisor: Mark Hinchman

The purpose of this quantitative and qualitative research study was to explore EBD knowledge of interior design students participating in a service-learning project utilizing a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to examine if service-learning projects used to teach EBD are an effective means for teaching the importance of conducting research to future interior designers. Third-year students enrolled in the interior design program at North Dakota State University were surveyed to determine their current EBD knowledge. The most significant finding of this research was that students thought the interior design profession benefited from interior designers conducting research. All the students indicated an interest in service-learning projects and an interest in interior design studio projects that incorporated real clients and spaces.

Determining the most effective types of projects to utilize when teaching EBD to interior design students could impact students’ perception of the importance of research to the interior design profession. Providing faculty with a means to engage students in research could encourage future interior designers to incorporate research into their professional work, expanding the interior design BOK in the process.

Advisor: Betsy S. Gabb

Advisor: Mark Hinchman

Inherent to any building design is the initial program for its construction. These programs help define the building and set up parameters upon which architects base their designs. The problem that often arises is that nothing happens to these spaces once the programs have changed. This thesis looks to examine how an adaptive reconstruction process can take an abandoned building and through a series of alterations over a period of time, change the building to adapt to a radically different program. This strategy begins to address principles of adaptive reuse, life cycle building, sustainability, material waste, deconstruction, and building construction techniques.

The first stage of the project recognizes that the existing Lincoln Steel site is in a light industrial area near downtown Lincoln. It also became apparent in the studying of this site that there was a large amount of vacant properties in close proximity to the site. What used to be a historically strong auto retail location has now become a series of vacant used car dealers and construction industry tenants. This relatively large quantity of vacant properties will help support a new program of an Eco-stores architectural salvage. As the site changes over time it is important to understand how this specific building changes with it. Speculating that the continued decline of the surrounding context leads to an increasing number of vacant properties, the site can adapt to this new resource by capitalizing on its proximity and thus, an Urban farm is developed. This change is facilitated through a common core of program that remains throughout the buildings life cycle.

This common core become crucial to the future value of the building. Containing the critical element of many building typologies, this core helps facilitate the adaptive value process. As the value of the site begins to change again, this project again forecasts a dramatic change in the context. Looking much further into the future, it is again speculated that as a new community begins to develop around this site, a potential community center develops. Again, this site can change to adapt to the new program with little trouble. This process is then repeated as the building needs of the site change over time. As the downtown grows and economy changes, different programs will find the site attractive and through this process of creating value through adaptation, the long term value of the building increases as well.

Over the long term development of this site, different architectural solutions can be used to help increase its value, thus increasing the role of architectural design in the construction process.

In order to research the seemingly inexplicable realm of intuition, a wide range of subjects and fields of study are to be considered critically. The fields of study to be analyzed include psychology, philosophy, and design in general. This widespread search for insight and gathering of information will lead to a more full understanding and appreciation for the powers of intuition and its connection to creativity.

After fully understanding the relationship between intuition and creativity, one can move on to applying this knowledge toward an architectural process. In order to arrive at precedents for using intuition in a design process, several architects’ processes will be scrutinized for their use of intuition, whether intuition is used intentionally or not.

A personal stance and theory will then be taken, in order to move forward and make use of the research material. This theory will be clearly demonstrated during the design process of an architectural project. To conclude the thesis, critical analysis of the project will be undergone to ultimately determine how intuition should be used in an architectural design process.

“The activity of riding closely simulates human gait. The warmth from the horse and the rhythmical motion provides relaxation to spastic muscles. Exercises done on the horse are designed to improve balance, endurance, range of motion and strength” (HETRA, 2011).

In physical therapy with the horse, humans form a bond with the animal. The patients learn how to care for and ride the horse, while fostering a stable relationship. By working with the animal, patients enjoy themselves and are able to see improvement in confidence and even improvement in his or her condition. “Grooming a horse works to improve tactile responses and motor planning skills” (HETRA, 2011). The horse can be used as a part of not only physical but mental stimulation. Students can improve fi ne motor and non-verbal communication skills and routines, among other skills. With the many stimulating sensory experiences such as the noises of the horses, tactile experiences, barn smells, new and exciting sights, and possibly even tastes, therapy patients have many opportunities for betterment of their condition.

Like horses, an intimate relationship between architecture and humans is also possible. This is because architecture cannot be defined without human interaction--architecture is made complete through the viewer. Our bodies are the only things we have with which to experience space: in activating the body’s neurological systems by means of sensory experiences, we are able to stimulate ourselves mentally and physically, regenerating the disabled body. A proper therapeutic space activates the relationship between the viewer and the built form -- taking it beyond the architecture and into a user’s space. In many ways, architecture mimics the body -- it expands, contracts, has a skin, responds to the environment, is healed and deteriorates. The architecture body can be designed to aid in the healing process (as a second skin of the users),

For this project, the extent of the research and design decisions focused on the ways in which architecture can take its cues from the therapy world; creating a place that is as equally therapeutic and stimulating as the therapies housed within. The result: a project designed to incorporate architecture, horses and therapies that answers the question:

Can architecture become an instrument of therapy, where architecture becomes more than just the enclosure, but a tool for therapy providing a place that uses horses and architecture as the tools for human therapeutics?

The measure of light can be quantitatively described in luminous flux, radiant energy, or even directionally in relation to time. This way of approaching light produces standard approaches to day-lighting based on design guidelines, energy strategies, and ultimately instrumentalization.

This approach is not worthless, however, it diminishes the full significance of light in design. The heterogeneous building requirements of our age cannot be met by standardized “one-sized-fits all” solutions.

As a critique and compliment to instrumental day-lighting research, which assess the performance only in terms of quantitative illuminance goals and glare-based discomfort, my thesis attempts to re-establish a fuller understanding of day-lighting. To do this, I look to elevate the experience of light in order to disclose understanding of a different nature. In other words, natural light is a dynamic and ephemeral tool for expressing the qualities of architectural space, forms, and materials. This relationship can underpin architectural thinking as a way to connect the significance of light with the making and inhabitation of spaces. In short, the transformative powers of light stand at the threshold of vision and discovery. By looking carefully at the transformative properties of light in design, we may begin to realize the potential of light in both spatial and temporal variability. It supports our daily activities because we as humans evolved in the cyclical swing of day and night throughout the changes seasons and years.

There is also a need for a deeper sensibility for light’s role in design as it relates to understanding people in their totality.

Rather than employing generic and uncritical lighting strategies, we can look at buildings as domains of immaterial energies. To say this differently, by understanding our commodified world driven too frequently by control and optimization, this thesis wonders if the architect can re-animate architecture with a secular-sacred dimension through light.

The secular-sacred is an environment that initiates a profound and sensitized encounter of the self in the world. This is an event of singularity, which surpasses the sphere of the everyday by raising up moments and architecturally framed activities. This is a direct challenge to an instrumentalized architecture that fails to sustain the immaterial and ideal totality of our lives.

In order to operate critically and design effectively to these conditions, an examination of socio-spatial urban processes and transformations in the world economy is needed; along with an investigation into the evolution of ideas and approaches to the informal and irregular processes of suburbia making. In this context, the research will generate alternative templates of suburbanization based on strategies that stem from embryonic processes seeking the integration of cultural tradition, regional ecological systems and economic globalization.

The ultimate goal of project is to create an alternative model for suburbanization while critically addressing the phenomena of mass-produced urban sprawl. With alternative templates for localized, sustainable strategies capable of addressing a wider range of scales and interests. These alternative templates will address issues of housing, poverty, and the concepts of urban intensification and density. Dealing with these divers and complex issues in the patterns of suburban growth in an architectural context, architecture can play a central role in the creation of strategies and generating novel suburban clusters. The end result will focus on understanding the most important changes in the contemporary suburban condition and show how architectural intelligence will help the development community to respond to these trends.

The significance of the public institution as a center for information exchange and knowledge transfer has diminished in the 21st century in favor of new forms of networking communications, including distance and mobile learning strategies. With seven thousand students dropping out every school day, the need exists for exploring the development of work environments for students that are more stimulating and engaging in order for them to benefit in our society.

This thesis rethinks the contemporary university institutional model to consider the affects of new media on a student’s individual and community interaction. If architecture is to respond to the evolving means of personal interaction, shouldn’t then architecture be able to adapt and respond to its users? The ability for architecture to meet the changing needs of evolving individual, social and environmental demands can suggest new ways to interact with space and other users and allow for a new form of sensory perception. This thesis aims to redefine the conventional thinking of people as users of architecture, to people as participants of architecture in order to understand how new adaptive spatial environments can challenge participant interaction and improve the education process.

As digital communication influences the way people communicate in society, there exists a need for an architecture that responds to this. I propose that contemporary urban space and architecture be designed with an integrative approach that address both urban and media spaces of social interaction. The construct of static architecture can no longer facilitate the needs of society and therefore what is required must respond more directly to the ever changing needs of the individual student.

However, other fields have found ways to combine a social initiative and a profitable business. Grameen Bank founder Dr. Muhammad Yunus not only defined the term, but created the model for social business. Subsequently, many non-profits have followed suit and applied the successful system, increasing the capacity for social change within their fields.

My thesis will aim to find how architecture, as a for-profit business, can increase its work with humanitarian companies (primarily nonprofits) in order to provide design while sustaining a business. My hypothesis is that creating an architectural business with a social cause, rather than relying primarily on donating design time, will increase the quantity and quality of architecture in non-profit and humanitarian capacities.

In order to prove the viability of this business model I will choose a non-profit business client requiring a new facility to test a design solution. This investigation is critical because the business model alone will not support the architectural response. For example, TOMS Shoes qualifies as an example of a successful social business because they produce the shoes in the same country in which they donate them. In order to have a social business, one must increase the strength of the local economy in conjunction with achieving the social impact of the business. The design solution will determine in a specific case if this will be achieved through work with local construction and production of materials, or a new approach yet to be discovered.

This scenario may be found in the Northside neighborhood in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A manufacturing zone on the east side of the neighborhood contains the city’s roots in industry and provided a means of growth until 1970, populating a 2 mi2 area to the west until industrial decline set in.03 The “un-city” of the Northside has grown over the past forty years into 70+ acres of emptiness, beginning in the industrial zone with huge tracts of abandoned factories and spreading westward in a scattered patchwork of foreclosed homes and vacant parcels. The result is an astonishing level of physical emptiness in the industrial zone and severe socio-economic problems in the residential zone.

Presented with these consequences of disurbanism, the Rustbelt Rhizome is a proposal that embraces the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari04 in order to redefine emptiness. If the understanding of dis-urbanism is shifted from the idea of “holes in the urban fabric” to that of increase in smooth positive space,05 what are the proactive opportunities for intervention across the changing urban landscape? In this regard, emptiness, instead of being an intruder, could become a shared possession of the neighborhood.

Also utilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s principles of multiplicity and cartography,06 the Rhizome capitalizes on the density and locations of singular instances of foreclosure, abandonment, and vacancy. Instead of treating unoccupied parcels as a series of unconnected tragedies littering the neighborhood, the Rhizome takes advantage of their unique and dynamic cartographies, connecting them to create a purposeful and advantageous move across a changing landscape. Flowing through multiplicities of emptiness, it shapes disparate parcels and isolated structures into smooth connective tissue,08 creating opportunities for movement laterally through city blocks and toward gathering nodes at street intersections. Opportunities for new programmatic space is strategically placed into foreclosed historic homes and abandoned warehouses, providing the Northside residents with spatial nodes that respond to specific issues, thereby providing relief from some pressing social problems and re-forming community ownership.

The Rustbelt Rhizome exists in the dynamic complexity of the “un-city” and thrives on its ebbs and flows. Although the emptiness of the Northside neighborhood will continue to change in size, configuration, and density, the Rhizome will adapt by constantly linking new vacant lots and buildings. Disparate voids that no one wants to claim will be reestablished as smooth space owned by all.

Debates continue today, whether the consolidation movement is considered a success. Opponents of school consolidation point to research that suggests consolidation may not lead to cost savings and in some cases may even lead to increased costs for transportation and specialized staff. Furthermore, towns that lose a school to consolidation may face a loss of social and fiscal capacity. However, some projects have brought attention to the strengths of rural and small schools. Advocates for small schools, opposing consolidation, express the low teacher/student ratio, personal environment, higher number of students in extracurricular activities, cooperative learning, and integrated curriculum. Socially, schools in rural areas act as the main social activity, allowing students to have a strong connection to their community and immediate environment.

School district consolidation has a long and jagged history in Nebraska. The historical trend has been towards fewer school districts. In fact, in 2005 the passage of Legislative Bill 126 in the Nebraska Unicameral encouraged the merger of many small rural school districts with larger K-12 districts, signaling a move toward district consolidation. In recent years, changes in the state school aid formula have encouraged voluntary school district consolidation. For this reason, the idea of consolidation has breached my hometown and nearby communities. Knowing that consolidation is currently being considered, I wanted to devote my efforts towards creating a unified and more up-to-date school environment for the rural communities of Clarkson, Howells and Dodge.

In addition to the school consolidation conflict, there is a pedagogical shift occurring within schools across the nation. The current Information Age is a period of American history representing a time of great cultural transformation from the industrial factory model to a new paradigm that is more student-centered. Educational approaches to accommodate media saturated students have created experimentation and controversy. The current situation between Clarkson, Howells and Dodge allows the unified school board to finally capitalize on those missed opportunities to create better school facilities and incorporate newer teaching pedagogies.

Human experience can be improved upon if sensual experiences are more duly considered. When the other senses besides the visual are regarded there can be an experience that is created that is more embodied with an increased feeling of attachment to our spaces, buildings, and environments.

An in-depth inquiry into how one experiences was done to gain an understanding of how one comes to understand their embodiment with the world. Under the assumed doctrine by Johne Locke of the tabula rosa, or “blank slate,” the senses are the only sources of knowledge about the world. This is directly related to research into sensual psychology, sensory deprivation and sensory overload. These were researched to form a solid base of information towards the consideration of the physiology and psychology of how one senses and perceives the world. From there, an investigation was undertaken to understand physical objects in regards to their inherent haptic nature. This was accomplished by building various three-dimensional artifacts as a physical manifestation of the ideas received from the research. Each artifact had a recipe for design intent that dealt with the sense of touch regarding the hand, and the eyes. This is research for the exploration of relationships using contextual, rather than quantitative data. The design process, the creation and, observations of these artifacts are considered for the qualitative research and evidence. The results were not necessarily generalizable, but were transferable.

The artifact research was done to understand the relationships between vision and touch, exploratory touch, sensual information received through touch, and what happens when a physical object considers its own haptic qualities for aesthetic and pragmatic interaction. It is important to note that with these it is the hand that is of value. Because of their scale they are tailored to the intimacy of the hand. What was learned

from the artifacts was then taken and applied to the concepts of a wall, a space, and to architecture. This was done for the sake of the body as well as the hand. Because the back will interacts differently than the hand, the feet differently than the elbow.

As an architectural investigation into Haptic Vision there was a designed addition to the Southern entrance of the link of Architecture Hall. Three programs were exercised into the design to fully investigate the potentials and limitations in consideration of the haptic dimension in architectural design.

While performance based design is not a new concept, it can be applied in a way never possible before. The age of computation in architecture and its part that it plays in the design process is continually changing. It continues to become less a tool used to draw and more a integral part in the development of design and the direct form of architecture. With the quick implementation of these tools into specific bits and pieces of the design process there is still a gap between its current uses and its potential. This potential is what this project strives to explore. In a world moving away from shallow ascetic and toward performative space, how can architects produce a more accurate & performative architecture? The answer lies in the information we have access to and what it can tell us about our users and our context. For the better we know our users and context, the better we are poised to produce a quality architectural product.

The conventional alternative to mass production is hand production, where each product is variable. Architecture tends to fall more into this category - buildings are more unique and variable in terms of accuracy, repeatability, and specificity. Complexity no doubt factors into this, though mass production can also yield complex products. Digital fabrication offers the potential to economically realize higher variability without the expense of highly skilled hand production. The fixture could further improve economy (and precision) as it removes the need for highly skilled assembly. Given the fact that architecture is usually nonuniform, eternal fixtures are not reasonable. However, if digital fabrication is being utilized to create unique parts, it is reasonable to embed fixturing properties within the parts. Thus, digitally-fabricated self-fixturing parts can be expediently assembled to create unique works of architecture.

Self-fixturing architecture exists between the superspecialized “one-off” and the super-generalized module. The proposed implementation of self-fixturing is to first explore fixturing on different scales. The scales are loosely defined as Scale 0 (a single joint), Scale 1 (an assembly of parts to make a structural member, such as a beam, or a bench), Scale 2 (an assembly of members), and Scale 4 (an entire building).

The gas station has been selected as a typology for a number of reasons, though the intent of the thesis in not exclusively to explore architectural aspects of this typology but to rather explore how fixturing can exist within the typology. The gas station gives a degree of specificity to the design, resulting in a genotype. The genotype is parametrically controlled such that a specific site can inform the parameters in order to create an architectural solution. Moderate span lengths also permits the use of conventional laser cutting beds. The gas station is favorable as a typology given its status as a semi-mass-produced entity, lending itself to “specified mass production.” It is a ubiquitous building type that demands economy, yet could benefit from a higher degree of design consideration.

This thesis, on one level, attempts to inject beauty into the utilitarian. Beauty is of course subjective, but here it is about the “manu-tech” aesthetic, where the process of making is evident in the design, and the parametric flexibility of the genotype allows conformation to site conditions and human needs.

A prominent aspect of the thesis is the idea of designing from the detail up. “The aesthetic of parametricism” can be criticized for its disregard of fabrication and economy. “Parametricism” is not representative of all realms of parametric thinking. A system of details can be resolved with parametric control. This system of details yields a complex yet flexible genotype that can gain specificity given its parametric control.

Israel represents a unique and volatile manifestation of this question. Since its formation, the borders of Israel have been in a near-constant state of flux. Conflicts have expanded the borders considerably from those drawn at the original 1948 declaration. The current status of the border, since the 1967 War, consists of a number of systems working together. A zone of land, sitting on the Palestinian side, is what defines the border between what is the State of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The primary piece of this Seam Zone is an 8-meter high concrete barrier, the West Bank Barrier Wall. A campaign of control and occupation conducted by the Israelis through the use of illegal settlements, military occupation, and checkpoints throughout the Palestinian Territories has effectively brought 82% of land in the West Bank under the direct control of Israel, of which up to 10% is located behind the Barrier Wall, in the Seam Zone. In a way the barrier is not altogether unnecessary: there is a benefit to a defined border and suicide attacks within Israel have decreased since the construction of the wall in 2004.

What the actualization of the wall creates, however, is an attitude of erasure, separation and control. The wall implies an end, the end of ‘civilization,’ and what lies beyond is the wilderness of unknown. The wall is by its nature a non-place within the landscape and this adds no benefit to the continued evolution of the conflict/ peace-process. Michel Foucault says that “buildings do not have an inherent politics, but act as a form for political aims to be applied to.”1 What is needed is a facilitator to create place and path across this divide, to create an engagement across the seam. This engagement would thereby evolve with the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. The design would be a ‘third place’, a new space where neither side has true control or power, a neutralizer. This new space would work into the understanding of strangeness and otherness of the philosopher Richard Kearney2, at once neutralizing and stressing the roles of host and guest, known versus unknown.

How can a conflict evolve and improve without an open and equal dialogue and understanding? Architecture can serve as the grounds for either conflict or reconciliation, but does not define the political nature of this interaction itself.

The current home-building market is led by developers who consider custom residential architecture to be a list of interior finishes from which a home buyer can choose. As a result, four or five floor plans populate a neighborhood. Architects currently account for a negligible portion of the residential architecture industry, being limited primarily to the design of rare, expensive custom homes. Although these homes often push the typology of a residential architecture, they are not an economical solution for home design. In the paper “Towards a Fully Associative Architecture,” Bernard Cache showcases the Philibert De L’Orme Pavilion and his fully associative design and manufacturing process which allowed him to produce everything from the initial form of the pavilion to the 100percent CNC custom kit of parts. Cache’s projects elaborate on the traditional design methodology and production methods. The parametric methods he employs are used to define greater complexity within his designs. Like most custom homes designed by architects, these methods are not widely affordable, and so the power of parametric methods cannot be captured for average people. By implementing new methodologies these underutilized parametric systems can be leveraged to generate custom home solutions to both fully engage computers within an architectural design process and raise the quality of current housing practices.

The performing arts center will serve as a prototype for the new sustainability system, which will not only be used as a catalyst to inject life back into the south Haymarket area, but also as the technological and sustainable standard for future performing arts centers. The current working habits and energy consumption of performing arts centers and other similar building types fail to even register on the current sustainability scale. It is not only our duty as architects but as admirers of the arts to help preserve them. The fact that most performing arts centers and convention centers seem to be exempt from the basic standards of sustainability is ludicrous.

In creating an educational pilot program in the south Haymarket neighborhood, it will create not only public interest in the area which will be key in the rejuvenating the area. The disjunction between the buildings ability to perform as its ability to work as a contributing member of the city is a key concern in this project.