VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Brown, William W."

Browsing by Author "Brown, William W."

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4 Elements of Deer Field Inn
Koslosky, Barrow Arthur (Virginia Tech, 2002-07-25)
Architectural orientation of wood surfaces is the primary study of this thesis. To understand different wood surfaces, they are ordered into 4 elements of Architecture; Earth, Air, Fire, Water. This thesis is structured from these 4 elements in a simple legible form. Deer Field Inn would serve the local communities of Ritchie County, West Virginia for family, social, and organization gatherings.
4 walls +
Ebert, Doreen (Virginia Tech, 2000-05-02)
A higher level of complexity is possible by combining more than one idea as long as the order of the elements is readable in each built condition. Order is possible at any level of complexity. The more complex the greater the need of order. Order can be the relationship of a limited set of elements that inform and reform each other.
"An act of making form"
Light, Barry Hill (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992)
This thesis is my commitment to this medium of social and personal expression. lt is also, the development of a foundation from which my search for truth, understanding and architecture can continue through time. The study vehicle is the design of an addition to Cowgill Hall, the College of Architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. The primary determinants which contribute to the addition's form are derived from site, structure and institution. The solution, an infill language of columns, beams and gravity walls, is ordered by interpreting these ideas into architectural elements that express an open and harmonious environment that encourages the creative spirit to flourish.
Alley-Gallery
Vicens, Rebeca (Virginia Tech, 2002-01-25)
The site chosen for this thesis project is located in downtown Blacksburg, Virginia. It consists of a 30'x110' infill lot and an alley running parallel to it. An initial desire to blur the boundary between the alley and the proposed building led to a study of the potential of parallel planes overlapped along the shared border. Representation of these planes in two dimensions allowed almost simultaneous perceptions of multiple spatial and geometrical configurations among them. The architectural consequences of this phenomenon became the main subject of inquiry. Exploration through silkscreen prints and model studies culminated in the design of an outdoor art gallery.
Along the River's Edge – A Bed and Breakfast Residence
Organsky, Jennifer Ann (Virginia Tech, 2001-02-09)
There are many forces at work in a design process. Each element of a design sketch reacts to ones before and after it. As a designer, one must be able to look at each individually and as part of the whole. In addition, the ideals and experiences brought to a project works its magic as well. It is the tension and the balance between the elements and ideals that create architecture. With a Bed and Breakfast as a project vehicle, the connection to the site, the relationship between public and private areas, and how the materials and structure form spaces were studied. These considerations led to a process of discovery and the challenge to weave the site, structure, and materials in a cohesive design.
Alternative suburban settlements
DiMarco, Daniel Joseph (Virginia Tech, 1995-08-05)
This Thesis begins with two premises. As architects: I. We assume responsibility for the built environment. II. We should perceive and address change in society. The focus is an exploration into possible solutions to the paradigm of the suburban settlement. 1995 The condition of life in suburbia is currently drifting away from the ever-changing reality of our culture. The strongly infused notion of a private dwelling amidst a green grass setting has been the normative goal of living for most of our society during its evolution, but particularly since WWII. Much of what is built in suburbia today is done through the inertia of habit. The suburbs continue to be built as if families were large and supported by one income; and as if land and energy were boundless. These conditions have led to patterns of growth which are dysfunctional. The vast land areas covered by this type of settlement require ever-expanding roadways, which in turn become less and less practical to those who live there. More time is devoured daily by getting from one place to another, through a landscape of built sameness. The controlled environments people typically live in; the automobile, workplace, and house, diminish the possibilities of insightful experience that are a part of life in either urban or rural settings. Suburbia, as a place between extremes, offers diluted opportunities for a richness in the quality of life. The architecture of the suburban condition needs to make places which allow both social interaction and truer connections to nature.
An American Indian Museum
Gauthier, Michel A. (Virginia Tech, 1999-02-07)
A Museum dedicated to the Indian American, through its cultural magnitude and scope of work, has been the perfect opportunity to explore a methodological approach derived from research, beginning in biology, progressing to sociology, and then to political economy. The most important aspect of an ethnological and sociological entity is the growing organization of its structure and progression. Its dynamics are fostered by the perpetual adaptation to its environment. This master thesis investigate a design expression generate by the interaction of ethnological, sociological and personal researches.
An architectural intervention to the Corcoran Gallery of Art
Arnold, Colin Michael (Virginia Tech, 1998-06-05)
The essence of an architectural intervention is the reconciliation of the joint between the old and the new, the historic, and the present.
Architectural tales
Doichev, Nickola (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1996)
“Images haunt… Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they this is. In the nineteenth century one would have said that what compelled about them was a sense of the eternal. And it is something like that, some feeling in the arrest of the image that what perishes and what lasts forever have been brought into conjunction, and accompanying that sensation is a feeling of release from the self.” Robert Hass
Architecture and Human Event: a Theatre for the Consortium
Keeling, Tom (Virginia Tech, 1999-08-20)
Architecture is an interaction, a marriage between human event, human need, human spirit and built form. Architects range along the line of this interaction from those that embrace the complexity of humanity and struggle with form to those that embrace only form and cause humanity to struggle with the results. Is it possible to stand in the center of the creative tension of this struggle, embracing and recognizing the power of built form to support, shelter, enliven, confront, uplift and even bring transformation, healing and poetic transcendence to the human event and therefore to life while simultaneously embracing the rich complexity, contradiction and paradox of human event which informs and interacts with the place of happening; to recognize and wed the power of both. This thesis is an exploration which questions the relationship of human event and the architectural response to that event. Perhaps it may serve to stimulate discussion of the vital bond between human beings and the places they design for themselves to inhabit.
Architecture as a Transition Space
Lugo De Jesus, Mayte Nilda (Virginia Tech, 1999-07-01)
Architecture as an act of social intervention is the concept of this project. Careful consideration of context and surrounding as well as community needs are the forces behind the creation of a building that is both a place of transition and interaction; a place that both philosophically and programmatically intends to enhance the life of the town's population by promoting social and civic togetherness. Through the architectural concept of flexibility it is my intention to make a center that would not only house several permanent activities at once, but will also be able to host as many types of temporary activities as the community can imagine. The building intervening as a social unifier provides both the local and the university communities a place to interact and play together. The chosen site is ideal for this project, since its location is considered as a bridge between downtown and the university campus, thus making it easier to generate an activity space where both could meet throughout the year. The proposed building design reflects this "bridge" condition of the site by turning itself into an urban icon of different qualities; the building that becomes a plaza, the plaza that becomes a building.
Architecture as narrative
Stodghill, Kathleen (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990)
Architecture for the Imagination: A Study of an Elementary Educational Environment
Henderson, James M. (Virginia Tech, 1999-04-30)
This thesis seeks to create an environment that encourages the learning process by addressing issues of emotional and physical well-being. The concept implies that success in learning can be linked to the environment of an elementary school. The building does not have to teach by itself, but merely facilitate the learning process through the making of a comfortable environment. Designing an elementary school demands that the architect look at the world through the eyes of a child. If the architect considers the scale of the building, both in terms of size and perception, the school becomes an oasis of security for the child that inspires intellectual growth. By integrating environmental design issues that are traditionally ignored in contemporary schools, like natural ventilation or daylighting, the school becomes less of an institution and more like a home.
Architecture for Urbanity
Russin, Mark C. (Virginia Tech, 1997-08-04)
Designing architecture that reinforces urbanity starts with an intuitive understanding. Urban places are complex, containing many simple systems which combine to make a chaotic whole. This complexity is full of events, incidence and energy. In creating an architecture for urbanity, complexity is used to release the potential of a place to be urban. The purpose of the building proposed by this thesis is to reinforce the ideas of urbanity in historic downtown Blacksburg. It supports the expansion of the downtown urban density along Main Street and at the same time provides an important urban node, manifesting the meeting of the Town of Blacksburg and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. It is an architecture that supports urbanity.
An architecture of a wall
Latulippe, Michael II (Virginia Tech, 1998-09-14)
A wall is a primordial architectural artifact. The power and potential of a wall lies in its ability to transcend the necessities of construction and become a generator of architecture. A wall can be more than a plane in space, it can sculpt light and provide housing for various activities within its tectonic dimension. These additional functions can create an experience of both solidity of a wall as well as the possibility of inhabiting a wall. The creation of a "place". A wall also possesses the ability to create a sense of place. This can occur not only through the provision of habitable space, but also through the provision of bearing points for other structural members, illuminable surfaces, or zones of both visual and physical penetration. Within this thesis project, the wall generates a stair, and together, they begin to produce the rest of the architecture. At first there is a wall. Then there is the apartment.
The architecture of masts
Lettieri, Lisa A. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990)
The origin of this project came from careful consideration for a threshold between the fabric of Old Town for its historic presence and the Potomac River for its freedom to sail. The order for the threshold came from recognition of the historic grid of the city and its brick construction. A sailing school was chosen as the activity to draw the community to the river. The inspiration for the design was derived from the nature of boats and their delicate rigging. The architecture was generated from the principles of material economy of the masts and ties to create a tensile structure. Although the project fulfills the basic needs of a sailing school, its form came from the desire to express the spirit of sailing at the edge between land and water.
An Architecture of Reconciliation
Bolton, Carlton Robert (Virginia Tech, 2001-09-12)
The reconciliation of architectural idea and built form is accomplished by the materialization of the idea through the use of specific materials with their inherent qualities and restrictions. The learning begins when one sees these restrictions not as a hinderance to the idea, but that which can reveal the very essence of Architecture. The virtue of this architecture of reconciliation lies in its ability to help Man understand his surroundings and place in the world at large. This is accomplished by bringing an awareness and appreciation of the tangible, physical world to the individual. However, we must use not only our eyes, but all of our senses to truly know a place. It is in this knowing, this understanding, that one is able to dwell. In dwelling one finds true peace.
Architecture: the making
Marquardt, Vincent (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990)
Significance in how the building is made. To celebrate the materiality, the making, of Building is to give it significance, meaning. To make Building a meaningful work there needs to be an inherent structure, order, to the work. This order must be revealed and strengthened through harmony, articulation, and rhythm.
The archtype and the ideal
Green, Carter B. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991)
The location for the project is in the downtown area of Staunton, Virginia, a small town in the Shenandoah Valley. The site is a parking lot with a wall of nineteenth century warehouse buildings on one side that suggest the completion of a public square. The means by which l tried to find a resolution to this architectural suggestion involve a historical search for connection as well as a vision for the future. The circumstantial demands of place and occasion allow the project to materialize between the archetype and the ideal.
An artists' community in Georgetown: a study of the dialectical relationship between the general and the particular in architecture
Falkenbury, Paul H. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993)
Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space. These interior and environmental forces are both general and particular, generic and circumstantial. Architecture as the wall between inside and outside becomes the spatial record of this resolution and its drama. And by recognizing the difference between the inside and the outside, architecture opens the door once again to an urbanistic point of view. Robert Venturi It is the role of design to adjust to the circumstantial. Louis Kahn The existential purpose of building (architecture) is therefore to make a site become a place, that is, to uncover the meanings potentially present in the environment. Christian Norberg-Schulz

Browsing by Author "Brown, William W."

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