Browsing by Author "Choudhury, Salahuddin"
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- Analogue paradigm artifactMisner, Kenneth (Virginia Tech, 1993)Paradigm, analogue and artifact are the elements of a conceptual framework within which constitutive principles of architecture can be explored.
- Between the ocean and the baySutton, Jane V. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994)"Between the Ocean and the Bay" is about a design process enabling the designer to see and know through three different graphic methods. The thesis concentrates both on the design of a specific structure, and on the ability to develop a design through two and three dimensional graphic manipulations. The three design methods are sketching, three-dimensional modeling, and computer drawing. All three have their unique qualities and all are effective. The Sketching method evolved through observing, seeing and drawing architecture in western Europe. The intimate visual process formulated a greater sense and comprehension of architecture. The on site drawing experience initiated this particular design expression. Furthermore the fragments of architecture recorded in these visual sketches became a vocabulary for all future designs. There are two kinds of three dimensional models. The first is for displaying a building or a project as an object in three dimensions. The second is a sketch, which is a fragment of a whole building or an idea. Fragmentary modeling provides a simple method of combining three dimensional elements enabling one to scrutinize them as they become part of a whole composition. This method of modeling allows the observer to see the spatial relationships between each element and the form as a whole. Modeling is a tactile experience. This physical involvement brings to the design a tangible relationship that develops scale and proportion. Fragment modeling was used in the development of the house between the ocean and the bay. Computer drawing produces two dimensional drafted plans or wire frame models that are viewed from infinite angles and then reproduced. Computer drafting lacks immediate tactile involvement of the other two methods of design discussed here. The results can appear to be flat and not dynamic. However, the computer provides discipline; by forcing one to make decisions on a design, it organizes abstract visual thoughts. There was a point in the designing of the house when turning to the computer to explore order was essential. The house between the ocean and the bay developed by employing the three different yet complementary design tools. Sketching was the strongest tool to explore a design problem through quick immediate production. Modeling forced the realization in space of the strengths and weaknesses of a design. The computer drawings in this project helped control the final shape of the house simply by forcing decisions and creating order. Each of these methods is productive by itself and together as they meld and feed on each other to create the product.
- Between thought and objectWallace, Stuart (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988)A place at a boundary A struggle from reason to poetry A dialogue between thought and object
- Bryn Myrrdin: a temple in timeOgburn, Scott A. (Virginia Tech, 1991)From the stars we are born, and to the stars we return. The heavens hold our heritage and our destiny. Throughout Man’s history, marking the positions of the moon and stars has been essential to knowing one’s place in the cosmos, to defining the cycle of seasons and Time itself. To connect Man between Heaven and Earth. In Architecture, it is fitting to celebrate the stars. To celebrate Light and the spaces contained within. Torevere silence in the space created by star light. In this Thesis, a central premise is Architecture to mark the rising and setting of the Sun, Moon, and stars. An Architecture of exploration where the forms are generated from astronomical markers, alignments from the stars. To capture a moment in time. As stars are beacons for Man’s hopes and dreams, the Temple complex I propose is a beacon for Man coming together to share his visions with one another in harmony. A world center is eventually to be built where philosophers, artists, writers, scientists, politicians, and musicians can come together to exchange their ideas and aspirations in lectures, workshops, concerts, theater, dance, and art. A place for gathering to include studios and living areas, as well as a library. A space for solitude, meditation and the pursuit of one's own dreams. A place for the Vision quest, for contemplation and spiritual renewal. Architecturally, the crystallization of sacred geometry to create a sacred space.
- By way of the highway: a collection of towersVan Pierson, Douglas (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992)A questioning of methods: If we are to accept existing American culture as an entity, should design not embody the spirit inherent in that culture? In Europe, architecture has been afforded the luxury of time. There, the concept of dwelling has encompassed the questions of man’s position as a rational being separated both from his surrounding environment and his divinity. A sense of alienation from such a universe forced him to search beyond his immediate environment. The role of architecture thus became a mediator, a departure point where man could dwell between heaven and earth. Sanctity, purity, proportion, centrality, and hierarchy all became building blocks for an architecture striving for a transcendental perfection. In the United States, however, architecture has been adjusted to accept its surrounding environment as a formal model. Space is defined either by the existing condition of the environment or by the will of man existing within his surroundings. Man, no longer alien or subservient, now does not need a mediator but instead a throne on which to share in the government within his surrounding environment. As a result, the American conception of space (i.e. the ‘tradition of the way we view our landscape’) has evolved into something different from that of our European counterparts. In a sense, America is the embodiment of the rational enlightenment in a new society. Its history lies not in the hearts and minds of its citizens, but on the other side of the ocean. Because of this unique occurrence where history loses its proximity, America has been able to develop into what Jean Beaudrillard describes as truly modern: a “utopia achieved”. It is a space where random meets rational and the limitless becomes a limit, a space which rejects European conceptions of centrality and hierarchy. If the foundations of Europe lie within the philosophy of Aristotle, than those of North America lie within the theories of Newton. Whereas Aristotle revealed the parameters of a perfect order, along with its ensuing hierarchy and centrality. In Dice Thrown, Benjamin Gianni investigates both early American farmsteads as well as the development of its cities (the rural and the urban) and compares them to European types. In the rural comparison, the European farm seems to be organized around a courtyard, creating an order of symmetry and proportion. The American farm structures, however, are arranged loosely in a cluster, their relationship being functional necessities and a common way of building (the doghouse is designed to look like the shed, which is designed to look like the main house). Moreover, Gianni draws similar contraindications in the urban comparison. In Europe, the city is autonomous, walled off from the outside and arranged in a hierarchy with the most important structures at the highest points in the center. Conversely, in American cities the countryside is brought into the city at its center in the form of parks to remind the people of their link with their natural origins. For traditional Europe then, purity and perfection lie in the symbolic harmony of formal relationships, where a center defines the elements around it and provides a place for man between nature and the heavens. For America, however, purity and perfection lie in the vast expanse of the natural surroundings. No longer a symbolic mediator between heaven and earth, architectural forms confront the world around it as it is. Without the guidance of formal relationships in culture, we have developed a conception of arrangement (or anAmerican type) which combines the classical adaptation of a rational imposition by a grid system with the limitless aspect of horizontal space. So important in the United States is the sanctity of individual freedoms. This suggests that the individual has the capacity through rational thought to intervene in nature and dictate his or her destiny. In early America, cities were built modeling the roman grid system. The urban plan was derived rationally as an egalitarian way of dividing space. Also inherent in theAmerican mind set, however, was the perception of boundless opportunity and individual freedom which promoted a dimensionless unregulated horizontal expansion of the built environment. The grid emerged as a way of organizing town centers. No sacred truths of the heavens and the earth were revealed, no ritual was carried out in a departure point for the transcendental; instead, a rational organization occurred as a means of confronting an environment as it existed in its own state, just as earlier settlements had developed a seemingly random order based on the boundless opportunities of providing landscape as a means of confronting nature in its own state. An interesting paradox emerged between two orders. One looked as if buildings and places were dropped from the sky, left to be dwelled within depending on how they tumbled and lied to rest on the landscape; a celestial game of jax played on an uneven surface. The other depended on a complete and unyielding imposition on the landscape where every thing, place or building was measured or monitored. As a result cities would emerge, each with their own rational imposition, with no relationship to each other. Today, a certain randomness permeates their rational existence. The result has been deformative. That is the realization of something completely different from original intention. It is a combination of an upward extrusion with the introduction of a diffusive horizontally which re-orders its existence. It is, in a sense, a changing of definition. Even New York, with its density and strictly imposed grid, has a kind of deformative diss-order which defines its place as a totally American (though unique in and of itself) phenomenon. Rem Koolhaas identifies the madness of piling up chaos on chaos in a rigid system which creates its “delirious effect” Even language, signs, and meaning have become deformative, setting in motion a wave of paradoxical relationships.Intention dissolves over time, history becomes representative or imitative, the immutable becomes alterable, and new definitions are formed to re-explain existence. The universal, the transcendental, they are the spiraling center which decomposes and recomposes, leaving sometimes only a shell from which to decipher meaning and existence. Umberto Eco, in his essay "Travels in Hyper-reality”, examines the relationship in American culture between the sign, the thing, and that which links them together, history. The sign is not a means for understanding the thing it symbolizes but rather is an object which "aims to be the thing, to abolish the distinction of the reference. This is the mechanism of replacement." In doing so, the sign becomes more real (or hyper-real) than the thing because it is identified by and more tangible to the existence of our culture. This explains our fascination with historical reenactments, dramatizations, wax museums, escalators, and Dysney main streets. All are hyper-realities which have taken over and become "more real” than the things they represent. They are “better” because they excite the senses and give material evidence of our place in history. In doing so the hyper-real in American culture has successfully performed an about face in the way we define things, creating the perfect irony: “the completely real becomes the completely fake”. If modernism lies within the tradition of the way we view ourselves and our landscape, if we live in Newton’s limitless universe of absolute space independent of perfect geometry, if we live devoid of origin with no primitive accumulation of time, if architectural space does not always necessitate the symbolic harmony of formal relationships but rather seeks to confront its natural surroundings, if the arrangement of space is deformative, lying somewhere in between rational intervention and the application of the limitless, and if irony is the result of our application of language and meaning, should these conditions not become tools for design in architecture? Does this not suggest that the modern conception of space has deformed itself into something completely different from that of our European counterparts?
- The church rememberedRichter, Barbara Clare (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988)the vision the vision is composed broken glass shiny sharp edges of light beckon the captured bird come into the world you wish to create the stuff of strange silent dreams the waters of the fountain long corridors small rooms the big room dance the presence of the sacred see disunity seen the sparkling colors shining beckoning the worlds of imagination and possibility of confusion and chaos fractured to bits the mind and the hand destroy the whole in order to see destroy the whole and leave only the pieces to be seen what is irreducible the element constructs that which is intuited the vision choreographs the dance with a more limited palette
- …Closed Together Order…Coble, Z. Van (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992)
- Community NarrativesAlbright, Kathryn Clarke; Choudhury, Salahuddin (2018)Virginia Tech highly values its diverse community of faculty, staff and students. The Community Narratives Project is lead by Kathryn Albright, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies (CAUS). The project grew organically with a small exhibit in the college highlighting the concept last year. Later, individuals within the Hokie Community inspired by this earlier exhibit had their portrait taken and added their stories. Working with Kathryn, photographer Sal Choudhury, Professor of Architecture in CAUS, created the photo-narratives on scheduled dates throughout the past year. The project concept is designed to spark conversations and create an ongoing dialogue in response to this question: Based on your lived experiences, what does diversity mean in your life? The photo-narratives highlight individuality. Participants decide how to showcase their identity, their culture, their own perspectives on diversity as they reflect on personal life experiences.
- Compelled to makeGlasheen, Deirdre (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990)¹“We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he should persuade, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order nor does anyone else deliberate about his end. 'They assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is to be achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, til they come to the first cause, which is the order of discovery is last.” Aristotle, Ethics. ²Gaston Bachelard, on Beaudelaire's use of word vast“...brings calm and unity; it opens up unlimited space. It also teaches us to breathe with the air that rests on the horizon, far from the walls of the chimerical prisons that are the cause of our anguish." Poetics of Space. ³ “Exterior spectacle helps intimate grandeur unfold" Poetics of Space.
- Conditions in architectureAnand, Rohit (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1989)Mortal Limit by Robert Penn Warren I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming. It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming Of dream spectral light above the last purity of snow-snags. There-west-were the Tetons. Snow peaks would soon be In dark profile to break constellations. Beyond what height Hands now the black spec? Beyond what range will gold eyes see New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light? Or, having tasted that atmosphere’s thinness, does it Hang motionless in dying vision before It knows it will accept the mortal limit, And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore The breath of earth? Of rock? Of rot? Of other such Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch? This is an endeavour in learning about architecture. The project, a competition on Charles Bulfinch’s Old Jail Site in Old Town Alexandria, to make Townhouses, serves as a vehicle towards that end.
- A conversationWall, Marie Lala (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991)
- Definition of a thresholdHuggins, Jeremy James (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990)This thesis explores the possible resolution of colliding autonomous architectural entities. The manifestation of this resolution occurs in the design of an art museum that utilizes the memory of the Victorian national spirit. The realization of this program underlies the author's continued pursuit to define the entities of boundary and threshold. This entire enquiry is presented through the utilization of photographs, drawings, and supporting text.
- Denotation: a literate institution for a small southern townLouviere, Gregory Paul (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991)The usage of the paired terms of denotation and connotation are one means by which language provides for the declarative knowing of all things; denotation is a naming by means of indication, whereas connotation is that which incites the specificity of meaning to a particular thing. Where the denotative assumes a recessive posturing of a formal ambiguity, the connotative proceeds towards a greater clarity with the intention of potential certainty and separateness in meaning. In the same manner as with language, the denotative in architecture responds to the elemental analogue operatively as a background within a field of signification, whereas the connotative responds to the elemental analogue exemplifying an objectification through categorical distinction. The use of the term denotation as the title of this exploration is to instate the accompanying text within the resonance of the denotative background in an attempt to circumvent a connotative, architectural objectification, at times operating under the guise of evidential justification. This circumvention, by means of the denotative positioning, is not meant as a vindication of the architectural object; rather, it is meant as a critique of the autonomy of the object and the foreground that it inhabits. This use of denotative background (not as a dialectical or teleological response to the connotative object) is to provide for an ungrounding in the work to the primacy of object as architectural edification.
- DialecticMorphew, Kirk L. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990)LORD, shall we not bring these gifts to your service? Shall we not bring to your service all our powers For life, for dignity, grace and order, And intellectual pleasures of the senses? The LORD who created must wish us to create And employ our creation again in His service Which is already His service in creating. For man is joined spirit and body, And therefore must serve as spirit and body. Visible and invisible, two worlds meet in Man; Visible and invisible must meet in his temple; You must not deny the body. Choruses from "The Rock" T.S. Eliot We read in this stanza, from a T.S. Eliot poem, a description of man. Here we find man as a created being experiencing the two separate worlds that merge within him. We witness the coexistence of these two worlds in life and death, in our ideals and our temporality, in what we desire to be and what we are. This thesis is a study (in architectural terms) of humanity touching the ideal, of the ephemeral brushing the eternal. And beauty, I must not deny beauty.
- A dream of the sacredEhmann, Christine Marie (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994)Memory Childhood Walking the long, winding dirt road to our home. The road is flanked by pine, birch, fern, occasioned by bold jack-in-the-pulpit and fire-red newts. Underfoot, stones roll and skitter. Each stone, solid, whole, each, an open eye, feigning sleep. Holding secret its very center. Dream Powerful in its simplicity. One stark picture frame. Like a billboard in an endless landscape, it comes between two other dreams. It is the cross section of a stone. Thin skinned and ordinary on the outside. Obsidian black inside, with a cube of transparent crystal rising in the center. Once a dream. Now a talisman.
- Elements in the field of an airportBrawner, Henry P. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1995)
- existence and continuityBryon, Hilary (Virginia Tech, 1996-08-01)History is a narrative of interdependent events or a series of events clustering about some idea which weaves them together. History gathers individually occurring events along the datum of such an idea and absorbs it into a realm of simultaneity. Similarly, this thesis attempts to amplify the co-existence of overlaying fragments of construction. Interventions with extant artifacts are another layer compounded toward a continuing history of building. This investigation is a search for an architecture with a presence of permanence and historical continuity.
- Existing in contrastAbelsen, Vernon Michael (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991)In the act of building, man places himself between earth and sky. Where a wall is raised, a place becomes divided. Architecture occurs. One wall in one place begins to define three physical realities. The form and matter of a wall exist as one thing. Each side of the wall exists separately and face opposing parts. The wall is a barrier, yet acts as an architectural element that joins the two sides.
- Face of the newBlizard, Mark Alan (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988)A house for a stage for the event of poetic impulse. An architecture founded on the understanding of the fragment and the definition of place of being. A building of the acknowledgement of the rituals of man.
- Folding: A HouseHuntington, Kacey Joy (Virginia Tech, 2010-06-11)Folding: A House is a study of the continuity of floor, wall and ceiling within the context of a house. With this method of continuity through folding, a strong directionality occurs within the spaces. The relationship among the different folds and between the folds and their enclosures is a syntactical relationship. Each fold slips in and past the previous fold. The forty-five degree rotation of the house on the forty-five degree sloped hill site allows for four fundamentally different relationships of house to ground and the surrounding views. The closed and open spaces inherently created within the folds directly relate to these differentiated views.