Abstract by Andrea Hunniford The New York Public Library’s Central Building, constructed just over a century ago, is in the midst of a major renovation. The Library’s trustees have asked the architects at Foster + Partners to imagine the space currently occupied by the research collections’ closed book stacks as a new, publicly accessible, circulating library. The administration’s public relations strategy glosses over the meaning of this architectural reinterpretation, selling the renovation plan with...
December 18th 5-8. OPEN STUDIO NIGHT 2013 is intended to open discussion between students in the Masters Program at Waterloo Architecture in a relaxed setting: food + drink will be provided! Come check out posters documenting M1 work from this term. Faculty and >M1 graduates are encouraged to submit an image or two that can be projected during the evening. Templates are available via dropbox. A full description and deadlines for submittals are listed below:
ABSTRACT by Sebastian Strobel This thesis is a journey that unfolds alongside the transformations of a river during springtime. Moods and movements captured by Ted Hughes in his poem Stump Pool in April inspire a series of explorations that set out to express the affective vectors of the river’s becoming through sculpture and architecture. The thesis is a manifestation of this search. Arranged as a narrative in five chapters, each offers an account of the emergence...
ABSTRACT by April Wong The Dollhouse is a model of domestic life; its material framework, spatiality, passage, function and aesthetic describe the architectural construction of a domestic ideal. Yet, the Dollhouse is not simply an architectural model; it is made specifically to house a Doll. While architecture structures the movement of the body, social constructions mold the body as well as its image. Thus, both architectural and social frameworks come together simultaneously to form the cast of the Dollhouse, for which the Doll is molded to fit....
Please post an image or text of an imagined idea of the future 400 years from now. http://future400.tumblr.com Email your post to: q4fa2ucsx9sqw@tumblr.com The profession of the architect is being redefined within the current paradigm shift. In this century (the twenty-first), there is a rapid acceleration of change occurring due to the dynamism of shared information and technologies that were once just mere science fiction. For my thesis, I am interested in studying the impact...
ABSTRACT by Taehyung Kim Contemporary architectural discourse commonly invokes the term framing. Derivative phrases contrived in education and practice are seemingly inexhaustible: framing the view, framing space, framing an idea, frame of reference, framework, window frame, body frame, space frame. The polymorphic nature of the term is perplexing, and despite its frequent and casual mention, the rich potential of framing in the architectural design process is often overlooked. Framing is a primal phenomenon. It shapes...
Detail of 367 Undergraduate Student Paths. The University of Waterloo – November 26 to December 7, 2012 ABSTRACT by Geoffrey Giles Christou As Galileo peered through a lens to see the twinkle of the Jovian moons, and Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek did the same to study the tremulous basis of all life, so the fabric of threads we weave across time and space – the vast net of relations that bind and separate us – is only...
ABSTRACT by Emma Ma The City of Shenzhen was created as a part of the Chinese economic reform in 1978. The existing undulating topography was bulldozed and flattened, as agrarian fields were transformed into a world-class megalopolis. The state-backed initiative saw the accelerated growth of the city from a population of 300,000 to more than a million in one decade. The new city was split in two by the fenced and guarded Shenzhen Special Economic...
ABSTRACT by Virginia Fernandez Rincon Striving for subsistence, the growing population of Caracas has radically transformed the city in the course of the past fifty years. The inability of the city to respond to the accelerated growth that resulted from mass rural migrations left millions to provide land, shelter and basic services for themselves. The barrios, once thought to be a provisional solution to the housing shortage, are now home to more than half the...
ABSTRACT by Samantha Oswald Brick. A simple object, but one that has been a base unit of architecture for over 6000 years. It carries connotations of labour, of energy, of the fundamental desire of humanity to give form to the substance of the Earth. However, current tendencies in manufacturing and construction are challenging the prevalence of the traditional brick-and-mortar system. Automated manufacturing, large-scale prefabrication, and digital simulation are becoming standard practices. This thesis posits that...
