Rozprawy doktorskie na temat „Domestic z United States Architecture”

I began this investigation by asking a question. What is a possible design solutionthat can enable people who live-in or seek-out affordable housing to inhabit a structure that is more than a shelter, but a place they are proud to return to, bring friends to, and live in?The first portion of this thesis documents the need for affordable housing in the United States. Franklin Roosevelt, in 1944 before United States Congress, listed one of the economic rights of every citizen to be, "the right of every family to a decent home." Less money is being spent building new affordable housing or maintaining existing housing than at any other time in our history. The need for affordable housing continues to grow while the amount of available units continues to decline. There will always be a need for affordable housing in the United States. Some people will move out, but there will be new people with a need. I believe housing should be more than merely shelter. The rundown big box affordable housing we are all familiar with does not empower the people who occupy it to live their lives or easily better themselves. They are isolated in location and by negative connotation. There are a growing number of architects who have taken on the challenge to help people to better themselves, when they are unable to themselves. The four architectural precedents that are documented in the second portion of this thesis have dedicated their lives and abilities to creating better affordable housing that aids in allowing citizens, reguardless of race, ethnicity, or income (economic status), to benefit from their physical environment. Examples of each architectural firm's work are presented. I examine the design and participatory processes that enabled the architects to empower the people who live in their well-designed affordable housing.The final portion of this thesis focuses on stating and justifying seventeen design principles to enable people to create decent affordable housing based on the research and interviews. These principles investigate the ideas of being human, giving the sense of ownership to the people who live in affordable housing, being contextually respectful to one's neighborhood and community, being environmentally friendly, being modifiable or changeable for the different people who live in it over time, and respecting each family's specific story and enabling them to express their life and lifestyle. This thesis expresses the design principles of housing for empowerment.
Department of Architecture

Architecture builds the frames for human lives and thereby frames humans and their well being. Thus, the role of the user and their needs are brought into the picture. The American psychologist Abraham Maslow defined human basic needs as physical needs that must be fulfilled. In my thesis I intend to argue that certain psychic needs should also be added to the basic needs of humans; in particular, the need for aesthetics. I intend to define a specific type of aesthetics, namely the everyday aesthetic that has existed as long as the aesthetic debate. The everyday aesthetic can be defined as a symbolic communication expressed by the user in connection with residential architecture.Scholarship on the need for aesthetics in relation to architecture is lacking. This thesis addresses the subject through a case study documentation and by analyzing traces and patterns of the everyday aesthetic in fifteen residential neighborhoods in different cities across the United States (July 2006). The conclusion that can be drawn from this empirical research indicates the desire for everyday aesthetics functions like a basic need and can be understood as a psychic need appropriate for addition to Maslow's pyramid of human's needs.
Department of Architecture

This thesis examines aspects of the work of American writer and social critic, Lewis Mumford, and the domestic buildings of architect William Wurster. It reveals parallels in their careers, particularly evident in an Arts and Crafts influence and the regional emphasis both men combined with an otherwise overtly Modernist outlook. Several chapters are devoted to the background of, and influences on, Mumford???s regionalism and Wurster???s architecture. Mumford, a spiritual descendent of John Ruskin, admired Wurster???s work for its reflection of his own regionalist ideas, which are traced to Arts and Crafts figures Patrick Geddes, William Morris, William Lethaby and Ruskin. These figures are important to this study, firstly because the influence of their philosophical perspective allowed Mumford, almost uniquely, to position himself as a spokesman for both Romanticism and Modernism with equal validity, and secondly because of their influence upon early Californian architects such as Bernard Maybeck, and subsequently upon Wurster and his colleagues. Throughout the thesis, an important architectural distinction is highlighted between regional Modernism and the International Style. This distinction polarised the American architectural community after Mumford published an article in 1947 suggesting that the ???Bay Region Style??? represented a regionally appropriate alternative to the abstract formulas of International Style architecture and nominated Wurster as its most significant representative. Wurster???s regional Modernism was distinct from the bulk of American Modernism because of its regional influences and its indebtedness to vernacular forms, apparent in buildings such as his Gregory Farmhouse. In 1948, Henry-Russel Hitchcock organised a symposium at New York???s Museum of Modern Art to refute Mumford???s article. Its participants acrimoniously rejected a regionalist alternative to the International Style, and architectural historians have suggested that authentic regional development in the Bay Region largely ceased because of such adverse theoretical and academic scrutiny. After examining the influences on Mumford and Wurster, the thesis concludes that twentieth century regional architectural development in the San Francisco Bay Region has influenced subsequent Western domestic architecture. Wurster suggested that architects should employ the regional and vernacular rather than emulate historical styles or follow theoretical models in their buildings and Mumford, upon whose work Critical Regionalism was later founded, is central to any understanding of the importance of the vernacular, regional and historical in modern architecture.

Terraces have been a common design element in Mid-Atlantic formal landscapes during the eighteenth century. Their roots in recorded Western history can be traced back to the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance. Because of the scattered research and a lack of a systematic approach to the study of historic landscapes, terraces have been an overlooked design feature. This thesis serves to synthesize research into a terrace typology that can be used to systematically document a terrace site, determine its significance, choose a preservation strategy, and interpret the landscape. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed terrace typology and its components. this project studied the Virginia plantation Menokin and its terraced landscape. The terrace typology is one possible tool to be employed as a first step in the examination of systematic approaches to the study of historic landscapes that can contribute to the development of the profession and expand the knowledge of the cultural environment.
Department of Landscape Architecture

This document is an examination of the millwork industry in the nineteenth century and its influence upon the residential built environment. This study explores influences and results in relation to the development of millwork in the United States. The first is the technological divergence that developed between the United States and Europe, as America introduced different technologies to exploit the vast amounts of timber accessible to the New World. The second development occurred as the New World slowly developed a taste for the type of elaborate millwork previously associated with wealthy patrons. Low cost of materials and new technologies made more complicated wood finishes available to those of modest means. The third situation reflects the struggle between an elite class of architects and pattern book designers, who advocated restraint in design, and carpenter-builders and their clients, who wanted to display their talent or status through the use of a high level of ornamental millwork.
Department of Architecture

The impact of the Cold War on architecture in the United States is exemplified in the promotion and construction of fallout shelters. The development of the hydrogen bomb by the United States and Soviet Union in the first half of the 1950s increased fears of the far-reaching effect nuclear war could have on public health and safety. Government agencies, such as the Office of Civil Defense, promoted the widespread construction and use of the fallout shelter as a safeguard against human annihilation in the event of nuclear war. This thesis examines the various types of residential fallout shelters designed by public and private entities. The location of the fallout shelter within the family residence had the largest impact on the style and construction method adopted. This thesis investigates a wide variety of examples and techniques used to encourage fallout shelter construction. An in-depth discussion of the preservation of the residential shelter completes the text, including two examples of current preservation practices.
Nuclear weapons, the Cold War and a need for shelters -- Evolution, promotion and requiremens for residential fallout shelters -- Interior residential shelters -- Exterior residential shelters -- Preservation issues of the residential fallout shelter.
Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only
Department of Architecture

This thesis argues that early nineteenth-century domestic architecture along Indiana's eastern National Road (Wayne, Henry and Hancock Counties) was a product of the available local materials, not a product of cultural influences traveling along the Road. While the first chapter drives in this point, the second and third chapters describe the local materials (builders and carpenters, wood, saw-mills, clay, brickmaking and limestone), and explain construction techniques in a series of case study buildings. The thesis concludes by not only confirming the proposition, but also by making a few conclusions regarding early nineteenth-century construction methods.
Department of Architecture

This research study investigates the extent to which evaluation of housing forms may be affected by functional, experiential and emotional factors. The study also investigates the influence of the Western civilization on the Iranian culture through perceived imagery associated with architectural form.A set of twenty photographs representative of architectural styles commonly found in the city of Tehran, Iran as well as a questionnaire survey were the tools used in this perception study.After analyzing the responses , it was concluded that Iranians were in agreement in their perception of Persian, Western, and Ancient architectural styles and preferred the Western architectural style over the other styles. Iranians associated familiarity with newness. Throughout the study it was evident that the Western civilization had a strong influence on the Iranian culture in the perception and preference of architectural forms.
Department of Urban Planning

The housing shortage in the United States at the close of World War II led President Truman and his National Housing Expediter, Wilson W. Wyatt, Sr., to enact the Veteran's Emergency Housing Act. Enacted in the spring of 1946, one goal of the V.E.H.A. was to encourage the production of prefabricated and factory-built housing units.The Lustron Homes Corporation, founded by Carl Strandlund, was a subsidiary of Chicago Vitreous Enamel Products Company which received over $37 million from the Federal Government between 19461950, in order to manufacture standardized all-steel houses.This creative project explores the wartime and postwar housing situation across the country, and specifically, in Louisville, Kentucky. An interview with Wilson W. Wyatt, Sr. is included.The production, assembly, and sales practices of the Lustron Homes Corporation are explored through research, and through an interview with the regional salesman who represented Kentucky. Documentation and photographs of Louisville's Lustrons are included.
Department of Architecture

In the decades following 1945, Americans moved increasingly out of cities into suburbs. The migration illustrated the emergence of a new, broader middle class as a result of growing postwar affluence. In the previous half-century, families living in a suburb could claim middle-class status. The emerging class built its identity on the forms and values adopted from this earlier, more affluent Victorian middle class. These adopted values were played out in a home designed around Progressive era ideals of the family. Through this Progressive filter, the new concept of the home was scaled down, without servants, and ceased existing wholly as the wife's sphere of influence--as in the Victorian version. The Progressive impulse also reduced the size of the house to make it more efficient, and through government subsidies shaped the home into a smaller, economically sized package. The financial framework that determined the shape of the postwar home also influenced the technology placed within its walls. This financially influenced technology particularly affected the shape and content of the kitchen. The new, efficient kitchen did not release women from their duty to provide daily family meals, but it did create a culturally safe space for men to cook as a hobby. In the postwar, suburban kitchen women and men contended with economic pressures and changing social realities which complicated the Victorian values and Progressive ideals. Middle-class women needed to leave the home for work, and--now separated from traditional urban social outlets--middle-class men sought refuge in the suburban home. By examining Sunset magazine's "Chefs of the West" column, traditional women's cookbooks and service magazines, men's magazines, building industry trade journals, and census reports, the kitchen demonstrates that women and men reshaped the home in response to changing middle-class values. While financing regulations at first shaped how the emerging middle class lived within the postwar, suburban home, residents reinterpreted the space as a reaction to the economic changes around them. This cycle continued with each new interpretation of the postwar single-family home.

The vast majority of housing in the United States today has been created to conform to a family definition that does not match current demographic realities. The "traditional family" - a married couple with an employed husband, a homemaker wife, and several children has been the model family that housing designers have strived to accommodate on a grand scale since at least the mid-1940's. This type of family, however, comprises only 10% of all American families; the remaining 90%, despite being a majority, have had their housing needs ignored. One family group often considered to be non-traditional and often left out of housing considerations is the single parent family. This family type is an established household form in the United States; currently nearly one third of all American families are single parent families, most of which are headed by women. During the past few years housing projects have begun to appear that are designed to house "non-traditional families" such as single parent families. It has been generally assumed that the spatial needs of single parent families are different from those of nuclear families or the "traditional family". This research will focus on the analysis of housing as designed for single parent families in comparison to housing as designed for the American nuclear family. Floor plans of the two housing types were obtained from the following cities: Denver, CO, Hayward, CA, Providence, RI, and Minneapolis, MN. The intent of this study is to examine what, if any, differences occur in the spatial orientation of housing designed for single parent families and housing designed for the nuclear family: the single family detached home. The study examined room layout in relation to use and commonly accepted social function. Two methods of analysis were employed: gamma analysis as developed by Hillier and Hanson and annotated analysis developed specifically for this research. The method of gamma analysis was used to determine if the housing as designed for the two family types is different in form and social function, while the annotated analysis was used to measure the "fit" of the housing for each of the family types. It was originally expected that the single parent family dwellings would exhibit a higher degree of integration than the single family detached homes based on predictions gleaned form the literature. However, the gamma analysis revealed a lower mean relative asymmetry value for the single family detached houses (0.308), indicating a higher degree of integration, than the mean relative asymmetry value for the single parent family dwellings (0.368). This difference was not found to be significant (p = 0.276). The annotated analysis results indicated single family detached houses scored a better fit to their intended family type (mean annotated analysis score = 0.638) than did the single parent family dwellings to their intended family type (mean annotated analysis score = 0.533). Again, this difference was not found to be significant (p = 0.385). The findings of this study provide a glimpse at the interior spatial arrangements of housing as designed for the two family types in question. While the results of the two analysis methods seems to indicate that the interior spatial arrangement of housing is not meeting the needs of either family type, more research should be conducted to further substantiate the findings. These findings will be of interest to designers of homes, housing developers, planners and policy makers, and researchers in the field of housing, all of whom can have an effect on the shape of the housing environment and can help make it more suitable for all family types.
Graduation date: 1991

In 1946, House Beautiful's editor-in-chief Elizabeth Gordon launched the Pace Setter House Program, an annual series of exhibition houses that proposed a new modern architecture for postwar America. Set in direct opposition to Arts & Architecture's Case Study Houses, the Pace Setter houses criticized orthodox modernism, and offered a "livable" and distinctly American alternative. Organic design, particularly the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, further informed this new concept of American modernism, adding a rich layer of humanism, naturalism, and democratic idealism. Rejecting the Case Study prototype of universal solutions and prefabrication, the Pace Setter houses advocated a solution in which the craft of building guaranteed regional variation, artistic quality and individual expression. House Beautiful's Pace Setter Program, with its implicit organic roots, underscored one of the most charged architectural debates of the postwar period: the renewed tension between the specific and the general, the regional and the international, the individual and the collective. With the establishment of the Pace Setter House Program, Gordon developed a mature paradigm for the postwar house -- and simultaneously created a dynamic public forum for architectural debate. With the Pace Setters as counterpoint, she lashed out against the architectural current to attack what she viewed as the greatest threat to American design: the unlivable, autocratic, and foreign modernism of the International Style. Gordon's role in the larger architectural debate was critical, not only in her vociferous opposition to what she viewed as a blind continuation of an oppressive modernist lineage, but in her stalwart support of alternative design tropes. The Pace Setter Houses and their architects -- ranging from Cliff May to Alfred Browning Parker to Harwell Harris -- represented one battlefield in the aesthetic and philosophical struggle between the emerging modernisms of the postwar period. Accompanied by Gordon's insistent voice and publications, the Pace Setters became ammunition in an architectural revolution that, for House Beautiful, lasted nearly twenty years. The Pace Setters chronicled the emergence of a vital strand of American modernism, and provided a lens through which to view the ultimate integration and acceptance of modernism within the mainstream of middle-class America.