DDes Dissertations

Advisor: Charles Waldheim

Abstract

Svalbard is an archipelago built on an irreducible plurality of interests and Arctic design traditions. Norway has sovereignty over the island group. Contesting Svalbard combines a granular understanding of the spatial implications of multinational occupation in Svalbard with a critique of the Norwegian nationalism underlying the Svalbard project.

The Svalbard Treaty grants all 46 signatory states equal rights to conduct commercial and scientific research activities on the archipelago. This results in an intricate mix of interests and stakeholders and a unique foundation for design experimentation, collaboration, and speculation in an Arctic context. Norway is, however, tightening its grip on Svalbard, impacting the idea of Svalbard as an Arctic common imagined and designed by many nations and people groups.

Five distinct challenges in Svalbard’s built environment are identified as fertile ground to inject a range of alternative futures, catalyzing the archipelago’s multinational character. A participatory and scenario planning approach based on design research is central to such an endeavor. This study, therefore, deals with and speculates about a cross-cultural, fluid, and plural set of issues and actors in an increasingly contested Arctic common.

This study results in (i) adaptations to The Svalbard Treaty addressing climate change, the empowerment of minority groups, and the increasing diversity of interests in the region; (ii) design recommendations and scenarios foregrounding Thai and other Asian-Arctic interests in Svalbard’s built environment; (iii) a proposal for new material assemblies promoting the entanglement of multiple—existing and speculative—Arctic design traditions found in Svalbard; (iv) the introduction of a new transnational organization, The Central Arctic Ocean Design Agency, streamlining inclusive knowledge exchange across the Arctic and guiding alternative futures for Svalbard; and (v) a baseline condition where Norwegian dominance on Svalbard continues in the form of a new company town proposal.

This dissertation is geared toward an international design audience. It acts as a body of actionable knowledge to inform future development on Svalbard while curating and expanding the scope, practice, and literature on urbanism within Arctic contexts. This study also aims to supplement natural and social sciences on Arctic topics, challenge dominant literary histories, and unfold new spatial orders by transversing multiple nation-states, looking beyond the old polarities of hegemony.

Advisor: Gary Hilderbrand

Abstract

Urban infrastructure has replaced what once was biologically rich soil with compacted, sterile substrates severing the underground networks that facilitate mutualistic relationships between plants and mycorrhizal fungi. This dissertation argues that one way of reintegrating mycorrhizal networks – and thereby restoring the health and resilience of the urban biota—is by redesigning underground environments. An extensive literature review was first undertaken to develop a comprehensive understanding of current research across the fields of landscape architecture, microbiology and ecology. The review revealed a lack of cross disciplinary collaboration and highlighted the need for a more integrative approach to studying and designing urban environments. Central to this dissertation is the design, development and testing of the soil conduit—a new form of green infrastructure designed to connect trees physically in order to help foster the growth of fungal networks in urban conditions. By creating a connected rhizosphere, the soil conduit enables trees to exchange nutrients, which encourages health and resilience through cooperative dynamics. To demonstrate the feasibility and impact of the soil conduit, this research employed two proof of concepts at different scales. At the micro scale, a controlled experiment was conducted in a greenhouse with 53 oak saplings to evaluate the effects of the soil conduit on tree health and fungal communities. Over the course of the study, samples were collected from the soil and the root zones, to be analysed using molecular and microscopic techniques.

The results confirmed the presence of ectomycorrhizal fungi in the soil conduit, in addition to improved tree health-scores and growth measurements in connected treatments. These findings suggest that the conduit is effective in promoting underground connectivity and ecological resilience in urban landscapes. At the macro scale, a mapping exercise was undertaken to analyse the spatial and infrastructural conditions that support soil connectivity and tree health. A study explored trees growing in parks and sidewalks to determine the effects of fragmentation in an urban context on the structure of the soil as well as the health score and growth measurements of trees. Here mapping is also suggested as a tool to begin speculating about potential underground fungal networks in the built environment and how a soil conduit might enhance this connectivity, thereby enhancing the resilience of the urban forest. This research demonstrates the soil conduit’s potential to transform how we design for urban ecosystems, reimagining the underground landscapes as a site of connection rather than isolation by offering a scalable and design-oriented framework for reintegrating mycorrhizal fungi—and the vital ecological functions they support—into the urban fabric.

Advisor: Erika Naginski

Abstract

“Lagos is a complex entity that subverts common expectations. It is not just its demographic size that makes it a megacity, but also its social and cultural contradictions … a mega-slum and megacity — in that order.” — Oka Obono (2007)

The sociologist Oka Obono’s characterization of Lagos brings to the forefront the opposing realities of (post)colonial African urbanisms more generally: abundance as opposed to scarcity, colonial hegemony as opposed to cultural diversity, and crippling elitism as opposed to the lived experiences of the vast majority of urban dwellers experiencing poverty. Urban landscapes are inevitably marked by the fluidity of the spaces produced by contradictions like these—a fluidity that, in Lagos, is marked by the richness of culture and vibrancy of peoples while at the same time making manifest oppression, suffering, and collective trauma. The interaction of group identity and physical space here is simultaneously reciprocal and contested, uniting and fracturing.

With Lagos as its focus, this dissertation addresses the interaction of group identity and physical space by bringing several disciplinary perspectives into conversation: urban planning, preservation, anthropology, religion, and postcolonial theory. It takes as its subject a city whose constituent parts, which are bound by water, serve as the unstable container for dramatic ethnic and religious differences, for competing narratives of cultural identity, and for profound socioeconomic divide. Indeed, ethnic and religious contestation, marginalization, and inequality in Lagos exemplify the non-neutrality of physical spaces in which they are made visible. The built environment is both the container of inequality and the stage on which colonial pasts, cultural hierarchies, and social exclusions continuously play out. So, what are the means of describing Lagos in all this complexity? How might such a description lead to a better understanding of the urban environment and to proposals for a more equitable and just city?

The dissertation is structured by a sequence of chapters in which the aforementioned non-neutrality of physical space is foregrounded at different urban scales: first, how the traces of colonial urbanism leave their imprint on modern networks; second, how the urban governance and planning interact with current social hierarchies in contexts such as outdoor markets; and, finally, how the physical manifestation of urban informalization offers up forms of resistance. These chapters and the scales they offer as objects of study—the urban grid, the streetscape, and the informalized district—speak in different ways to broader issues of social inequality, the physical unfolding of the urban fabric, and the ways in which this urban fabric shapes and reflects identity, hierarchy, culture, and exclusion. They exemplify the different modalities that construct various political narratives of place in Lagos, resulting in vastly unequal distributions of capital and services.

Advisor: Antoine Picon

Abstract

This mixed methods study examines the citizen’s role in the production of space in the peripheral urban spaces of post-colonial Botswana, aiming to shape collective imagined futures for housing policy. Current research is silent on the citizen’s lived experience in policy formulation. At most, discourse on policy formulation in Botswana analyzes the influence of policy on spatial representations or the socio-economic outcomes of policy. There is a disconcerting silence on the citizen’s role, engagement, and agency in the production of space. In response to this silence, this research embraces African epistemology as a decolonizing approach, recognizing indigenous knowledge systems. This methodology responds to the call for scholars studying African phenomena to dismantle the barriers that obscure local perspectives. Using an exploratory sequential design, the study identified key variables from citizens’ lived experiences regarding housing and translated qualitative findings into a game. The study sample comprised participants from the peri-urban villages of Mogoditshane, Oodi, and Tlokweng, located at the periphery of Botswana’s capital city, Gaborone. The research methodology was structured in three phases: an initial phase involved narrative interviews with 31 participants, followed by the iterative design of a cooperative strategy game called MOOT City Game, and concluded by testing the game on a sample of 102 participants. An integrated interpretation approach contextualized the qualitative data and determined the nature of the game, while the quantitative data collected during the game were analyzed in relation to the qualitative findings. The first key finding of the study was its essential invariant structure: the interconnectedness of community through collaboration and cooperation in housing production was a consistent lived experience for the participants. Additionally, the study revealed a significant relationship between collaboration and imagination: participants who collaborated during the game reported higher levels of satisfaction with the game’s outcome than those who did not. Furthermore, male participants who collaborated in a game that featured Molao, or the leader, expressed higher satisfaction with the game’s outcome than their female counterparts. Ultimately, the study found that participants’ agency flourished in an environment that fostered collective imagination rather than individualistic imagination.
This research underscores the value of contextualized local knowledge in crafting innovative solutions for democratizing policy formulation and advancing decolonization efforts in epistemology. Furthermore, the methodology contributes to the literature by linking gamification theory, serious games, and practical applications beyond participant engagement and motivation. The combined approach of the methodology and MOOT City Game serves as a valuable urban planning tool for policymakers, an empowering mechanism for citizens, a new way of thinking about urban planning as collaborative puzzle-solving., and an opportunity to build community beyond formal structures. Future research could involve testing the game in diverse cultural contexts and investigating the potential of the methodology to produce localized urban technologies.

Advisor: Martin Bechthold

Abstract

This dissertation emphasizes the critical role of architectural materiality on health by investigating how the perceptual qualities of materials modulate cognitive and physiological symptoms of stress, with a particular focus on individuals with heightened anxiety sensitivity. While architecture often engages questions of space, form, and sustainability, it has yet to fully address how material perception operates on a subconscious level to influence well-being. In response, this work proposes that materials, particularly when activated through movement, rhythm, and multisensory patterning, can become powerful agents in shaping emotional and physiological experience. Employing an interdisciplinary methodological framework that integrates virtual reality (VR), wearable biometric sensors, and programmable material prototypes, this research systematically quantifies psychophysiological responses while enriching them through qualitative analysis. Three empirical studies were conducted to evaluate the extent to which material perception, specifically; texture, naturalness, color, and rhythmic motion, shapes cognitive appraisal and autonomic recovery during moments of stress. Findings reveal that natural materials, especially wood, consistently reduce physiological stress markers, while materials animated with rhythmic motion most effectively support parasympathetic recovery, as indicated by lowered electrodermal activity (EDA) and increased heart rate variability (HRV). Unexpectedly, participants who were given control over material behavior during stress experienced diminished recovery and more negative subjective reports, highlighting the cognitive load that perceived agency may impose in emotionally heightened states. Across all studies, a disconnect emerged between subjective preference and physiological response, suggesting that embodied experience often speaks more clearly through the body than through conscious awareness. The research and methodological contributions in this dissertation offer not only notable potential for advancing the discipline but also raise critical questions about the complexities of instinctual responses, cultural associations, and multisensory interpretations that lie at the heart of what distinguishes materiality from material. These results support the development of animated materiality as both a conceptual framework and design strategy, one that reimagines materials as dynamic, perceptually rich agents capable of responding meaningfully to human states. This shift calls for a rigorous and ongoing exploration of how the synergy of technology, perceptual science, and historical context can be mobilized to address the pervasive mental strain of our time. Ultimately, this work underscores the profound responsibility, and opportunity, architects and designers have to create spaces that not only alleviate stress but also foster resilience and enhance the human condition in meaningful and lasting ways.

Advisor: Mohsen Mostafavi

Abstract

Confronted by escalating planetary environmental crises, the global demand for “green” energy solutions has paradoxically intensified historically extractive practices in peripheral regions. This dissertation studies one such case: pine biomass in the Southeastern United States. Pine biomass is often misrepresented as a carbon-neutral energy source, and its production relies on patterns of social and environmental appropriation inherited from plantation systems established in the 18th and 19th centuries.

By foregrounding the role of pine as both an industrial commodity and an arboreal tool of enclosure, this dissertation demonstrates how military, carceral, and logistical landscapes are fragmented, reclassified, and concealed under “greening” agendas to stake political claims to ecology. The View from Nowhere mobilizes an experimental geographic methodology that combines political ecology, environmental history, and critical realist filmmaking to move between scalar frames, from the situated to the systemic. The aim is to interrogate the epistemic frameworks and visual paradigms that render these landscapes inevitable and invisible, with the purpose of illuminating crucial opportunities for reconfiguring our engagements with land, labor, and ecology. At stake is not only an alternative representation of energy transition, but a broader critique of the spatial and economic models that structure our understanding of crises. Through bottom-up accounts of socio-natural processes in Georgia, The View from Nowhere – and its film component, Under Story – resist the dominant technocratic view of “the planetary” as an object of totality and instead seeks to reawaken its productive tensions and inevitable distances. Ultimately, these paradigm shifts seek to assert the political agency of subjects embedded within socio-spatial transformations.

Advisor: Diane Davis

Abstract

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has constructed locks and dams throughout North America to achieve hegemonic control over riparian landscapes and the people occupying those spaces. Deployed liberally throughout Haha Wakpa / Gichi-ziibi (the Dakota and Ojibwe names for what settlers call the Mississippi River), these infrastructural projects were frequently built on Native land and designed in such a way that actively disenfranchises Native people. This dissertation examines how the U.S. government and Native nations have engaged with river infrastructure to assert sovereignty along the Upper Mississippi River Watershed, both historically and today. Understanding infrastructure as texts that can be read for underlying socio-political agendas, this project will consider how locks, dams, and reservoirs in the regions of the Upper Mississippi River Watershed that no longer serve navigational purposes could be Indigenized through redesigning or removing locks and dams, informed by Dakota and Ojibwe perspectives.

By observing governance and activism tactics, the research compares how historic settler-Native relationships have played out at river infrastructure operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and how contemporary Dakota and Ojibwe land and water management practices establish a new framework for the redesign, management, or removal of these locks and dams, as well as the landscapes that surround them. The research is grounded in six months of fieldwork on Dakota and Ojibwe homelands, which included participant observation at public events and interviews with non-profit organizers, as well as several canoe and kayak trips to observe and photograph lock and dam sites along the river. Additionally, archival research at the Army Corps of Engineers St. Paul District Library and the Gale Family Library at the Minnesota Historical Society provided a wealth of historical material to contextualize the governance tactics at play along the river today. Based on these experiences, the dissertation concludes with a collection of Indigenous infrastructures for stewarding rivers that address riparian health and wellbeing in ways that are overlooked by current settler river management practices. In contrast to rigid material infrastructures deployed by settlers, Indigenous infrastructures include grounded socio-political tactics to care for Haha Wakpa / Gichi-ziibi, such as storytelling, mapping for rematriation, lobbying for land back, and designing “in a good way.” Through these practices, Dakota and Ojibwe leaders are inscribing a path towards strengthened reciprocal relationships between humans and rivers. While the projects discussed in this dissertation are specifically attuned to the conditions on Dakota and Ojibwe homelands, they serve as a meaningful example of Indigenous governance tactics that can be adapted to other riparian landscapes. Ultimately, as more settler infrastructure wanes, these Indigenous infrastructures present a contemporary approach for designing and stewarding rivers and their surrounding landscapes in the future.

Advisor: Charles Waldheim

Abstract

20th-century Chinese history has been widely interpreted as part of a perennial search for modernity. While city-making has undoubtedly played a significant part in China’s path to modernization, there were also key moments when reformers—such as Zhang Jian, Sun Yat-sen, Zhou Zuoren, Zhang Yongnian, Liu Shaoqi, and Mao Zedong—repeatedly turned their commitments to rural alternatives. Instead of following the dominant city-centered paradigm, a range of reformist projects demonstrated a shared belief that an agrarian modernity could be realized through mobilized localities and dedicated professionals. Although these rural reforms have left a notable imprint on China’s modern history and have been dealt with extensively across many disciplines, architecture and planning disciplines have remained largely disengaged from these agrarian topics, focusing instead on the more legible—and at times even ceremonious—results of urban development. This dissertation addresses this gap, focusing on the often-neglected rural reforms and the history of ideas that took shape well before the reforms themselves. It argues that a range of ideas, images, and models of the agrarian modern—though largely unfamiliar to most Chinese by the turn of the 20th century—were disseminated from the West and ultimately made available to relevant audiences in China. In doing so, this dissertation offers a more nuanced understanding of the often-overlooked notion of agrarian modernity in the design disciplines and, more importantly, situates modern rural schemes and practices in China within a global intellectual framework that transcends the conventional East-West divide.

Advisor: Gareth Doherty

Abstract

This research examines the role of desalination in the process of urbanization. The focus of the investigation is Kuwait, a country situated within a region containing some of the highest levels of water stress and per capita consumption around the world. The aim is to reveal the spatialization of desalination infrastructure, its underlying ecological epistemology, and the historic urbanization patterns that it has generated and will continue to perpetuate into the future. In doing so, this research reveals a novel view of water politics that is less focused on crisis and scarcity to instead examine the spatial practices that inform water management and consumption from the extraction of salt water to the metabolism of potable water in everyday household use.

Advisor: Ali Malkawi

Abstract

The operation of buildings is responsible for 30% of the world’s total energy use and 26% of global energy-related emissions. Proper control of buildings is thus economically, socially, and environmentally crucial for reducing energy consumption. However, most Building Management Systems (BMS) still operate on traditional principles, lack optimization, and function in isolation. This highlights a critical need for more advanced, adaptable, and interconnected solutions to collectively control buildings. The data-driven methods in building control show promise for scalability and transferability, offering the potential to eliminate the time and effort needed to create traditional physics-based models.

This dissertation introduces a data-driven building control framework that adapts to changing environments, coordinates multiple building systems, and balances various optimization objectives utilizing both model-based predictive control and model-free reinforcement learning (RL) control methods. The research first investigates the multi-objective smart control of nonlinear dynamic systems: specifically focusing on natural ventilation. The Ensembled Multi-time scale deep-learning-based Adaptive Model Predictive Control (EMA-MPC) system is proposed. This innovative algorithm aims to optimize thermal comfort, better indoor air quality and energy efficiency by controlling automated windows in a naturally ventilated room during winter. The EMA-MPC system demonstrates better performance as compared to basic-MPC, enhanced-MPC and baseline rule-based control. Additionally, the proposed EMA-MPC system reduces modeling efforts and provides an effective approach towards reliable use of machine learning models in smart building control. Building on the model predictive control, the research further explores model-free approach. A multi-agent RL control algorithm is proposed to tackle the challenges of coordinating control systems with diverse response times. Specifically, the research examines the coordinated optimal control for delayed/slow response radiant floor cooling and fast-response window systems in summer period. The proposed RL algorithm illustrates also better performance compared to the rule-based control in ensuring thermal comfort, maintaining indoor air quality, and minimizing cooling energy consumption. Throughout the dissertation, both the EMA-MPC and RL control algorithms are comprehensively designed, constructed, and assessed in virtual testbed and applied in real building for physical experiment, demonstrating their effectiveness and significant promise for future autonomous building applications.

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

This research focuses on the conservation of historic timber structural buildings in China. Specifically, it examines the various methods, organisations, histories, and approaches to architectural conservation aimed at countering the obsolescence of traditional wooden construction, particularly in terms of its physical characteristics. It also explores geographic adaptation and misadaptation, alongside the craftsmanship and institutional arrangements of conservation. Though relatively scarce, traditional timber structures hold critical importance for modern China. As observed globally, conservation for physically deteriorated buildings is not unique to China, yet in contemporary times, it has become crucial to this nation’s identity, cultural heritage, global standing, and economic well-being.

Traditional Chinese timber architecture embodies two distinct construction thinkings: one is the object-oriented approach, which emphasises the buildings’ forms and appearances, predominantly observed in official architecture, characterised by a uniformity of form across provinces and strict hierarchical distinctions by function. The other is the process-oriented approach, primarily evident in vernacular architecture, emphasising regional adaptability and the construction process itself. In the pre-industrial era, the forms of both official and vernacular buildings were indirectly produced through carpenters’ calculations and manual construction. Moreover, the construction and conservation of buildings are integral to the evolutionary process of architectural forms. Carpenters, pivotal in traditional architectural engineering, established specific social groups around carpentry teams, known in academic circles as ‘jiangpai’, representing a guild system of apprenticeships, schools of thought, or ideological families.

Over the past century, with the advent of modern architecture in China, traditional timber structures have been progressively supplanted by modern constructions. Modern architectural professionals have largely overshadowed traditional ‘jiangpai’, though small fractions persist along China’s southeastern coast. Regarding wooden structure conservation, traditional artisans and modern architects diverge significantly; the former concentrates on the hands-on construction and maintenance process, while the latter focuses more on representing historic architectural imagery.

This research centres on one official artisan collective and two grassroots artisan groups. It investigates the histories, organisational structures, distinctive building techniques, and the transmission of knowledge among these jiangpai. Additionally, the study contrasts modern architects and scholars in the architectural field with traditional artisans, analysing disparities in conservation approaches through specific case studies. The research finds that conservation strategies centred on representing historical information in heritage buildings, typically advocated by contemporary architects, are prevalent in government-led conservation initiatives. In contrast, process-driven conservation practices, espoused by traditional artisan groups, are more common in community-led construction and conservation projects. There is increasing interaction and convergence between these two groups of practitioners. The co-existence of design-led and process-led conservation methods is evident in contemporary conservation practice. Moreover, traditional building techniques remain valuable for future conservation efforts.

Advisor: John May

Abstract

This dissertation examines William Brewster’s (1851-1919) seminal yet underappreciated contributions to ornithology through the analysis of his extensive archival materials—including field notes, journals, diaries, systematic bird observations, photographic prints, and voluminous correspondence. The thesis elucidates the development and impact of Brewster’s ethically driven, non-lethal observational methodologies, contrasting substantially with the earlier practices of John James Audubon (1785-1851), which involved the widespread killing of birds for illustration purposes. Brewster’s approach marked a pivotal shift towards more ethical scientific inquiry and early conservation principles.

Housed at Harvard University’s Ernst Mayr Library at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Brewster’s archives span five decades and provide an unparalleled dataset of bird behavior, habitats, vocalizations, and population changes, alongside notes on the changing landscape. This dissertation probes the evolution from visually biased scientific methods to sensory-integrated observational practices, examining the implications of Brewster’s auditory and multi-sensory engagements in the broader context of 19th-century scientific epistemology. By intersecting theoretical frameworks such as Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, Tim Ingold’s work on “phenomena of the weather-world” and Steven Feld’s “acoustemology” with archival methodologies informed by Jacques Derrida’s concept of “archive fever,” Frédérique Aït-Touati’s analysis of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, and Friedrich Kittler’s media theory, this work offers an analytical discourse of the archive as a technological apparatus.

Key research questions guiding this dissertation include: How did Brewster and Audubon’s ornithological methods navigate tensions between scientific objectivity and subjectivity in the representation of birds? What do their methodologies reveal about the evolving notion of the scientific self and ethical engagement with avian species during the 19th century? How did contemporary technological advancements and cultural perceptions of the so-called “nature” shape their observational practices and understanding of human-animal-machine interactions? Critically, how did Brewster’s implementation of non-lethal observation methodologies and his meticulous documentation of ecological changes contribute to early notions of conservation and foreshadow contemporary multispecies approaches as articulated by scholars like Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing?

By integrating frameworks from the history of art and sciences with critical theory across critical posthumanities, new materialisms, cultural geography, media, and sound studies, this interdisciplinary inquiry underscores the vital role urban environments play in conservation efforts. The study foregrounds how contemporary artistic practices and digital scholarship could not only contextualize Brewster’s legacy within the historical trajectory of ornithology but also advocate for the re-evaluation of ethical practices in current scientific disciplines. It underscores the urgency of fostering multispecies cohabitation and sustainable living practices in the Anthropocene (a contested term), thereby addressing broader ecological crises and redefining human-animal-machine relations. Engaging multispecies perspectives in multiple modalities offers insights for cultivating more ethical and sustainable ways of living on a damaged planet (Tsing 2017).

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

This dissertation concerns the growing role of China, specifically Chinese state capital, in reshaping the built environment through financing, building, and operating mega infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka over the past two decades. In the early 21st century, China quickly emerged as the world’s largest official financier of infrastructure projects around the world, providing a cumulative total of nearly one trillion U.S. dollars by 2022. Of the 165 recipient countries, Sri Lanka stands out as a country that has seen one of the most dramatic – and uneven – restructuring of urban space. Observing that China-backed megaprojects had divergent performance and spatial outcomes in Sri Lanka during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency, the dissertation explains this curious within-country variation by comparing three China-backed megaproject cases with otherwise similar characteristics. Why did the Colombo Port City project succeed in producing early agglomeration effects while the Mattala Airport project became a wasteful “white elephant”? Why did the Hambantota Port project become more successful over time after initial struggles? The dissertation finds that the length of time horizon in Chinese state capital and the degree of power concentration in Sri Lanka’s planning process are key determinants. It shows how a toxic combination of an authoritarian approach to planning in Sri Lanka and short-term oriented Chinese capital can lead to mega infrastructure projects built at the wrong scale, at the wrong place, or at the wrong time. It also shows how a patient form of Chinese state capital and a more inclusive approach to planning can result in better performance. In so doing, the dissertation highlights the politics of risk allocation. It details the circumstances under which specific risk management strategies were adopted, and how different incentive structures shape the relationship between planning power and Chinese capital. While the dissertation is focused on Sri Lanka, the findings hold broader implications for the theory and practice of megaproject planning across the Global South.

Advisor: Rahul Mehrotra

Abstract

This dissertation examines the complex interactions between urban religiosity and modernity in the context of Dhaka, Bangladesh, focusing on the celebration of Eid ul Adha. As a South Asian megacity, Dhaka undergoes significant transformations during this annual religious festival, temporarily disrupting the city’s usual modernist development trajectory. The thesis introduces the concept of “Sacrificing Cities” to describe how Dhaka, like several other South Asian cities, tends to sacrifice its modern development mandates temporarily to accommodate traditional religious practices. These sacrifices manifest in various urban domains, including infrastructure, institutions, markets, and technology.

The study is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka, exploring how the city manages the influx of millions of rural cattle farmers and traders, the transformation of urban spaces into makeshift cattle markets, and the temporary suspension of regular urban activities during Eid ul Adha. The research highlights the adaptability of Dhaka’s urban infrastructure and institutions to non-secular functions and the role of the informal economic sector in managing the festival’s demands. It also discusses the challenges posed by digitalization in maintaining traditional communal practices and religious sentiments.

By situating Dhaka within the broader frameworks of postcolonial, modern, and global city discourses, the thesis argues that the city’s temporary disruptions during Eid ul Adha challenge conventional understandings of urban modernity. The concept of “Sacrificing Cities” provides a new lens for analyzing how cities in the Global South negotiate between tradition and modernity, revealing the unique ways in which urban religiosity shapes economic and political pathways. Through detailed case studies, the thesis explores the justifications and mechanisms that enable Dhaka to temporarily deviate from its modern development goals, emphasizing the importance of understanding these practices within the context of South Asian urbanism. The findings contribute to broader discussions in critical urban development, postcolonialism, modernism, and developmental studies, offering insights into the evolution, development, and functioning of cities like Dhaka.

Advisor: Ann Forsyth

Abstract

Addressing climate change requires public and private organizations with varying disciplinary approaches to collaborate in cross-functional partnerships. This research investigates how cross-functional teams learn new knowledge and skills while developing adaptive responses to large scale climate challenges.

Two case studies of cross-functional teams working on sustainability programs in a federally owned electric utility in the American South demonstrate the importance of managing data pathways as the basis for team learning. Project scope and preconceptions of colleagues’ professional identities were major factors that affected how the teams acquired and utilized information.

Technological advances have made tools for complex data analysis and interpretation widely accessible. The findings from this research provide guidelines that help leaders of cross-functional public sector teams maximize the data their teams use to learn about and develop adaptive solutions to climate challenges.

Advisor: Charles Waldheim

Abstract

This dissertation describes the institutional history of Princeton Architectural Laboratory from 1949 to 1954. While recent scholarship in architectural history and building science clarified the Laboratory’s enduring contribution to environmentally informed design strategies, the circumstances of its establishment remain underreported. This work argues that a closer look at this early history is warranted. It reveals the administrative mechanics and challenges involved in establishing an organizational capacity for experimental design research.

Using maintenance as the governing theme, this account describes the relationship between the Laboratory’s intellectual project, its material expression, and institutional support. Based on archival research, it contends that Labatut’s project and its ultimate failure were necessary preconditions for the Olgyay’s arrival at Princeton and the Laboratory’s subsequent success.

This dissertation elucidates the continuity between the two iterations of the Laboratory. It offers a historical account of how Princeton University’s architecture program established an organizational capacity for experimental research. This work seeks a new audience interested in developing a design laboratory or a research center within an academic institution.

Advisor: Martin Bechthold

Abstract

Color, light, and their interaction within the built environment have always been pertinent spatial and aesthetic factors that architects consider in their work; however, their study has been limited to a primarily perceptual perspective. This thesis studies the relationship between color, light, and design from a physiological perspective, and, in particular, through the lens of newly discovered findings in human neuroscience and photobiology. Those findings pertain to the discovery of light as a promoter of alertness -or sleep- depending on its spectrum, as introduced through the discovery of a non-visual, photosensitive system in the human retina. That system consists of a network of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) and is responsible for synchronizing human circadian rhythms and a series of associated bodily functions such as sleep/wake cycles and hormone production. The key photopigment that activates that system is melanopsin, a blue-light sensitive photopigment that, depending on the spectra and the illuminance of the light, triggers a biochemical cascade that signals the brain on the synchronization of the body’s daily rhythms. Specifically, melanopsin photoreceptors have a peak light absorption at wavelengths of approximately 480 nanometers.

To date, research in lighting and photobiology has examined alertness and sleep effects mainly in relation to light spectra, overlooking the role of architectural surfaces and materials in the shaping of an environment’s photobiological behavior. Moreover, research has not yet addressed photobiological behavior in an adaptive context where interiors are designed to affect both daytime- and nighttime-appropriate spectral content. To address this problem, the thesis proposes Photobiological Material Systems as a design framework for spectrally selective surfaces that, in combination with adaptive lighting infrastructures, can promote alertness effects during the day and sleep-promoting effects during nighttime. The proposed framework is developed through a series of physical and simulation studies of increasing complexity, as well as a contextualization of the studies’ results within contemporary theories of color and areas of architectural discourse.

Through the introduction of this new framework, the thesis contributes to the areas of Architectural Design, Lighting Design, and Photobiology in various aspects: at a fundamental level, the thesis produces new knowledge on how spatial elements such as color, light, and surface geometry contribute to an interior environment’s alertness and sleep effects on its occupants; from a standards perspective, it explores the limits of photobiological efficiency of commercially available color swatches when combined with light sources of different spectra; at an application level, the thesis introduces a new, science-grounded and biology-driven framework for using color in design and architecture.

Advisor: Ann Forsyth

Abstract

The shift from traditional 9:00 am to 5:00 pm work hours to more flexible work arrangements in white-collar knowledge-based private companies has increased the emphasis on minimizing workplace spatial footprint. While emerging evidence-based methods rely on real-time spatial technologies and utilization rate analysis to determine workplace spatial optimization strategies, existing methods frequently overlook daily, weekly, and monthly variations in occupancy. Consequently, there is a lack of effective methods for reducing spatial footprint that balance benefits for the company, employees, and environment.

The Real-Time Architecture dissertation presents a method through two studies for evaluating workplace utilization rates in real-time, using hourly peak measurements and accounting for employee interactions. This method shows significant improvements in estimating potential spatial downsizing. The first study analyzed 162,778 spaces across 115 companies. The results revealed the crucial significance of a detailed analysis of utilization rates in determining the potential for spatial reduction. The data indicated that individual spaces exhibit a higher frequency of use than collaboration spaces, contradicting the prevailing viewpoint among practitioners advocating for a greater emphasis on collaborative spaces. Furthermore, the findings challenge the assumption that adaptive designs are necessary.

The second study, which was conducted at the Panasonic headquarters in Japan, aimed to investigate the impact of workspace reduction on employee interpersonal interactions and meeting behavior in a controlled setting. Specifically, the study tested a reduction in formal meeting spaces by 79.3%, resulting in an overall decrease of 26.7% in the total workspace area. The utilization rate methodology, which was established in the first study, was utilized to evaluate the effects of workspace reduction. The study’s results revealed that while the occupancy of social spaces increased significantly, the hourly utilization rate of the remaining formal meeting spaces in the open-plan environment remained the same. In other words, the formal meeting spaces were used for the same time per day as before the workspace reduction. Additionally, the duration of meetings held in the formal meeting spaces decreased, with a rise in the proportion of short meetings (30 minutes or less) and a decrease in the number of lengthy meetings (1.5 hours or more). Furthermore, teams were more inclined to utilize the meeting rooms for collaborative purposes rather than individual use.

The two studies above provide valuable insights into optimizing workplace spaces by utilizing occupancy and employee interaction data. The conclusions of these studies offer a comprehensive framework for architects and corporate real estate professionals to evaluate workplace performance and identify redundant spaces. Furthermore, to advance the understanding of the effects of spatial reduction on employee interaction behavior, a comprehensive set of de-identified datasets, including 456,451 records of interactions and the building information model of the space, extracted from the second study, has been made available for use by other researchers.

Advisor: Martin Bechthold

Abstract

Clay, just like other natural, paste-like materials, offers a potential reduction in the embodied CO2 that the production of buildings using conventional materials emits, yet its large tolerances during printing remain an obstacle. In paste-based 3D printing, the material dries and shrinks at unpredictable rates while new layers continue to be deposited, causing increased self-weight onto the lower layers that are subjected to variable displacement. The ability to anticipate and correct the complex material behavior during the extrusion process is important in the effort to achieve accurate building components and assembly. While a possible approach is highly specialized models or workflows guiding designers to understand and model material and process variances, comprehensive models or workflows dealing with the nonlinearity of paste-based 3D printing processes are still lacking. Nonetheless, these processes promise efficient, waste-free, and sustainable production workflows at the architectural and building scale. This dissertation investigates how computational techniques based on machine learning models can enable rapid assessment and calibration of design solutions before fabrication, allowing for the prediction and simulation of final geometrical outcomes for accurate printing. The research contributes to digital fabrication by connecting digital design processes with material outcomes through a data-centered framework that leverages machine learning in novel ways. The framework offers: 1) a scanning method for a real-time calibration workflow that corrects the printing trajectories of the design object and serves as a rapid data-collection technique for machine learning applications; 2) a method for building an optimized dataset to evaluate the printability of design solutions; and 3) a method for training neural network models to calibrate the printing trajectories before fabrication. Tested in the context of clay lattice printing, an unorthodox extrusion scenario characterized by a large feature space and high material uncertainty, the framework demonstrated the ability to evaluate and calibrate the toolpath geometry of clay lattices with sufficient accuracy for manufacturing while using minimal resources, presenting an important step toward next-generation solutions for sustainable 3D printing.

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

This dissertation is about urban conservation and the matter of agency in post-WWII urban reconstruction. As a contested field where various interpretations of the past, competing interests in the present, and divergent expectations for the future entangle with one another, urban conservation rarely proceeds without twists and turns. Some ideas might be appealing in the early process of urban conservation but lose their luster after they play out. Some ideas might assume a marginal role on the initial stage of a project but become increasingly important as the project develops. Ideas are often not considered agents of change because there is an illusion that agency, or the capacity to wield influence, is exclusive to humans. To uncover the active role of ideas in urban conservation, this dissertation examines the reconstruction of Rotterdam, Warsaw, and Tokyo, which were all severely ravaged by the Second World War but were each rebuilt differently. How did the ideas for the city become agents that profoundly reshaped the cities during post-war reconstruction? How did transactions and communications among various agents contribute to accepting some ideas that were previously marginalized while abandoning others that were previously celebrated? How did these turnarounds happen? Through what agency was each war-torn city rebuilt in a particular way? Drawing upon the works of Bruno Latour, this dissertation explores these questions to reveal that ideas can be agents of change in urban conservation. Only through interactions with humans and nonhumans can ideas reshape the built environment. As evidenced by the case studies of the three cities, some views of urban conservation have proved untenable. Nonhumans render it obsolete to take an anthropocentric view of urban conservation and material objects cast a discursive view into doubt. To enhance the efficacy of design in addressing conflicts and complexities inherent in urban conservation, it is useful to take an agentic view which emphasizes the matter of agency. By examining humans and nonhumans as agents of change on equal terms, this view focuses on the differences they make during urban conservation rather than the differences between them. This view also rejects seeing the material through the prism of the social and cultural, or vice versa, and collapses such hierarchy to provide a fresh outlook on urban conservation.

Advisor: Diane Davis

Abstract

Infrastructural corridors of circulation and connectivity form the backbone of the colonial project of modernity, facilitating its rise, expansion, and domination over the past centuries. Contrary to the spatial imaginaries of the unhindered and smooth circulation spaces of commodities, energetics, wealth, and cargo, these global corridors are fragile zones that operate across multiple scales and temporalities of bordered and militarized circulation. This dissertation focuses primarily on the cracks and fissures of corridor infrastructures as they become entangled with postcolonial migratory moves and their creative inhabitation of these spaces for survival in the project of western modernity. Specifically, it focuses on Europe’s post-2015 self-declared migration crisis through the framework of three corridor geographies of migration and bordering: the western, central, and eastern Mediterranean corridors. Instead of a linear projection of corridor geographies, this dissertation argues for the uneven and patchworked nature of these spaces which consists of the strategic coming together of nodes, lines, and zones of simultaneous bordering and circulation. Furthermore, this work argues for the nonlinear and circular understanding of the timespace of the migratory vernacular as it manifests against the horizontality of the modern corridor ontology of unlimited extractivism and commodification of bodies and nature. In conclusion, this project by closely examining infrastructural spaces of circulation sheds new light on the less studied in-between condition of the postcolonial migratory subject: her extended liminality of nondeparture (always of there) and nonarrival (never of here).

Advisor: Niall Kirkwood

Abstract

The focus of this study is Ulsan City, one of South Korea’s largest hydrogen producers and consumers, and its collaboration with local industries to generate both grey and blue hydrogen as alternative energy source to reduce its carbon footprint sources by 2030. Using lifecycle and material flow analysis, the study reveals that the city’s 2030 hydrogen targets will likely increase its dependency on LNG, leading to increased water consumption and CO2 emissions compared to levels recorded in 2019. Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), a prominent industry player in Ulsan City, has also pledged hydrogen production to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel in the near future. The lifecycle analysis for transitioning from fossil fuel consumption to waste-to-hydrogen generation at HHI points towards a significant reduction in the overall environmental impact. A multi-criteria decision-making model was utilized to assess HHI and Ulsan City stakeholders’ alignment with the national hydrogen goal in terms of their renewable energy preferences. The findings point to a preference for grey and blue hydrogen due to their lower operational costs, and a lack of sufficient support for other cleaner hydrogen such as waste-to-hydrogen and green hydrogen technologies. In conclusion, the study explores the spatial and planning aspects in the Dong-gu area relating to waste-to-energy planning. It advocates for a behavioral change model for future industrial and municipal leaders and emphasizes the need to capitalize on local resources in scenarios where a decentralized energy hub is established in each community in Dong-gu area. This is particularly important in the event of potential deindustrialization of Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan City in the near future.

Advisor: Ann Forsyth

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore the community development work of three prominent African American artists who have used arts-based real estate development to create positive change in their neighborhoods. Through a multiple case study approach, I investigate the real estate, design, and artistic actions that led to the creation of these projects and if there were social benefits that followed. These benefits include social cohesion, adherence to social health determinants, minimization of displacement, and the perception of a strong cultural identity for each neighborhood. By comparing the work of all three artists, I gain insights from community partners, residents, and those within the organizations.

The first chapter of my dissertation highlights the importance of arts in city and neighborhood development and government policies to aid vulnerable communities. The second chapter reviews scholarly literature on the relationship between artists, neighborhood change, and development. In the third chapter, I discuss my research methods and evaluate the benefits and limitations of the case study approach. Chapter four investigates each artist and their organization, exploring their creative practices, the motivations behind their projects, and the real estate actions that made them possible. I examine neighborhood dynamics and the perceived impacts of these projects, discussing the opportunities and challenges they present. In the fifth chapter, I critically analyze the effects of these projects. In the final chapter, I draw conclusions and highlight areas for further research. While these arts-based development projects have positively impacted their neighborhoods, it is essential to note the challenges of maintaining an arts-led community organization. Ultimately, these projects cannot please everyone, but their benefits are far reaching including improved social cohesion and cultural preservation.

Advisor: Jerold Kayden

Abstract

The Massachusetts Community Preservation Act (CPA), enacted in 2000, provides a dedicated funding source for local open space and recreation, historic preservation, and affordable housing initiatives. CPA authorizes local governments to impose real estate tax surcharges to fund eligible programs and projects, with the state offering matching funds from its Community Preservation Trust Fund to incentivize participation. In its 22-year history, the CPA has generated $3.15 billion in total funding for participating municipalities, with over $1 billion allocated to affordable housing activities, resulting in more than 10,000 new housing units and an additional 16,500 units subsidized by CPA-funded programs. While some CPA jurisdictions have effectively utilized the program to make significant investments in affordable housing, half of participating municipalities are consistently unable to appropriate even the minimum required percentage for this purpose.  Drawing on insights from an empirical analysis of more than 1,000 affordable housing appropriations funded by the CPA from 2018 to 2022, the dissertation outlines municipal affordable housing strategies that offer viable funding options for diverse local CPA budgets and community contexts.   It also highlights the flexibility of CPA funding to cater to a broader range of household incomes than other municipal, state, and federal affordable housing programs.   It further emphasizes the critical role played by municipal CPA funding awards in demonstrating the local financial commitment required to leverage additional state and federal housing subsidies needed to undertake more ambitious affordable housing projects and programs. In light of Massachusetts’s escalating housing crisis, the dissertation advocates for enhanced state oversight of local CPA programs as well as policy reforms than can enable CPA municipalities to achieve greater impact with their affordable housing appropriations by funding regional projects.  Pursuing these strategies could bolster the Community Preservation Act’s capacity to subsidize an even greater number of affordable housing projects and programs than it has to date.

Advisor: Richard Peiser

Abstract

The global housing affordability crisis has reached critical proportions in major cities like New York and Taipei, where soaring housing prices have placed immense pressure on homebuyers and residents. Governments worldwide are actively seeking effective solutions, with property tax emerging as a commonly employed approach due to the regulatory powers governments possess in tax systems. New York State initiated property tax caps in 2012, known as the levy cap, which restrained property tax levy growth to either 2% or the inflation rate. In contrast, Taipei City introduced distinct measures, namely the Hoarding Tax, in 2014, aiming to encourage property hoarders to release vacant units into the housing market. These divergent approaches raise critical questions: What motivated these cities to adopt such contrasting policies, and what are the outcomes in terms of housing affordability?

This dissertation contributes to the discourse by conducting semi-structured interviews, validating hypotheses through interrupted time series (ITS) and Difference-in-Differences (DID) analyses, and offering insights into the effectiveness of property tax caps at the regional or district level. Our quantitative models indicate the potential for property tax caps to raise housing prices, but the Hoarding Tax’s intended objectives were not fully realized. Surprisingly, the Hoarding Tax did not effectively mitigate inflation and appeared to facilitate the transfer of the tax burden from sellers to homebuyers, leading to higher prices in most areas. This study contextualizes these findings within market, cultural, and governance factors unique to each case, offering comprehensive insights into policy effects and their underlying rationales, decisions, and multifaceted implications.

Advisor: Holly Samuelson

Abstract

During the pandemic, millions of workers transitioned from working in office buildings to working at home, bringing into focus worker perceptions of their physical work environment. Currently, limited data is available on the role of the physical work environment on biopsychosocial aspects of worker well-being in home and office (hybrid) workplaces. Additionally, utilization of complex statistical tools for quantifying the impact of the interaction of multiple workplace spatial attributes using a holistic, systems-based approach has also not been fully explored. Machine learning tools hold great potential for understanding occupant behavior and predicting human perceptions in future scenarios. This research analyzed workplace design using a data-driven approach to measure and model the impact of spatial attributes of home and office workplaces on perceived productivity, physical activity, comfort, and sense of connection. In the first study, a nationwide survey  (N=617) administered during the pandemic indicated that overall perceived work performance was higher at the office, while perceived well-being and comfort were higher when working at home. Machine learning models found that temperature, noise, and furniture were the best predictors of work performance, while access to amenities and the outdoors predicted physical activity and social interaction. To complement the birds-eye snapshot of the large-scale survey, a small-scale study (N=15) involving fine-grained wearable data and qualitative assessments examined participants working in a hybrid situation. Real time data from wearable devices revealed that participants had significantly greater step counts on days when they worked in an office. Machine learning models also showed that stair use, time spent walking while commuting to office or during breaks at home were significant predictors of increased daily step count. Lastly, the third study developed a framework to computationally create architectural images of workplaces and crowdsource perceptions (N=23,820) of productivity, comfort, and connection to coworkers. The machine learning models trained in this study predicted perceptions of new, “unseen” office workplace images based on spatial attributes present in the image.   Insights from the studies can inform the design of future workplaces that optimize the benefits of working at home and in an office to promote health and well-being. Moreover, the novel user-perception-informed methodology developed through this research can serve as a pioneering framework for designers to better understand and predict the impact of their yet-unbuilt environments.

Advisor: Carole Voulgaris

Abstract

Urban scholars can now investigate complex phenomena on a larger scale and with lower costs, thanks to the advancements in big data collection and analyses. Among these data sources, social media data has been argued to be very useful for understanding human behavior and opinions. However, despite the considerable efforts in gathering and analyzing this emerging data source and the intense critics of its poor representation and potential biases, rare efforts have been made to compare the results generated by social media data and those revealed by other research methods. My dissertation lays out a research framework to explore the potentials and limitations of large-scale social media data in capturing and understanding human behavior, compared to traditional fieldwork methods (e.g., observation). Focusing on park use behavior, an essential pathway linking the built environment with human well-being outcomes, I extract behavior metrics from social media data using state-of-the-art machine learning models, triangulate social media-based results via systematic fieldwork, investigate how and why the discrepancies emerge, and propose responsible ways to deal with them. This study aims to create a heuristic about how to appropriately apply new technology for the betterment of cities and society.

Advisor: Martin Bechthold

Abstract

As populations rise, the global building stock is predicted to double in floor area in the next 40 years. As a result, the embodied carbon footprint of the construction industry, which the UN has estimated to be 11% of global emissions, becomes a critical impasse in attempts to confront the climate crisis. This dissertation attempts to develop a new material system to address the issue of embodied carbon in construction from both a top-down ecosystem and a bottom-up material perspective. A circular approach to the cultivation of carbon-sequestering microalgal biomass is proposed, and the research develops the technological capacities to 3D print the micron-sized biomass into structural objects. After optimization, the final algae-based material features similar mechanical properties to engineered wood products. The proposed systems exhibit a negative upfront carbon footprint, as the carbon dioxide absorbed by the algae through photosynthesis outweighs the cultivation and manufacturing emissions. Furthermore, analysis shows an immense capacity to grow this biomass as a part of nutrient recovery systems. The dissertation points towards a possible future in which architecture itself is used as a carbon sequestration device, storing tons of atmospheric carbon for the lifetime of the material.

Advisor: Martin Bechthold

Abstract

In this thesis, I take a post-cognitivist view of design and use eye-tracking to study the oculomotor behavior of architects during different exploratory model-making activities. My interest is to determine to what extent eye movements may yield a useful low-level, fine-grained understanding of design cognition in exploratory model making. I do this by designing and conducting a mixed-methods, observational exploratory eye-tracking study. The study consists of a series of block assembly tasks that are increasingly complex from a design standpoint. I develop a multi-tier coding scheme and propose original metrics that link eye movements, hand motoric action, and design operations together. By doing so, I show the unique opportunities that eye-tracking methods offer to the understanding of design cognition in exploratory model making ;furthermore, I outline a set of preliminary hypotheses about the role of eye movements in exploratory model making to inform future research in this topic.

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates the idea of the block and its manifestations in the socio-spatial development of the modern Chinese city—particularly from the 1950s onward. It delineates the existing discourse of the block and renews its idea against the continuity and transition of modern China. The underlying argument this dissertation puts forward is that, as opposed to conceiving the block as a modernist development directly imported from the West, the architectural and urban operations, together with its socio-political processes in modern China, constitute a rather internal yet continuous logic in understanding the Chinese city. By introducing the dialectical logic of tongbian that encompasses continuity through change, this dissertation examines one of the most canonical Chinese cities—Xi’an—as a case study by focusing on its planning practices in the transitional periods of the 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s, alongside the urban and architectural developments of the Xi’an Textile City project. It maps out the trajectory of Xi’an’s urban form and the role of block in the modern era while foregrounding its transitional episodes through major urban and architectural projects, policies, and socio-cultural practices. In doing so, the idea of the block and the modern Chinese city is theorized through three key propositions: First, it interrogates the concept of the block against its realities—the developments and nuances manifested in specific architectural, urban, and social configurations in China. In doing so, it defines the concept of the block in modern Chinese cities as two specific models: the perimeter-block and the parallel-block, and reconsiders such concept as a modern iteration of a long-existing and continuous socio-spatial construct in the Chinese city. Second, it concerns the block in modern China as an essential planning apparatus in cultivating a common socio-spatial framework, one that is informed by both the continuity of its internal cultural logic and the transitions of specific socio-political conditions, strategies, and practices at moments in time. Third, it postulates the idea of the modern Chinese city as one that spatializes the social collective and encompasses the ‘largeness’, ‘multiplicity’, and ‘bounded figure’ in constituting the architecture for the collective, which remains consistent with the idea of the Chinese city as a continuous cultural project at large and has the possibility to be charted towards a renewed model of urban and architectural production for the future.

Advisor: Ali Malkawi

Abstract

Form-finding in the current performance-driven design methodology of architectural design is typically formulated as a design optimization problem. Although effective in engineering or late-stage design problems, optimization is not suitable for the exploratory design phase due to the time intensity and cognitive load associated with the processes involved in the formulation and solution of optimization problems. The iterative, diverging nature of early-phase design is incompatible with the i) cognitive load of parametric modeling and its limited affordances for conceptual changes, ii) time and resource intensity of simulations, iii) interpretability of optimization results. This thesis suggests a framework for generating optimal performance geometries within an intuitive and interactive modeling environment in real-time. The framework includes the preparation of a synthetic dataset, modeling its probability distribution using generative models, and sampling the learned distribution under given constraints. The several components are elaborated through a case study of building form optimization for passive solar gain in Boston, MA, for a wide range of plot shapes and surroundings. Apart from the overall framework, this thesis contributes a series of methods that enable its implementation. A geometric system of orientable cuboids is introduced as a generalizable, granular modeling vocabulary. A method for efficient boundary condition sampling is suggested for the dataset preparation. A Variational Autoencoder (VAE) is extended for performance-aware geometry generation using performance-related loss functions. A series of techniques inspired by the data-imputation literature is introduced to generate optimal geometries under constraints. Last, a prototype is presented that demonstrates the abilities of a system based on the suggested framework.

Advisor: K. Michael Hays

Abstract

Despite obvious distortion and intentional biases, heritage has a history. When did a particular heritage story arise? Why did it arise at that time? What purposes does it serve? Using archival and ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the power interplay and conflicts between UNESCO’s Outstanding Universal Values, Chinese nationalistic discourses and practices of heritage, and local responses from a perspective of authenticity construction. The research is conducted through a careful examination of spatial and socio-cultural changes at two Chinese sites: Quanzhou World Heritage Sites in Fujian Province and the Taoxichuan Creative Park in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province. By dissecting the construction of discursive authenticity, affectionate authenticity, and living authenticity, I argue that authenticity and the consequent heritage conservation practices are inevitably political because there is always a failure of mapping the living cultural practices onto the authorized heritage discourses/doctrines. In contrast to a binary thinking in the prevalent heritage studies adopt, the contemporary Chinese heritage practices show us there is less of a clear demarcation between the majority and the minority, the ruler and the ruled, the elite and the common folk, etc. Thus, by thinking across scales and looking beyond the legibility project of the state, this dissertation analyzes how the socio-cultural and political agents have empowered themselves to muddle through the contemporary Chinese heritagization process and the power geometry of it. A porous discursive mechanism of authenticity is the tie and the means for weaving the power web.

The following questions are addressed in this dissertation to reveal the underlying power structure behind contemporary China’s use of heritage and history: How does UNESCO intersect with different levels of the Chinese government to affect the narratives and spatial and socio-cultural character of the heritage site? What kinds of spatial interventions are imposed on the heritage site and how do the spatial changes inform socio-cultural changes on the heritage site? How are different levels of governments, local social groups, and conservation experts engaged in the formation of heritage narratives and spatial practices? What different roles do they play in the knowledge production of heritage?

Advisor: Ali Malkawi

Abstract

Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) have become more prominent in the building, architecture, and construction industries. One area ideally suited to exploit this powerful new technology is building performance simulation (BPS) for sustainable building design. Physics-based models have traditionally been used to estimate the energy flow, air movement, and heat balance of buildings. The algorithms behind physics-based models, however, involve solving complex differential equations that require many assumptions, significant computational power, and a considerable amount of time to output predictions. With the advent of DL, which can handle large amounts of computation in a short period of time, data-driven models for predicting the physical properties of buildings are becoming increasingly popular due to their simplicity and efficiency. As such, artificial neural networks (ANNs) with measured or simulated data for environmental analysis are likely to be a more feasible option for designers during the early design phase. To train ANN models, 3D data is an asset to computer vision because they provide rich information about the geometry and the related environment. Depending on the 3D data representation considered, different challenges may emerge when using trained ANN models. Hence, an interoperability framework is required for converting building geometries and environment-related information into relevant 3D matrices for model training and utilization. However, to date there has been no research on this topic in the BPS field; thus, this research proposes a new data interoperability framework for ANN models with 3D buildings serving as inputs. The framework has been subjected to a trial investigation using several ANN modeling studies on radiation and airflow simulation. The result is a comprehensive process map that includes the BPS requirement for ANN modeling, related subprocesses (i.e., building geometry and environmental levels), specific rules and methods for modeling, and processing of input and output data. To accomplish this, data exchangers for the ANN models, geometry representation tool (GRT), and BIM specification tool (BST) were introduced and developed as computational tools. The comprehensive framework has been validated using the developed case studies, demonstrating its applicability for different Computer-aided design tools (i.e., Rhinoceros and Revit) and ANN models (i.e., radiation and airflow) and illustrating the future capacity of integrated ANNs to serve as a tool for use in BPS and early-stage modeling.

Advisor: Antoine Picon

Abstract

This dissertation explores the digital transformation of urban governance, the city and its governing institutions, and its dynamic relationship with urban restructuring and economic development. As digital transformation policies expand in the political agendas of local governments of various sizes and socioeconomic backgrounds, the in-depth and up-close study of existing smart cities becomes critical to understand, challenge, and improve this policy instrument. The dissertation asks: how path-dependent is the digital transformation of governance in a mid-size American city? To set the analytical framework for the empirical inquiry, the research asks what policymaking context mainstreams digital governance institutions and whether digital governance is a new governance model or the continuation of existing models through new technological tools. In Syracuse, NY, a mid-size and post-industrial city, which serves as the contextual focus of this research, the digital transformation policy agenda is instrumentalized to reverse the urban and economic decline through Syracuse Surge, the city’s strategic plan for the growth in the New Economy. This research is enacted through four main lines of inquiry: first, investigating how digital transformation policy responded to the complexity of coordinating operationally autonomous yet systematically inter-dependent networks of individuals and organizations in a rapidly changing environment. Second, identifying actors, the symbolic media of communication such as money, law, and knowledge they use, and its efficiencies to create a shared agenda to advance urban governance transformation. Third, tracing moments of disjuncture that happen through accidents, errors, and disruptions due to the immaturity of the technological tools and methods and insufficiency of infrastructural and implementational capacity. And fourth, grounding the smart city spaces of visibility and related urban revitalization projects to pinpoint the change in intra-urban geographies of uneven development within capitalist production processes. The investigation brings together perspectives and methods from political science, critical governance and policy studies, and urban studies to bear upon some of the most pressing issues facing local governments and their constituents as cities transition towards emerging paradigms of digital transformation. The main finding is that the utopian rhetoric of the project did not correspond with the reality due to the lack of resources, problematic national regulations, organizational readiness, and co-ordination problems among multiple stakeholders and expectations. Therefore, the implementation of the policy agenda is highly context-specific and path-dependent. At the theoretical level, the research finds that even though the extant political and economic policymaking conditions have not changed, multiple interdependent actors, perspectives, and resources involved in the digital transformation policy agenda negotiation and implementation have changed the organizational settings and governing techniques. I conclude that the heterarchic urban governance that foregrounds and is forged by the instrumentalization of the digital transformation policy agenda captures the current changes in urban governance.

Advisor: Antoine Picon

Abstract

Energy consumption for building thermoregulation is a major contributor to the environmental impact of our built environment. Building envelope systems that actively tune their heat transfer rate in response to environmental stimuli and leverage the free energy the exterior environment has to offer, thus represent a promising solution to make building thermoregulation more energy efficient. This dissertation investigates the means and methods to develop façade systems that tune heat flow by drawing inspiration from nature and leveraging the unique properties of compliant materials. The research encompasses a wide range of highly complementary fields including thermodynamics, materials science, and soft actuators, all of which are framed within the context of employing nature’s design rules for tuning heat transfer and generating motion. From these interdisciplinary investigations, two novel thermoregulatory concepts are presented in the form of mechanically actuated designs made from the optically transparent elastomer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Inspired by the chromatophores in coleoid cephalopod skin, the first example is a novel infrared light-modulating technology constructed from a PDMS film with a thin gold surface coating. Inspired by the cutaneous cardiovascular system in endothermic homeotherms, the second example consists of a PDMS-based vascular device that modulates conductive and convective heat transfer. Through both experimental projects, the work investigated how to translate biological design principles into our own concepts for tunable systems, how to fabricate these systems, how they can be actuated, how to evaluate their performance, and where and how to apply them in our building envelopes to benefit building thermoregulation. To achieve these goals, the research encompasses an extensive literature review of the biological precedents, iterative and functional prototyping, and performance analysis through numerical modeling and experimentation. The results from these efforts demonstrate how the new concepts provide opportunities for optimizing heat transfer and utilizing freely available solar energy and wind, and consequently, significantly reducing energy use for building thermoregulation. Fundamentally, the work demonstrates how a design strategy that integrates science, technology, and design creates new design opportunities for façade systems with tunable heat transfer.

Advisor: Antoine Picon

Abstract

Efforts to forecast travel demand have led to the development of complex models which attempt to replicate human daily actions, choices, and movements. However, a growing body of literature suggests that the complexity of these models and their limited consideration of uncertainty have adversely affected their usefulness in the planning process. This dissertation argues that transportation planning should shift to methods that facilitate understanding and communication of uncertainty instead of relying on seemingly deterministic predictions of complex models. Two modeling paradigms – activity-based and scenario-based models are analyzed to show how they handle uncertainty in the case of assessing the travel impacts of autonomous vehicles.

Three metropolitan areas, Seattle, San Francisco, and the Detroit region, are used as case studies to estimate the impacts of autonomous vehicles on total travel and accessibility. The results of the activity-based modeling indicate that the effects of autonomous vehicles are different in different regions, primarily due to the differences in income, density, and access to public transit. While vehicle miles increase in all three regions, 17% in Seattle, 22% in the Bay Area, and 11% in Detroit, accessibility is highly dependent on the local context. The scenario-based model is not able to produce the results with this level of granularity. However, due to many unknowns associated with emerging technology, the scenario-based model proved to be better suited to incorporate various aspects of autonomous vehicles.

Beyond the estimates of travel impact, the results show that more informed planning can be achieved by moving away from deterministic forecasting and especially away from the urge to improve forecasting accuracy by building bigger models. Every piece of additional data and every additional parameter has an uncertainty cost that is compounded with the previous uncertainty costs. Instead, the modelers should aim to create more useful models by increasing the transparency of the modeling process and by reducing its complexity.

Advisor: Anita Berrizbeitia

Abstract

Physical planning has contributed to perpetuating spatial inequality in Caracas, Venezuela, a dynamic that has many parallelisms with other processes that result in social and economic inequalities in Latin America. The consequence has been the reduction of access to spatial opportunities for people living in Self-Produced Settlements. Working with a historical lens, this thesis aims to identify the reasons why this has happened. The study begins in 1657 with the founding of Caracas and culminates in the government of Hugo Chávez the first decade of the twenty-first century. The research highlights the end of the Guzmán Blanco period at the end of the nineteenth century when the government carried out the first national population census, and the experience of Banco Obrero, a federal institution created in 1928 focused on the subject of housing for underprivileged communities. To achieve this goal, this thesis proposes an index to measure spatial opportunities, and a methodology that applies the index to the analysis of government sponsored project as well as planning reports by federal agencies since the Venezuela oil-boom to our days. Self-Produced Neighborhoods are known worldwide as slums. This thesis understands them as a form of urban development that occurs when communities manage the construction of their neighborhoods with no prior planning but through an incremental yet effective system of self-organization. From the analysis of technological, accessibility, and other infrastructural networks for the case of Latin America, we conclude that Self Production is efficient for the progressive construction of housing although fundamentally deficient in its lack of access to networked infrastructure systems. Nevertheless, most planning strategies of divergent ideological approaches have assumed fragmented and localized perspectives in planning Self-Produced Neighborhoods by providing scattered and spatially disarticulated “points of resources,” most often aimed at the construction of housing units. Instead, this thesis proposes that the framework of Spatial Opportunities, when applied to Self-Produced Environments could result in the integration of these extensive parts of the city by prioritizing networked infrastructural systems over housing units. This instrument is hinged on the right to the city discourse, which posits that cities are environments that either allow or limit the development of the capabilities of their citizens, in which the networked access to the opportunities offered by the city is a fundamental variable.

Advisor: Ali Malkawi

Abstract

Natural ventilation (NV) is a sustainable building strategy that improves building energy efficiency, indoor thermal environment, and air quality. The successful implementation of natural ventilation relies on various factors, such as local climate, ambient air quality, floorplan, adjacent urban environment, window configuration, and urban noise. Among these factors, climate is the most influential one that determines the potential for natural ventilation, whereas the control of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system along with the window system becomes the most critical element for the successful natural ventilation in a given case, when only a few features are feasible to change. This dissertation investigates global natural ventilation potential through NV hours and cooling energy saving percentage and estimates China’s natural ventilation potential by taking into account the additional factor of ambient air pollution. The aggregated energy savings and carbon reductions were estimated at the city level across 35 major Chinese cities. This dissertation then focuses on developing optimal NV control strategies to coordinate window operations with HVAC systems, aiming for an optimized synergy to achieve minimal energy consumption and maximum thermal comfort. A reinforcement learning control strategy is proposed, which demonstrates better performance compared to the rule-based heuristic control in accommodating stochastic internal heat gain, maintaining steady indoor thermal comfort, and reducing HVAC system operation. Finally, the effectiveness of different levels of automation in NV control is tested in a variety of distinct climates. Specifically, spontaneous occupant manual control, informed occupant manual control, and fully automatic control (including rule-based heuristic control and model predictive control [MPC]) are evaluated. The results demonstrated the superiority of fully automatic control with MPC, which significantly enhances building energy efficiency and thermal performance. The findings from this dissertation provide information for architects, building owners, and policymakers to realize the potential for natural ventilation in buildings.

Advisor: Neil Brenner

Abstract

Nonhuman animals are a key parameter for processes of urbanization, but have been marginalized in both mainstream and critical frameworks of urban theory and design. This dissertation critically analyzes this proposition in relation to the history and theory of Western urbanization, using livestock production in the United States as a lens. Four core areas of engagement form the theoretical landscape of this analysis: the persistent nature/city binary in theory and design; modernity as an ideological force reifying city and nature in theory and practice; creative destruction as the propellant force driving machinations in the built environment; and, urban metabolism as a conceptualization of urbanization that offers a counter-narrative to fixed spatial boundaries. Each has played a prominent role in how we think about cities and urbanization in theory and design over the last hundred and fifty years.

Underpinning this exploration is a twofold hypothesis. First, while there has been vigorous debate over what constitutes ‘the urban’, an unexamined anthropocentric core in urban theory and allied design disciplines remains under explored, leaving nonhuman animals black-boxed. Second, while ‘nature’ has in recent years played new and larger roles in discourses like urban political ecology, landscape architecture, and architecture – its use in extant literature has tended to be narrowly focused, reducing the heterogeneity of the nonhuman to an undifferentiated mass. This dissertation argues that the coupled reduction of nature as roughly synonymous to being ‘green’, with the black-boxing of nonhuman animals, produces serious epistemological, analytical, and empirical blind spots in our understanding of urbanization. If we are to take seriously the possibility that we have entered a period of generalized urbanization – a period in need of an urban theory without an outside – then we necessarily need to bring nonhuman animals into our frame of reference, and work to incorporate them into our conceptual and theoretical apparatus.

Organized around thematic concerns that foregrounds livestock bodies as a register in which cycles of capitalist urbanization in the United States can be understood, dung, death, and disease are explored to gain analytical clarity with regard to the proposition that nonhuman animals have been, and continue to be, important to processes of urbanization. The position developed in the pages to follow is that ‘urban’, ‘nature’, and ‘urban nature’ operates beyond ‘good’ nature, and that the metabolic processes and biological labor of livestock – a kind of ‘bad’ nature – pulse through the creative destruction of the urban fabric. By illuminating these dimensions of the ‘urban’, ‘nature’, and ‘urban nature’, we can begin to render into existence a theory of urbanization as processes formed through manifold and intersecting human and nonhuman worlds.

Advisor: Charles Waldheim

Abstract

The present historical condition has been characterized by the impasse between two seemingly opposing narratives, one of modernization, mastery, and progress (usually associated to economic growth), and another of interdependence, precaution, and balance (usually associated to ecological integrity). In addressing the relationship between design and ecology, this dissertation’s aims are threefold. First, it problematizes the relationship between design and ecology defined by the apparently self-evident discourse of mainstream environmentalism developed since the seventies around the institutional notion of sustainability. The dissertation reveals how ecology, in its different acceptations (as a scientific field, a synonym for environmentalism, and a particular worldview) played a central role in the processes of de-politicization and re-politicization of design discourse, first as a cultural metaphor in the theoretical writings of the late 1990s and early 2000s, then as the result from the maturation of political ecology accelerated by the Global Financial Crash of 2007-9. Second, drawing from a comparative literature analysis of representative texts from different bodies of ecological scholarship (environmentalism, techno-managerialism, political ecology, and ecological philosophy), the dissertation probes the limits of different instances of the ecological metaphor and the effect these have on the construction of political narratives. Third, the dissertation rearticulates the relationship between design and ecology (now understood as an aesthetic as much as a political problem) asserting that the current cultural impasse can be overcome if politico-ecologic problems are restated as design problems.

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

This dissertation questioned the tendency toward varied architectural forms in US housing projects, given that the function of the public housing program evolved over time. This work contributed to existing studies on public housing by driving at the heterogeneity in the architecture hit by the forces at play—ideological, political, racial, and economic—echoing certain norms prevalent in the nation’s urban centers. In other words, beneath the story of variation in US housing project designs, the architecture reflected and expressed ‘cultural moments,’ defined here as the temporary alignment of beliefs about society, politics, the economy, and architecture that prevailed at periods of time.
The investigative lens used in this study—the concept of cultural moments—extended conceptual frameworks on historical progressions to the architecture of public housing—notably, geographer Peter Taylor’s (1999) ‘prime modernities’, and, alternatively, ‘modernity’ in the work of historian Miriam Levin et al (2010). The methodology employed was case study-based, a qualitative research design which combined historical, cultural, and architectural analyses. The dissertation’s core methods relied on archival research, architectural precedent study, the generation of interpretive drawings, census data, and four in-depth interviews. To answer the research question, the study investigated three housing projects illustrative of their milieux—subdivided into three chapters. These projects were Langston Terrace in Washington, DC, Schuylkill Falls in Philadelphia, and Centennial Place in Atlanta. The three projects were chosen because they reflected housing project design’s evolution, representing critical periods of intensification in the history of public housing—the 1930s, 1950s and 1990s. The methodology interrogated the key reasons why, in each period, abrupt shifts in American’s attitudes toward low-income housing provision followed a pattern of breaking with the past.
Our findings showed that political forces lie beneath the variation in US housing project designs in nearly every aspect of their creation. The findings also revealed that integral to each cultural moment were change agents and their motivations—political, social, and economic—shaping the architecture. Third and most important, our findings underscored that hybrids in style and form, embodying their cultural moments, were indispensable to America’s housing officials in achieving social good when little consensus existed. Architectural hybrids defined in this dissertation—the combination of any historical style in a single project—resulted from the necessary convergence of competing claims about location, projects’ financing, construction, and tenantry, spread across a wide range of stakeholders’ opinions. Taken together, our findings show that housing project design, by nature, was an iterative process shaped by the times.

Advisor: Charles Waldheim

Abstract

Every building, infrastructure, or city is the spatial manifestation of metabolizing multiple materials, energy, labor relations, and capital investments from local and distant sources. Yet, an overemphasis on specific sites or projects easily obscures these metabolic interdependencies at a broader scale. Working on urban metabolism concepts, this dissertation examines the role of design in regulating how materials and energy flows circulate, metabolize, and produce urban form. It articulates how the separate realms of extraction, production, circulation, accumulation, and disposal of metabolic flows are integral and generative for design. It elucidates a critical position for design discourse and practice through a boundary-exploding inquiry of transcalar feedback loops between design projects and their life-supporting spaces. Selecting wood as the metabolic flow of analysis examines how the laborious effort of orchestrating its associated social and ecological processes can enable designers to engage with urgent problematiques of anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric concern.

Articulated via the concept of metabolic urbanism, this dissertation proceeds in three parts: epistemologies, lineages, and prospects. Part I offers an intellectual history of the epistemologies of urban metabolism by different scholarly clusters. Part II re-examines an intradisciplinary lineage of design discourses, models, and interventions driven by metabolic considerations. Finally, Part III reflects on metabolically significant design prospects where wood, as one critical flow of urbanization, plays a key role. Metabolic urbanism critically advances the knowledge of urban metabolism in design by following the intricate flows that comprise the urban fabric at a planetary scale. It articulates the discursive and projective potentials of architecture and urbanism when shaped by metabolic transcalar interdependencies.

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

During China’s thirty years planned economy era (1949-1978), including the following two decades, the work-unit system has played a significant role in the country and has effectively promoted its economic growth by virtue of the system’s combined political, economic and social functions. However, as the domestic and international environment changed around the 1980s, the government slowly abandoned the work-unit system after deeming it an impediment to the country’s modernization. While the policies could be implemented quickly, the system’s physical space, which mostly consists of the working quarter and the living quarter, was not so easily erased. In reality, because of the economic situation’ limitations and the political priorities concerning the working quarter redevelopment in the reform’s early stage in the country, there has appeared a separation of working and living, and a lag of the work-unit community (the living quarter) development in the country. While large numbers of working quarters have been regenerated, relocated or demolished, and lots of researches have been done on the work-unit redevelopment, the majority of which are centered around the working quarter, most of the work-unit community are left behind and faced with the lash of the market economy, rapid urban development and physical deterioration on their own. Today, forty years have passed since the 1978 economic reform, due to all kinds of changes that have happened in the country, such as the new economic situation, urban sprawl and the existing stock-based development policy, there now exists a viable housing stock in the work-unit community area and it would be necessary and enforceable to retrofit them. In this context, in order to fill the gap of the work-unit community study in the country, to provide innovative research ideas and methodologies for the field, to provide strategic support for the national existing stock-based development policy, and to enrich the research on work-units in the second-tier cities of the country, this research aims to explore reasonable and applicable retrofitting strategies that would follow the inner self-organizing logic of the work-unit community. This will be done by studying both the administrative and morphological evolution of specific work-unit community cases in Nanjing, with the self-organization theory as a supporting theory and the typo-morphology approach as the primary physically-oriented methodology. In summary, administratively, residents’ sense of autonomy is the key to the retrofitting of the work-unit community. In the meanwhile, other participants in the community management should assist residents in the process, especially the street office, residents’ committee, planners and designers. Morphologically, three main retrofitting strategies are finally proposed. Namely, to increase the degree of openness in a limited way, to improve the competition mechanism in the work-unit community, and to focus on variable retrofitting strategies.

Advisor: Charles Waldheim

Abstract

This dissertation introduces urbanism to the discourse on autonomy within design. Autonomy is a critical method in design, engaging the social, economic, political, racial, gender, or environmental tensions derived from the processes of urbanization. The introduction of autonomy into architecture in the 1930s created a design system sensitive to cultural phenomena. However, architectural autonomy gradually departed from social, cultural, human, and urban conditions as the century matured. The social and cultural unrest in the second half of the twentieth century precipitated the use, and abuse, of the term, acting as a catalyst to redefine the disciplinary parameters of architecture. When autonomous discourse within architecture reappeared, it overemphasized architectural form to counter the commodification of culture, the professionalism of architecture, reliance on quantitative methods, and the degradation of the modern city. But the impulsive conception of autonomous architecture remained prevalent, condemning the term’s cultural and historical formation to oblivion, leading to the alienation of disciplinary knowledge over time.

This dissertation offers a critical reconsideration of the evolution of the term within the design fields, from its initial formulation in the eighteenth century by Immanuel Kant (autonomy of the will), to its introduction to architecture by the art historian Emil Kaufmann (autonomen Architektur) in 1933, to the successive interpretations of architectural autonomy in Europe and the United States. In contrast to etymological wisdom, Kant’s “autonomy of the will” implies engagement rather than detachment. The Kantian autonomy influenced the construction of the modern consciousness of the Western individual as both cause and consequence of eighteenth-century social and political changes, such as the French Revolution. Autonomy’s influence on aesthetics, political theory, and architecture during the subsequent centuries attests to its importance as a reflection on our cultural successes and failures. Nevertheless, the design fields often omit that autonomy implies a productive tension between individual and collective aspirations. Galileo Galilei’s use of the telescope promoted the autonomy of the modern individual. Scientific discoveries expanded our knowledge of the external world (Galileo’s telescope) and motivated the philosophical exploration of our inner selves (Kant’s epistemology). With these examples in mind, the more we look outside ourselves, the more we need to look inside ourselves. We have developed a critique within architecture (architectural criticism) but not a self-critique. Instead, it is a critique of design by design through our engagement with the urban condition. This self-awareness redefines the terms of our engagement as individuals, designers, or members of society with the world. Thus, the more design explores the urban reality, the more it needs to reevaluate the premises of its disciplinary engagement with the urban condition.

Individuality is not individualism. The general maxim of autonomy is that (disciplinary) self-governance is sensitive to social, cultural, human, and urban conditions despite, paradoxically, its rebuttal of cultural and historical determinism. The alliance between Urbanism and Autonomy adopts the artist’s critical eye and rejects the supposed moral superiority of the religious and non-religious priest. In contrast, this dissertation aspires to operate in a social space that escapes the jurisdiction of traditional disciplines or the aesthetic blindness of dogmatic critiques. This effort advocates an epistemological search, through cinematic language, for new knowledge, experiences, methods, contents, contexts, and aesthetics.

Advisor: Alex Krieger

Abstract

The capacity of health care has transcended the provision of medical care in the past decades. Consumption associated with public and private spending on health care, as well as innovation produced by advancement in biotechnology, have together constantly reshaped the socio-economic order and urban landscape of cities. In the United States, health care is an urban asset that transforms the urban economy from the industrial past to the knowledge economy around life sciences. This economic transformation has produced medical cities that aggregate medical, university, and research institutions in cities. As an international counterpart, medical cities in China originated from a vastly different socio-political background. The changing demography and central leadership’s policy directives promoting various aspects of health have created opportunities for the government and real estate developers to build various forms of medical cities to mobilize resources from the market, universities, and medical institutions. As the semantic definitions of “medical city” have departed in the distinct institutional contexts in the United States and China, their practical experiences should also be contradistinguished.

This dissertation aims at offering insights into medical cities in the United States and China, and contextualizes them in the different institutional, political, and economic environments. The research concerns the differences between medical cities in the two countries and explores the underlying factors that have shaped these differences. It proposes the “Knowledge-Material Circuit” to examine the significance of American medical cities, and the “Institutionalized Spatial Practice” to unfold the complexities of medical cities in China. Supported by comparative studies of four case studies in Boston, Houston, Beijing, and Shanghai, medical cities are situated in their wider narratives of the transforming economy, the shifting realm of urban governance, the varying degree of civic engagement, and the changing perception of the civic-health relationship. Drawing upon the findings, recommendations are made to address the future path of medical cities.

The research finds that medical city in the U.S. is a reaction to the public and private, for-profit and non-profit interests of the health care system, a result of the state, market, and civic leadership, a culmination of place-based policies by the entrepreneurial states, and a representation of the spatial concentration of knowledge production and innovation. Medical city in China is a result of the changing state-market interests, a contestation between central and local governments, a trophy to inter-local competitions, an instrumentalized mega project to mobilize state resources, a negotiation between the public and private hospitals, and an experiment for the health care system under reforms. The significance of medical city extends beyond its physical planning and urban form – its interpretation has to be embedded in the dialogues among various participants from the state and the market, from the public and the private.

Advisor: Neil Brenner

Abstract

Nature State: Incentivized Forests in Southern Ontario investigates the rapid growth of voluntary private land conservation efforts in suburban and rural Ontario, focusing on the rise of incentivized management from the mid-1990s until present day. Using a mixed methods approach the study combines semi-structured interviews, archival research, and GIS analysis with case studies in southern Ontario. This research considers the coevolution of new taxation schemes for conservation, devolved governance, and privatized approaches to owning land and resources. In particular, this work examines the growing use of programs such as the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program in order to manage environmental change and biodiversity of forested lands within an extended urban fabric. Incentivized environmental management raises important questions about the growing interdependence between suburban land conservation and urban housing affordability, the changing scales of stewardship, and the increasing role of finance in land conservation. My findings reveal the development of new actor assemblages and knowledge geographies that have come about due to the transfer of forest management activities from the state to landowners, the new spatialities of protected areas and their land use dynamics, as well as the integrated role of civil society and stewardship in addressing urban climate futures.

Advisor: Ann Forsyth

Abstract

This dissertation examines how design teams have created and users have occupied spaces intended to support interdisciplinary collaboration, connections to the community, and innovation activity on higher education academic campuses. It combines several forms of investigation, including a review of academic and professional literature, an inventory of existing buildings, an evaluation of building assessments, and a case study of an exemplar innovation center using interviews with 50 occupants and design team members to evaluate the design and operation of the emerging postsecondary innovation center typology. Through these investigations, three themes emerged. First, although proponents of innovation centers suggest that “if you build it [an innovation center], they will innovate”, most occupants already had begun to innovate prior to visiting the innovation center. Second, occupants did report that the design of the case study innovation center did aid many of their innovation activities, particularly their informal collaborations with peers and mentors. Third, contextual factors can increase or reduce the extent to which occupants find innovation center buildings useful, including building location, occupant characteristics, tensions between design team goals and user needs (e.g., transparency vs. privacy), and a lack of a universal design approach. Based on these findings, a series of considerations are proposed to support future postsecondary innovation center design team members.

Advisor: Peter Rowe

Abstract

With climate change adaptation becoming ever more urgent, decisions about how to allocate adaptation resources have become increasingly important. For instance, should decision-makers in flood-prone areas fund a sea wall to protect a larger community, provide subsidies to property owners to raise minimum floor heights to avoid flooding, or consider relocating a neighborhood to accommodate increased river discharges? Making these choices means evaluating and prioritizing potential responses to climate risks and understanding how they will impact communities living in these vulnerable areas. Though questions of who benefits and who is burdened apply to all public policy decisions, climate change adaptation forms a particularly challenging context due to its conditions of high urgency, existential threat, deep uncertainty, conflicting notions of justice and stakeholders’ valuation of risk and prioritization of objectives.

This doctoral research investigates how local governmental bodies are making decisions on resource allocation to address flood risk in the context of climate change adaptation and in what ways they take into account social equity in their adaptation responses. Through plan analysis of adaptation plans in the United States and the Netherlands and two in-depth case studies of the flood-prone urban regions of Houston, TX and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I develop a set of lessons learned on equitable climate change adaptation. These lessons learned include the need for political and administrative commitment at all levels of decision-making; the effectiveness of an explicit and formal framework for equity consideration; the role of inclusive stakeholder engagement; the need for a broad and dynamic understanding of social vulnerability; the role of data in countering systemic injustice; the importance of trust, accountability, transparency and recognition of historical marginalization and injustice; and opportunities for a comprehensive assessment of benefits and costs of adaptation measures.