Doctoral Studies / Recent Graduates
2009
A Cross Cultural Analysis of New Urbanist Practice in the USA and Turkey:Neighborhood Form, Resident Experiences, and Community Life
by Kadriye Fusun Erkul
This study examines the cross-cultural practice of New Urbanism, one of the most internationally influential contemporary urban design models. The goal is to expand knowledge of global practice of urban design via a cross-cultural comparison of two New Urbanist neighborhoods—Ispartakule in Istanbul, Turkey and Cherry Hill Village in Detroit, USA. The research design employs case study methodology combined with quantitative and qualitative tools. The primary data collection tactics are surveys, face-to-face interviews, and structured observations. The research uncovers the similarities and differences of the two New Urbanist developments in different cultural contexts, with reference to their physical and spatial qualities as well as the residents’ motivations, behaviors and attitudes. The primary findings are: 1) The physical and configurational properties of the neighborhoods are significantly different. In the US case, neighborhood form is successfully designed to enhance pedestrian movement and active use of public spaces. In contrast, the design of the Turkish neighborhood has disadvantages that challenge pedestrian movement and use of civic spaces. 2) Public space use and level of social engagement also differ with respect to cultural context. In the US case, streets and civic spaces accommodate a greater variety of activities and are better used than in the Turkish case. Similarly, the US residents are both physically and socially more active than the Turkish residents. 3) Residents’ motivations in choosing New Urbanist communities reveal the different priorities of goal-oriented needs in different cultural contexts. US residents consciously chose their New Urbanist neighborhood for its distinct architectural style, traditional town concept and active community life. Turkish residents chose their neighborhood for its high-quality construction and environment. When New Urbanist practice is adapted to a different cultural context, the outcome can contradict New Urbanist principles: neighborhood form might inhibit active use of public spaces; multiple building types might result in segregation; civic spaces might become deserted; neighborhoods might function as isolated settlements rather than well-integrated centers that promote active urban life.
Museum Gallery Layouts and Their Interactions with Exhibition Narratives and Space-use Patterns: An Investigation of the YCBA, the MoMA and the HMA Galleries
by Ipek Kaynar Rohloff
This study analyzes one gallery each in the Yale Center for British Art (New Haven), the New Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta) to investigate the interactions among gallery morphology, exhibition narratives and space-use patterns. Specifically, this study explores how the exhibition narratives in each museum is shaped by the spatial layout and to what extent space-use patterns are predicted by the gallery layouts. The gallery layout of each museum is described in terms of permeability and visibility properties using space syntax. These properties are then compared and correlated with exhibition narratives and space-use patterns. These correlations take into account both top-down and bottom-up characterizations of the layouts to understand the effects of layouts on narratives and space-use patterns in detail. This study reveals that museum gallery layouts guide visitors’ exploration with the most available levels of visual information, whether global level visibility among the galleries or the property of exposing visitors to neighboring locations (local visibility). In exhibition narratives, these properties further role of a layout in reproducing narratives prescribed by curators, which often is to generate alternative readings at the scale (layout and/or gallery room), and thus determine whether narratives are presented didactically top-down or bottom up. Visitors seem to more engage in viewing displays under low level visibility in galleries; however exhibition design that incorporates popular paintings and/or conceptually strong narratives in visually isolated locations also encourage visitor contact. In smaller and exposed rooms, visitors tend to view displays in conjunction with displays in other rooms. However, larger, more isolated rooms facilitate viewing displays in a contained environment. Museum gallery layouts also predict scanning behavior when visual information is opened up through atria voids or other central locations. In the layouts where central and peripheral locations have visual connectivity, visitors tend to engage in patterns of exploration, viewing displays and scanning behavior; such layouts create synergy among the various space-use patterns. These patterns are dissociated in layouts with visually isolated galleries. These findings have implications for placing artwork in reference to the architectural characteristics of a gallery.
Current Postion: Instructor at Boston Architectural College
Structural Evaluation and Life Cycle Assessment of a Transparent Composite Façade System using Biofiber Composites and Recyclable Polymers.
by Kyoung-Hee Kim
A composite façade system concept was developed at the University of Michigan by Professor Harry Giles that considered the use of various transparent and composite materials in building construction. Particular aspects of this transparent composite façade system (TCFS) were investigated in this dissertation and involved the use of recyclable polymers and biofiber composites. This dissertation addresses research questions related to structural and environmental performance of the transparent composite façade system (TCFS) compared to a glass curtain wall system (GCWS). In order to better understand the context for the TCFS and establish performance evaluation methods, an extensive literature review was conducted focusing on material performance, structural performance requirements, life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques, composite panel principles, product surveys and building codes. Structural design criteria were established for the TCFS with respect to the strength and stiffness requirements of the International Building Code (IBC). A new testing frame was fabricated and installed at the architectural department of the University of Michigan to conduct static and impact tests in accordance with Safety Performance Specifications and Methods of Test (ANSI Z97.1). Initial static tests were carried out to measure bending stiffness of TCFS specimens in order to compare the results with theoretical predictions. Impact tests were also carried out to examine whether TCFS specimens conformed to the safety glazing criteria specified in ANSI Z97.1. In addition, a comparative LCA of TCFS and GCWS was performed on each system to assess their respective environmental implications. Structural testing results indicated that the bending stiffness according to simple beam theory is in agreement with measured stiffness under two-edge supported conditions. Impact tests demonstrated that TCFS specimens satisfy the Class B of the safety glazing requirements of ANSI Z97.1. Comparative LCA results showed that the total life cycle energy of the TCFS was estimated to be 93% of that of the uncoated GCWS and the total emission of kg CO2 equivalent for the TCFS was determined as 89% of the uncoated GCWS. The impact associated with transportation and the end-of-life management was estimated to be insignificant in this study.
Current Postion: Structural Engineer/Building Facade Consultant at FrontInc
REVOLUTIONS IN PARALLEL: THE RISE AND FALL OF DRAWING IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
by Kristina Luce
This dissertation is about revolutionary change and specifically two moments when similar forms of shift seem to occur in architecture. These two moments are connected by the historic arc of drawing and the story of drawing’s place within the process of architectural design. My focus is not on all forms of drawing in architecture. Instead, I examine a specific and important set of drawings made up of the plan, section and elevation. I call the combined use of these drawings triadic form in order to denote their function as an analytic system through which architectural space and form may be understood and imagined. Drawing in this role has its roots in the Renaissance, and its conventionalization is essential to the development of our modern conception of the architectural discipline. I maintain that through its dominance, triadic form creates a reign over architecture that lasts throughout the last five hundred years. Moving forward, as computational modes of thought become pervasive within design, drawing’s reign is being challenged. As an extension of my contemplation of drawing, a series of questions about the contemporary moment in architecture are raised. What role(s) is drawing relinquishing? Is our current moment one of profound alteration for architecture, or simply a moment in which architecture adopts new creative tools? In other words, along side its contemplation of the past, my dissertation also asks whether or not today’s changes represent another paradigm shift for architecture, one of similar scope to that which occurred in the Renaissance.
Current Postion: Visiting Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina-Charlotte
Ann-Based Model Free Thermal Controls for Residential Buildings.
by Jin Woo Moon
This research aimed to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based advanced thermal control method for creating more comfortable thermal environments in residential buildings. The proposed control method, which consisted of a thermal control logic and system hardware framework, was designed to improve residential thermal environments through the reduction of thermal imbalance in various rooms; the achievement of thermal comfort taken into account humidity or PMV as a control variable; and the reduction of overshoots and undershoots of air temperature, humidity and PMV using ANN-based predictive and adaptive control. In the control logic framework, four logics were employed for the residential thermal controls: (1) temperature and humidity control without ANNs as a conventional method, (2) PMV control without ANN, (3) temperature and humidity control with ANNs, and (4) PMV control with ANN. In addition, the system hardware framework was developed using sensors, data acquisition systems, a control panel, and building climate control systems. The performance of four developed control logics and system hardware was tested through computer simulation incorporating IBPT (International Building Physics Toolbox) and MATLAB, and through experiment. A typical two-story single-family home was modeled for the computer simulation while a thermal chamber was built for the experiment. Variables for the simulation were (1) the change of building conditions such as orientations, R-values for walls, the roof and windows, and window-wall-ratio, and (2) disturbances such as the change of internal load and ventilation rate, the application of setback, the change of setpoint, and the extreme change of exterior thermal conditions. Variables for the experiment were application and non-application of setback. The study reveals that ANN-based predictive and adaptive control strategies created more comfortable thermal conditions than ones without in terms of increased comfort period of air temperature, humidity, and PMV. This improvement was through the reduced ratio and magnitude of overshoots and undershoots out of the specified comfort ranges. In many cases, ANN-based strategies consumed less energy for building climate control systems although not as significantly as expected. Based on this study, it can be concluded that ANN-based predictive and adaptive climate control strategies can improve thermal comfort in residential buildings.
Social Change and the Thai House: A Study of Transformation in the Traditional Dwelling of Central Thailand.
by Piyarat Nanta Mullard
This study investigates the impact of social transition upon the traditional dwelling of Central Thailand during the period ranging from the 1950s to present. Aspects investigated include the place experience, the morphology of house form, and the spatial organization by using a single-case design with mixed methods. Semi-structure interviews with rice farming families were carried out in Baan Krang village of Suphanburi province. Master builders and master carpenters of the traditional Thai house were interviewed on the topics of historic house form, and how it has been modified to fit the contemporary needs. Additional information about the historic dwelling was drawn from the survey of the actual dwellings, museum houses, and mural paintings from temples in the Central region. Both qualitative data analyses and Space syntax analysis on the house floor plan layout were performed to compare the differences and commonalties between the historic and modified dwellings on settlement type, exterior, architectonic details, and floor plan layout. Results suggest that the farmers’ adoption of a mechanized agricultural production system, decreased poverty, increased farm holding size, reduced family size, 2 increased rural migration to cities and lead to the changes in house form, and perception of place experience. While minimal changes in the spatial organization of the interior space were detected, the analysis of the dwelling form revealed the transformation of the exterior and architectonic details in the contemporary dwellings to become more enclosed leading to a reduced exterior-to-interior floor space ratio and reduced interaction between the occupants and their surrounding environment. The contemporary dwelling of the Central Thailand reflected the characteristics of the society with weakened social ties where family units are increasingly isolated from each other, and safety and crime prevention were the driving force behind the modification of house structure. The traditional home has been transformed from home as “a center of social structure and unit of agricultural production” into home as “a sanctuary.”
Current Postion: Lecturer at King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang
Reconstructing Italy The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era
by Stephanie Pilat
At the end of the Second World War, Italy was socially divided and physically shattered, the former by two decades under Fascism, and the latter by the destruction of millions of housing units. At this moment of crisis action had to be taken to rebuild the nation both physically and psychologically. One way was through architecture and urbanism: the Ina-Casa plan for workers’ housing created more than 350,000 units of housing throughout Italy during two seven year phases (1949–56 and 1956–63) and the jobs to build them. Bringing together the efforts of politicians, reformers, architects, and even the workers themselves, the Ina-Casa administration as well as the neighborhoods they built provided an important means by which Italians re-imagined themselves and their national community in the postwar period. Of the many neighborhoods that were built three—the Tiburtino in Rome, Borgo Panigale in Bologna, and Villa Longo in Matera, are cogent as case studies that demonstrate the major results of the plan. Ina-Casa urban design and planning contributed to the prevailing tendency of locating the lower classes on the periphery of cities in part because it was easier to build large scale projects where land was cheap. In the architecture, often characterized as neorealist, the use of regional vernaculars reflected the desire of many designers to break with the recent past, but modernist characteristics, particularly in the projects of those who had practiced under Fascism also indicate continuity. Inside the homes, the domestic lives of millions of families were redefined through the provision of basic amenities such as running water, plumbing, and electricity and through the planning of spaces to reflect developing conceptions of the family. By increasing the basic standard of living of the most needy, Ina-Casa did more to unify the nation than any other earlier entity. From the exterior of Ina-Casa projects, however, the picture that emerges is of a fragmented and divided society, a nation weary of nationalism.
Current Postion: Lecturer at University of Michigan-Taubman College
2008
The Public Realm as a Place of Everyday Urbanism Learning from Four College Towns.
by Anirban Adhya
The public realm is an important component of the American urban condition. Contemporary theories and practices of urban design often conceive public space as an undifferentiated and universally accessible. Yet, public spaces are increasingly complex in western culture and require a contextual understanding of human diversity, human behavior, and human expressions in addition to physical form. This dissertation examines the everyday human experience of the public realm through the following research questions: (1) To what extent does the spatial configuration (embedded in campus-downtown formal relationship) affect people's experience and understanding of public places? (2) In what ways do people conceptualize publicness? (3) In what ways do people's activities vary with time and location across different types of public places? The multiple dimensions of the public realm are addressed through a mixed-modal case-study research design of four college towns: Ann Arbor, MI; Athens, GA; Tallahassee, FL; and Lansing, MI. (1) Historic morphological analysis and space syntax methods are applied to describe the spatial configuration of the public settings. (2) Multiple sorting tasks and open-ended interviews are employed to determine people's conceptual constructs related to publicness. (3) Naturalistic observation techniques are used to document people's activities in specific public settings. A comprehensive empirical understanding of the public realm, focusing on the role of human involvement and appropriation, is developed. The research reveals that (1) the spatial configuration of the public realm is highly formative of the perceived qualities of publicness, (2) the public realm is a human construction based on people's environmental role and purpose, and (3) the public realm is a temporal phenomenon, varying with the formal and informal ways in which people perceive, appropriate, and contest publicness. The overall investigation demonstrates that the public realm is a place of everyday urbanism. The focus on people and their everyday experiences, in the imagination and realization of the public realm, allow designing and producing public places that are relevant, functional, and empowering.
Current Postion: Assistant Professor at Lawrence Technical University
A Pre-history of Green Architecture: Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Architecture, from Princely Mysore to Post-colonial London
by Vandana Baweja
In this dissertation, I investigate how trans-colonial histories of architecture intersect with transnational environmental histories of architecture. I locate Tropical Architecture, which I define as climate-responsive and energy-conservative design, in the pre-history of environmentalism. I argue that the corpus of knowledge that developed through Tropical Architecture in the 1950's constitutes the pre-cursor to Green Architecture. I locate Tropical Architecture as a trans-colonial set of architectural practices that originated in the colonial experiences of European modernist architects. As a crucial part of this hypothesis, I trace the career trajectory of émigré architect Otto Koenigsberger (1909-99), who escaped Nazi Berlin in 1933 to go to Egypt and subsequently immigrated to India in 1939. In India, Koenigsberger served as the chief architect for the Maharajah of Princely Mysore from 1939 to 1948 and as the Federal Director of Housing for Nehru's government from 1948 to 1951. In 1951, he immigrated to London to become one of the founders of the Department of Tropical Architecture (1954-1971) at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture. I argue that working in exile in Princely Mysore fundamentally transformed Koenigsberger's architectural thinking and practice. The most significant change in his thinking was his cognizance of the limits of resources and energy. Through his experience in Mysore, Koenigsberger theorized Tropical Architecture as a discourse that was climate responsive, energy conscious, and built with local resources. Existing histories locate Tropical Architecture as a neo-colonial project that emerged in the 1950s along the networks of the diminishing British Empire. propose that Tropical Architecture embodied a vision of environmentalism. Green Architecture, which is considered a recent discourse, cannot therefore be fully grasped unless it is historicized in relationship to Tropical Architecture. The careers of tropical architects are the missing link between histories of architecture in the colonies and histories of Green Architecture. I make my argument by establishing continuities between Tropical and Green architectural practices and by demonstrating how people trained in Tropical Architecture made their careers in the field of Green Architecture.
Current Postion: Assistant Professor at University of Florida
A LEGIBILITY EQUATION FOR DETERMINING IDEAL VIEWING AREAS IN LECTURE HALLS
by Hongyi Cai
Text presented in modern lecture halls often simultaneously appears on multiple visual media (e.g., blackboard, projection screens, TV) that have different locations, geometries, orientations, and lighting conditions. An ideal viewing area inside which all text is legible to the entire audience could be calculated using equations that predict the spatial legibility of text viewed from any directions across the lecture hall. However, among the 95 legibility equations ever published in the literature, none can serve this purpose. After using ten assumptions to narrow down the research scope, this study applies a constant-solid-angle hypothesis to develop the demanded equation from the existing Howett's equation (1983). This derived equation examines seven critical factors but the surrounding luminance of the ambient environment, which may reduce its accuracy. The hypothesis is first verified consistent with how retinal images of text activate cones in the centre fovea of an observer's eyes, then tested in the lighting laboratory at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute using legibility data collected from 3 subjects in a pilot experiment and 20 subjects in a follow-up main experiment. Both experimental setups abide by the typical viewing conditions surveyed in 38 lecture halls at the University of Michigan. The outcomes show that the hypothesis holds when incident angle 0° ≤ ξ ≤ 65.7°, but it does not hold when 65.7° < ξ ≤ 82.8° (the largest angle examined). The derived equation is thus accordingly improved. Moreover, this study uses 20 human subjects with a modified setup at four different ambient light levels in the same laboratory to verify the negligible effect of ambient light on legibility. The validated equation is then improved and used as the underlying algorithm for developing a computation-program-aided design method in MatLab. This method allows architects to find an overlapped two-dimensional ideal viewing area of text viewed in modern lecture halls along any viewing plane, such as that parallel to the sloped floor at eye height level. This program-aided method is verified using a field experiment carried out in the lecture hall in the Art & Architecture building at the University of Michigan.
Current Postion: Research Associate at Hong Kong Polytechnic University
"The laboratory of a new humanity": The concept of type, life reform, and modern architecture in Hellerau garden city, 1900--1914
by Didem Ekici
The founders of the first German garden city, Hellerau, begun in 1908, aimed to realize their vision of mass society through a holistic vision of the garden city. The initial years of the garden city movement and Hellerau, from 1900 until 1914, are particularly important for demonstrating the complex intertwining of the reformist discourses on the mass subject, organic society, and a new architecture that incorporated industrial production. Reformers, artists, and architects involved in the garden city movement and Hellerau wanted to reconcile the capitalist industrial society with the perceived social cohesion of an ordered past. They attributed design a key role in achieving this goal. Their ideas were based on the assumed relationship between form and physiognomy: types in applied arts and architecture was intricately connected to ideas about the healthy body in Körperkultur . The concept of type profiled not only commodities and buildings, but also the mass subject with its promise of "unity within diversity." Both types and Körperkultur would restore harmony to mass society by reversing the increasing anonymity of the individual, and yet creating uniformity in bodies as well as the built environment, domestic spaces, and clothing that enveloped those bodies.
Current Postion: Lecturer at University of Nottingham (UK)
Colonialism at the Center: German Colonial Architecture and the Design Reform Movement, 1828-1914
by Itohan Osayimwese
Scholars have paid little attention to the architecture of German colonialism. This lacuna coincides with a general lack of interest in German colonialism that is in part due to the brevity of the German colonial encounter, but is also a result of the overdetermined nature of the Nazi era in German historiography. This dissertation explores the architecture of German colonialism as a discourse produced primarily between a largely constructed "Africa" and Germany. I investigate this history across a broad temporal frame from early nineteenth-century villages founded by German missionaries before the onset of formal colonization, to buildings imagined and/or built during the colonial period. I argue that German colonial architecture cannot be fully understood in the narrowly defined timeframe of official colonialism or in terms of the geographic limits of a particular colony. The dissertation therefore locates German colonial architecture in relation to vernacular architecture in the colonies, to the architectural practices of German missionaries before the onset of official colonialism, and to the development of architectural modernism in the metropole. The dissertation is framed around the most significant event in the history of German colonial architecture--the German Colonial Society's architectural competition--which took place in collaboration with the construction of a colonial pavilion at the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Using the Colonial Society's competition as a guide, I narrate and analyze the events and themes that characterized German colonial architecture. Close readings of the competition and colonial pavilion then offer insight on the state of colonial architecture in relation to ongoing debates about German culture and industry, and on the relationship between colonial and metropolitan discourse. I conclude that German settlers, colonial administrators, missionaries, as well as colonized subjects were deeply invested in the idea that architectural design was a constitutive, supportive, and at times even a subversive component of colonial ideology. By revealing connections between colonial architecture and various reformist ideas and activities in early twentieth-century Germany that have come to be seen as representative of the period, this dissertation contributes to rethinking the architectural historical canon and expanding existing knowledge about the cultural contexts of German colonialism.
Current Postion: Visiting Assistant Professor at College of William and Mary
Architectural and HVAC Applications of Impinging Jet Ventilation Using Full Scale and CFD Simulation
by Jatuwat Varodompun
To enhance thermal comfort and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) by using least amount of energy is a challenge for building ventilation system. One answer to this challenge is "ventilation strategies" which are characterized by the placement of the terminal configurations and the control schemes such as supply temperature and velocity. Mixing (MJV), displacement (DV), and newly introduced impinging jet (IJV) system, are the available options for a common ventilated room. Past studies show that IJV performs impressively yet this system is still lacking of studies in many aspects. For the practitioners to use this system, impinging jet characteristics, terminal configurations, operation method such as Variable-Air-Volume (VAV) and Constant-Air-Volume (CAV), and space volume, are four objectives that must be answered with the first priority. In the process of completing these objectives, this dissertation has maximized the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) by not only for visualizing the flow but also for developing a new ventilation index called CFD ventilation performances. This index is unique for CFD and impossible to be obtained from full scale experiment. Recommended by the standards such as ASHRAE RP-1133, full scale experiment was rather used for validating the CFD results such as predictive models of an impinging jet. After implementing this newly developed index, well-known indices such as ventilation effectiveness and PMV-PPD (Predicted-Mean-Vote and Predicted-Percentage-of-Dissatisfaction) with related ventilation theories, parameters to make IJV provided the better IAQ and consumed less energy are the results. With high ventilation effectiveness at least 1.1, IJV still can be supplied with normal velocity and typical cool temperature which is not possible for DV, while disadvantages are stratification discomfort and draft near supply terminals. Given the confirmed promising results of a case study classroom, there are many architectural applications possible for implementing IJV. Laboratories, passenger terminals, operating, tunnels, atrium, etc, are all good candidates that come with different settings and requirements. The configurations of IJV in these applications combining with many unknown impacts from furniture lay-out, people movement, transient simulation, etc, raises the demands of not only IJV future studies but also improving the advanced research tools such as CFD.
Current Postion: Lecturer at Thammasat University
An Integrative Approach: Environmental Quality (EQ) Evaluation in Residential Buildings.
by Sung-Hoon Yoon
The main purpose of buildings is to provide a comfortable living environment for their occupants. Indoor environmental factors are considered to be one of the most important factors affecting occupant assessment of their quality of life in residential building. These environmental factors include thermal, lighting, acoustic and indoor air quality. The appropriate levels of these environmental factors increase occupants' satisfaction and improve the residential environmental quality. The objective of this research is to propose integrative evaluation models for improving environmental quality (EQ) in residential buildings. A field physical measurement and occupant survey were conducted in actual residential buildings, "Northwood Community Apartments", 2-bedroom apartment units at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. This research examined the relationship between indoor physical environmental conditions and occupant responses in buildings with four different orientations (i.e., N, S, W, E) in two seasons (i.e., winter and summer). EQ models for assessing the environmental quality of a space are based on its thermal, lighting, acoustic and indoor air quality conditions. In this study, it is hypothesized that occupant's satisfaction with and perceptions of environmental quality are influenced by building orientation, occupant's gender, age and seasons. The measured physical environmental conditions in residential buildings differed substantially depending on space, outdoor weather conditions and building orientations. Each space within the same residential building had different environmental conditions. Combinations of unbalanced physical environmental conditions in residential building decrease occupants' satisfactions and their perceptions of overall residential quality. Occupants' satisfaction and their responses to physical characteristics of their residential environment is strongly related to thermal, lighting, acoustic and indoor air conditions in their buildings. Based on relations between the architectural characteristics, the environmental control system, and the use of the building, integrative EQ evaluation models are proposed that will help designers to identify problems and develop solutions for improving environmental quality from the occupants' point of view. Also, this research suggests weighting factors for the integrative evaluation of all physical environmental factors that were developed from responses to survey questions about the respondents' EQ priorities. In order to integrate all environmental factors, it was crucial to determine the relative importance of various environmental factors.
