Copyright (c) 2009 University of Massachusetts Amherst All rights reserved. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Recent documents in Masters Theses en-us Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:15:26 PST 3600 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/310 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/310 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:26:14 PDT ABSTRACT: P.A.C.E. Theater is a non-profit performing arts group in the town of Easthampton, Massachusetts. The group's desire to find and create a new working standard for artistic non-profits' survival led them to purchase a 125,000 s.f. 19th century mill complex in town. Their goal is to convert the building into a community arts center with theaters, event spaces, dance studios and rehearsal studios while offering tenant space for additional local businesses such as cafes, restaurants, and offices. Some of the tenant space is also intended for multiple local non-profits in order that they can share their resources and cut their expenses even further. The bigger picture is to create a working model of self sustaining art non-profits which can more easily survive during difficult economic times. In order to bring this vision to fruition, I needed to form a workable plan for a very complicated building complex. The building (or I should say buildings) where built over the course of 150 years being added onto and subtracted from as the mill owners saw fit. This created a complex interior space filled with transition spaces via floor level changes, wall type changes, fenestration adaptations, and structural adaptations throughout the decades. The buildings are a collection of historical layers, or stratifications which have the potential to be uncovered in an "excavation" of the building.My thesis explores the process of understanding a building with these types of complexities and then addresses programming the space to create a logical, clear building plan for the end users. And lastly, I explore the stratification levels, or the archeology of the building and attempt to address its history in my design process. Interior design http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/309 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/309 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:26:11 PDT Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter in the brain, where it plays a regulatory role in the coordination of movement and cognition by acting through two classes of G protein-coupled receptors to modulate synaptic activity. In addition, it has been shown these two receptor classes can exhibit synergistic or antagonistic effects on neurotransmission. However, while the pharmacology of the mammalian dopamine receptors have been characterized in some detail, less is known about the molecular pathways that act downstream of the receptors. As in mammals, the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans uses two classes of dopamine receptors to control neural activity and thus can serve as a genetic tool to identify the molecular mechanisms through which dopamine receptors exert their effects on neurotransmission. To identify novel components of mammalian dopamine signaling pathways, we conducted a genetic screen for C. elegans mutants defective in exogenous dopamine response. We screened 31,000 mutagenized haploid genomes and recovered seven mutants. Five of these mutants were in previously-identified dopamine signaling genes, including those encoding the Ga proteins GOA-1 (ortholog of human Gao) and EGL-30 (ortholog of human Gaq), the diacylglycerol kinase DGK-1 (ortholog of human DGK0), and the dopamine receptor DOP-3 (ortholog of human D2-like receptor). In addition to these known components, we identified mutations in the glutamate-gated cation channel subunit GLR-1 (ortholog of human AMPA receptor subunits) and the class A acetycholinesterase ACE-1 (ortholog of human acetylcholinesterase). Behavioral analysis of these mutants demonstrates that dopamine signaling controls acetylcholine release by modulating the excitability of the cholinergic motor neurons in C. elegans through two antagonistic dopamine receptor signaling pathways, and that this antagonism occurs within a single cell. In addition, a mutation in the putative Rab GTPase activating protein TBC-4 was identified, which may suggest a role for this Rab GAP in synaptic vesicle trafficking. Subsequent behavioral and genetic analyses of mutants in synaptic vesicular trafficking components implicate RAB-3-mediated vesicular trafficking in DOP-3 receptor signaling. These results together suggest a possible mechanism for the regulation of dopamine receptor signaling by vesicular trafficking components in the cholinergic motor neurons of C. elegans. Genetics http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/308 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/308 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:26:08 PDT The way we build our environment today is a process of protecting ourselves from the elements of nature. We build walls, roofs, and windows; we create a more predictable and controllable environment to keep out what's felt to be dangerous, dirty, and destructive. We isolate ourselves from the things we perceive as threats. This is common practice and not illogical. Shelter is about preservation and refuge. We need to feel safe in order to prosper. What is illogical, though, is wasting all those opportunities that come along with living closer and more integrated these natural processes that are being excluded. What would happen if we were to re-integrate our lives with nature? This examination of a re-integration strategy begins with breaking down the idea of plant and animal into basic "technologies" and learning from them. Through the use of fractal generation these technologies are embedded within the landscape to create a framework that embodies both plant and animal traits or desires of habitation. This new framework becomes the basis for the design; the ground zero for an explosion of life. The final design seeks to re-integrate the human with a whole host of organisms that already exist on site and play vital roles within the ecosystem that the human is participating in. The intention of this process is to imbue the final design with aspects or technologies that are not merely centered on human habitation conditions but are purely post-anthropocentric in that they see to the needs of all inhabitants on a particular site. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/307 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/307 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:26:05 PDT It is at the interface of the virtual and the physical worlds where both the practice and the process of architecture are generated. This premise will be explored in the context of designing community- or in other words resolving apparently binary relations.This thesis explores the spatial interaction of two autonomous but interrelated systems- for example, the interior and the exterior, the virtual and the physical, human systems and informational systems. The proposed "building" becomes the frame of these relationships. The built project is the landscape of connections shaped by its passengers- the networked individual and the incessant flow of information."Community" has been sentimentalized in our American culture as the suburban "neighborhood". By contrast I see community as networked individuality, human sociability which takes place at the interface of the digital and physical worlds and therefore transcends geographical space and time. In effect, community becomes a space of distant intimacy. It is the purpose of this project to materialize this space.Space is what is available; space holds potential. Space is the result of social relations. Spaces are relationships. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/306 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/306 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:26:02 PDT Sustainable development practices and historic preservation efforts are imbued with contradictions, overlappings and shortcomings. Adaptive reuse is a tool for the sustainable preservation of existing building stock that bridges these approaches and more appropriately addresses the values of time, energy, place and community with respect to the built environment. Destruction of both material and abstract qualities can be circumvented by actively engaging a site, landscape or context through revealing and crossbreeding complex patterns, traces and perspectives. The value of a datascape is optimized when such a re-contextualization consists of both additive and subtractive manipulations and is flexible, continuous and regenerative. To avoid demolition and severing connections to the past and to extend the potential success of the development of the former Belchertown State School for the Feeble Minded in Belchertown, Massachusetts, I investigated ways by which the existing Auditorium Building and its relationship to the site could be re-contextualized. Since 1992, this defunct state-operated facility has been closed, transferred to the town and considered for economic development. Within the one hundred fifty-five-acre parcel that remains to be developed there are approximately sixty acres of forested areas and wetlands, a freshwater pond, and numerous abandoned school buildings in poor condition. The Auditorium Building, centrally located within the buildable area of the state school parcel, acted as a gateway into the campus and historically served as a gathering, performing and learning space for both school and Belchertown residents. In conjunction with precedent and programmatic research, I mapped patterns of State School site data which included not only existing, visible data but that which is historical, potential and invisible. The interpretation of these vectors, connections and boundaries served as a framework for re-contextualization and aimed to identify contextual attributes that require preservation, accretion or removal. The grafting of this data to the Auditorium Building and its surroundings exposed and affected various patterns of behavior that ultimately impacted its form, program and relationship to the landscape. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/305 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/305 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:25:58 PDT My project is an acknowledgement of the fact that the physical layout of our environments is not directly describing and shaping the way we live or our societies are shaped. Non-spatial structures are playing a bigger role in societal processes than spatial ones. My project is trying to give these invisible processes spatial expression. Non-functional structures that highlight the non-functionality of postsocialist space. The monotony and monumentality of socialist spaces is contrasted with a design that expresses the multiplicity (of possibilities, paths, choices, desires) that exists nowadays. Orthogonal space is sliced up, perforated and at points overlaid without replacing it in it’s totality.‘Non-functional’ elements are formal expressions of the realm of virtual space which permeates our lives and cities as well. These elements function in a more ‘internet’ fashion (multi layered, multi directional, yet clustered, streamlined etc) and yet they perform in the real world. Yet in the same time they are expressing our high-tech society without being hightech.Simultaneously, the presence of these structures addresses the condition of impermanence and change that play a strong role in the psyche of East Germans today. The multiplicity which is expressed by the project contrasts the rigidity of socialist architecture and society - and creates a link to remembering the past. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/304 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/304 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:50:19 PDT Crossfit is a unique method of physical exercise founded on a specific set of underlying scientific principles. The ultimate goal of Crossfit is to maximize work potential across broad time and modal domains. This project attempts to apply the concepts and principles of Crossfit to architecture to maximize living potential of built environments across broad time and modal domain by means of an architecture that is kinetic, interactive, responsive, and continually reconfigurable. The focus of the project is the design of an approximately 35,000 sf building titled The Motus Center for Kinetic Art Science. The building serves both as an actively used gymnasium and movement studio as well as an interactive museum and gallery of kinetic arts and sciences. The building site is located on Cross Street in Boston, Massachusetts between Hanover Street and Salem Street, in an area known as the Artery Strip. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/303 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/303 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:50:15 PDT The current paradigm in the field of architecture today is one of degeneration and obsolete building technologies. Regenerative architecture is the practice of engaging the natural world as the medium for, and generator of the architecture. It responds to and utilizes the living and natural systems that exist on a site that become the "building blocks" of the architecture. Regenerative architecture has two focuses; it is an architecture that focuses on conservation and performance through a focused reduction on the environmental impacts of a building.This paper introduces regenerative architecture as a means for architectural design. I present the Nine Principles of Regenerative Architecture and Place Analysis Criteria, which I developed in order to provide a logical and succinct means for creating regenerative architecture. These are employed and embedded in the creation of the R_Urban Intervention Dwelling model and tested on the Coop House design project.The result was an architectural design in which the Nine Principles of Regenerative Architecture are embodied through the application of the Place Analysis Criteria process. Though the process underwent many mutations through its infancy, the final product has proven to work in producing successful and potentially regenerative architecture as described in part 1 of this paper. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/302 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/302 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:50:12 PDT Today our cities have surpassed the industrial state that originally organized them, where our social network is no longer bound by the limits of the cities streets, sidewalks, blocks and city centers, but rather by our internet connection. Our cities have become "global-cities" or mere hyperlinks to a global network of information where we have the world at our disposal at the blink of an eye. Technologies i.e. the internet, mobile technology, virtual environments etc. provide us with infinite information, connectivity, accessibility and even experience. One can argue that the way we live and experience our lives is directly associated with our technological capabilities and accessibility to these technologies. While this connectedness exists virtually through the streaming of data throughout space, it cannot be experienced physically. This network of information possesses relationships amongst itself as well as with everything else in the world. While our cities today have become digital melting pots, their image does not reflect the informational state of our society, but rather still resembles the industrial city.Since virtual environments are nothing more then an extension of the physical environment, we cannot limit our perception of space to the way in which we currently experience it, but must understand the various levels of complexity which define the space in all dimensions. While Boston City Hall Plaza currently exists as a baron sea of bricks, it contains virtual information which digitally connects it to the rest of the world. This information, variable X, will be the cities design input to creating new spatial relationships, in turn circulating people into these programmatic voids, as well as reflect the state of our society. Architecture http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/301 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/301 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:50:08 PDT This thesis aims to critically examine the relationship of digital technology and the modern art gallery in order to find the possible role of art galleries in the future. The integration of technology and the modern art gallery can change the way people experience art in built space.In order to examine this, certain questions needed to be asked. The most important of these questions is authenticity and originality in a digital art gallery. What if, in order for the notion of originality to exist, it needs the notion of the copy; a kind of parasite. What if we don't consider them as opposites, but rather as variables of a knot. What if there was never an original voice, but only writing. The process of writing itself undermines any notion of a primary original. It creates a space of difference, a gap. The space from one letter to the next, from one word to the next, from the graphite to the paper, and to continue to the digital, the space from 1 to 0.The difference described by Derrida in of Gramatology is the idea of difference through "trace." Derrida says "The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the difference which opens appearance and signification." Through a process of language study a series of spatial conditions were derived from a structured process of analyzing trace.This series of spatial conditions were then used to design the interior and exterior spaces along with arranging the buildings program and circulation through the new University Gallery. These spatial conditions allowed for a development of space that looked beyond simple geometric forms to form genuine experiences derived from a process. Architecture