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Title: TOWARD A MODERN CIVIC MONUMENTALITY: ARCHES, VAULTS, AND DOMES IN POSTWAR AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE
Creator: Amado Petroli, Marcos
Date: 2021
Description: This dissertation studies the use of arcuated structures in post-World War II American civic buildings, which serve both to answer the...
Show moreThis dissertation studies the use of arcuated structures in post-World War II American civic buildings, which serve both to answer the practical and functional demands of the architectural program, and to communicate a distinct and hierarchical character inherent to the very genesis of civic architecture. This research demonstrates how a generation of multicultural architects, educated in the academic tradition, with the collaboration of structural engineers, participated in the expansion of the syntax and vocabulary of modern architecture at a time when the language of monumentality was also being discussed. In doing so, they moved away from a Bauhaus-German doctrine that promoted a universal, orthogonal, and homogeneous architectural language, serving all types of buildings. In this context, this research redefines the relationship between academic tradition and modern approaches to monumentality in American architecture, which are usually seen as antagonistic languages. To test the hypothesis that these new arched forms, of high structural engineering, were linked to both modern and academic aspects, and more precisely, French roots, this research addresses three main issues: (i) the mistrust of the new monumentality, which was often mystified and associated with totalitarian regimes; (ii) the analysis of this production through pioneering case studies in postwar arched structures; and (iii) the relationship between academic tradition and modern architecture, with an emphasis on the theory of "architectural character." Finally, this research concludes that the construction of this civic monumentality in the United States was not only a rational response to special programs and an opposition to the universal character of modern buildings, but also the result of an immigration of more inclusive ideas, which, reacting with the local tradition and heritage of the Beaux-Arts system, gave rise to an autochthonous American production.
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Title: An aircraft hangar and the study of long-span metal structures
Creator: Sharpe, David C. (David Carold)
Date: 1962-06
Description: The study of long-span structures developed from a design problem for an aircraft hangar. The problem of the aircraft hangar was concerned...
Show moreThe study of long-span structures developed from a design problem for an aircraft hangar. The problem of the aircraft hangar was concerned with the development of a reasonable structurtal type into an architectural solution. Several types were considered; the truss, the arch, a rigid frame system in prestressed concrete. These were discarded in favor of a rigid frame system of steel that seemed to give the best visual solution.
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Title: ENERGY INNOVATIONS IN BUILDINGS AND URBAN FABRICS
Creator: Hirematt, Chandrasekharaiah Ashish
Date: 2021
Description: In his keynote speech on the "Infrastructures of Integration" at the 5th International LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction, Ricky...
Show moreIn his keynote speech on the "Infrastructures of Integration" at the 5th International LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction, Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE), said “…you can actually invest in better infrastructure to do things better.” However, the population grows at the rate of almost one billion per decade. With about four fifths of it happening in urban areas, the challenge for sustainability is huge and the key for the future.Urban fabrics are expanding both vertically as well as horizontally to accommodate the population growth. With the scale of expansion happening, challenges such deforestation, resource depletion, habitat destruction, energy production and consumption are some of the major challenges that need to be focused on ecologically. It is also important to note that ecological solutions are very highly dependent on social and economic progress of the society. Energy efficient design is one which does zero or minimal damage to the environment while meeting the energy needs of the society. This thesis will discuss the concept of developing energy efficient designs as well as net zero designs in urban settings. With the help of three projects, this thesis aims to discover the challenges along with the obvious advantages of such designs. The first experiment is to look at the reduction of energy consumption in the city of Chicago with multiple neighborhoods set up in an iron grid. It was observed that taller buildings are much more energy efficient due to the reduction of surface area exposed to the external environment. This observation was used to develop a climate specific energy efficient urban fabric design in the city of Shenzhen. The design of the off-shore tower involves tackling larger issues such as the pandemic while having energy production as a bi-product of the same. Thus, the thesis argues that investment in infrastructure to build a better infrastructure should be done to solve social and economic challenges which will, in turn make it easier to produce energy efficient designs.
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Title: Research in Architectural Education: Theory and Practice of Visual Training
Creator: Jones, Kristin
Date: 2016, 12/12/2016
Collection: Enquiry

Title: The City in the Landscape: Alfred Caldwell's Broader Perspective on Urban Design
Creator: Jones, Kristin, Garcia-Requejo, Zaida
Date: 2020, 2020
Publisher: Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València
Description: Alfred Caldwell was among the first full- time American professors Mies van der Rohe hired at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Many...
Show moreAlfred Caldwell was among the first full- time American professors Mies van der Rohe hired at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Many have admired Mies’s architecture since the 1920s, and know that his ideas were also transmitted as a professor, first at the Bauhaus in Europe and then as Director of the Department of Architecture at IIT. Caldwell, a practicing landscape architect and protégé of Jens Jensen, is perhaps less widely known, but was a major influence on IIT’s program especially in the areas of construction, landscape, and architectural history. Caldwell completed a Master of Science in City Planning with a thesis entitled The City in the Landscape: A Preface for Planning, which can be considered a manifesto of both his professional ideas and IIT’s planning pedagogy. In addition to his own works, Caldwell collaborated with Mies and architect Ludwig Hilberseimer, Director of City and Regional Planning at IIT and former Head of Building Theory at the Bauhaus, on the design of built works which left behind artifacts representing the ideal of “the city in the landscape.” This communication examines the broader perspective on urban design influenced by the symbiotic disciplines of architecture, city-regional planning and landscape as manifested in the individual and collaborative built work and pedagogy of Caldwell, Hilberseimer, and Mies.
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Collection: EAAE-ARCC International Conference & 2nd Valencia International Biennial

Title: Drawing on Darwinism: Rewriting the Origin of Louis Sullivan's Idea
Creator: Frey, Syan
Date: 2021
Description: To observe that the unique architectural ornaments that make up the body of work of Louis Henri Sullivan (1856-1924) emulate nature is to...
Show moreTo observe that the unique architectural ornaments that make up the body of work of Louis Henri Sullivan (1856-1924) emulate nature is to state a reality so obvious that it is both pedantic and droll. To use the double entendre that those natural forms drew on Darwinism, however, is to make several more specific claims. First, it can be credibly established that the system of architectural ornament that was the primary contribution of Louis Sullivan to the discipline of architecture was directly inspired by Sullivan’s synthesis of the thesis of natural selection contained within the pages of Asa Gray’s botanical manual. Second, the circumstances of that moment of synthesis reveal that the reason for Sullivan’s Darwinism was not merely the desire to emulate nature, but rather to signify the end of faith. Finally, Sullivan’s synthesis of various Darwinisms drew not only on the thesis for his own artistic inspiration, he drew on the substance of Darwin’s arguments to formulate a secular theory of the nature of inspiration and the technique of design. In the years following, this theory has become the primary technique by which design is taught.Louis’ unique education, which was tied to Darwinism from the very beginning, gave him an unusual perspective on the challenges of architectural design in the industrial age. The economic circumstances of his life as a first-generation immigrant exposed him to just the right education to lead him to explore evolutionary science as the inspiration for design. To be clear, the content of the thesis of natural selection was entirely irrelevant to the theory and practice of architecture in the nineteenth century. Yet by the end of the century the broad consensus among architects, historians, and theorists alike was that there was a, “close and causal relationship,” between Darwinism and modern architecture. Sullivan’s theory drew on Darwinian ideas to dismiss theological styles as empty formalisms, reveal the racism of ethnographic accounts for architectural forms, and argue for the evolution of an American Architecture, liberated from its colonialist origins. The context within which that shift occurred is significant. The justification for nearly every work of architecture in human history prior to the middle of the nineteenth century was some form of god. Mid-nineteenth century architecture in the United States was composed of a variety of regional ethnic styles intended to represent the ethnic origins, religious affiliations, moral inclinations, and nationalist allegiances of an array of displaced immigrant communities. The Civil War laid bare the reality that such ethnic styles represented a segregationist and racialized idea of the modern world. Over the course of the late nineteenth century, the profession of architecture was forced to abandon theological justifications for the practice of architecture as scientifically invalid, morally corrupt, and motivated by racism. This was Sullivan’s full idea: Put instinct before reason in priority, and engage in the iterative analysis of various instincts about the situation. Observe the patterns that emerge. Explore those instincts, until you find that your patterns merge with universal patterns. Do not fear error, as it makes the work alive. The capacity to capture that living essence is in all of us, individually and collectively, not some external force. The most-right instincts are ones in which the resulting form is a demonstration of its function. To understand what Sullivan meant with this we must see it as a Darwinian idea. Instinct is an animal property, a capacity which we share with other species. For Darwin, this sharing of instinct is essential for interspecies empathy. The antithesis of instinct is reason, which Sullivan describes as secondary. Reason is cold and lifeless, but also correct. True reason, Sullivan claims, is learned by experiment, and example. The greatest art speaks not just to our reason, but to our instinct. This, then is the task of the designer – to temper instinct with reasoned evaluation. Sullivan argues that it begins with an intuition, an idea he drew from Darwin’s Descent of Man.
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Title: From Critical to Transformative Pedagogy in Architectural Education
Creator: Jones, Kristin
Date: 2019, 2019
Publisher: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Washington, DC
Collection: 2019 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference Proceeding

Title: Analysis on the Persisting Effects of Redlining on Green Infrastructure in Chicago Neighborhoods - Neighborhood Map files
Creator: Meyer, Joel, Eshraghi, Amirreza
Date: 2023
Description: This compressed collection of map files constitutes data used in "Analysis on the Persisting Effects of Redlining on Green Infrastructure in...
Show moreThis compressed collection of map files constitutes data used in "Analysis on the Persisting Effects of Redlining on Green Infrastructure in Chicago Neighborhoods", published in SoReMo, March 2023 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.18409/soremojournal.v3i1.221). The report looks at “redlining” maps produced by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to analyze the current green infrastructure levels in various neighborhoods of Chicago.
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