American Void: Engagement Through Ambiguous Architecture

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In Folder: 2017 Theses

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American Void: Engagement Through Ambiguous Architecture

Submitted to in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, April 2017

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title: American Void: Engagement Through Ambiguous Architecture

creator: James McDonnell

subject: Plazas; Public spaces, Social aspects

publisher: Douglas D. Schumann Library and Learning Commons, Wentworth Institute of Technology

type: Thesis

format: .pdf

language: en

rights: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

description: With the development of the American city has come its biggest void, its plazas. These public spaces have hollowed out today's cities and created areas lacking of engagement and activity due to their ignorance of the human condition. This project dissects multiple plazas within the United States and identifies similar characteristics and attributes that either promote or hinder engagement and interaction between users. It then begins to propose a series of spatial elements that can begin to understand new possibilites for the average day, week, and month in terms of architectural forms, propelling programmatic possibilities for the average American city. Federal Center Plaza in Chicago, IL was chosen as the test site for this thesis project because it serves as the premiere model of the American plaza. Testing here allows for similar design thinking to be applied to multiple plazas at a variety of scales across the country in order to finally offer a solution to the American Void.

date: 2017

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