This thesis proposes a blending of built and natural environments in the urban fabric. The design blends both physical elements and features as well as social relationships between people. Blending is a way of thinking about the shared experience of the city, incorporating people, landscape, and the built environment.

Connecting with nature provides physical and mental health benefits, yet current nursing home design does not make the natural world a priority. By using biophilic design strategies it is possible to incorporate many of the health benefits provided by nature. This thesis reinvents the nursing home interior to create a more holistic and healthy environment for all its residents.

Homelessness and food insecurity are issues in every metropolitan area across the United States. Current solutions only offer temporary answers, which is not a sustainable way of thinking. Prioritizing the people and the community needs is a way to begin to understand better design strategies for long term solutions. A new way to start thinking about designing a permanent residence and providing food security is by creating spaces that provide safety and security to aid in comfort and recovery, fostering a community to work together to address these issues, and make the system a sustainable one to break the cycle of homelessness while helping the environment for which they inhabit.

People today are addicted to tangible material goods, neglecting the precious value of how intangibility satisfied people in the past. This thesis explores the possibility of conveying poetry into architecture, through a library and exhibition space that creates a calm and engaging space of immaterial possibility.

While the benefits of access to nature for humans are well studied, our built environment instead tends to exploit and poison natural ecosystems. Regenerative design offers a solution by incorporating whole-systems thinking to restore, renew, and revitalize the resources and processes of our environment. This thesis utilizes regenerative design to create an Environmental Education Center that is beneficial to all stakeholders, especially the natural ecosystems in which a building lives.

This thesis explores the benefits of alternative off-grid village design, the value of a community's closer relationship with nature, and the positive effects this can have on the environment. The proposed village is one of sustainable living and a permaculture lifestyle, including design and planning that addresses architectural engineering, food production, and structural organization modeled after natural ecosystems. A community aware and blended with the natural environment around it.

Discovering the emotional connections that people have to places can assist in creating habitats that people are drawn to and experience in a holistic way. Through research into rural community hardships, understanding how these issues may be mediated through place attachment, and emphasizing the specific experiential connection people have to natural surroundings, this thesis aims to enhance local commerce opportunities, bring awareness and positive experiences to the area, and incorporate connection to the land and surroundings. Utilizing local materials and resources helps realize the design intent to revitalize local architecture and highlight the beauty of historic structures.

This thesis explores the collision of two universal cultural phenomena, Film and Architecture, with a focus on phenomenological experience. The primary subject of this narrative is “loss.” Through transposing cinematic techniques into the interiors, these spaces heighten and dramatize user experience both physically and emotionally, suggesting a novel approach to memorial design. Pier of Grief is a safe haven for people who are grieving and a symbol of resilience for individuals who have overcome their testing times. With the inundation of violence, insensitivity, and hostility it is crucial more now than ever to encourage people to get in touch with their feelings and foster connections through shared vulnerabilities, and more importantly to take a pause and reflect upon what has gone by and what we have left. Like a cathartic film, this memorial creates a world filled by our own feelings allowing a highly personal and fulfilling experience.

Resettling into another country is never an easy task; how can we designers make displacement and the refugee crisis a design solution? This thesis proposes both temporary and permanent housing as part of a more robust, more sustainable solution. The Lake Van region of Turkey is a key area in the flow of refugees in the middle east, and this project proposes a combination of local materials and prefabricated units to provide housing and amenities for those on the journey to safety.

Working with a team of architecture, interiors, and real estate students, and collaborating with community stakeholders, this project focuses on expanding the capabilities of the mutual aid group, North Philly Peace Park. The site sits within a primarily Black and low income neighborhood and includes a community garden and rowhouse prototype for temporary housing. We wish to actualize the larger vision of Peace Park through architectural support in a way that meets physiological needs, invites commerce, allows knowledge exchange, and community healing so that residents can reclaim space, agency, and sense of place. The project would provide food, energy, shelter, Black self determination, and resilience that could hopefully be replicated throughout Philadelphia.

Humans have an intrinsic psychological need to connect with nature and the natural environment. Architecture is created when humans build in response to the environment around them, and continuous creation of architecture creates the built environment. The treehouse, which is created in response to the environment of trees, is built for the interaction with and/or appreciation of the natural environment. The experience of being in a treehouse brings one to a deeper and more personal connection with nature.

This project utilizes biodegradable and recycled materials in furniture design to reduce carbon footprints, while also addressing travel distances, manufacturing processes, and the forms of energy used for manufacturing. Additionally, information about the furniture elements and production processes will be made available in courses for the public, raising awareness for sustainable practices within furniture design.

Due to unjust practices in the architecture and interior design fields, the built environment lacks equality. In particular, racist practices such as redlining and Jim Crow laws have shaped the built environment to systematically dictate who belongs where. This thesis uses inclusionary methods and community-based design to create a school for underprivileged youth, and make a healthier built environment for everyone.

The US correctional system is the largest and most pervasive social control system in the world; its cyclical nature displaces millions of lives each year. This thesis project confronts mass incarceration in America by using architecture and design to improve the incarcerated experience. These designs promote a more rehabilitative environment and enable human connections using architectural fluidity, spatial flexibility, natural light, and material texture to provide relief from inmates’ relentless world of confinement and cultivate an environment that instills hope for a productive life after prison.

Loneliness affects people of all ages, ethnicity, genders and occupations. It is a growing global issue, and has negative impacts on health and wellbeing. This thesis proposes to counteract loneliness by creating attachment to place through scent. By using scent to provoke memories of experiences, we can restore place attachment, which provides a sense of security and comfort. Designing for olfactory experience helps to cue vivid memories. Memories of scent are emotionally rich. The goal is to restore connections in design through scents, and create moments that evoke memories and nostalgia to alleviate loneliness.