One of the most important issues for architects practicing in the post-Modern era concerns how we deal with our past. Of primary concern are monuments and memorials, which are intended as significant cultural markers yet often do not survive the era which created them. These structures provide an opportunity to develop a critical dialogue between a ...

Houston's Fourth Ward has often been the object of redevelopment schemes which call for extensive change. The most recent such plan would save neighborhood houses, but would displace residents. To so easily separate buildings from their occupants requires an architecture concerned primarily with aesthetics. My thesis' premise is the desirability of ...

Neighborhood planning involves American cities in a conflict of virtually irreconciable imperatives. Cities are both political bodies and corporate entities, of which land is the primary asset. By satisfying residents' demands for stability and protection, cities may inhibit the investment which supports their financial integrity. Since satisfaction ...

A lack of non-commodified public space in Galveston was revealed through a series of analysis. The current state of a town that is undergoing a transformation from an agro-industrial economy to a tourist based economy is fertile ground for urban hypotheses. Responding to this need, a site was identified: a fringe area of downtown Galveston, left ...

Architecture can be defined as the manifold of space, movements, and events. This project, located in the City, utilizes movement as the primary ordering device for the production of space and the encounter of events. Movement, both determined and aleatory, can be understood to have spatial consequences which locate and materialize the architectural ...

In place of an indigenous culture, Houston has gathered an industry devoted to deploying generic, understandable, manmade environments in places they otherwise might not seem to belong. This project is a website that attempts to link the history of Houston to recent major transformations in the American landscape: the seeming homogenization of urban, ...

The contemporary city has evolved into an agglomeration of shopping malls, convenience stores, corporate offices, and single family houses that are linked by an intensive highway infrastructure and, as Andrew Kruse referred to it, "thinfrastructure" of fiber optic cables and satellites. This agglomeration, dubbed the "Generic City" by Koolhaas, is ...

On Chicago's Metropolitan Rail system (Metra), the conventional commuter rail station remains configured much as it did when it served commuter suburbs of the late 19th century. The contemporary commuter station, however, now operates within a diffused suburban landscape. As the suburban fabric has loosened itself from the rail corridor, so have the ...