This is an applied research paper, where a micro campus was designed for the San Carlos Apache Community with a goal of meeting requirements for at least three petals of Living Building Challenge. The end goal was to submit recommendations for attaining the petal certifications. The process of design not only included following spatial requirements of designing the building, but also including a wider perspective of construction and energy management in it. The first step of the research was getting to know the community and their requirements and priorities. This was done in 1st semester as a part of an applied class Indigenous Project Delivery. The second part of the research was to design a micro campus for the community that is in sync with the main campus. The intent of design is to respect the community’s culture and help them pass it on to the next generation while abiding by the Living Building Challenge standards. The third step of this research was to back up the design with recommendations for petal certifications.

Throughout history people have used storytelling to leave remnants of their life and culture in the world. From the ancient cave paintings to the Egyptian hieroglyphics and from Greek mythologies to our modern-day novels, storytelling reflects parts another person’s life from a different time and place. Stories have a way of taking us out of our place in time and sending us into a realm created by the storyteller. We listen and tell stories every day to the people around us, whether they are our own stories or another person’s story. It is how we connect with each other intimately. Through storytelling, you give your audience a glimpse into your mind, the way you think and the way you perceive the world by how you illustrate the story. Architects create the frame for the user to define the space and the opportunity for the narrative of the user to be reflected in the frame and space of the architecture. Storytelling is used in architecture to bring the audience into the narrative constructed by the architect to create the experience. For my in-studio thesis project, I created a short film to tell the story of the Architectural Studio VI class. The images and video footage that I included are used to allow the audience to have a glimpse of what the life and environment of studio was like as the students were working collaboratively and independently to develop their designs. I produced this film with the intention to not only tell the story of the Architectural Studio VI class but to also bring my audience into the story through the images and video footage.

As existing typologies and precedents that integrate music into architectural form don’t pay careful consideration to the composer’s intent and technique of the score into built structure and its program, the goal is propose a new architecture that integrates the site, program, and acoustics. Scenes from Childhood (Kinderszenen), composed by Robert Schumann, depict memories, dreams, hopes, candor, and games- all lost in paradise. Schumann composed the piece as an adult, reminiscing of his childhood. The rising 6th with a four-note falling figure is the main motif. The motif opens the 1st movement, reappears in the 2nd, 4th, and 11th, and is transposed in the 6th, 7th, and 9th. This motif and the implications of each movement, as well as the piece as a whole, became the organizing principle in defining form, program, and experience: a public park wedged between two elementary schools in a low-income neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The proposal aims to integrate the lack of the two institutions’ music programs into the experience of the 13 pavilions that reflect the 13 movements in Schumann’s piece. The manifestation of the final project was just as important as the process; the program is developed through the score, and the architectural is supported by the musical curriculum as well as Schumann’s intent.

This research and design project proposes an active (resilient/adaptive) architecture to address the problem of natural disasters in developing communities. Natural disasters are the outcome created when mankind stops listening and learning to the surrounding environment. They are like any other natural hazard created by the environment, or human activity, the only difference is that natural disasters are destructive, claiming lives and damaging economies of affected areas. Research shows that it is more expensive for a community to recover from a disaster than it is to prevent it from happening in the first place or trying to prevent factors that might increase fatality. Therefore, rather than dealing with the after-effects, this project proposes solutions for the prevention of the adverse effects of natural disasters during the process of building rural communities \u2014 to better adapt for those events. Furthermore, research has shown that natural disasters have little power in taking lives and weakening economies alone. In his book, 2000 Years of Mayan Literature, Professor of Anthropology Dennis Tedlock, explains that many historical civilizations collapsed in part due to the inadequate relationship between society and the environmental conditions upon which societies rely. He compares this situation with our own, pointing to the parallel between the isolation of Easter Island, set apart by the vast wastes of the Pacific Ocean, with the isolation of the Earth in space. Tedlock's statement remains relevant in our time, yet mankind still turns a blind eye, and together with unprepared infrastructure, natural disasters can become exceedingly devastating and have long-term destructive effects. Active Architecture is the form of architecture that adapts to challenges and reacts to them accordingly and repeatedly, according to challenges introduces and forces present. Architecture plays a huge role in how natural disasters are dealt handled. In an interview with Arbuckle Industries, architect and humanitarian Shigeru Ban argues that natural disasters are manmade. He says that the earthquake alone cannot kill a person, the collapse of a building does. The actions of mankind are implicit in the massive destruction when a disaster occurs. Ban stresses it is the responsibility of an architect to make safe spaces. My proposal is that safe spaces can be created through active architecture. One example of active architecture is the civilization created by the people of Badjao, a 21st-century sea people. They are a relevant case study in my research because of their five (5) core technics in creating their active architecture: 1) architecture can be collective initiative, 2) adaptability goes beyond the building, 3) successful design can be born from fragility instead of stability, 4) listen to their environment, and 5) use surroundings and ecological impact as the defining qualities of their work in the long-term. In this paper, I will discuss the techniques of active architecture through a study of natural disasters in the form of landslides that occur often in my native country, Rwanda. Landslides, floods, droughts and heavy rain all routinely affect the country, however, landslides are the most urgent problem to be dealt with. In the final section of my paper, I use my research to develop an architectural solution to the issue of landslides in Rwanda and I project what the future of the country could look like if the proposal is implemented. The proposal describes a more active form of architecture that is responsive to the site and offers a resilient yet solid infrastructural solution to the problem of landslides.

The purpose of this text is to research and specify inequities present within three South American cities; Medellin, Columbia, Mexico City, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This research then considers specific neighborhoods within these cities that have become underprivileged as a result of the inequities, and analyzes architectural insertions that have been placed in these communities in hopes of balancing the inequities secluding the communities from the rest of the city. With the information gathered from the three case study cities, another city, Tijuana, Mexico, is examined and ascertained as to what type of inequities are present. Using the methodology implemented in the case studies, a specific architectural insertion is proposed in relation to the problems at hand, with the intent of balancing the inequalities present in an underprivilege neighborhood in Tijuana. Ultimately, the text strives to demonstrate the power of architectural insertions within a community, while highlighting the importance of the effects upon the daily lives of the inhabitants, as well as the dynamics within the community and greater city.

This project addresses the high demand of housing units in the Gila River Indian Community and proposes an architectural intervention with the intent of bringing tribal culture into the everyday context of the home. Initially, the existing condition is critiqued from an architectural and cultural lens, and establishes the current realities of the residents. An investigation of the existing condition and the surrounding context determined that the immediate contradiction to the existing house is the storytelling tradition of the Akimel O'odham and Pee Posh tribes. This project accepts and revises the existing condition and attempts to combine it with the fundamental traits of storytelling culture to create a house that encourages storytelling across generations, and serves as a space that allows residents to practice culture in the every day.