Investigating Current Sustainability Issues Through Play and Future Scenarios

The concept of sustainability has started to take place in researches in the current period. At present, where urbanization continues rapidly, the idea of sustainability has become a necessity rather than an option. At this point, it is critical to address these current problems in design education. Sustainability should also take its place in design education. Based on these concepts, a studio structure was created at Istanbul Technical University, Department of Interior Architecture with third-year students as participants in 2021. The project is about the scope of sustainability awareness in future scenarios by teaching children the idea of sustainability. The studio proposes future scenarios with play experience and develops the idea by using scenario-based design as a design methodology. Participants were asked to design a play that creates alternatives to discuss sustainability through their works. Using this potential, the studio aimed to convey the importance of environmental sustainability to new generations in future scenarios.

‘A Construction in the Void’, Formal Architecture in the Novels of Edith Wharton

<p>Edith Wharton has been persistently framed as an author detached from the ‘modern’ twentieth century literary world she inhabited. Intellectually compromised by critical conceptions of her as the “last Victorian”, and Henry James’s “heiress”, Wharton’s attentiveness to modernism’s fractured worldview and her original employment of literary form to redress this perspective have been largely overlooked. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate Wharton’s ‘old-fashioned’ authorial persona. Instead of reading her commitment to a past perspective as evidence of her literary obsolescence, this thesis argues that her adherence to a bygone worldview serves as a means of managing the disorientation and disorder of the modern, incomprehensible present. Following Wharton’s evolving conception of stylised aesthetic form across pre-war and post-war worlds, I suggest that Wharton’s literature evidences a tension between two opposing literary aspirations. On the one hand, her texts reveal a desire to abandon aesthetic enclosures and realise an unbounded, authentic interior reality. Yet on the other hand, Wharton’s works underscore the poignant sense of fulfillment acquired within a life bound by such aesthetic architecture. Chapter One outlines Wharton’s critical stance in relation to both realism and modernism. It discusses the way in which the outbreak of the Great War motivated Wharton’s implementation of a critical ‘interior architecture’, in which a modernist interiority is held in play alongside an encompassing realist reality. Chapter Two assesses the stunted nature of stylised aesthetic forms in the pre-war world as evinced in The House of Mirth (1905). There, Wharton demonstrates how a lack of grounding in reality renders such aesthetics devoid of an internal anchorage that clarifies their purposeful relation to the world around them. Vacant of real-world relation, such forms abstract, disintegrating into formlessness. In Chapter Three, I reveal how Wharton moves from scorning to celebrating the artificial nature of aesthetic form in the wake of the Great War. In The Age of Innocence (1920), aesthetic forms deemed arbitrary and artificial in The House of Mirth are reevaluated and revealed as possessing an invisible, intrinsic real-world purpose. From denying realism, stylised aesthetics are redeemed in their attempt to frame individuals in relation to a formless world. Though such forms are inherently fictitious, Wharton asserts that their provision of an illusion of structure aids in the preservation of interpersonal and intergenerational connection. These forms thus cultivate an interior architecture within which society can shelter against an intrinsically unstable reality.</p>

Agility in Interior Architecture: An investigation through Prototypical Design for Interactive Spatial Dynamics

<p>This paper identifies and discusses designing interior building dynamics that, through user interaction, can be physically manipulated and maneuvered to suit a changing situation in spatial requirements/preferences. Designers have partially realised this architectural vision through both mobile and dynamic interior elements, and relocatable construction systems. Here lies the potential for a digitally manufactured modular system for spatial dynamics, providing interactive interior architecture with embedded spatial fluidity. Providing occupants of these interior spaces with the capacity to determine the spatial conditions how and when they require. Leveraging modern digital fabrication techniques like CNC timber milling and consideration of factors such as assembly/disassembly, this thesis explores ideas of tactility and kinetics of interior space and how the user interactions can exact spatial change. This research develops a modular tectonic language, with low operational - mechanical and construction - complexity. A manipulatable interior tectonic such as this would be possible to complement existing structures or other fixed designed architectural elements to provide an enhanced level of building function through a immediately influenceable spatial conditions. The research undertaken explores a series of experimental modular prototypes, each a unique response for spatial dynamics.</p>

‘A Construction in the Void’, Formal Architecture in the Novels of Edith Wharton

<p>Edith Wharton has been persistently framed as an author detached from the ‘modern’ twentieth century literary world she inhabited. Intellectually compromised by critical conceptions of her as the “last Victorian”, and Henry James’s “heiress”, Wharton’s attentiveness to modernism’s fractured worldview and her original employment of literary form to redress this perspective have been largely overlooked. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate Wharton’s ‘old-fashioned’ authorial persona. Instead of reading her commitment to a past perspective as evidence of her literary obsolescence, this thesis argues that her adherence to a bygone worldview serves as a means of managing the disorientation and disorder of the modern, incomprehensible present. Following Wharton’s evolving conception of stylised aesthetic form across pre-war and post-war worlds, I suggest that Wharton’s literature evidences a tension between two opposing literary aspirations. On the one hand, her texts reveal a desire to abandon aesthetic enclosures and realise an unbounded, authentic interior reality. Yet on the other hand, Wharton’s works underscore the poignant sense of fulfillment acquired within a life bound by such aesthetic architecture. Chapter One outlines Wharton’s critical stance in relation to both realism and modernism. It discusses the way in which the outbreak of the Great War motivated Wharton’s implementation of a critical ‘interior architecture’, in which a modernist interiority is held in play alongside an encompassing realist reality. Chapter Two assesses the stunted nature of stylised aesthetic forms in the pre-war world as evinced in The House of Mirth (1905). There, Wharton demonstrates how a lack of grounding in reality renders such aesthetics devoid of an internal anchorage that clarifies their purposeful relation to the world around them. Vacant of real-world relation, such forms abstract, disintegrating into formlessness. In Chapter Three, I reveal how Wharton moves from scorning to celebrating the artificial nature of aesthetic form in the wake of the Great War. In The Age of Innocence (1920), aesthetic forms deemed arbitrary and artificial in The House of Mirth are reevaluated and revealed as possessing an invisible, intrinsic real-world purpose. From denying realism, stylised aesthetics are redeemed in their attempt to frame individuals in relation to a formless world. Though such forms are inherently fictitious, Wharton asserts that their provision of an illusion of structure aids in the preservation of interpersonal and intergenerational connection. These forms thus cultivate an interior architecture within which society can shelter against an intrinsically unstable reality.</p>

Agility in Interior Architecture: An investigation through Prototypical Design for Interactive Spatial Dynamics

<p>This paper identifies and discusses designing interior building dynamics that, through user interaction, can be physically manipulated and maneuvered to suit a changing situation in spatial requirements/preferences. Designers have partially realised this architectural vision through both mobile and dynamic interior elements, and relocatable construction systems. Here lies the potential for a digitally manufactured modular system for spatial dynamics, providing interactive interior architecture with embedded spatial fluidity. Providing occupants of these interior spaces with the capacity to determine the spatial conditions how and when they require. Leveraging modern digital fabrication techniques like CNC timber milling and consideration of factors such as assembly/disassembly, this thesis explores ideas of tactility and kinetics of interior space and how the user interactions can exact spatial change. This research develops a modular tectonic language, with low operational - mechanical and construction - complexity. A manipulatable interior tectonic such as this would be possible to complement existing structures or other fixed designed architectural elements to provide an enhanced level of building function through a immediately influenceable spatial conditions. The research undertaken explores a series of experimental modular prototypes, each a unique response for spatial dynamics.</p>

A Tale of Place

<p>The purpose of this research is to develop a cultural centre for Paraparaumu College that will aim to counter the number of students leaving school without any formal qualifications. The need for such a centre, with particular reference to Māori, was identified with the publishing of the 2013 census, which saw a third of Māori aged 15 years and over make up this demographic. While this number has decreased in comparison to earlier census results, this percentage still sits high above the national average. From the standpoint of Māori, the reason for this statistic has been speculated by many theorists claiming Māori disconnection from their ancestral roots and the assimilation into European culture as a potential cause. Yet, while the Māori arts and language have declined in terms of common practice, the prevalence of western society is an aspect of life that modern-day youth have become accustomed to. Therefore, it is proposed that the medium of interior architecture can serve as a tool to explore the notion of culture and identity in the built environment. While the success of Māori students is of particular interest to this investigation, the issues outlined are not exclusive to this cultural group. As such, this research will seek to generate a physical form that will pay homage to the unique blend of cultures that make up the Kapiti region as a means to anchor the building to its environment. Additionally, as a nation of people who have travelled to this land, the overarching theme of journey will serve as the basis with which the subject of identity in architecture will be explored. It is hoped that by establishing a strong sense of identity this will service the student in a way that a standardised education system may fail.</p>

"Interior view of a hut ...": Stereography and the depiction of an Interior Architecture in 1930

This paper is an exploration of a stereographic photograph taken inside a New Zealand backcountry hut. Matter-of-factly entitled, "Interior view of a hut, with mugs, a bottle, plate and cutlery on a table, looking through door to another hut, location unidentified," the photograph is attributed by the Alexander Turnbull Library to keen amateur photographer Edgar Richard Williams. The image gives little detail away in its depiction of the hut interior, except for a utilitarian table tableau that begins to suggest a nascent New Zealand interior defined by no-nonsense pragmaticism and Lea & Perrins. But, far from being a scene of Depression-era poverty and deprivation, close examination of the photographed situation and its broader context provides a glimpse into a monied amateurism that heralded an emergent leisure class. As a stereoscopic image, the photograph does more than depict a scene. By placing us within a spatial view, we become immersed in questions concerning interiority and exteriority. We are presented with two spatial contrasts: one in the subject of the image, the other in the object of the image. By taking a close reading of both contrasts, this paper is an attempt to make some architectural sense of these dualities.

"if other arrangements can reasonably be made": the interior architecture of Children's Courts in New Zealand in the 1930s

In 1925, the Child Welfare Act was passed. The Act introduced the idea of the Children's Court as a space "separate from the premises in which another Court usually exercises jurisdiction" (s28). In 1927, an amendment to the Act provided further elaboration, clarifying that: "persons attending any sittings of a Children's Court shall not be brought into contact with persons in attendance at any other Court." To achieve this the amendment stipulated that: "for this purpose the sittings of the Children's Court shall not, except in cases where no other suitable room is available, be held in any room in which any other Court ordinarily exercises jurisdiction; nor shall a sitting of the Children's Court, if held in the same premises as any other Court, be held at a time when such other Court is sitting, if other arrangements can reasonably be made" (s18(1)). This paper investigates the locations, and interior architectures of Children's Courts in New Zealand in the 1930s. It aims to establish whether or not the interior architecture of Children's Courts, with their legislated requirement to be physically distinct from the rest of the court system, was also distinct, and in what ways children were specifically accommodated for in this interior architecture.

A Tale of Place

<p>The purpose of this research is to develop a cultural centre for Paraparaumu College that will aim to counter the number of students leaving school without any formal qualifications. The need for such a centre, with particular reference to Māori, was identified with the publishing of the 2013 census, which saw a third of Māori aged 15 years and over make up this demographic. While this number has decreased in comparison to earlier census results, this percentage still sits high above the national average. From the standpoint of Māori, the reason for this statistic has been speculated by many theorists claiming Māori disconnection from their ancestral roots and the assimilation into European culture as a potential cause. Yet, while the Māori arts and language have declined in terms of common practice, the prevalence of western society is an aspect of life that modern-day youth have become accustomed to. Therefore, it is proposed that the medium of interior architecture can serve as a tool to explore the notion of culture and identity in the built environment. While the success of Māori students is of particular interest to this investigation, the issues outlined are not exclusive to this cultural group. As such, this research will seek to generate a physical form that will pay homage to the unique blend of cultures that make up the Kapiti region as a means to anchor the building to its environment. Additionally, as a nation of people who have travelled to this land, the overarching theme of journey will serve as the basis with which the subject of identity in architecture will be explored. It is hoped that by establishing a strong sense of identity this will service the student in a way that a standardised education system may fail.</p>