Architecture Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Architecture Theses and Dissertations by Author "Davis, Howard"

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    A Historical Inquiry into the Failure of Downtown Eugene's Pedestrian Mall Strategy to Revitalize the Retail Core, 1971-2002
    (University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Shrestha, Subik; Davis, Howard
    “Downtown” and its revitalization have been among the most prominent issues for post-war American urbanism scholars. Of importance to this research are the federal government’s institution of urban renewal in 1954 to revitalize the declining parts of the central city areas and the local governments’ incorporation of the “pedestrian mall” strategy in the 1960s and 1970s. The downtown pedestrian malls successfully facilitated the downtown core revitalization in these two decades. However, several of them began to fail in the 1980s, continuing in the following decades. This research examines two questions through a historical study of downtown Eugene, Oregon. First, why did the retail center facilitated by the pedestrian mall begin to decline in the 1980s and eventually fail by the early-2000s? Second, in addition to demolition and reconstruction, what other design and planning-related processes did the urban renewal project experience? The four major fields of inquiry comprising the literature research framework are urban history, urban morphology (Conzenian approach), space syntax, and urban economic/urban retail theories. The research incorporates a Mixed-methods Research Design, including archival research, interviews, space syntax analysis, mapping/spatial analysis, and statistical analysis. These literary and methodological frameworks examine the following urban morphological components: (1) building morphology, (2) retail business structure, (3) relationship between the mall and the built form, and (4) influential historical/socio-political forces. Among the many reasons associated with the Eugene mall, the prominent ones are related to the drastic and sudden alteration to the existing built fabric, mall’s design and planning, spatial configuration, small business dislocations, the project’s planned and inflexible nature, disregard to downtown housing, failure of parking garages, and growth of outer-city areas. However, positive stories like the renewal agency’s efforts to facilitate the small businesses or the involvement of downtown merchants and the local community in the process are also central to the mall’s story. Additionally, in the later phase of the mall’s existence, the retail core experienced a shift in approach by the city and the renewal agency from a retail-centric approach to preserving the existing fabric and attracting diverse residential and commercial projects.
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    Redefining the Lakou: The Resilience of a Vernacular Settlement Pattern in Post-Disaster Haiti
    (University of Oregon, 2013-07-11) Miller, James; Davis, Howard
    The study shows the importance of the lakou, which is a spatial manifestation of the familial social structure in the Haitian culture, through the analysis of post-disaster temporary settlements, showing that through their own devices endogenous inhabitants create the lakou in post-disaster temporary settlements. The methodology was qualitative through interviews, observations, and site mapping, and qualitative coding was used to uncover the emergent themes. This study establishes the importance of the lakou in community vibrancy and demonstrates how the lakou adds to the resilience of the survivors living in such settlements. The unprecedented transformation of the lakou from a kinship based settlement pattern to a more inclusive non-familial pattern points to the importance of the spatial and social manifestation in the development of community in a settlement. It is conjectured that this resiliency factor can be useful in the process of turning a post-disaster settlement into a successful permanent settlement.
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    The Continuity of Deep Cultural Patterns: A Case Study of Three Marshallese Communities
    (University of Oregon, 2019-01-11) Miller, James; Davis, Howard
    In the era of Global Climate Change, forced displacement and resettlement will affect coastal communities around the world. Through resettlement, the local production of culturally supportive environments can mitigate culture-loss. While previous vernacular architecture studies suggest that the influence of imported architecture leads to culture change, this study investigates the continuity of generative structures in the production of culturally supportive built-environments, demonstrating resilience. In addition, this study expands the discourse on the dialectic relationship between culture and the environment by investigating the role of Indigenous Design Knowledge in the production of culturally supportive space. The dissertation investigates the dialectic relationship between Marshallese culture and the built-environment and uncovers the continuity of deep cultural patterns (DCP) in the production of the Marshallese built-environment. These DCPs are forms of local knowledge production that generate culturally supportive environments. The study takes a theoretical position that persistent DCPs are resilient and provide cultural capital. A multi-sited case study was conducted across rural and urban communities in the Marshall Islands. Historical ethnographies and archaeological studies of the Marshall Islands were examined for cultural patterns present in the built-environment. Interviews, participant observation, site documentation, and a survey were assessed for persistent cultural patterns in the built-environment that supported everyday life. Qualitative analysis uncovered persistent patterns in everyday cultural behavior, such as the cookhouse, and quantitative analysis uncovered spatial and syntactic relationships that demonstrated persistent, underlying cultural structures, such as the shared genotype of urban and rural housing. While outside influence has impacted the production of the Marshallese built-environment and the Marshallese cultural evolution, I argue that DCPs generate everyday cultural spaces and aid in the reproduction of Marshallese place-identity. DCPs represent Indigenous Knowledge and should be applied to design frameworks for climate forced displacement and resettlement.
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    The Global City and Its Discontents: A Study of New York City's Garment District, 1930-1980
    (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Kayatekin, Cem; Davis, Howard
    Big business and small business, the global and the local, the rich and the poor—these polarities often inhabit compartmentalized geographies within the modern global city. This compartmentalization proves to be problematic since the lack of a localized diversity of socioeconomic actors is a critical point of vulnerability in the context of urban resilience. The question is, what role does the relationship between the built world and human socioeconomic agency play in the context of this issue? The objective of this dissertation is to document, analyze, and understand: (1) at the district scale, how architectural / urban characteristics, typologies, and configurations have historically influenced the developmental trajectory and composition of the city’s socioeconomic fabric, and in turn how socioeconomic structures have historically influenced the architectural / urban characteristics, typologies, and configurations observed in the city; (2) at the building scale, how the internal physical / spatial characteristics and configurations of buildings have historically influenced the developmental trajectory and composition of the socioeconomic fabric, and how socioeconomic actors in turn have historically altered and influenced the internal physical / spatial characteristics and configurations of buildings over time; (3) the commonalities, patterns, and processes that can be discerned via the historic study of these narratives of physical and socioeconomic change; and (4) how these commonalities can in turn inform future architectural and urban projects in their capacity to support localized diversities of socioeconomic actors. In seeking to answer these questions, this dissertation endeavors to understand, more broadly: (1) the historic nature of the relationship between the physical and the socioeconomic fabric of the city; and (2) how future alterations to the physical fabric of the city can be informed so as to positively impact a locality’s ability to attract and maintain a diversity of socioeconomic actors over an extended period of time. These broader objectives are pursued with the supposition that they have the capacity to significantly impact the ideological conception, as well as practical regulation, planning, and administration of global cities.
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    Traditional Principles in the Urban Vernacular Environment: Study of Persistence and Erasures of Belief System’s Architectural Expressions in Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia
    (University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Wicaksono, Dimas; Davis, Howard
    In this dissertation, I embark on an exploratory journey to unravel the relationship between the belief systems of urban communities and the physical spaces they inhabit. Central to this investigation is the idea that our built environment and social fabric are inextricably linked, particularly evident when rural traditions encounter the complexities of urban life. The research is driven by curiosity about how traditional values, born in the expansive settings of rural-agricultural settings, are reimagined within the dense confines of urban areas. The study provides a meticulous analysis, comparing and contrasting the cultural practices of Bali’s rural-agricultural regions with those of its urban areas. It observes the set of differences and similarities of practices in both places and the ways in which people change those practices for survival or transfer of traditional religious values.The investigation operates under three hypotheses: firstly, that religious traditions are resilient and find expression in the vernacular architecture; secondly, that with increasing spatial constraints, some traditional religious architectural features may be sacrificed; thirdly, there is an implicit consensus about the sufficiency of a belief system's architectural manifestations across different densities, which is crucial in refining the contextual design approach. Employing a multi-sited ethnographic approach, the study explores two rural areas in Bali and traces their architectural evolution in the urban context of Denpasar city. By comparing architectural adaptations across different genealogical groups, the research aims to offer deeper insight into the spatial practices of religious communities within dense urban environments. The dissertation contends that examining the architectural expressions of vernacular houses – both traditional and modern, rural and urban – unveils how they accommodate the evolving identity struggles within Balinese society. The tacit consensus on the adequacy of the belief system’s spatial manifestations at varying density levels also reveals patterns that reflect not only the persistence of religious architectural expressions but also their resilience against spatial constraints. This enduring nature of spatial practices is posited as a key consideration for future designs and developments, enriching our understanding of the spatial dynamics of religious tradition, which is vital for spiritual identity and communal development in an increasingly diverse post-secular society. This dissertation includes previously published coauthored material.