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Helping homeless LGBTQIA+ youth from a place of uncertainty to a place of security to ensure the wellbeing of future city dwellers. This thesis aims to help the ongoing issue of homelessness in Washington, D.C. This will be achieved by creating a wellness facility for LGBTQIA+ youth. This thesis is overall attempting to create a more healthy, lively, green city, starting with transforming the lives of its youth. The goal of the wellness facility is to welcome the homeless LGBTQIA+ youth population of the city and those less fortunate and help them transition to a life that focuses on their success and wellbeing. This involves rehabilitation, education, and transitional housing, in order to help the occupants begin a new chapter of life. There will also be physical necessities for the occupants like food, water, and shelter - the basic things that these people may struggle to find on a daily basis. The occupants can stay and be fully immersed into a life-rehabilitation program or use the facility until necessary. The multi-use facility will be part of a larger master plan for Howard University, integrating mixed-used commercial, residential, and retail space for more sustainable urban design that involves the community. Helping people get off the street and start a stable life will also increase the lives of all city dwellers and create a more livable and healthier city. The goal of the exterior of the wellness facility is to create a space on the street for a more enjoyable pedestrian experience. The interior exterior will also introduce local art and context in order to engage the community and embrace the passions of the wellness facility’s occupants. Overall, this thesis aims to create a city that is kind to its occupants and creates an environment of peace and success.

The widespread adoption of autonomous cars has the potential to revolutionize urban transportation, but what impact will it have on urban form? This thesis examines the hypothesis that adopting autonomous cars can transform street space into a more human-centric purpose, leading to more livable and sustainable cities. The research was conducted through a literature review, analysis of case studies, and the development of specific street designs in order to reveal possible scenarios. The literature review suggests that adopting autonomous cars can reduce the need for parking and increase the efficiency of transportation. Furthermore, the rise of shared cars is expected to revolutionize the way people move. With the advent of autonomous cars, it is possible that personal cars will become less necessary as people can rely on these constant-moving vehicles for transportation. These changes will impact our cities creating new opportunities to improve the urban space. The thesis explores these challenges and opportunities through design for the actual urban environment of Washington D.C. As the capital of the United States, the country where cars have significantly shaped its cities, it is also home to influential political and policy-makers. As a result, the city offers a good opportunity to rethink the future urban environment when this technology will be widely adopted. The findings of this thesis suggest that the adoption of autonomous cars has the potential to transform urban form reclaiming street space for people, but also requires careful planning and design to ensure that the benefits are distributed equitably and the negative impacts are minimized. The thesis concludes with four street proposals, each performing a different role in the city and the results provoke a reflection of the role of the street in our cities.

Modern changes in lifestyle have inadvertently disconnected urban inhabitants from experiences known to be good for our well-being, including spending time in nature and having a sense of community and connectedness to those around us. We spend 90% of our time indoors in limited and artificial environments, mostly in our homes or places of work. The internet and a global pandemic have advanced this disconnection to our surroundings through the rise of remote work and a slew of apps ready to deliver whatever you desire to your front door. This thesis seeks to remedy these unintended consequences of modernity by reconnecting District of Columbia residents back to nature and to their surrounding communities through the design of a public library that incorporates nature to promote the holistic health of the community and the individual. The incorporation of nature into the built environment is proven to have physiological and psychological benefits and improve overall well-being. Neighborhood libraries have always been important institutions in our social infrastructure; functioning as places of self improvement, providing free resources, and acting as central public spaces in the communities they serve. In urban environments where public and private outdoor spaces are limited, a beneficial experience of nature can be one of the resources that public libraries provide to their communities. Through the use of natural materials, vegetation, passive ventilation, and natural light, this project utilizes biophilic design to promote wellbeing, enhanced cognition, and create a welcoming environment that draws District residents out of their homes and together to create a sense of community. The proposed project pairs D.C. Branch Library programming with outdoor spaces, including a courtyard and a public plaza, creating a permeable indoor/outdoor social center within the dense Washington D.C. neighborhood of Adams Morgan. The neighborhood is vegetated by a field of ginkgo tree

"Counter-Capital: Black Power, the New Left, and the Struggle to Remake Washington, D.C. From Below, 1964-1994” traces how grassroots organizers in the nation’s capital fought for greater control over the city and its future between the War on Poverty and rise of neoliberal austerity, helping to shape its recent past and present. Comprising a set of linked case studies, it explores how a generation of activists forged in the crucibles of the Black freedom struggle and resistance to the Vietnam war responded locally to redevelopment schemes, planned inner-city freeways, nascent gentrification, and an exponential rise in homelessness from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The campaigns they waged brought them into confrontation with federal administrators, legislators, mayors, and even the president. They also led to moments of collaboration with the state, altering the course of urban and social policy locally and nationally and contributing to the growth of community development and direct service approaches. Going beyond the boundaries of policymaking, the radicals it follows fostered emancipatory and participatory visions for the District and urban life more generally rooted in their movement ideals, ones which remain instructive even as they encountered obstacles to their full realization. Drawing on a diverse array of archival materials including organizational newsletters, meeting minutes, event flyers, campaign brochures, and correspondence; underground press and community papers alongside mainstream news outlets; documentary film and preserved footage; and oral histories and personal interviews, “Counter-Capital” contributes to debates in the fields of African American, social movement, and urban history. The project is further animated by and participates in discussions taking place across the correlating interdisciplinary fields of African American studies, American studies, and urban studies, bringing aspects of these fields that don’t always speak to one

This dissertation explores the role of popular music genres in constructing and enacting an imaginary of national and diasporic community among the Salvadoran diasporic community in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Two music genres with rich transnational histories, rock de las buenas épocas and cumbia salvadoreña, are central to the analysis. The research investigates how cumbia salvadoreña may be considered representative of El Salvador by D.C.-based members of Departamento 15, an “imaginary” additional state of El Salvador formed by its citizens living in the diaspora. The genre aligns with the myth of the perseverant and patriotic immigrant, one who stays connected to their home country through remittances. Before the reign of cumbia salvadoreña, rock de las buenas épocas served as an avenue for Salvadoran youth to imagine alternative realities to those of mainstream Salvadoran society—a parallel of the counterculture movement of the 1960s in North America and Europe. Despite aesthetic differences, both genres are performed at events for the Salvadoran community in the Washington D.C. area, as emblems of nostalgia. I also explore how, in the diaspora, these narratives are reaffirmed and contested. For instance, second-generation Salvadoran Cindy Zavala (also known as La SalvadoReina), performs cumbia salvadoreña with a twist. She presents the stories that have surrounded her as the daughter of immigrants to showcase a "bitter" alternative to the joy and perseverance usually conveyed through the genre. Another example I present is 1.5-generation Lilo González, Jr., a musician who is part of the renowned D.C. punk scene, who has integrated cumbia into his socially committed music. This study is based on intermittent ethnographic research conducted from 2019 to 2022 in the D.C. area, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Key events I participated in included the Salvadoran Independence Day festivals in Maryland, which reaffirm the nostalgia that maintains

The Federal Aviation Administration is allowing airlines to keep their flight slots from several busy airports due to the continuing pandemic. The FAA is extending covid relief so airlines can keep their coveted flight slots for takeoffs and landings.

DIGI-GOV is a research project that aims to understand (I) the role of large digital corporations (LDCs) in digital urbandevelopment, (II) how the presence of LDCs in urban planning practice challenge pre-existing modes urban governance, and (III) how LDC-led urban development constitutes a new relational geography of digital cities. DIGI-GOV is thus a chance to call attention to this critical shift in the ways that contemporary digital cities are constructed, planned, mediated and governed. DIGI-GOV expands on prior research that examined Alphabet Inc.’s digital city project in Toronto that raised a number of important issues forurban planners, development practitioners, and urban studies scholars – even if this particular digital city project was ultimately unsuccessful. DIGI-GOV expands this research because the range of services that LDCs provide has increased in both volume and centrality; more and more public and private institutions rely on LDCs for essential digital infrastructures. There is an urgent need to study the trajectories of urbanization that are rolled out under the leadership of LDCs and the tensions in urban governance that are unleashed. DIGI-GOV will shed light on four further cities in addition to Toronto, which have been challenged by the presence of LDCs—namely, Seattle, Washington D.C, Bissen, and Eemshaven. The selected cities are some of the few exemplary cases available where LDCs have secured their position in the local urban field. Through qualitative methodological approaches, DIGI-GOV will tease out how these cities are relationally connected through LDC-led urban development, and what scholars and practitioners can learn from these experiences. Examined together, one can scratch at the surface of, and unearth, this new emerging relational geography.

Housing is one of the most critical design challenges of the 21st century. Sparked by increased urbanization, issues around affordability, density, development, and displacement create stress on people and the urban environment. In Washington D.C., an inadequate supply of housing for families forces them to leave the city in search of more comfortable and affordable options. However, families are essential dwellers in a healthy urban fabric. This thesis explores how architecture and empathic design-thinking can begin to address these issues and contribute to the health of the family unit and a healthy community. My thesis begs the question… what lifestyles are we encouraging by the way we design? Dwelling is a more appropriate, personal, and empathic term for housing. Dwelling should meet the needs of its inhabitants and support three vital organs of urban life: social activity, peaceful refuge, and theatrical celebrations. A healthy city and a healthy dwelling should include all three. My goal is to re-imagine urban dwelling for families living in the city and how architecture can create intentional moments of connection between people and the city they are a part of – especially how ideas of transparency and movement or air, light and people can be agents of a healthier urban dwelling. A new mid-rise multi-family dwelling in Adams Morgan, a colorful, diverse, artistic, and eclectic neighborhood in Washington D.C., creates a home that enhances the experience of dwelling for families. My thesis project supports the primary functions of dwelling and secondary functions of food creation through a kitchen incubator. The intention of the building is that it will serve as a space for growth, for individuals and for growing families, that it will be successful as both a well-designed home and a food lab that fosters collaboration and community for chefs and entrepreneurs who are growing their businesses and connections in the city. The building aims to incorporate living

The STR report for the week October 17 - 23 show that occupancy decreased while room rates rose slightly when compared to the comparable week in 2019. Tampa recorded the largest increase in ADR and was also the closest in occupancy compared to 2019.

There is an affordable housing issue in our capital, Washington D.C. There needs to be intervention to create affordable housing to those that live under the poverty lines. In this we explain tools, technology and action plans to help solve this issue.

With millions of crime offenses are recorded each year in the United States, regardless of our position or background in the community, safety and security are our top concern when we are in an area. To help increase the community's confidence in public safety, our team proposed a product that can help people view the crime history as well as predict future times and places for crimes in the Washington D.C. area. This product is designed for a typical worker, a real estate agent, a regular student, a researcher or an analyst that are interested in exploring the likelihood of crime to occur in the area to ensure safety. The product provides users with analysis on the count of records in yearly cases or in each ward in the metropolitan area, analysis on how different machine learning models can effectively classify and predict the offense group. Our product also provides time series analysis in each census tract and thus, can predict the crime trend in the same census tract in the upcoming month.

This thesis looks at the role that infrastructure plays as it relates to the city. It is about taking an area of uninhabitable and divisive infrastructure and elevating it to something civic. It focuses in an area just south and west of the U.S. Capitol Building. It aims to embrace railroad and highway infrastructure as elements that serve multiple city needs, as part of the everyday, while adding artistic and monumental attributes to Washington D.C. It accepts the premises that the presence of, and the need for, the infrastructure will remain. This thesis proposes a master plan, involving the redevelopment of portions of Interstate 395, 695, and 295 highways and the railroads, to provide better use of valuable land, re connection of neighborhoods, and to create place, experienced through a series of civic spaces. Ultimately this thesis aims to set a new ideal that embraces infrastructure and elevates it to civic quality.

This thesis looks to explore the history and culture of soccer in America, relative to that of the top nations in the sport, in order to design a youth academy to bolster the cultural interest. Soccer, although one of the oldest sports in history, is relatively unpopular in America, compared to the “Big” sports: Football, Baseball and Basketball. Sports play an important part of our daily lives economically, politically and socially. As entertainment they act as a catalyst in developing close-knit communities. The objective is to integrate these pieces of architecture into the city to create a social hub, focused around developing the youth and interest in the sport.

This project will address light use in a museum. The focus and the program will require give and take in order to provide sources of natural light without compromising conservation standards. The building will house exhibits of film and photography, including theatres, dark rooms, prints, and projections as well as all the necessary program to support the building including a cafeteria, restrooms, a gift shop, as well as indoor and outdoor gathering spaces. The building site is in DC. When choosing a site I consulted with the National Capital Planning Commission's urban plan of Washington. They have published on their website a study that has listed the city's potential monument and museum sites. When evaluating these sites I decided to use views to and from the sites, as well as acreage to dwindle down the options.

Ramps are usually perceived as utilitarian objects emerging from standardized guidelines for architecture and landscape architecture. But closer examination reveals they can be quite beautiful and poetic. What we commonly call ramps, Galileo referred to as inclined planes, counting them as one of six classical simple machines in Le Meccaniche (On Mechanics) . Because inclined planes are actually static machines that do not require any energy to run. They do not discriminate among users. This thesis explores the work of the ramp in moving fragile loads, such as human beings.

The traditional rowhouse form was a result of economical use of available space and materials that provided its occupants a home that fulfilled functional and societal needs. The result was a series of rooms along a travel corridor with a distinct underlining organization. The typology was established by certain characteristics of spatial configuration, constructional methods and ordering systems that kept the building economical. Popular attempts to accommodate modern needs into these buildings have lead to implementing the "open-plan" concept and creating a series of floors verses a series of rooms. This thesis explores the rowhouse within the modern context of Washington D.C. and attempts to redefined the typology for new construction. The desire is to resort back to the historical relevance of the individual room and create a typology appropriate for modern single-family needs. Four empty sites, each with their own context and conditions within the cityscape, are used to create four individual rowhouses that exemplify this new typology. The proposed row houses exhibit architectural structuralism and phenomenology, resulting in four rowhouses that complete the context they are set in, yet emerge with their own identity.

In this thesis I investigate issues of post-war concrete buildings and how we can both add value and make adaptable what we have traditionally defined as not valuable and not adaptable. 55% of United States’ commercial building stock was built between the years of 1960 and 1980, leaving 36 billion square feet of building material to be adaptively reused or at the bottom of a landfill. Currently, our culture does not value many character defining features of these buildings making the preservation of these buildings difficult, especially at this 50 year critical moment of both the attribution of a “historic” status and time when major renovation of these buildings needs to occur. How can architects add value to a building type, sometimes called “brutalist”, that building culture currently under values and thinks is “obsolete”? I tested this hypothesis using the James Forrestal Building in Washington D.C. After close study of the obsolescence, value,history and existing conditions, I propose a design that adds value to Southwest Washington D.C. and may serve as an example for post-war renewal around the country.

The changes in technology and cultures of mobility within dense North American cities have resulted in a space that intervenes between one thing and another which often generates seemingly uninhabitable zones and problematic discontinuities in the physical and social fabric. Over time, the pattern of cities has changed; movement spaces have fractured the social spaces. The social dimension in the design of movement spaces has been neglected and thus these spaces have primarily become products of the functional dimension, i.e. traffic flow, circulation, and access for vehicles. These approaches to developments and prioritizing the movement space over the social space have contributed to the creation of fractured people spaces in between the fabric of cities. This thesis proposes to reconnect the broken fabric of cities that are shaped as result of the juxtaposition of movement infrastructure. Furthermore, the research studies the methods by which such spaces can become transformed into successful people place through literature review of what constitutes a successful urban space. Case studies of successful places adjacent to roads, waterfronts, and in between the fabric of cities were studied to understand the methods by which underused, and fractured spaces were transformed to successful urban places. This thesis further implements the methods of place making into creating the new physical, visual, cognitive, and ecological connection between the fractured spaces.

The stadium, in its purest form, is a structure that holds tiered seating arrangements built for mass viewing of sports, competitions, and public events. However, over the years, it has become much more than that. The stadium provides the spiritual need of community, allowing individuals to connect to others by sharing common beliefs and goals. This allows the stadium to become a source of civic pride to the people it serves. This combination of purpose and pride makes the stadium one of the most important archetypes ever created. It is the physical representation of human connectivity, a city's symbolic soul; the modern day cathedral. A symbiotic relationship is formed between the stadium and the public. In the modern era, viewing live sports has become big business. Taking advantage of the situation, team owners have designed stadiums to capitalize financially as much as possible. These newly designed stadiums, along with the rise of the automobile, have been moved from downtown to the suburbs, providing owners more space for seats, larger parking lots, and ultimately more revenue. These larger, disconnected stadiums have led to waning attendance, heavy pollution, and an overall lack of use. The once spiritual experience of the arena has now been watered down as the stadium has become a detractor of public good. Sports leagues now run as unopposed monopolies, with each major league having approximately 30 teams. With supply low and demand high, private entities essentially blackmail the public into building and funding stadiums to attract highly coveted sports teams. Desperately desiring to call a team their own, the public agrees to the deal. The end result is that the public funds a major project that provides no socioeconomic benefit to anyone other than the teams owner. The once symbiotic relationship between the stadium and the city has become perverted. Although public subsidies are now frowned upon due to the growing awareness of the damage they cause citie

The construction and subsequent abandonment of the streetcar tunnels below Dupont Circle in Washington D.C. speaks volumes about our culture and how we choose to treat our resources. The current tension regarding the fate of the site is an opportunity to re-evaluate the possible uses for the structure. This thesis will explore the roles of public space, historic preservation, and civic discourse in the urban environment. Topics of focus include: overcoming barriers to reuse, analyzing abandonment and desire, and questioning existing notions of authenticity.

This thesis began by studying how a temporary event could create permanent architecture and how that architecture could change an urban lifestyle. I chose the Olympics as the event and proposed that they be held in Washington D.C., a city of international prominence with a rich design history but a city that hasn't had a large scale urban redevelopment plan in over a century. I focused on the city east of the Capitol as I wanted to extend the monumental core created in the McMillan plan. I researched baroque design, Olympic planning, and even the original L'Enfant plan. The result of this research was unearthing some of the original L'Enfant design elements and incorporating them into a 21st century city by blending new design issues with the idea of a city designed around radial vistas with magnificent termini. I focused on two sites, the Olympic Torch and the Olympic Stadium. The Torch is situated as a terminus on a site that was intended to be mile marker zero for the country. Its design and importance make it a monument while still not impeding the views. The stadium was created to serve as a stadium for the people, allowing pedestrians outside to view and interact with the event inside. It is sunken so as not to obstruct views but it is spanned by arches that pierce the cityscape signifying its monumentality and appropriately ending the monumental axis started with the Lincoln Memorial on the western edge of the city.

Rock Creek Park is an urban forest within the District of Columbia and is administered by the National Park Service. Before it was established in 1890, much of the area was farmed by a diverse group of landowners and tenants, including William Riley owned 100 acres in what is now the northern section of the park. Today this area is used regularly by hikers, runners, dog-walkers, and horseback riders and is informally referred to as the "wilderness" area of the park. Many believe it is a natural forest, unaware of the land's history. Left relatively undisturbed for years, this heavily wooded parkland contains intact historical archaeology resources and cultural landscapes. Survey of the Riley tract located several cultural landscape features including a stone wall, a dam, two terraced.fields, and a vineyard. Two previously recorded 19th-century sites were also revisited and further characterized. The research located the site of an earlier tenancy, likely late 18th-century, as well as evidence of three 19th -century structures. Many of the newly discovered structures and landscapes features are associated with the late 19th-century Riley farmstead. The research demonstrates that the Riley tract contains extensive evidence of 18th and 19th-century workplaces, and parkland should be interpreted not just as a natural area but recognized for the extensive human component evident in its intact cultural landscapes and archaeological sites.

Looking at Washington D.C.`s Downtown and observing its domination by office blocks, which contribute little to street life on weekends, my thesis is dealing with the broad topic of cultural sustainability. I began my thesis thinking about a project dealing with ecological sustainability, but not long after starting to research, I gained the knowledge that the cultural aspect is often forgotten or minor. Thus the design got inspired through the idea of reviving a site in D.C. and to give the different occupants of the building the chance to sense, hear, see and eventually interact with each other. The project is giving an opportunity for architecture to get involved in people's life, not just as a room to live, work and study but to lead their interaction with each other and with the city itself. To create such a mixed used building I decided to connect three main characters of a city in one building: Work Space, which includes retail and office space, Living Space for students and professors and Education, which is a literature department library. A labour intensive model making process helped me to develop the design for a mixed used building where the different programs penetrate into each other`s realm and where the city is not excluded from the building but takes part in it.

Human beings by nature are social creatures capable of intelligent and complex interactions. Unfortunately, planning and implementation of the built environment has not always influenced or created opportunities for social exchange and conversation. The thesis explores how architecture can influence the interconnection between people at various scales in order to promote interaction. The mixed-use building includes a social coffeehouse and bar above which is a small apartment complex. These apartments would house a small number of politicians and their interns from each political party. This setting becomes a vehicle within which various players from the political spectrum could interact and commune together. By creating a variety of both public and private spaces, different experiences and relationships between inhabitants create opportunities for social dialogue and interaction. This architectural narrative, then, is the conversation between the reader and writer. ***NOTE: The uploaded file is 72dpi for computer viewing. Please contact the author if you should require a higher resolution pdf.***

This thesis explores the definition of an urban canopy, how civic architecture can create a space for the pedestrian in the city, and the elements which can compose such a space. Experimentation in the urban canopy allows definition into the protective nature of such an archetype. Filtering and entrance techniques are discovered to allow access by the pedestrian only. The structural and spatial composition of the space is also developed to enhance human interaction and usability. Layering provides different levels of access and privacy as different groups use the space. And finally the employment of light highlights key elements and creates a presence in the space. This covering is designed to protect more than just the citizens below. It creates a place that fosters civic community under the a the generous shelter of a new urban institution.

A Clinic for the study of Sleep Disorders The proposal for a clinic for sleep disorders sited on the edge of Dupont Circle within the District of Columbia. This thesis is a reference to time and movement as it relates to our individual perception. We each experience our environments differently and architecture should be prescribed to the fit the needs of the individual. It is the study of design evolution along a time-line. The science of effect. As we move along a line how does our environment and influence shape the final outcome? In architecture, process is the task of understanding. The following documentation is my personal time-line along that undefined path.

Geological processes define every place on earth. They tell us their story of formation, of shaping events that have long passed and about current conditions that continue to form the place. Each place therefore reveals its historical events and points towards its future. Man manipulates these processes and often ends the dialog between the past and the future. I wanted to explore an architecture related to this dialog, that occupies a site but also enters its existence and future. Erosion is the all-encompassing term for the processes that constantly sculpt and ultimately wear down the landscape of the earth. It accompanies weathering, the break up of material at the earth`s surface through chemical, physical and biological processes. Gravity plays a vital role in these processes. It is urging all of the erosional debris downhill. Most of the material is carried by running water, transported downstream often to the world`s oceans.

A congressional record where the Hon. Michael M. Honda commends Francisco Jiménez for his life-long achievements

This is my agenda. My "code of ethics". A structure of intentions. I think it's why I'm here. I'm not serious but take me seriously. Cheez Whiz and potted meat, fluorescent lights and vinyl siding. I'm not laughing at it. I fall for the hype. I'm down with the bonus buys. I don't get anywhere pretending I'm above all that. I'm just having fun with it. Siphoning off some of its energy. Borrowing it indefinitely. Everybody does it. It's best when it's an unlikely source. Metallica borrows from West Side Story and Jay-Z makes Annie a rap star (Don't Tread on Me/ Hard Knock Life). Rework my sources. A dash of Shopper's Food Warehouse and a taste of 425 Monroe Avenue blended with an (un?)healthy dose of (un)popular culture and some (nutra)Sweet's for flavor.

Between the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of Film and Photography design thesis explores issues of architecture at a scale of cultural significance. This thesis is the architectural manifestation of a museum as a research institution, separate from, yet contributing to an educational mission. It is inspired by the thin line between the two worlds, the public museum and the unseen, though often larger, private archive. In this thesis, a home for a treasury of artifacts was designed, so that they might be experienced, and for their intrinsic value. This design thesis explores the role of context, scale, and geometry in a building for the National Mall, as well as the critical requirements and specialized program of a museum. The orthogonal and radial geometry of the city are echoed in the plan. The building program, as well as the physical opportunities of the site, led to the form of the building. The simultaneous cycles of the artifact, the visitor, and the worker, and how they related to the role and amount of natural light also contributed to the form. The thesis is also developed based on the relationship between an object or a film, and a viewer.