Architecture
This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's School of Architecture .
Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).
Waterloo faculty, students, and staff can contact us or visit the UWSpace guide to learn more about depositing their research.
Recent deposits
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ON THE EDGE OF THIRD SPACE: A Re-imagination of the Refugee Camp Boundaries
(University of Waterloo, 2023-10-24)This thesis explores the pivotal moment in which a refugee camp transcends its original temporary purpose. Central to this exploration is the intersections of architecture and citizenship practices in politically grey ... -
Repairs and Reappropriations: Examining Cultures of Care, Production, Agency in Bombay/Mumbai Chawls
(University of Waterloo, 2023-10-23)This thesis is driven by unravelling the intricate dynamics of ‘marramat’/repair. As the focus broadened, the work began to consider reappropriation and reuse as spatial tactics of agency. The research is anchored within ... -
Cairo from Above: A Guide to Cairo’s Informal Communities & Rooftop Practices
(University of Waterloo, 2023-10-16)In Greater Cairo, Egypt, informal settlements have emerged as the predominant form of urbanization, accommodating over 40% of the city’s population. Seventy-five percent of urban areas across Egypt are unplanned. For over ... -
MORE THAN JUST SMOKE AND LIGHTS: THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONCERT STAGE DESIGN
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-25)Live music creates an environment that allows your mind to go silent, where all your senses are stimulated in perfect harmony. It’s a heightened sense of reality, a place to escape and be consumed in something that feels ... -
Parkdale People's Palace: Rethinking a Heritage Church as Revitalized Social Infrastructure
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-22)In recent decades, Canada’s church buildings have been steadily declining in number and use due to the increasing secularization of society and the diminished role of Christianity in the country. Rather than demolishing ... -
City of Rebirth: Revisiting the Place and Memory of Tainan's Multi-generational Homes
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-19)This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration of how the multi-generational homes in Tainan, Taiwan, along with the objects and people found within them, play a fundamental role in shaping the city's individual and ... -
Waste as Resource: Recycling housing components in the informal settlement of Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-15)Amidst rapid urbanization, large self-built settlements such as Kibera in the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya, confront numerous environmental crises like flooding, alongside critical issues like limited nutrition, overall ... -
Home Away Home: Student housing as a catalyst for student and community well-being in Cambridge
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-28)In 2004, the University of Waterloo School of Architecture (UWSA) was relocated to Cambridge, Ontario, establishing a new satellite campus 31 km away from the main campus in Waterloo, Ontario. This move aimed to invigorate ... -
The Psychology of Nature: Our Dwellings, Well-being, and Evolutionary Preferences
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-28)Nature has always played a significant role in the human experience. Throughout prehistory, our early ancestors experienced life through a purely natural world. As an evolutionary mechanism aiding their survival and ... -
Materializing the Hidden Identity of Hong Kong: Re-connecting Hong Kong's vanishing fishing community through urban interventions on the Tam Gong Festival route in Shau Kei Wan
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-25)Against the backdrop of the expanding metropolis of Hong Kong, many functioning members of contemporary society have concealed facets of themselves that they now deem irrelevant to their daily lives. Over the last half a ... -
Re-Occupying the Archipelago: The Potential of Unified Governance in the Thousand Islands Region through Application of the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-24)This thesis explores the potential Indigenization of governance in the Thousand Islands region through integration of Haudenosaunee political philosophy to better inform methods by which local governing bodies make decisions ... -
Translating Encounters with Stone: Investigating Rubbing as an Ecological Method of Inquiry within Architectural Material Studies
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-24)This thesis situates the practice of rubbing within the context of an immediate geological feature in Southern Ontario, the Niagara Escarpment, as a site that is admired for its natural and productive qualities. Adverse ... -
Back to the Mountains: A Guesthouse for the Preservation of Vernacular Memory on Mount Tomorr in Albania
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-24)For millennia, the mountains of Albania have been a repository of vernacular knowledge, and in difficult times, a place of refuge from the often-hostile urban world. However, since the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, ... -
One Stone, Three Processes: A Material Culture Study on Queenston Limestone
(University of Waterloo, 2023-06-19)Named after the Queenston Quarry, Queenston Limestone is Canada’s highest calibre of building stone for its durable building properties and aesthetics. The stone has been quarried in the St. David’s and Niagara region for ... -
Exploring Toronto's Inner Frontier
(University of Waterloo, 2023-06-05)It is without ceasing that urban spaces witness the cycle of their birth and death. Like the waves of an ocean repeatedly crashing into and withdrawing from the shoreline, the city’s sphere of production and human ... -
Stone it was Stone it Remained: The Evolution of Architecture on the Azores island of Pico
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-24)The culture of building with volcanic stone on the Portuguese Azorean Island of Pico represents the resilience of human creativity. The original settlers of this isolated Atlantic Island were faced with an adverse ... -
Just Build It: Design guidelines for a tiny home community in the Region of Waterloo based on conversations with residents who have experienced homelessness
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-23)As governments in the Region of Waterloo consider implementing tiny home communities (THCs) for people experiencing homelessness, the Tiny Homes Research Project (THRP) has partnered with the City of Cambridge to design a ... -
Performing the Forbidden Public Space: the Case of the New Clock Tower Square in Homs, Syria
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-23)Public spaces in Syria have been controlled and militarized for a long time, even before the revolution of 2011. In the city of Homs, however, during the revolution's early days, thousands of people poured into the New ... -
Jiazhai: In Search of My Mother's Childhood House
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-15)The concept of home has become increasingly complex and challenging to defi ne in modern times, as traditional notions of home are being challenged by diverse family structures, globalization and mobility, economic instability, ... -
Space & Story: Constructing and Communicating Narrative Space in Dungeons and Dragons
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-12)Designing and communicating spaces is an ever-evolving practice and challenge for the architect who must translate individual and collective experiences of space both to those within the field of architecture, and those ...