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Repurposing Central Avenue SE : a multimodal urban cyclist corridor
(2015) Dahl, Keith
Many countries, cities, and communities have recently set out new policy frameworks to support growth of non-motorized transportation, creating a multimodal environment. This paper examines the repurpose and redesign of Central Avenue SE in downtown Minneapolis as a primary route for cyclists into the downtown area. Focusing on safety of the cyclists, the research presented looks at the cyclist in a multimodal environment – more specifically, road design and connection characteristics, through a discursive approach. The research indicates that with effective design treatments, cycling can be a safe transportation system as demonstrated through the solution proposed along Central Ave, thereby increasing the public's health benefits.
Manufacturing: A New Way
(North Dakota State University, 2012) Wullschleger, Scott
This thesis project, titled Manufacturing: a new way, will examine manufacturing buildings, and the working conditions that exist there. The typology will be a brewery with a area of 60,000 square feet. The guiding idea is that through careful design, manufacturing buildings can be made safer, more productive, and more enjoyable to inhabit. The site is in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a lot at the corner of North 3rd Street and 7th Avenue North, right in the heart of the warehouse district. The manufacturing industry has been held to a minimal standard for many years. Through thoughtful design decisions, this project will help to redefine a new standard that will show good design can create an improved work environment that allows for increased productivity and a reduction of stress.
Dwelling in Nomadic Architecture: Transitional Housing for the Suddenly and Chronically Homeless
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Miller, Nathan
The goal of this thesis project is to create a welcoming and respectful space to house, educate, and rehabilitate the chronic homeless population in the Minneapolis area. The challenge of this premise is to provide transitional housing that separates itself from the stereotypical institutional stigma many facilities face. This will be done by studying the difference between smooth and striated places as referenced by Deleuze and Guitarri, nomadic tendencies and architecture, and case studies demonstrating different responses to homelessness. There is a growing need for solutions addressing homelessness, particularly the significant rise of new age groups such as seniors, two-parent families, and teenagers under the age of eighteen. The number of homeless persons with mental illness is also on the rise. The challenge will be to match different age groups or living situations with their preferred type of space. This will require the ability to design spaces that are flexible and supportive of the nomadic tendencies many of the chronically homeless are accustom to. It will also require the ability to design efficient, institutional spaces that act as more of a system to elevate people out of homelessness.
Urban Stadia: Integrating Stadium Design with Mixed-Use Building Tactics to Rejuvenate an Urban Neighborhood
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Borgen, Mitchell
Sporting stadiums impact the socio-economic capabilities in all of the areas in which they exist. Some have a good impact, they are able to fully integrate into the urban environment and benefit the area through areas such as economics, walkability, transportation, etc. But there are many that do not accomplish this. They essentially become enormous concrete structures that are surrounded by thousands of asphalt-laden parking spaces and they only end up serving the community on the days in which the sporting team plays, usually once or twice a week. What if the same tactics we are using to rejuvenate our downtown areas can serve a bigger part in getting one of the most expensive typologies in this world back on track? With this thesis, I look to delve into just what type of impact a stadium will have on an urban environment, when combined with mixed-use building tactics.
Saudade - rethinking deathcare
(North Dakota State University, 2015) Schrader, Alex
This thesis explores the manner in which architecture can more sympathetically respond to people in a time of loss and grievance. Through adaptively repurposing a historic structure in Minneapolis, MN, a crematory and funeral home can show an alternative to the current deathcare industry. This alternative is more environmentally sustainable by providing alternatives to harmful cremation and embalming processes, emotionally responsive by creating spaces that encourage the grieving process, and user-focused by providing flexible and innovative spaces which allow for many types of ceremonies.
Sensory Overlay: Promoting Inclusivity and Accessibility for Americans with Disabilities along the Midtown Greenway in Uptown Minneapolis
(North Dakota State University, 2019) El Tamimi, Alina
Urban spaces are often hostile environments for individuals with disabilities. The bigger American cities grow the harder they become to navigate for those with disabilities as they provide more challenges and obstacles. Cities and public spaces are often designed with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance. Unfortunately, these designs always feel like an afterthought. It feels as though necessities for individuals with disabilities is set aside and are only provided due to the requirements. Individuals with cognitive or sensory disabilities are often completely disregarded. Even though recently more and more urban projects are being designed with amenities for people with disabilities, we still lack those basic needs that accommodate everyone and allow people of all abilities to interact, as well as experience the environment. For years urban greenway systems have been a wonderful and interactive space for many. Greenways can be a recreational space or a source of commute. However, these spaces are restricting as they fail to accommodate everyone. By better understanding those with a physical, sensory and cognitive study we can begin to design better public spaces and environments that would not only accommodate everyone but will also connect a different kind of people together. This thesis will examine how greenway systems can improve day to day life for people of all abilities, how greenways can connect not only people but neighborhoods and how those important connections to amenities can change everyday lives for everyone. This thesis will also explore the possibilities of multiple technological aspects that could be incorporated in the form of light, illustrations, installations and material patterns. By taking an already existing greenway system that already connects the city of Minneapolis together there is room to focus only on accessibility and amenities. Although the Minneapolis midtown greenway is already known as an ADA accessible destination, it misses most main aspects to a sustainable and accessible design. The greenway mainly caterer to cyclists rather than pedestrians and has no room for wheelchair users, more so it has absolutely no amenities for people with sensory or cognitive disabilities. This thesis includes a design for accessible greenway systems that solve these often-overlooked challenges that people with disabilities face in their day to day lives.
Aeronautical destinations
(North Dakota State University, 2014) Rathbone, Brett
One can arrive at as many as three or more airports on the way to their destination with two layovers during the trip, KFAR to KMSP to KSLC to KPSP for example. How can an airport design be more than just a vehicle for aviation, but serve as a desirable location to be, rather than just one more step along the path. It can have such a lack of circumstance that you only remember menial inconveniences, rather than a positive experience. With effort, can an airport be made to evoke a similar set of circumstance as a national landmark when seeing it? Perhaps to a select few, but the airport could have a grand sense of arrival instead of a mere step along the path. Economic expansion would benefit the expansion of existing infrastructure to be able to better support the local business hub that is the Twin Cities. Arrive sooner, forget the details along the way. Get in, get out, don’t care about surroundings. These are phrases that could be used in a critical manner to describe some airports. Statements that should not be used. Ellis Island and Angel Island had grand senses of arrival. However these are on a different scale from an airport but the sense of arrival from an airport should be carried over to the most popular form of overseas travel.
In the Loop: Making Historically Conscious Pedestrian Connections
(2016) Tomkinson, Christopher
Connecting green spaces, and providing meaningful and convenient pedestrian passage are two ideas that push sustainability, encourage community activity, and create a more enjoyable environment for the users. This is the thought process behind the proposal to redevelop the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes Regional Park. Currently all pedestrians walking through the park (from Lake Calhoun to Lake of the Isles) are forced underneath Lake St. on a single sidewalk that is only accessible near the North East corner of Lake Calhoun, and the nearest alternative crossing is a stop light located more than a block away. This research explores the different solutions that have been used to unite public spaces, and provide useful and convenient pedestrian trails. The park was initially designed as part of a system of parks that wind through the city of Minneapolis called the Grand Rounds, Horace William Shaler Cleveland was the designer, and his philosophy was to create a city that is a work of art. (Nadenicek, p.5). The park system is very successful for recreational purposes but could be updated to accommodate more utilitarian (non-recreational) trips. Manny cultural destinations around the park were not present when Cleveland designed the grand rounds and more meaningful and useful connections can be made to the neighborhood. A process of inventory and analysis will help determine the right solution to fit the site. The aim of this study is to provide updated connections to the neighborhood and motivate more people to walk or bike. Success of this will be determined by the number of pedestrians using the park system for non-recreational trips, and travel time from one end of the park to the other.
Hmong Funeral Rites and The Space Between
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Vang, Hue
The sacred has always been a part of human life from the beginning of time. Religion and faith throughout the timeline has driven multiple major revolutions. They have answered questions that could not be answered, but now in this modern age, the need of the sacred seem to be diminishing with the discoveries of science and progress. The modern age may be calling for a new sacred, a sacred that is not related to religion and faith but a sense of understanding one’s self. The deeper calling of the question we ask ourselves that may never be answered by science, the afterlife. Thus every culture has come to deal with it their own individual way. When an individual passes we perform the appropriate rituals to mourn, to commemorate, and sometimes to celebrate their transcendence beyond our world. As Hans-Georg Gadamer says “We could perhaps even say that this experience initiated the process of our becoming human. As far back as human memory extends we can recognize as an undisputed characteristic of human beings that they perform some kind of funeral rites.” in his book The Enigma of Health. As Jon Cannon from The Secret Language of Sacred Spaces states “The architecture might be intended to replicate the features of the sacred landscape in which it is set, or to represent a culture’s deepest ideas about the ordered nature of the cosmos and humankind’s place within it, from earthly life to the ultimate mystery of what lies beyond mortal death.” Architecture in many senses has provided the space for these rituals, or maybe the other way around. These spaces has provide the opportunity for architecture. But we can’t disagree that where there are these rituals there is architecture. In the past these spaces has always emitted a sense of holiness and transcendence. In the present time, in the Hmong community, these spaces have become dull and plain. It does nothing in educating the young and providing an aesthetic for such rituals. This thesis provides a sublime sacred space to educate and enlighten the younger and present Hmong generation. The analysis of precedent spaces will be used to engrain elements and concepts into the design. The study of people and such spaces will help us understand why these spaces are diminishing. The need to embrace one’s roots and recognize one’s descendants may be the answer to transcending one’s self.
Urban Transitions: making connections between transportation to the livable environment
(2013) Olson, Adam
The dependence on personal vehicles for transportation continues to grow for Americans. This has changed the shape of our cities toward automobile oriented transportation over the past decades. In return cities have been designed to be vehicle friendly causing higher automobile traffic and lower pedestrian oriented neighborhoods; resulting in the expansion of the cities beyond the sustainable boundaries which depletes more agricultural lands and natural resources. This study explores the potential options available to reduce the automobile dependency and enhance multi-modal transportation within urban cores. This has been done by evaluating various case studies and their relevant implementations. This research evaluates case studies in transportation oriented developments along with revitalizing streets to hypothesize that redesigning core urban neighborhoods around public transportation will reinforce sustainable livable communities. The case studies are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively in order to make comparisons on the design elements. The elements analyzed include land use, public transportation, and street composition. This research concludes with the discussing different options cities can adopt, and what elements have been proven to create more sustainable livable communities.

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