Cornell Theses and Dissertations

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The theses and dissertations of graduate students at Cornell University have been deposited in Cornell's institutional repository (eCommons) since about 2004. This collection also includes a few earlier Cornell theses.

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WRITING ROADS: WORKER STORYTELLING, KARMIC HAUNTING, AND THE MANAGEMENT OF CONSTRUCTION IN CHINA
Wang, Yuanping (2020-08)
On the edge of a sparsely-populated area in China’s countryside, a young worker with an excavator was shoving an unclaimed corpse out of the way of a highway under construction. Afraid of being seen by the nearby villagers, he hastily mixed the bones with trash and then dumped them a mile away under cover of night. It was not until later, when the worker died during construction, that the story of the corpse turning into a ghost and asking for the worker’s life, circulated in the field. Faced with the daily hazards of poorly regulated labor, workers tend to dramatize accidents, relating them to relocated corpses, disturbed animal dwellings, or old trees growing in tomb dirt. To workers, these ghosts haunt the construction; therefore, a machine malfunction must be redressed by local rituals, a coworker’s death may be a sacrifice for the moral insult to the land, and a bossy manager’s death is a divine punishment for the state’s disrespect of workers. Attending to Chinese workers’ affective responses to death, infrastructure, history, landscape and state power, this thesis aims to explore how ghosts speak to Han migrant workers in Xinjiang as they adjust to ever-expanding, dangerous, and sometimes fatal infrastructure projects by engaging not only with one another, but also with supervisors, local bureaucrats, company managers, and ritual specialists who actively participate in the construction.
ENABLING STABLE LITHIUM NUCLEATION AND GROWTH VIA CROSSLINKED POLYMER ELECTROLYTES AND ELECTRODE/ELECTROLYTE INTERPHASES
Stalin, Sanjuna (2021-05)
The rapid rise of electric drive vehicles has accelerated research aimed at developing energy storage technologies with high gravimetric and volumetric energy densities. Lithium metal batteries (LMBs) are considered particularly important in this aspect but are not available today primarily because the lithium metal anode poses multiple challenges. Among them, the most difficult include the metal’s propensity to form an undesirable and dynamic corrosion layer known as the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) that results in rough, non-planar electrodeposits at all current densities. These challenges arise from coupling of chemical reactivity of Li, highly reducing potentials during battery charge, and the out-of-equilibrium transport phenomena that drive morphological instabilities at the metal/electrolyte interface. In this thesis, crosslinked polymers are used as a powerful platform to develop design principles for electrolytes and electrode/electrolyte interphases that enable planar deposition in lithium metal anodes. The design principles are based on guidelines from a theoretical linear stability analysis of metal electrodeposition that captures chemical effects in the transport coefficients and their spatial variations at the electrolyte-electrode interphase. The aim is then to probe physical factors responsible for the nucleation and growth of morphologically unstable electrodeposits. During dendrite growth, it is revealed that the growing deposit front experiences a significant amount of compressive stress exerted by the bulk electrolyte, which if large enough can potentially slow down the growth rate. Development of structured electrolytes capable of increasing this compressive stress, while not yielding under compressive strain is proposed and demonstrated as an effective strategy to suppress dendrite growth. To address dendrite nucleation, artificial interphases and similar electrode engineering techniques are proposed as a potential drop-in solution. Careful design of the solid electrolyte interphase and tuning of its chemistry and physical properties are found to be crucial for driving stable nucleation of lithium electrodeposits. In particular, strategies to synthesize and fabricate electrochemically stable artificial interphases with precise thickness control are shown to be essential for achieving uniform ion transport, for enhancing surface tension forces, and for reducing the equilibrium reduction rate at the metal surface. Importantly, these methods enable planar lithium electrodeposition in both nucleation and growth stages.
Group Versus Individual Variations in the Narrative Content of College Student Autobiographical Memories
Braimon, Rebecca (2022-08)
Autobiographical memories (AM) are a subset of memories that pertain specifically to events in an individual’s own past. Using simple predictor models, this paper perturbed the narrative content of 117 Cornell students’ positive and negative autobiographical memories about parents and peers, exploring whether or not group-level status markers like sex and culture were significant predictors of recall style. Specifically, we wanted to validate or expand upon previous research on group versus individual-level differences in memory. Through mixed models statistical analysis of the 468 memories in our final dataset, we found that group membership accounted for less of the variation in AM recall than expected, with individual-level subject differences being much more pronounced. Of the narrative content variables analyzed, participant sex only significantly predicted three –agency, emotional expressiveness, and chronology– and participant culture/ethnicity only significantly predicted two –redemption and unity. The implications of these findings, as well as the methodological limitations that might have prevented us from parsing more group differences, are discussed. Suggestions for future study replications that might yield more generalizable results are mentioned.
Alternative Antimicrobial Agents Against Multidrug-Resistant Gram-Negative Bacteria
O'Leary, Meghan Kathleen (2022-08)
The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is outpacing the discovery and development of new antibiotics, and this phenomenon poses a global health crisis and exemplifies the need to develop alternative antibacterial strategies. Oligothioetheramides (oligoTEAs) are a class of synthetic, sequence-defined oligomers that have demonstrated antibacterial activity against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Particularly, the oligoTEA BDT-4G has exhibited potent activity against a range of multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates. In addition, BDT-4G can evade mechanisms conferring resistance to the last resort antibiotic, polymyxin B, and is active against P. aeruginosa clinical isolates with an acquired resistance to polymyxin B, as well as intrinsically-resistant gram-negative species, such as Burkholderia and Pandoraea spp. However, BDT-4G is toxic to mammalian cells at concentrations required for bactericidal activity, and this narrow therapeutic window precludes clinical translation. To mitigate cytotoxicity, we first investigated a bacteria-responsive prodrug methodology whereby BDT-4G is temporarily inactivated through coupling to a polyethylene glycol (PEG) promoiety via a triglycine peptide linker (Gly3). PEGylation of BDT-4G decreases the in vitro cytotoxicity by an order of magnitude, and antibacterial activity is recovered via site-specific cleavage of the triglycine linker by LasA, a virulence factor secreted by P. aeruginosa. To further improve localization to the infection site for systemic applications, we next explored an antibody-bactericide conjugate (ABC) platform for the targeted delivery of BDT-4G. In this design, BDT-4G is coupled via a cleavable linker to an antibody that targets P. aeruginosa. For proof-of-concept of this ABC platform, we first coupled the prodrug, PEG-Gly3-BDT-4G, to an anti-Pseudomonas polyclonal antibody, and we demonstrate LasA-mediated release of the payload and bactericidal activity against P. aeruginosa. Lastly, to improve the reactivity of the ABC, we conjugated BDT-4G to the monoclonal antibody Cam-003, which binds to the conserved P. aeruginosa exopolysaccharide Psl. This conjugation was achieved through a host-cleavable peptide linker, which was selected to offset the selection pressures that may accompany a therapeutic that is activated by bacterial proteases. Through flow cytometry, fluorescence resonance energy transfer, and time-kill curves, we have demonstrated that the ABC binds to the bacterial cell surface, serum cleaves the linker, and the released oligoTEA payload is bactericidal. Overall, these studies validate the ABC strategy in vitro and motivate the translation to in vivo experiments.
Self-Timed Length-Adaptive Arithmetic
Bingham, Edward Arthur (2020-12)
Diminishing returns in technology scaling has motivated a resurgence of exploration into new computer architectures. While Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Arrays show promise in accelerating commonly used complex operations, their overall capacity remains fairly limited. While there is pressure on general purpose systems to support wide operations, the typicalworkload mostly exercises the lower 10 to 15 bits. This leaves most of the array on and unused during normal operation. This thesis presents adaptive digit-serial arithmetic as a plug-and-play method to support a variety of bitwidth requirements, showing decreased energy and area alongside increased throughput.
Do Formal Workers Use Informal Search Methods? Investigating Labor Search in Mexico.
Zhong, Moira (2022-12)
This study examines how formal sector employment affects the worker’s job search methods in Mexico. It studies how each worker and workplace characteristic is associated with the probability of using each job search method as opposed to private/public agencies using a multinomial logit model. It also examines a differential effect of using friends and family search in different sizes of town: the bigger the size of town, the more rewarding is friends and family search in terms of real monthly wages, and the possibility that the position offers any work-related benefits. In addition, it finds that using formal job search methods such as friends/family search, advertisement, internet search is associated with a slightly larger probability of that position being in the formal sector for males than females, while using direct approach is associated with a significantly larger probability of that position being in the formal sector for females than males. Importantly, it argues that the return to searching through friends and family is bigger in terms of real monthly income in towns of smaller sizes, even though larger towns are associated with higher real monthly income.
Sustainable thinking in a digital era
Zhao, Xiaobai (2022-12)
This essay explores current environmental problems within the context of the digital age. By using several studios and elective works in MS.AAD program at Cornell as case studies, the essay connects environmental issues in urban and building scales to innovative strategies supported by emerging digital tools. The topics include scenic site water pollution, metropolitan electricity system transformation, sea level rising and flooding mitigation, water treatment, adaptive material reuse, sustainable timber customization, and urban evacuation plans.For each topic, the essay evaluates optimal design strategies through robust research and analysis. By implementing digital technologies like immersive animation engines, 3D printing, robotic arm fabrication, and interactive infographics, the projects tend to explore new territories of sustainable thinking in the architecture industry. Here, solving or mitigating environmental problems is not the only valuable sustainable design practice. Building awareness of hidden pollution is sustainable thinking. Encouraging people to play a role in the energy system through virtual games is sustainable thinking. Digitally modeling carbon footprint in building assembling and disassembling processes is sustainable thinking. Utilizing renewable natural building materials in digital fabrication is sustainable thinking. Even providing critical information about security and food services is sustainable thinking. With speculative graphic representation and small-scale fabrication prototypes, the essay bridges these innovative perceptions of sustainable design with the current digital context. It not only wants to challenge our status quo on sustainability but also aims to transform our understanding of digital technologies. If the first industrial revolution started the chapter of serving climate and environmental change, can we, with the help of the new technology revolution, mitigate or even alter the problems? Following the case study, are eight studio and elective projects the author worked on in her MSAAD program. More detailed documentation and explanations for each case study can be found in this section. A few of the projects also concern with sustainable design and development but are not selected due to a more conventional design approach.
Time in the minds of Spaniards and Moroccans: Evidence from spontaneous gestures
Zhao, Siyi (2022-12)
People use space to conceptualize time, but the specifics of the space-time mappings in people’s minds vary across cultures. Here we investigated whether people with different reading and writing systems in their native languages think about time differently, and whether exposure to a new language and culture changes people’s space-time mappings. We analyzed the spontaneous hand gestures that people made while telling stories about the past and the future and compared these gestures across three groups: Spaniards living in Spain, Moroccans living in Spain, and Moroccans living in Morocco. Whereas Spanish is written from left to right, Moroccan Arabic is written from right to left. Consistent with previous studies linking temporal thinking with reading and writing habits, we found that Spaniards showed a statistically significant bias to gesture leftward for earlier times and rightward for later times. Moroccans showed the opposite bias, gesturing rightward for earlier times and leftward for later times; this pattern did not differ significantly between the Moroccans living in Morocco (who were speaking Moroccan Arabic during the test) and the Moroccans living in Spain (who were speaking Spanish during the test). Together, these results support that hypothesis that people’s mental timelines follow the direction of reading and writing in their native languages, and that these culture-specific space-time mappings can be maintained despite immersion in a second language and culture.
A MULTI-STAGED STOCHASTIC OPTIMIZATION MODEL WITH COLUMN GENERATION BASED HEURISTICS FOR HOSPITAL EVACUATIONS DURING HURRICANES
Zhang, Qian (2022-12)
Perpetual hospital evacuations caused by hurricanes require well-informed decision makings to handle uncertainty in future conditions and scarcity in various resources. Simultaneous evacuations from multiple hospitals are more challenging due to additional complexity in evacuation route choices and coordination among both evacuating and receiving hospitals. This thesis addresses above issues by developing a multi-staged stochastic optimization model and column generation based heuristics that considers uncertain future flood, wind and road traffic conditions, limited staff and vehicle resources, and effectiveness of evacuation routes generation. The model determines patient evacuation schedule and corresponding evacuation routes while trading off risk and cost. A comprehensive case study on North Carolina hospitals with Hurricane Isabel is conducted with data and model outputs of previous research. The results highlight the benefits of the model formulation and the heuristics that effectively generates complex evacuation routes and coordinates evacuating hospitals’ efforts while adapting to new information.
On Spatial Ecologies of Culture: Reciprocal Constituents of the Built Environment
Yocum, Connor (2022-12)
Place, a scaleless realm of territory in which architecture performs, cannot be understood as a purely physical context. It cannot be divorced from temporal effects of time nor the ideological concerns of other actors. The contexts in which architecture exists are constructed from an interconnected ecology of people, place, and time that manifest complex notions of culture in space. The following body of work seeks to understand architecture as a reciprocal medium that engages with complex inputs across the physical and nonphysical terrain in which it acts, while at the same time becoming an input itself, embedding the practice with agency. This study positions architecture as a dynamic force in a spatial ecology and explores through three lenses how the practice simultaneously represents and refigures the cultural: Situations, Dissimulations, and Dispositions.
THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF A NATURE CENTER: PERSPECTIVES OF NATURE CENTER LEADERS AND STAFF
Yan, Mi (2022-12)
Since the mid-twentieth century, nature centers have offered environmental education programs for surrounding communities. They play a significant role in nonformal and informal environmental education, with audiences from children to seniors. They also generate social impacts on communities. This research used qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate nature centers' social impacts from the perspectives of nature center leaders and staff. Findings showed that leaders and staff recognized three categories of social impacts: impacts on “human,” impacts on “human-society,” and impacts on “human-nature.” The social impact on human includes health, human development, and personal achievement. The social impact on human-society includes sense of community and facilitating community building and solidarity among people of different races, ethnicities, and social-economic backgrounds. The social impacts on human-nature includes connectedness to nature, sense of place, and catalyzing environment stewardship. Among these three categories, nature center leaders and staff prioritized human-nature over human and human-society. This study begins to fill the gap in nature centers' social impact analysis.
DECODING TACIT KNOWLEDGE IN TECHNICAL DESIGN
Yang, Yoon (2022-12)
This study attempted to understand fit sessions in the apparel product development process and focused on capturing the tacit knowledge of technical design team members. Because fit sessions have not been studied thoroughly as they were considered company secrets, the study also proposed a new framework for documenting the fit session decision-making process, which combined the team mental model and seeing-moving-seeing methods. Data collection included one case study of fit session observation with follow-up interviews and individual interviews with five fit models. Participants of the study were recruited by snowball sampling and word of mouth. The findings provided a broad set of insights around the tacit knowledge of technical designers and fit models and how they make decisions during fit sessions. It was found that to solve garment fit issues, technical designers had priorities in resolving them as some of these solutions derived from misfit cases observed on different garments. The power dynamics in the fit sessions kept changing as each fit session participant had their own professional knowledge. This study also highlighted the various topics discussed in fit sessions. These insights could be beneficial for the fashion technology industry as they develop new technologies to support the apparel product development process as well as for the apparel brands as they develop a competitive edge through utilizing stored tacit knowledge to simplify fit sessions.
New forms of Interactions in Public Spaces
Wang, Yunqin (2022-12)
Communities are built upon the collective memory related to public spaces. Engagement from the public generates a living atmosphere and a welcoming vibe, which brings about commercial opportunities. Especially in the past two decades, architects have been making efforts to expand the forms and programs of public spaces. Then, apart from the form and program, is there another perspective to innovate public spaces?Following the trajectory of Architecture + Representation, I explored how digital mediums could stimulate the interactions between visitors in public spaces that can escape time and spatial constraints, which means visitors coming to the space at a different time and visitors being in different physical spaces at present could still interact with each other and create a new form of collective memory. I have developed designs using cross-disciplinary skills and resources to present what might be possible to help redefine the interaction between visitors in public spaces. I believe that these proposals could facilitate the public space revolution in the future.
A Latent Space Analysis of the Sketch-to-Model Problem
Wolford, John (2022-12)
Despite the accomplishments made in the field of computer science, computers still struggle with many tasks that are relatively simple for humans. One such task is to interpret the approximate three-dimensional structure of an object from a ‘sketch,’ which here is defined as a grayscale two-dimensional line drawing. Algorithmic approaches where the rules for interpretation are explicitly defined by the programmer have seen some success, but these methods have a limited ability to account for the many nuances of human perception that influence our interpretation of 3D structure. More recent approaches for solving the related problem of interpreting three-dimensional structure from two-dimensional digital photographs rely on deep learning techniques and large datasets. These approaches have remarkable performance, but many are plagued by artifacts and limitations inherent to the format of the output representation. Research on generating the three-dimensional structure with implicit representations have promise in that they avoid the limitations of the other formats, and the goal of this thesis is to generate these implicit representations from sketches instead of digital photographs. This thesis proposes a two-step process for constructing three-dimensional geometry from sketches. First, the sketch is encoded into a sketch-model latent space, and second, the sketch’s latent space representation is used to generate an approximate signed distance field of the object. The first step was accomplished by training a convolutional variational autoencoder on a set of synthetically generated line-drawings, and the number of dimensions chosen for the latent space was 1024. Principal Component Analysis was used to get a rough estimate of the necessary number of latent dimensions, and the appropriate dimensionality was confirmed with measurements of variational autoencoder’s test set performance using varying numbers of latent dimensions. The second step was accomplished with an eight-layer network modeled after the architecture presented in [Park19], with modifications to account for the larger dimensionality of the input latent codes. To render the object, this second network was queried repeatedly using a modified sphere tracing algorithm to identify the surface, and an arbitrary directional light source and simple Lambertian shading were used to color the surface. While the networks performed well considering the naïve approach to generating the latent space and the vast increase in the latent space dimensions compared to [Park19], the quality was insufficient for accurately reconstructing sketch geometries beyond a rough approximation of their convex hull. The low-quality results can be explained by one or more of the following limitations with the approach used in this thesis: a poorly behaved sketch-model latent space, an insufficient amount of training data, suboptimal design choices for the network architectures, and suboptimal methods for training. Possible ways to address these limitations are presented as potential future work.
Post-Anthropocene Manifestation in Public Domain
Wang, Xingyao (2022-12)
Facing numerous radical changes in the political and climate matters of the global society, the alteration and continuous manufacturing of the built environment are currently positioned at the threshold between Anthropocenic and post-Anthropocenic ideologies. As the disentanglement of geo-and-eco-political context from the built forms is no longer a valid option, a series of architectural infrastructures in the public domain grows to bear the responsibility to embody, curate, and speak for the post-Anthropocenic imaginary. In this post-industrial approach to subvert the traditionally energy-heavy and ecologically devastating building activities, it values the embedded history and the interplay of resources involved in the progression of the built environment. It also denies the linear conceptualization of production and consumption by celebrating a reciprocal relationship between the context and design proposals, either of which plays a tremendous role in affecting the other. The compilation of works demonstrated in this book particularly addresses the social and cultural milieu in relation to the era's shifting focus on sustainability, virtuality, and mentality that are regulated and evoked by Anthropocenic consequences. At the same time, taking consideration of the post-Anthropocenic ideals, the research and design proposals possess the ability to alter cultural, social, and political discourses, as well as to redirect changing social actions through spatial configuration in the public domain. Two major groups of such proposals are introduced in the book. While one set of strategies is a direct physical response to urgent social issues, the other amorphous set addresses issues through the less direct yet similarly potent curation of social relationships. Finally, the book concludes with the politics of multi-dimensional cultural institutions that serve as democratic media through which the post-Anthropocenic ideals could be heard and seen to archive urban memories, shape common agreements, provoke dialogues, and catalyze spatial development reflecting the nonnegligible Anthropocenic urgencies in the present age.
Chances and Crises of Digitalization
Wang, Haoyuan (2022-12)
In 2022, it had been thirty years since the birth of the internet and twenty years since the Dot-com bubble burst of Web 1.0; now the Web 3.0 is coming. In those years, the architecture industry also digitalized. Some significant milestones may include the digital rendering invented by the team of Professor Greenburg, the first generation of 3D modeling tools from Ohio State University, the computerization studio from GSAAP, and more, and now the most advanced rendering tools using ray tracing can make 100% accurate pictures in real-time; Some software can simulate sunlight, winds, temperature, and gravity; BIM applications can make digital models with all engineering details… In Discrete Assembly and Digital Materials in Architecture, Gilles Retsin described two types of digitalization: one is the conservative, and one is the true digital. Even though his description is majorly around fabrication technologies, the core concept of true and fake digitalization is interesting, as I extend such ideas toward the design process, so there are two kinds of digitalization; the first is basically craftsmanship as the computer work as an extension of the architect's hands, assisting in realizing his thought, and tools like Rhinoceros or AutoCAD is no different from pen or rulers. Yet in the second one, the computer is not replacing the hands but the brain. Instead of designing architecture, the architect makes a system design for him. By adjusting the inputs, countless outputs could be automatically formed. Once a successful algorithm is proven to work, it can be put into mass production of the design. The second type of digitalization is closer to the concept of intelligent revolution and Web3.0, which may completely change the responsibility of architects. Therefore, the two projects described in the following contents are both tests on it, working on algorithms rather than designing, including possible practicing scenarios and general discussions on such topics. Digitalization also brings potential crises. Just like the famous motto of Google, "Don't be Evil," tech firms first appeared like the opposite of traditional firms: young, progressive, and inclusive; however, in the past 30 years, they have grown too fast and big, that they had reached unimaginable strength comparing to any traditional firms. Collection of users' data, exploiting labor, anti-competitive, monopoly..., tech firms practically doing evil at the place beyond the public's sights. Based on research about tech firms, digital platforms, data infrastructure, and the related problem, "Glitch Urbanism" proposed solutions to such problems through urban planning and architectural perspective. Living in 2022, everyone is talking about Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, and Virtual reality. These technologies change everything, and all are involved, including architects, so we should vigorously research, discuss and practice these techs, utilize the benefits, avoid the problems, and figure out the path of architects in this era.
Imitation Learning for Stylized Physics-Based Character Control
Tsao, Albert (2022-12)
In Computer Graphics, a heavily researched topic is the physical simulation of characters that can exhibit fluid, life-like motions. In recent years, imitation and reinforcement learning techniques have become popular approaches for training such controllers due to their flexibility, generality, and adaptability. One such example is DeepMimic, a data-driven framework that utilizes motion clips along with modern reinforcement learning methods to train control policies for simulated characters that can produce a wide variety of natural notions. Adversarial Motion Priors is an extension upon this framework in which adversarial imitation learning is utilized to enable characters to imitate various motions from a large unstructured dataset of reference motions without the need for explicit synchronization. In this thesis, we adapt the Adversarial Motion Priors framework to be compatible with OpenAI Gym environments. In doing so, a wide variety of RL algorithms can be tested on the framework. Finally, we demonstrate the use of this environment by evaluating Model-based Imitation Learning which is a purely offline imitation learning algorithm that tackles the covariate shift issue common in behavior cloning, a classic offline imitation learning algorithm.
Emerging Technologies and Interaction in Architecture Design
Wang, Ziqi (2022-12)
Architecture constantly absorbs and integrates emerging technologies for innovation. In the massive resource era, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data are affecting and changing our daily lives, giving people more opportunities to obtain information. Advanced 3D printing manufacturing and robotics are transforming how we live, work, do business, practice research, and engage with our communities. Additionally, it is changing how computation visualization, material intelligence and fabrication technologies have begun to alter design, construction and creation from the nano to macro scales. The development and advancement of these emerging technologies inspired architects to think about how to distribute design networks and microfactories to next generation methods for adaptive, low-cost, efficient, sustainable fabrication and construction strategies.Architects have never stopped trying to integrate emerging technology into architecture. At the beginning of the 20th century, Le Corbusier advocated that architecture should learn from transportation. He appreciated the high integration of technology and space in automobiles and airplanes, and believed that “the house is a machine for living in.” Later, “Avant-Garde architects” Archigram, imagined the architecture and urban utopia of the future machine age, taking buildings as a whole to adapt to the environment in their famous urban visions of Walking city, Plug-in city and Computer City. These imagined environments allow architects to embrace science, art, and technology as a whole allowing them to think about the future versions of architecture. These attempts not only have an impact on the construction of the architecture itself, but also have an impact on the interactive relationship between architecture, people and the environment. While exploring the combination of new technologies into the discipline, architects are also exploring the relationship between architecture and users, and architecture and the context. In the process of interaction between creation and influence, various subtle relationships are formed between the space and people. For architects, new technologies could be used in design are sufficient, but the creative integration of existing technologies into buildings is lacking. In order to better integrate these latest technologies into future buildings, we must not only understand the emerging technologies themselves, but also have a deep understanding of the logic behind the technologies, and have clear theories of the interactive relationship between technology, people and the environment. There are three aspects, from the macro to the micro, to creatively integrate existing technology into architectural design. They are as follows: the interaction with the environment, which means the harmony between the architecture and the surrounding humanistic community environment; the interaction with the space, how to make the architectural space better serve users and interact with behaviors, and how buildings can better respond and influence users’ behaviors. This article will be in conjunction with my project at Cornell MS.AAD to illustrate how to integrate emerging technology applications into architecture in terms of environmental interaction, spatial interaction and behavioral interaction.
The Craft of Storytelling in Architecture
Sun, Weijia (2022-12)
In pursuing architecture and discourse as my territory of investigation, I came across the power of storytelling as a tool to give back the freedom of design to the residents, the neighborhoods, and the natural environment. As we would soon inhabit a world full of “refugees” from war, poverty, and climate, architecture is no longer a top-down device that only resembles the economical and political power of the elite class and its aesthetics but in need to better shelter every individual given their own conditions and tell the story from the bottom-up. The way finding to represent local stories spatially may rely on the creation of fictions that are designed persuasively to address real-world problems. The first strategy to unpack such a power of fictions was to first observe and see how culture(s) and their differences were presented in the built environment. Writing then becomes a powerful tool to free the imagination from blunt pictures and lead to multiple interpretations of similar urban conditions. By taking classes in Writing the City and Asian Cities, I began observing New York City and Asian Cities through the lens of a writer. In Writing the City, I was able to be physically presented in the urban environment and consolidate the observations into phrases and metaphors to portray the busy streets and building ornamentation. In Asian Cities, I learned the urban conditions through films and other people’s writings; interestingly, the observations through multi-media were also a new way to interpret the Euro-centric idealizations of Asian cities and seek a way to decolonize the local Asian cultures. Through these observations on cities, the creation of fictions was then consolidated into design studios in urban, landscape and building design. The architectural designs are all aimed to show how narratives and local stories give form of the buildings, and the building begins to inform a problem-solving process and mitigate certain concerns of the neighborhood, forming the bottom-up power of design to either represent a particular culture or generate a creative cultural reformation through spatial presence. Three aspects of urban analysis, interweaving writing and design, will then be presented in this book: urban ecology, urban diversity and urban playground.
TARGETED TRACE LEVEL VOLATILE ANALYSIS OF AROMA COMPOUNDS TYPICALLY FOUND IN GRAPES
Stewart, Brittany (2022-12)
Despite nearly two centuries of grape vine propagation and cultivar breeding, little attention has been given to what chemical compounds work harmoniously within this complex matrix to produce the aromas and flavors consumers and producers alike have come to know and expect from each species. In this work, the analyses of seven common cultivars – V. acerifolia, V. aestavlis, V. amurensis, V. labrusca, V. riparia, V. rupestris, and V. vulpine - for sixteen volatile compounds are presented. Headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) was utilized for the determination of analyte concentrations, which highlight the compounds at the foundation of grape smell and taste.

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