Research

ECOEMPATHY STUDIES:

TOWARDS ECOINTEGRATION, ECODYNAMISM, ECOMORPHISM, and ECOIMPACT

• TerMight: Generative Design with Biology

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

• Playing by the Rules, my Princeton Senior Thesis on architecture designed to accommodate residents' expansions and modifications, analyzing how a more flexible, adaptable rule-based architecture can help fulfill larger social goals.
• An Avant-Garde, Collectivized Dacha? examining the conflicting ideals of the commune and the Garden City in the Avant-Garde proposals for the Moscow Green City Competition of 1930
• The Peasant Architect: looking at how Soviet architect Melnikov's work was in dialogue with local churches, monuments, and Russian tradition.
• Filling the Void: Tracing Changes in Global Value Systems through two Latin American Incremental Housing Projects
• Oscillations in Time and Space: a look at the effects of repetition in pictorial and textual portrayals of the life of St. Francis, by Bonaventure and Giotto.

URBAN STUDIES/URBAN HISTORY

• BART’s Angry Architect Problem: How the 1966 Bay Area Rapid Transit Design Controversy Raised a Storm over the Role of Design and Landscaping in Public Projects
• The Geography of Exclusion: a look at the racial relations between Blacks and Jews in the Bronx and Harlem in NYC in the 1930s.
• Learning from Three Colombian Cities: Lessons in Urbanism from Bogotá, Medellín, and Villa de Leyva
• The Hegemony of the Horse: The Great Epizootic and the history of Chicago's Public Transportation
• The Chinese Question: A Brief History of San Francisco's Chinatown, including a look at an 1880 Board of Supervisors report on living conditions.
• The Business of Frozen Water: The American Ice Industry and the Ice Trust Scandal of 1900

LITERATURE & LANGUAGE

• Sorry, Wrong Address: Discovering Strategies for the Translation of the Russian Vy/Ty Distinction from Russian into English through an Analysis of the English-Language Editions of Anna Karenina and War and Peace
• Which You to Use?: Translation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into T/V Languages
• Changing Jesus, Changing Times: a thorough look at portrayals of Jesus in the Gospels according to Luke and John and at the historical implications of the differences.

HISTORY

• A Saint Without a Story: The story of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Native American Saint whose true identity remains a mystery.
• Growing Hemp In Alaska? A look at Russian colonization documents and the "Russian Columbus" Shelikov's unrealistic visions for the future of the Alaskan colony

• This research project, undertaken for The Living with the help of entomologist Paul Bardunias, investigated the potential of using live termites for subtractive manufacturing from wood. Our tests suggest collaboration between software and termites could produce structurally optimized generative designs for wood components. Further research is ongoing this fall.
  • Mediated Urban Natures: Strategies for Connecting Urban Dwellers to the Natural World
  • This research project, undertaken for David Kooris' Planning Seminar and developed for the Connecticut Trust for Public Land, is meant to serve as an initial framework for interventions in the urban landscape that mediate urban dwellers’ experiences with nature.
• Building Nature In
  • This memo, completed for an Environmental Psychology class, presents four suggestions for using insights from environmental psychology to improve building users’ relationship to the environment.

URBAN ECOLOGY

• From Golf Course to Wetland: Aquatic Health & Nutrient Levels in Springdale Stream, Princeton, NJ
• From the Garden City Donut to an Integrated Landscape; An Analysis of the Garden City Movement’s Influence on Urban and Peri-Urban Farming and A Case for the Reintegration of Agriculture into Urban Life as Reconciliation of Urban and Rural
• Greening the “Fifth Façade:” Green Roof Technologies and their Potential for Alleviating Urban Environmental Issues