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2020 Student Thesis Showcase - Part I

Have you ever wondered what students design in architecture school? A few years ago, we started an Instagram account called IMADETHAT_ to curate student work from across North America. Now, we have nearly 3,000 projects featured for you to view. In this series, we are featuring thesis projects of recent graduates to give you a glimpse into what architecture students create while in school. Each week, for the rest of the summer, we will be curating five projects that highlight unique aspects of design. In this week’s group, the research ranges from urban scale designs focused on climate change to a proposal for a new type of collective housing and so much in between. Check back each week for new projects. 

In the meantime, Archinect has also created a series featuring the work of 2020 graduates in architecture and design programs. Check out the full list, here .

Redefining the Gradient by Kate Katz and Ryan Shaaban, Tulane University, M.Arch ‘20

Thesis Advisors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini / Course: 01-SP20-Thesis Studio

Sea level rise has become a major concern for coastal cities due to the economic and cultural importance tied to their proximity to water. These cities have sustained their livelihood in low-lying elevations through the process of filling, bridging, and raising land over coastal ecosystems, replacing their ecological value with infrastructures focused on defining the edge between city and nature. Hard infrastructures have been employed to maintain urban landscapes but have minimal capacity for both human and non-human engagement due to their monofunctional applications focused on separating conditions rather than integrating them. They produce short-term gains with long-term consequences, replacing and restricting ecosystems and acting as physical barriers in a context defined by seasonal transition. 

To address the issues of hard infrastructure and sea level rise, this thesis proposes an alternative design strategy that incorporates the dynamic water system into the urban grid network. San Francisco was chosen as the location of study as it is a peninsula where a majority of the predicted inundation occurs on the eastern bayside. In this estuary, there were over 500 acres of ecologically rich tidal marshlands that were filled in during the late 1800s. To protect these new lands, the Embarcadero Sea Wall was built in 1916 and is now in a state of neglect. The city has set aside $5 billion for repairs but, instead of pouring more money into a broken system, we propose an investment in new multi-functional ecologically-responsive strategies. 

As sea levels rise, the city will be inundated with water, creating the opportunity to develop a new circulation system that maintains accessibility throughout areas located in the flood zone. In this proposal, we’ve designed a connective network where instance moments become moments of pause and relief to enjoy the new cityscape in a dynamic maritime district. 

On the lower level, paths widen to become plazas while on the upper level, they become breakout destinations which can connect to certain occupiable rooftops that are given to the public realm. The bases of carved canals become seeding grounds for plants and aquatic life as the water level rises over time. Buildings can protect high-risk floors through floodproofing and structural encasement combined with adaptive floorplates to maintain the use of lower levels. The floating walkway is composed of modular units that are buoyant, allowing the pedestrian paths to conform and fluctuate with diurnal tidal changes. The composition of the units creates street furniture and apertures to engage with the ecologies below while enabling a once restricted landscape of wetlands to take place within the city. 

The new vision of the public realm in this waterfront district hopes to shine an optimistic light on how we can live with nature once again as we deal with the consequences of climate change.

Unearthing the Black Aesthetic by Demar Matthews, Woodbury University, M.Arch ‘20

Advisor: Ryan Tyler Martinez Featured on Archinect

“Unearthing The Black Aesthetic” highlights South Central Los Angeles’s (or Black Los Angeles’s) unique positioning as a dynamic hub of Black culture and creativity. South Central is the densest population of African Americans west of the Mississippi. While every historically Black neighborhood in Los Angeles has experienced displacement, the neighborhood of Watts was hit particularly hard. As more and more Black Angelenos are forced for one reason or another to relocate, we are losing our history and connection to Los Angeles.

As a way to fight this gentrification, we are developing an architectural language derived from Black culture. So many cultures have their own architectural styles based on values, goals, morals, and customs shared by their society. When these cultures have relocated to America, to keep their culture and values intact, they bought land and built in the image of their homelands. That is not true for Black people in America. In fact, until 1968, Black people had no rights to own property in Los Angeles. While others began a race to acquire land in 1492, building homes and communities in their image, we started running 476 years after the race began. What percentage of land was left for Blacks to acquire? How then can we advance the development of a Black aesthetic in architecture?

This project, most importantly, is a collaboration with the community that will be for us and by us. My goal is to take control of our image in architecture; to elevate, not denigrate, Black life and culture. Ultimately, we envision repeating this process in nine historically Black cities in America to develop an architectural language that will vary based on the history and specificities of Black culture in each area.

KILLING IT: The Life and Death of Great American Cities by Amanda Golemba, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, M.Arch ’20

Advisors: Nikole Bouchard, Jasmine Benyamin, and Erik Hancock / Independent Design Thesis

For decades, post-industrial cities throughout the United States have been quietly erased through self-imposed tabula rasa demolition. If considered at all, demolition is touted as the mechanism for removing unsightly blight, promoting safety, and discarding the obsolete and the unwanted. Once deemed unworthy, rarely does a building survive the threat of demolition. 

In the last decade, the City of Chicago has erased over 13,000 buildings with 225 in just the last four months. Not only does this mass erasure eradicate the material and the spatial, but it permanently wipes the remnants of human bodies, values, and history — a complete annulment of event, time, and memory. 

But why do we feel the need to erase in order to make progress?

Our current path has led to a built environment that is becoming more and more uniform and sterile. Much of America has become standardized, mixed-use developments; neighborhoods of cookie-cutter homes and the excessive use of synthetic, toxic building materials. A uniform world is a boring one that has little room for creativity, individuality, or authenticity.

This thesis, “KILLING IT,” is a design proposal for a traveling exhibition that seeks to change perceptions of the existing city fabric by visualizing patterns of erasure, questioning the resultant implications and effects of that erasure, and proposing an alternative fate. “KILLING IT” confronts the inherently violent aspects of architecture and explores that violence through the intentionally jarring, uncomfortable, and absurd analogy of murder. This analogy is a lens through which to trace the violent, intentional, and premature ending and sterilization of the existing built environment. After all, as Bernard Tschumi said, “To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder.”1 But murder is not just about the events that take place within a building, it is also the material reality of the building itself. 

Over the life of a building, scarring, moments in time, and decay layer to create an inhabitable palimpsest of memory. This traveling exhibition is infused with the palimpsest concept by investigating strategies of layering, modularity, flexibility, transparency, and building remains, while layering them together to form a system that operates as an inhabitable core model collage. Each individual exhibition simultaneously memorializes the violence that happened at that particular site and implements murderous adaptive reuse strategies through collage and salvage material to expose what could have been.

If we continue down our current path, we will only continue to make the same mistakes and achieve the same monotonous, sterilizing results we currently see in every American city and suburb. We need to embrace a new path that values authenticity, celebrates the scars and traces of the past, and carries memories into the future. By reimaging what death can mean and addressing cycles of violence, “KILLING IT” proposes an optimistic vision for the future of American cities. 

• Tschumi, Bernard. “Questions of space: lectures on architecture” (ed. 1990)

A New Prototype for Collective Housing by Juan Acosta and Gable Bostic, University of Texas at Austin, M.Arch ‘20

Advisor: Martin Haettasch / Course: Integrative Design Studio Read more: https://soa.utexas.edu/work/new-prototype-collective-housing

Austin is a city that faces extreme housing pressures. This problem is framed almost exclusively in terms of supply and demand, and the related question of affordability. For architects, however, a more productive question is: Will this new quantity produce a new quality of housing? 

How do we live in the city, how do we create individual and collective identity through architecture, and what are the urban consequences? This studio investigates new urban housing types, smaller than an apartment block yet larger and denser than a detached house. Critically assessing existing typologies, we ask the question: How can the comforts of the individual house be reconfigured to form new types of residential urban fabric beyond the entropy of tract housing or the formulaic denominator of “mixed-use.” The nature of the integrative design studio allowed for the testing of material systems and construction techniques that have long had an important economic and ecological impact.

“A New Prototype for Collective Housing” addresses collectivity in both a formal and social sense, existing between the commercial and residential scales present in Austin’s St. John neighborhood as it straddles the I-35 corridor; a normative American condition. A diversity of programs, and multigenerational living, create an inherently diverse community. Additionally, a courtyard typology is used to negotiate the spectrum of private and shared space. Volumes, comprising multiple housing units ranging from studio apartments to four bedrooms, penetrate a commercial plinth that circulates both residents and mechanical systems. The use of heavy timber ensures an equitable use of resources while imbuing the project with a familiar material character.

ELSEWHERE, OR ELSE WHERE? by Brenda (Bz) Zhang, University of California at Berkeley, M.Arch ’20

Advisors: Andrew Atwood and Neyran Turan See more: https://www.brendazhang.com/#/elsewhere-or-else-where/

“ELSEWHERE, OR ELSE WHERE?” is an architectural fever dream about the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning with the premise that two common ideas of Place—Home and Elsewhere—are no longer useful, the project wonders how disciplinary tools of architecture can be used to shape new stories about where we are.

For our purposes, “Home,” although primarily used to describe a place of domestic habitation, is also referring generally to a “familiar or usual setting,” as in home-base, home-court, home-page, and even home-button. As a counterpoint, Elsewhere shifts our attention “in or to another place,” away. This thesis is situated both in the literal spaces of Elsewhere and Home (landfills, houses, wilderness, base camps, wastelands, hometowns) and in their culturally constructed space (value-embedded narratives determining whether something belongs, and to whom). Since we construct both narratives through principles of exclusion, Elsewhere is a lot closer to Home than we say. These hybrid spaces—domestic and industrial, urban and hinterland, natural and built—are investigated as found conditions of the Anthropocene and potential sites for new understandings of Place.

Ultimately, this thesis attempts to challenge conventional notions of what architects could do with our existing skill sets, just by shifting our attention—Elsewhere. The sites shown here and the concerns they represent undeniably exist, but because of the ways Western architecture draws thick boundaries between and around them, they resist architectural focus—to our detriment.

In reworking the physical and cultural constructions of Homes and Elsewheres, architects are uniquely positioned to go beyond diagnostics in visualizing and designing how, where, and why we build. While this project looks specifically at two particular stories we tell about where we are, the overall objective is to provoke new approaches to how we construct Place—both physically and culturally—within or without our discipline.

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Digital Commons @ USF > College of The Arts > School of Architecture and Community Design > Theses and Dissertations

Architecture and Community Design Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2011 2011.

Aging with Independence and Interaction: An Assisted Living Community , Steven J. Flositz

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Wayfinding in Architecture , Jason Brandon Abrams

Phenomenology of Home , Lidiya Angelova

Do You Have A Permit For That? Exposing the Pseudo-Public Space and Exploring Alternative Means of Urban Occupation , Adam Barbosa

Architecture as Canvas , Monika Blazenovic

Women and Architecture: Re-Making Shelter Through Woven Tectonics , Kirsten Lee Dahlquist

Re-Connecting: Revitalizing Downtown Clearwater With Environmental Sensibility , Diego Duran

Livable Streets: Establishing Social Place Through a Walkable Intervention , Jeffrey T. Flositz

Upgrading Design: A Mechatronic Investigation into the Architectural Product Market , Matthew Gaboury

Emergent Morphogenetic Design Strategies , Dawn Gunter

Re-Tooling an American Metropolis , Robert Shawn Hott

The Rebirth of a Semi-Disintegrated Enterprise: Towards the Future of Composites in Pre-Synthesized Domestic Dwellings; and the Societal Acceptance of the Anti-In Situ Architectural Movement , Timothy James Keepers

Architectural Symbiosis , Tim Kimball

Elevating Communication , Thao Thanh Nguyen

PLAY: A Process-Driven Study of Design Discovery , Kuebler Wilson Perry

AC/DC: Let There Be Hybrid Cooling , Christopher Podes

The Third Realm: Suburban Identity through the Transformation of the Main Street , Alberto Rodriguez

From Airport to Spaceport: Designing for an Aerospace Revolution , Paula Selvidge

Perceiving Architecture: An Experiential Design Approach , Ashley Verbanic

(im•print) A Material Investigation to Encourage a Haptic Dialog , Julie Marie Vo

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

The Sleeping Giant: Revealing the Potential Energy of Abandoned Industry Through Adaptive Transformation , Wesley A. Bradley

Community Service Through Architecture: Social Housing with Identity , Karina Cabernite Cigagna

Building a Brighter Future Through Education: Student Housing for Single Parent Families , Carrie Cogsdale

Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design and Technology (C-HMD+T): Biomimetic architecture as part of nature , Isabel Marisa Corsino Carro

Dyna-Mod Constructing the Modern Adaptable Home , Sarah Deardorff

Memory - Ness: The Collaboration Between a Library and Museum , Kelsey Doughty

Promoting Cultural Experiences Through Responsive Architecture , Shabonni Olivia Elkanah

Urban-Eco-Filter: Introducing New Lungs to the City of Beijing , Carlos Gil

Sustainable Planning and Design for Ecotourism: Ecotecture Embraced by the Essence of Nature on Amboro National Park, Santa Cruz-Bolivia , Claudia P. Gil

Revitalization and Modernization of Old Havana, Cuba , Mileydis Hernandez

Framework for Self Sustaining Eco-Village , Eric Holtgard

Condition / recondition: Reconstruction of the city and its collective memory , C Lopez

Architecture of materialism: A study of craft in design culture, process, and product , Logan Mahaffey

Incorporating solar technology to design in humid subtropical climates , Andres Mamontoff

"RE-Homing": Sustaining housing first , Jennifer McKinney

Devised architecture: Revitalizing the mundane , Jason Novisk

A greener vertical habitat: Creating a naturally cohesive sense of community in a vertical multi-family housing structure , Justin Onorati

Visualizing sound: A musical composition of aural architecture , James Pendley

Biotopia: An interdisciplinary connection between ecology, suburbia, and the city , Jessica Phillips

Cultural visualization through architecture , Fernando Pizarro

Experience + evolution: Exploring nature as a constant in an evolving culture and building type , Robin Plotkowski

Nature, daylight and sound: A sensible environment for the families, staff and patients of neonatal intensive care units , Ana Praskach

School work environment: Transition from education to practice , Shane Ross

ReLife: Transitional Housing for Victims of Natural Disaster , Alexander B. Smith

Form and Numbers: Mathematical Patterns and Ordering Elements in Design , Alison Marie Thom

Martian Modules: Design of a Programmable Martian Settlement , Craig A. Trover

Redesigning the megachurch: reintroduction of sacred space into a highly functional building , Javier Valencia

Aquatecture: Architectural Adaptation to Rising Sea Levels , Erica Williams

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

Landscape as Urbanism , Ryan Nicholas Abraham

Architectural Strategies in Reducing Heat Gain in the Sub-Tropical Urban Heat Island , Mark A. Blazer

A Heritage Center for the Mississippi Gulf Coast: Linking the Community and Tourism Through Culture , Islay Burgess

Living Chassis: Learning from the Automotive Industry; Site Specifi c, Prefabricated, Systems Architecture , Christopher Emilio Emiliucci Cox

Permanent Supportive Housing in Tampa, Florida: Facilitating Transition through Site, Program, & Design , Nicole Lara Dodd

School as a Center for Community: Establishing Neighborhood Identity through Public Space and Educational Facility , Fred Goykhman

Reestablishing the Neighborhood: Exploring New Relationships & Strategies in Inner City Single Family Home Development , Jeremy Michael Hughes

High-Rise Neighborhood: Rethinking Community in the Residential Tower , Benjamin Hurlbut

reBURB: Redefining the Suburban Family Unit Under a New Construction Ecology , Matthew A. Lobeck

Blurring the Disconnect: [Inter]positioning Place within a Struggling Context , Eric Luttmann

Socializing Housing Phased Early Response to Impromptu Migrant Encampments In Lima, Peru , Raul E. Mayta

Knitting of Nature into an Urban Fabric: A Riverfront Development , Thant Myat

An Address, Not a Room Number: An Assisted Living Community within a Community , Gregory J. Novotnak

Ecological Coexistence: A Nature Retreat and Education Center on Rattlesnake Key, Terra Ceia, Florida , Richard F. Peterika

Aging with Identity: Integrating Culture into Senior Housing , Christine Sanchez

Re-Establishing Place Through Knowledge: A Facility for Earth Construction Education in Pisco, Peru , Hannah Jo Sebastian

Redefining What Is Sacred , Sarah A. Sisson

Reside…Commute…Visit... Reintegrating Defined Communal Place Amongst Those Who Engage with Tampa’s Built Environment , Matthew D. Suarez

The First Icomde A Library for the Information Age , Daniel Elias Todd

eCO_URBANism Restitching Clearwater's Urban Fabric Through Transit and Nature , Daniel P. Uebler

Urban Fabric as a Calayst for Architectural Awareness: Center for Architectural Research , Bernard C. Wilhelm

Theses/Dissertations from 2001 2001

Creating Healing Spaces, the Process of Designing Holistically a Battered Women Shelter , Lilian Menéndez

A prototypical Computer Museum , Eric Otto Ryder

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The Architectural Thesis provides the opportunity for each student to develop his or her own design interest, while providing a bridge between academic studies and professional practice.

The Thesis is a design project conceived and developed, independently by the individual student in a sequence of coursework that starts in the Fall with the Thesis Preparation course (3 cr.), followed in the Spring with the Thesis studio (6 cr.).

The Architectural Thesis includes a written section (research and analysis) and a complete architectural project. The material must be bound as a book and is deposited in the Architecture Library as well as put online on the University Library website.

The written section is completed by the end of the pre-design section of the Thesis Preparation course, and possibly amended and/or corrected during the following semester. The design project is started at the end of pre-design (site selection, site design and analysis, program and conceptual diagrams) and is developed during the Thesis studio the following semester.

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Ten architecture thesis projects by students at Tulane University

Dezeen School Shows: a thesis proposing 3D-printed coastal interventions for the Antarctic Peninsula, which supports food networks for local animals is included in Dezeen's latest school show by students at Tulane University .

Also included is a thesis that explores the possibilities of putting pavements , front gardens and driveways to better architectural use and a project that examines the possibilities of reusing former tuna fisheries in Sicily .

• Tulane University

Institution: Tulane University School: Tulane School of Architecture Course: ARCH 5990/6990 – Thesis Studio Tutors: Iñaki Alday, Liz Camuti, Ammar Eloueini, Margarita Jover, Byron Mouton, Carol Reese and Cordula Roser Gray

School statement:

"The Tulane School of Architecture in New Orleans generates and applies knowledge that addresses urgent challenges of humankind.

"We do this by educating committed professionals to creatively manage complexity and transform the world through the practices of architecture, urbanism and preservation.

"The five-year Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) and the graduate Master of Architecture (MArch) prepare students with advanced skills in the areas of history, theory, representation and technology.

"Our extensive network of alumni lead successful careers in various fields related to the built environment and design.

"The thesis projects presented below address a clear subject matter, identify actionable methods for working, and generate knowledge relative to their findings that ultimately contribute to architectural discourse.

"In the fall 2022 semester, students conducted research and processed work that led to designing a project according to crucial principles and parameters embedded within the discipline of architecture.

"The outcome of these activities is an architectural thesis – a competent, complex design proposal that contributes meaningfully to current and historic discussions in architecture and society – and it is presented in the spring 2023 semester.

"Throughout the process, each student was guided by at least one faculty thesis director."

Out of Scale: Disrupting the Typology of the American Mall Standard of Walkability by Merrie Afseth and Connor Little

"In order to better integrate localised systems of metabolism within the built environment, our thesis proposes the readaptation of suburban American malls into solar energy hubs.

"A new model for redevelopment centres the production, distribution and storage of energy as the key driver for transformation.

"The introduction of autonomous solar energy infrastructure informs a field condition that serves to create a new landscape strategy.

"Through reframing the mall owner's role to that of an energy provider, we can envision a future where malls become attractive not only for their retail potential, but also their role in fostering community resilience."

Students: Merrie Afseth and Connor Little Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray, Ammar Eloueini, Margarita Jover and Liz Camuti Emails: merrieafseth2018[at]gmail.com and connorlittle0714[at]gmail.com

Living In Dead Spaces: Mitigating the Housing Crisis through the Means of Adaptive Reuse by Alyssa Barber and Olivia Georgakopoulos

"In the San Francisco Bay Area there is a lack of housing and developable space but an abundance of underutilised structures.

"We propose that abandoned religious buildings are transformed into new pieces of social infrastructure.

"At three scales of intervention, these models demonstrate how abandoned churches can be adapted depending on contextual and financial considerations as a means to mitigate the housing crisis.

"After conducting an analysis of abandoned buildings in the Bay Area, we found that churches were the most common typology with the most similarities, making them suitable to implement a housing model.

"All three interventions weave the new and the old in various ways to revitalise the original building with a new programme."

Students: Alyssa Barber and Olivia Georgakopoulos Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini Emails: alyssakbarber[at]gmail.com and ogeorgakopoulos[at]tulane.edu

Amending Dead Spaces: Community Vitalisation through the Public-Private Intermediary by Andreea Dan and Tess Temple

"This thesis explores new urbanism tactics through the revitalisation of a pre-existing low-rise community in South Los Angeles, investigating the topic of American suburban-urban domesticity as a whole and expand results to other areas that face these same problems of contemporary 'dead space'.

"The primary proposal is to occupy the current street – by eliminating the access of the car, a barrier between the front of homes is eliminated, leaving space for architectural intervention that engages residents and introduces new revenue into a historically neglected community.

"The thesis reconceptualises these 'dead spaces' that have often formed in single-family urban settings where the front yard, driveway, sidewalk and street lie.

"In the particular instance of the four-block site chosen for this thesis, a repeated urban seam is highly visible. It includes single-family residences aligned to face a low-traffic street, with underutilised and fenced-in front yards and sidewalks, as well as long driveways often extending to garages in the backyards."

Students: Andreea Dan and Tess Temple Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini Emails: adan[at]tulane.edu and ttemple[at]tulane.edu

Mapping Memory: Preserving and Restoring the Landscape of Sicily's Tuna Fisheries by Giuliana Vaccarino Gearty

"This thesis project examines the reuse of tuna fisheries in Sicily – many of these 17th to 19th century buildings, called 'tonnare', have been converted from abandoned factories into commercial centres, museums and resorts.

"Focusing on one case study, I offer an expansive, landscape- and community-oriented solution to reactivating Sicily's tonnare.

"Rather than transform the site into another luxury property, I advocate for reuse with an emphasis on history, the landscape and ecological regeneration.

"I propose preserving and reactivating the tonnare through minimal programming and expanding the site to accommodate additional uses.

"New paths connect beachgoers to the water and a small 'village' of rental apartments allows visitors to linger, and a phased planting strategy will repopulate the site with native vegetation."

Student: Giuliana Vaccarino Gearty Course: ARCH 6990 – Thesis Tutors: Carol Reese and Iñaki Alday Email: giuliana.vaccarino[at]gmail.com

Immaterial: New Sensations from Old Materials by Alex Langley and Sam Spencer

"The standardisation of building materials has caused them to become more ubiquitous and less precious than they once were – there is no formal difference between a new brick and an old one.

"Therefore, it is easy to imagine demolishing what remains of buildings in poor condition and putting new brick buildings in its place.

"But this formal assessment does not take into account immaterial qualities embedded in the materials. As waste from construction and demolition increases (and the abandonment of Baltimore's historic row houses increases) the need to rethink traditional views of waste becomes more urgent.

"Through radical material reuse, architecture has the ability to reposition perceptions of value, by bringing out latent immaterial qualities within used materials.

"The fate of construction materials has been erroneously tied to that of the building – we must sacrifice certain buildings in order to reuse their materials thereby preserving the immaterial qualities within the materials."

Students: Alex Langley and Sam Spencer Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini Emails: alangley[at]tulane.edu and samuelbspencer99[at]gmail.com

Symbiosis On 'Ice': A Replicable Model for Antarctic Preservation by Seth Laskin

"The Antarctic Peninsula, which extends from the continent towards South America, is one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth and is the most significant location for climate research in the world.

"The region has experienced significant sea ice loss in recent decades, which negatively affects the local species – as sea ice disappears, the delicate balance of the food chain is disrupted, leading to declines in animal populations and biodiversity.

"This thesis proposes 3D-printed coastal interventions that invigorate local food networks and become extensions of the natural landscape, while integrating into the context of environmental research in the region.

"This can be accomplished through the implementation of research pods that are equipped with 3D printing equipment. The result is a self-expanding network that highlights a symbiotic relationship between human and environment."

Student: Seth Laskin Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray [at] Ammar Eloueini Email: slaskin[at]tulane.edu

Beyond Retreat: Realigning the Welsch Coast for Resilient Inhabitation by Megan Spoor

"The Welsh village of Fairbourne is the first community in the UK to face decommissioning due to sea level rise.

"Outlined for Managed Realignment by the UK's Shoreline Management Plan, there remains no strategy for how, or where, the village relocates, coupled with a strong desire by those affected to remain in place.

"This creates an opportunity to establish new approaches to coastal occupation that have the capacity to operate in future conditions of uncertainty and support the continued habitation of Wales' coastline.

"'Beyond Retreat' presents an alternative settlement strategy for Fairbourne, that would enable the community to prepare for (and adapt to) the impacts of sea level rise, whilst minimising community displacement, restoring coastal ecosystems and regenerating local tourism."

Student: Megan Spoor Course: ARCH 6990 – Thesis Tutors: Iñaki Alday and Liz Camuti Emails: megan.spoor[at]gmail.com

Lived Cyberspace: A Rehabilitation Center for Digital Addiction by Tiger Thepkanjana

"Surveillance, voyeurism and exhibitionism has had a long history. Today, there is the addition of the media as the main means to which we consume information.

"From this condition, physical spaces have been collapsed into what is inside the screen, all other spaces left unimportant.

"We all are voluntarily submitting ourselves into a modern digital panopticon, limiting our perception of physical space to the four corners of the screen.

"This thesis investigates speculative means to reflect upon this current state of society, establishing changing relationships between architecture and technological advancements.

"By translating virtual spaces into architecture and the landscape, this thesis attempts to show – through an architectural narrative – how the media have affected our perception of physical spaces, along with dystopian methods to rehabilitate and remediate."

Student: Tiger Thepkanjana Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini Email: tigerttz2000[at]gmail.com

Small, Multifamily, Affordable: Affordable Fourplex Design and Development in New Orleans by Daniel Tighe

"New Orleans faces a critical shortage of affordable housing. To address it, the city updated the comprehensive zoning ordinance to allow fourplexes in historic residential districts where a maximum of two units were previously allowed.

"The only condition is that at least one of the four units must be rented at a rate affordable to a household making 70 per cent of the area's median income.

"While this change is significant, other barriers exist – one year after the zoning change, not a single fourplex was built. While market-rate production of fourplexes may not be feasible, non-profit entities may offer a solution.

"Due to Louisiana's unique land tax regulations a disproportionate amount of vacant land is owned by non-profit entities.

"This thesis explores opportunities for building affordable fourplexes on vacant land already owned by local nonprofits and faith-based institutions to address the shortage of affordable housing in New Orleans.

"The design proposal seeks to create a system for designing fourplexes that can easily be adapted to most standard lots in the city."

Student: Daniel Tighe Course: ARCH 6990 – Thesis Tutor: Byron Mouton Email: dtighe[at]tulane.edu

Industrial Interface: The Future of Infrastructure in the Fourth Industrial Revolution by Leah Bohatch and Camille Kreisel

"Wastewater treatment is currently an isolated system despite its importance in serving civilians, creating a linear relationship that wastes a limited resource while harming the health of its source: the body.

"A micro WWTP in Miami is proposed to run in a cycle of water treatment and reclamation that supports the heat-stricken city through the reprogramming of a cooling aquatic centre to act as an example for future plants.

"This new interface is represented in a ribboning red path of circulation that fluctuates between snaking around mechanical systems or inhabiting the mechanical space as a volume that enables the user to experience the treatment cycle.

"A plaza utilises a gradient strategy to enhance water runoff, merging the mechanical and landscape."

Students: Leah Bohatch and Camille Kreisel Course: ARCH 5990 – Thesis Tutors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini Emails: lbohatch[at]tulane.edu and ckreisel[at]tulane.edu

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Undergraduate Thesis

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Thesis - The Basics

"The starting point for any thesis has to be a critique of present circumstances, which opens up possibilities of radical and practical changes in the world."

- Zegarski / Enos (2016)

What is Thesis?

The Undergraduate Thesis Research Studio offers a unique opportunity to continue your design education at NewSchool. You will plan, develop, and execute a self-generated self-directed architectural research project. You will identify a problem based on your personal interests and propose an architectural solution by navigating and expanding on a given methodology comprised of research and design tasks. You will self-evaluate and clearly convey a critical position grounded in the learning outcomes of the architectural program at NewSchool.

"An architectural thesis should be seen as a desire to map, create, draw, or plan a certain kind of spatiality through a critical/ radical critique of a specific aspect within the process of archietctural production that is representative of everyday life within our current urbanized process of spatial production." Zegarski/ Enos (2016)

The library will only accept Thesis Books that follow the standards outlined here. Make sure you review them and include all required elements. 

Front Matter

• Copyright Page
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• Acknowledgments (optional)
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General Thesis Timeline

Summer quarter.

• Thesis proposal and conceptual video

Fall Quarter (AR501)

• Thesis Essay, Case Studies, Programming, Site Investigation, Research Presentation

Winter Quarter (AR502)

• Project Schedule, Concept Development, Code Analysis, Site Development, Thesis Proposal Document, Design Presentation

Spring Quarter (AR503)

• Plans, Circulation, Structure, Sections, Systems, Interior Studies and Detailing, Storyboard, Final Design Presentation, Final Thesis Document

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• Last Updated: Apr 23, 2024 7:16 PM
• URL: https://library.newschoolarch.edu/ugthesis

B.Arch Thesis – The Neighbourhood School, by Akshay Mirajkar, Rachana Sansad Academy of Architecture,

• October 12, 2017

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B.Arch Thesis by Akshay Mirajkar | Rachana Sansad Academy of Architecture.

In the recent times, the field of education has witnessed numerous variations on a large scale. Due to the rising commercial aspect, schools are becoming grander in terms of garnering the image of being the best one in its field. In order to sustain in this competition, schools tend to market themselves through various lucrative offers, thereby rendering the students as mere consumers of a product. Over the years, School marketing, in India and across the world, has become a booming industry, and is set to grow even further as the focus of schools is on building sustainable brands. Research shows that marketing spends are on the rise in response to the increased competition for students, staff, and resources. The aim is to attract and increase the quality of students every year, retain top faculty, increase student placement opportunities through continuous interaction with businesses, optimize cost of achievement per candidate. Also, in this scenario, misleading architectural imagery plays a significant role where it becomes the platform to attract the consumers.

Due to this rat race, quality of education suffers the most as the schools are evolving with providing various infrastructural facilities, but the quality of space required for learning has remained constant or is left unexplored. Firstly, through documentation of two city schools; the thesis studies the existing schooling scenario. Thus, after drawing conclusions from the above study, the thesis tries to answer the needs of the city through a design project.

Documentation and Analysis of two city Schools

The LFS has an oval shaped layout with a single loaded corridor connecting all the programs having service cores at each ends. Due to the large scale volume of the atrium, the noise coming from children playing in the central space causes a nuisance to the classrooms on the ground as well as the floors above. Also, the hotel like lobby space (without any windows opening on to the corridor) and the standardised composition of the programs hampers the curiosity amongst the students.

The layout of BCS consists of a long and narrow corridor which connects the classrooms in the middle and resource centres and staff space at each ends, having two service cores for the working staff and the students. The scale of the lobby causes a nuisance to the classrooms due to the noise coming from children walking or playing in the lobby and also creates a sense of suffocation, as the only opening is at the end of corridor. The hotel like lobby space and the standardised cell like composition of the programs hamper the curiosity amongst the students. On comparing the classrooms, the scale as well treatment of the interiors of them for different user age group remains the same throughout.

After studying the existing situation, it is clear that there are various schools in the city imparting education through diverse approaches, with each having its own scale of conduct. Theoretically speaking, the learning environment required for each of them should be different, based on their principles of functioning. But in practice, a standardise plan of a double or single loaded corridor with classrooms and other program spaces on either sides becomes the common ground when it comes to formulating a dedicated space for the same.

Looking at the documentation of the city based schools; the most striking flaw, which requires serious attention, would be the failure to address the curiosity of the child at any given age. Children at any age, have a tendency to know about what their schoolmates are learning, irrespective of the age group. With a walled – fortress like classroom, this desire of the child often gets unanswered.

Another major area of concern is the ignorance towards the scale of spaces. In order to maximise the space and avoid any complicated structural arrangement, the scale of the classrooms as well as other program spaces remain the same throughout all the age groups. Due to this, there is a sense of reluctance amongst the students to familiarize with the school space.

Finally, the quality of space, which differs from each institution, requires instant consideration. The learning environment required for each age group is different and depends on their psychological growth at each stage. Use of repetitive and uninteresting as well as over stimulating visuals of spaces may create a hurdle in learning by altering their thought processes. Hence, a significant amount of energy should be spent on to create a visually inspiring learning environment with equilibrium maintained between the dull as well as over doing of spaces.

Site context

Site justification

The aim is to design an institution which promotes education with an holistic approach of learning which focuses on – finding child’s true identity, meaning and purpose of his life.

The above can be achieved through connections to community, to natural world and spiritual values. Hence, such a project requires a strong neighbourhood where cross exchange of knowledge takes place between the students and the community, thus educating both of them.

With this project, apart from learning, the intervention would serve as a core to restore harmony within its people.

The site at chinchpokli is up for redevelopment, in order to upgrade and modernize the current situation. The planned project is a school tower at the present site which will accommodate all the requirements. And thus, can be a blunder of the past mistakes.

Hence, to avoid the above scenario, the designed project will thus serve as a proposal to the redevelopment project and also, to the city as an example of a school with an out of the box approach of learning which takes cues from its own people and nature when it comes to facilitate education in a dense neighbourhood.

Analytical plans

On closely studying the movement patterns, it is clear that majority of the students, learning in this institution reside in the close proximity of the institute. Currently, the institute does not provide any seating or waiting area for the parents who have come to drop of their children. Due to this, they are forced to wait at the school gate causing traffic jam and inconvenience to other residents.

Site scenario

The part of the School building which faces the main road has been rented out for commercial activities like Doctor’s clinic, private office spaces, government post office, etc. Also, there is a line of shops thronging along the northern edge of the school plot, which is backed by an old deserted warehouse. There is a public recreational ground on the rear side of the school plot, but it does not have any official access to it. A tertiary road leads up to the open space, but it is blocked by a temple and a private office.

Program derived and Idea spring point –

The main aim of the project was to design a knowledge hub, thereby enhancing the learning process, emotionally as well as physically. The program to be derived should be based on the holistic learning of the students i.e. not binding within the four walls of the school. Hence, Special programs like a community centre is included which would encourage cross exchange of knowledge within the students and the parents as well as the society (neighbourhood). Based on the idea of interpreting ‘Education – as solving a mystery’, a series of pause points guides the program chain whereby the RG becomes the revelation in this circulation. The practice of the institution should not be bound to its students, but should also be learning as well as a social hub for the local residents. In this way, the school actually becomes an indirect connection between the neighbourhood and the recreational ground.

Design development

Based on the Idea, the situational analysis and the program chain derived, the design was developed in such a way that two third part of the plot will have the maximum programs in it (oriented by the introduction of an axis), while the one third fronting the main road will have the drop off zone (private entrance) and a small recreation area. The deserted warehouse was demolished and the shops were relocated in such a way that the roof (ramp) of the relocated shops becomes a secondary entrance to the school, thereby giving an access to programs like the Community Centre (a café, lecture hall and workshop hall) and the RG.

Exploded isometric view

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One Response

Loved the design. Overall, most of the aspects has been taken care of, which is quite impressive. Though, I couldn’t see the area of the Site. Let me know if it is there and I missed out.

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Beyond Design: Challenges and Opportunities in the Indian Architectural Profession

Vinod Gupta, of Opus Indigo Studio reflects on the evolution and challenges of the Indian architectural profession, emphasizing the need for architects to reclaim responsibilities beyond design to revitalize the industry’s trajectory.

Indian Railways: Stations seeking destinations.

India’s railway stations are undergoing a makeover, but concerns linger about whether the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme truly addresses overcrowding, inefficiency, and the deficits in its architecture and planning, as Kavas Kapadia explores.

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Tetris Garden , Surat, India, by Roomoor, is an alternative residence to high-rise living, retaining community ties while creating a dense yet flexible home.

Patwant Singh: Bridging Architecture, Design, and Journalism in Modern India 

Sardar Patwant Singh, a pioneer of Indian architectural journalism, revolutionized the field with his publications, The Indian Builder and Design magazine. His fearless critiques and advocacy for preserving India’s architectural heritage made him a true visionary.

The Proposed Broadcasting Services Bill: What Does it Mean for Digital Freedom in India’s Architectural Discourse 

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Home > Architecture > Architecture Masters Theses

Architecture Masters Theses

RISD’s Master of Architecture program is one of the few in the US embedded in a college of art and design. Here, architecture is taught in a way that understands the practice of design and making as a thoughtful, reflective process that both engenders and draws from social, political, material, technological and cultural agendas. The program aims to empower students to exercise their creativity by understanding their role as cultural creators and equipping them to succeed in the client-based practice of architecture.

The degree project represents the culmination of each student’s interests relative to the curriculum. A seminar in the fall of the final year helps focus these interests into a plan of action. Working in small groups of five or six under the guidance of a single professor, students pursue individual projects throughout Wintersession and spring semester. Degree projects are expected to embody the architectural values that best characterize their authors as architects and are critiqued based on the success of translating these values into tangible objects.

Graduate Program Director: Hansy Better Barraza

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License .

Theses from 2024 2024

Reform Craft | Re-Form Clay , Katherine Badenhausen

Narrative Structures , Theodore Badenhausen

Room to Grieve: The Space of Solace in Public Life , Lauren Blonde

Frontier: Land, Architecture, and Abstraction , Jacob Boatman

Rhythm of Space , Brian Carrillo

Searching for the Hyperobject: Crystals as Transscalar Vehicles , Jay Costello

Unconditioning Air , Weijia Deng

(Matter)ial Revolution , Aleza Epstein

Building the Body , Jasmine Flowers

House Calls , Gregory Goldstone

Culinary community: Collaborative Relationship Building through Improvisational Fine Dining , Victoria Goodisman

Textile Tectonics: Shaping Space Through Soft Studies , Lela Gunderson

Hong Kong’s Architectural Resistance: Practice Through Research , Jingjing Huang

“Modern Nomads”: Unfolding Domesticity , Yifan Hu

Mind Follows Matter , Fiona Libby

Curb Appeal , Eric Liu

Dreampool , Xia Li

Atelier Interloper , Isabel Jane Marvel

Entre Manos Y Barro: Innovando Con Tradición , Jose Mata

Patchwork: 76km between Juárez and El Paso , Naheyla Medina

The Dollhouse , Kristina Miesel

A Dispatch from the Site Office , Adrian Pelliccia

Infinite Plane: Metaphysical Architecture + Digital Space , Isabella Ruggiero

Icons of Solitude: Peace, Quiet, and the Urban Condition , Jack Schildge

Beyond the Idle Machine: Spatio-Subjective Architecture , Andrew Schnurr

snowstorm , Caleb Shafer

Corner Revolution: Beyond “skynet”, Brightening Grey space and Building Security , Caimin Shen

Living Surfaces , Ryan R. Sotelo

THE RUNIS: HOW CAN SOCIAL REMIDATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL REMEIDATION BE LINKED THROGUH ARCHITECTURE? , Tayu Ting

Entropic Accumulation , Abby Tuckett

What does water want? , Julia Woznicki

Design With Decay , Charlotte Wyman

LifeLink , Yuan Yuan

Architecture As A Carbon-Based Practice , Qixin Yu

Theses from 2023 2023

Ghost Hotel , George Acosta

Cohabitation x Adaptation, 2100: A Climate Change Epoch , Kyle Andrews

Reintroducing Hemp (rongony) in the Material Palette of Madagascar: A study on the potential of Hemp Clay components and its impact on social and ecological communities. , Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Norteada- En Busca De un Nuevo Norte. Cocoon Portals and the Negotiation of Space. , Kimberly Ayala Najera

Decolonial Perspective on Fashion and Sustainability , Haisum Basharat

Psychochoreography , Nora Bayer

Whale Fall·Building Fall , Jiayi Cai

Means and Methods: Pedagogy and Proto-Architecture , Daniel Choconta

The Miacomet Movement , Charles Duce

Unpacked: Consumer Culture in Suburban Spaces , Jaime Dunlap

you're making me sentimental , Chris Geng

Myths, Legends, and Landscapes , Oromia Jula

Old and New: Intervention in Space and Material , Yoonji Kang

Urban Succession: an ecocentric urbanism , Anthony Kershaw

An Architect's Toolkit for Color Theory , ella knight

WAST3D POTENTIAL , Andrew Larsen

Sustainable Seismic Architecture: Exploring the Synergy of Mortise-and-Tenon Joinery and Modern Timber Construction for Reducing Embodied Carbon , Cong Li

Recipes for Building Relationships , Adriana Lintz

Water Relations, Understanding Our Relationship to Water: Through Research, Diagrams, and Glass , Tian Li

Exploring Permanent Temporariness: A Look into the Palestinian Experience through Refugee Camps , Tamara Malhas

A Study of Dwelling , Julia McArthur

Appropriate that Bridge: Appropriation as a way of Intervention , Haochen Meng

Toronto Rewilded , Forrest Meyer

Confronting and Caring for Spaces of Service , Tia Miller

Reorientation , Soleil Nguyen

The De-centering of Architecture , Uthman Olowa

[De]Composition: Grounding Architecture , Skylar Perez

Soft City: Reclaiming Urban Public Spaces for Play , Jennifer Pham

We Have a (Home) - Co-operative Homes for Sunset Park , Lisa Qiu

The Incremental Ecosystem: Hybridizing Self-Built + Conventional Processes as a Solution to Urban Expansion , Shayne Serrano

Liberdade para quem? - Layered Histories , Vanessa Shimada

Tracing as Process , Lesley Su

The Design of Consequences , Yuqi Tang

On the Edge of the "Er-Ocean" State , Mariesa Travers

Beyond the White Box: Building Alternative Art Spaces for the Black Community , Elijah Trice

Translational Placemaking: The Diasporic Archive , Alia Varawalla

Unearthing Complexity: Tangible Histories of Water and Earth , Alexis Violet

Ritual as Design Gesture: Reimagining the Spring Festival in Downtown Providence , wenjie wang

Spatial Reveries , Alexander Wenstrup

Public-ish , Aliah Werth

Phantom Spaces , Craytonia Williams II

Navigating Contextualism: An architectural and urban design study at the intersection of climate, culture, urban development, and globalization Case Study of Dire Dawa , Ruth Wondimu

Green Paths - On the Space In-Between Buildings , Hongru Zhang

Blowing Away , Ziyi Zhao

Uncovering Emotional Contamination: Five Sites of Trauma , Abigail Zola

Theses from 2022 2022

Revisionist Zinealog : a coacted countercultural device , Madaleine Ackerman

Reengineer value , Maxwell Altman

Space in sound , Gidiony Rocha Alves

Anybody home? Figural studies in architectural representation , David Auerbach

An atlas of speculating flooded futures ; water keeps rising , Victoria Barlay

Notes on institutional architecture ; towards and understanding of erasure and conversation , Liam Burke

For a moment, I was lost ; a visual reflection on the process of grief and mortality within the home , Adam Chiang-Harris

Remnants , Sarah Chriss

A thesis on the entanglement of art and design , Racquel Clarke

Community conservation & engagement through the architecture of public transportation , Liam Costello

Sacred pleasures : a patronage festival of the erotic and play , David Dávila

Caregivers as worldbuilders , Caitlin Dippo

Youkoso Tokyo : Guidebook to a new cybercity , Evelyn Ehgotz

Home: a landscape of narratives ; spaces through story telling , Tania S. Estrada

A digital surreal , Michael Garel-Martorana

Moving through time , Anca Gherghiceanu

Rising to the occasion : a resiliency strategy for Brickell, Miami , Stephanie Gottlieb

Food for an island : on the relationships between agriculture, architecture and land , Melinda Groenewegen

Towards a new immersion , Kaijie Huang

Astoria houses: a resilient community , James Juscik

Healing the Black Butterfly: reparation through resources , Danasha Kelly

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View all past theses and dissertations on DSpace@MIT .

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Learning by Doing: Architecture Thesis Projects that Break the Mold

• Published on September 02, 2020

The Bachelor in Architectural Studies thesis projects at the IE School of Architecture and Design are exciting displays following students' years of study, exploration and hard work. This year, the students produced creative, surprising and theoretically-sound solutions to architectural problems - primarily based in the Spanish city of Valencia.

Rooted in post-structuralist thinking, Ujal Gorchu’s project “Mr Sandman, Bring Me a Dream” seeks to question the role of architecture as a mediator in spaces where ideological agendas collide. Taking an experimental approach, he explores the interplay between identity, politics, urban development and how we interact with nature. These theoretical musings come together to create a piece of transgressive architecture that meets the needs of human/non-human assemblages.

Mikhail Frantsuzov takes a more solution-oriented approach in “Liquid Babel” to tap into the potential of Valencia’s harbor. To rejuvenate the dominant and crumbling infrastructure, he tackles notions of scale and territorial issues by freeing himself from traditional restrictions. In regenerating the harbor’s industrial infrastructure, he hopes to produce more usable architecture in a space that often rejects it.

From the theoretical to the industrial, we now land on the theatrical with Paula Lopez Vallespir’s project “Entre Barrios” that celebrates the theatricality of daily life. Focused on the neighborhood of El Cabanyal in Valencia, Paula seeks to regenerate a 600-meter-long street, inspired by Broadway. Her project connects three adjacent neighborhoods with a paving design and locally produced constructed elements, reimagining the street as a stage with the public naturally acting as performers.

Finally, “El Nostre Nou Port” by Ana Corina de la Fuente tries to return Valencia’s harbor to its people by balancing connectivity with respect for the harbor’s history. To provide better access and create a more communal space, Ana envisions building harbor piers, a minimalistic metal ribbon for educational activities, and towers to transform the space into a beautiful, functional landmark.

Throughout the Bachelor in Architectural Studies , students push themselves outside of their comfort zones, while surrounded by other like-minded thinkers. As they accumulate a wide variety of techniques and perspectives, their naturally creative mindsets bring this theory to life to produce highly original work.

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2023 Urban Design Thesis Prize: Saad Boujane’s “Dwellings, Paths, Places: Configurative Habitat in Casablanca, Morocco “

by Saad Boujane (MAUD ’23) — Recipient of the Urban Design Thesis Prize. The Modernist…

Peter Rowe , Faculty Advisor

Spring 2023

2023 Landscape Architecture AP Thesis Prize and 2023 Digital Design Prize: Sonia Sobrino Ralston’s “Uncommon Knowledge: Practices and Protocols for Environmental Information”

by Sonia Sobrino Ralston (MLA I AP ’23) — Recipient of the Landscape Architecture AP…

Rosalea Monacella , Faculty Advisor

2023 Design Studies Thesis Prize: Alaa Suliman Eltayeb Mohamed Hamid’s Ghostopia: Interrogating Colonial Legacies and A Manifesto for The Modernized Nile

by Alaa Suliman Eltayeb Mohamed Hamid (MDes ’23) — Recipient of the Design Studies Thesis…

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Faculty Advisor

2023 Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize: Kevin Robishaw’s Manatees and Margaritas: Toward a Strange New Paradise

by Kevin Robishaw (MLA I ’23) — Recipient of the Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize.

Craig Douglas , Faculty Advisor

2023 Outstanding Design Engineering Project Award: Rebecca Brand and Caroline Fong’s Jua: Cultivating Digital Knowledge Networks for Smallholder Farmers

by Rebecca Brand (MDE ’23) and…

Jock Herron , Faculty Advisor

2023 James Templeton Kelley Prize: Deok Kyu Chung’s “Boundaries of Everyday: walls to voids, voids to solids, solids to walls”

by Deok Kyu Chung (MArch II ’23) — Recipient of the James Templeton Kelley Prize,…

Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Faculty Advisors

2023 Landscape Architecture AP Thesis Prize: Celina Abba and Enrique Cavelier’s Plantation Futures: Foregrounding Lost Narratives

by Celina Abba (MLA I AP ’23) and Enrique…

2022 Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize: Liwei Shen’s “The Echoes of Sky River – Two Pre-modern and Modern Atmospheric Assemblages”

by Liwei Shen (MLA I ’22) — Recipient of the Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize. The…

Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Faculty Advisor

Spring 2022

2022 James Templeton Kelley Prize: Isaac Henry Pollan’s “This Is Not A Firehouse”

by Isaac Henry Pollan (MArch I ’22) — Recipient of the James Templeton Kelley Prize,…

Sean Canty , Faculty Advisor

2022 Clifford Wong Prize in Housing Design: Brian Lee’s “People’s Park Complex: Repairing the Modern City”

by Brian Lee (MArch ’22) — Recipient of the 2021 Clifford Wong Prize in…

Grace La and Jenny French , Faculty Advisors

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Design is increasingly shaped by today’s innovators, collaborators, and leaders, equipped with knowledge and experience with which to create culturally transformative, ethically and ecologically sound buildings, communities, and cities. We prepare our students for their future professional careers with a sequence of intensive design studios, alongside courses focusing on the acquisition of knowledge and skills in advanced technologies for design, fabrication and construction, history, theory, and liberal arts.

Our programs emphasize the exploration of creative design solutions in an intimate, ambitious, and nurturing environment. We aim to create globally engaged, environmentally sensitive, professionally accredited designers, with intellectual and artistic sensibility and technical proficiency.

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1. Tomsk State University

2. House of the Architect Khomich

3. House of Karim Bai

4. House of Shishkov

5. Park of Wooden Architecture

6. Vtorovsk Passage

7. House of Merchant Smirnov

8. Slavic Marketplace

9. The Building of the Former Trading House Pharmacy Store "Stoll and Schmidt"

10. Science Library of Tomsk State University

11. House of the Architect Kryachkov

12. City Hall

13. Flour House

14. The Building of the Mariinsky Female Grammar School

15. House of Astashev

16. House of the Merchant Gromov

17. A. Shvetsova House

18. The Building of the Provincial Magistrate

19. A. Soboleva House

20. N.D. Rodyukov House

21. Mansion Merchant G.F. Fleury

22. The Building of the Former Public Assembly

23. Building of the Former Wine Monopoly

24. House of Semyonova

25. Fold Drama Theater at the Science Center

26. The Former Free Library S.S. Varguzova

27. Exchange House

28. Building of Former City College

29. D. Shadrina House

30. Urban House Shops

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Collection Meeting of Frontiers

Collections from siberia and the russian far east, aleksandrovsk municipal history and literature museum "a.p. chekhov and sakhalin" (55 items).

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Ivan Nikolaevich Krasnov's Views of Sakhalin Island (55 items)

Sakhalin Island was used by imperial Russia as a penal colony and place of exile for criminals and political prisoners. Between 1869 and 1906, more than 30,000 inmates and exiles endured the difficult conditions of the forced-labor colony on the island. This collection, consisting of an album and individual photographs, is preserved in the Aleksandrovsk Municipal History and Literature Museum "A.P. Chekhov and Sakhalin" in Alekandrovsk-Sakhalinskiy, Sakhalin Island (off Russia’s southeast coast). The photographs were taken on the island during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and provide rare glimpses of its settlements, prisons, and inhabitants. Most of the photographs in the collection were taken by Sakhalin artist Ivan Nikolaevich Krasnov, although some are unattributed. The collection depicts public life and institutions in the town of Aleksandrovsk Post, convicts working under harsh conditions or in chains, and political prisoners. The photographs also show the daily life both of the Nivkh people, indigenous to the northern part of the island, and the Russian settler population. The predecessor of the Aleksandrovsk Municipal History and Literature Museum "A.P. Chekhov and Sakhalin" appears in some of the photographs. The name of the museum refers to a trip taken to Sakhalin Island by the Russian writer and medical doctor Anton Chekhov in 1890, during which Chekhov researched the plight of island’s prisoners and native populations. The publication of his Sakhalin Island in 1895 highlighted the depravity of the situation in this remote corner of Russia and led to public protests that helped bring about the closure of the penal colony.

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Altai State Regional Studies Museum (221 items)

Photographs by the topographer g. i. ivanov, gornaia shoria, 1913 (109 items).

This collection consists of 109 photographs taken by G. I. Ivanov (1876-192?) during a 1913 topographic expedition to the Gornaia Shoria in the Altai region. That same year, Ivanov participated in another topographic expedition--to the Mrasskii region, Kuznetskii District (central part of the Gornaia Shoria). The photographs reflect both expedition activities and the life of the people in this region. The negatives were transferred to the Altai State Museum of Regional History and Folklife in the 1920s; prints were made and sets from both expeditions were added to the museum’s collections.

Sergei Ivanovich Borisov's Color Photo-Cards of the Altai Mountains (52 items)

A collection of color postcards made from negatives taken by photographer Sergei Ivanovich Borisov (1859–1935) in the Altay, or Altai, Mountains region of southern Siberia early in the 20th century. Borisov was born into a family of serfs in Simbirsk (present-day Ulyanovsk) and was forced to work from an early age. In the late 1880s he moved to the city of Barnaul in Altayskiy Kray, where in 1894 he opened a photography studio. This studio later became the largest and most popular in the city. In 1907, Borisov began his expedition in the Altay Mountains, which lasted until 1911. He took around 1,500 photographs during this expedition, which, upon his return to Barnaul, he presented to the public through the use of a magic lantern. The photographs depict views of nature in remote corners of the Altay Mountains and the Altay and Kazakh peoples indigenous to this region. Borisov offered the photographs to various European publishers for the production of postcards. The collection includes two series of color postcards. The first series was issued by the Swedish printing company Granberg Society in Stockholm, but it is not known where the second series was published.

V.V. Sapozhnikov. Photo Materials from Expeditions in the Southern Altai Region, 1895-1899 (60 items)

A collection of 60 photos by V.V. Sapozhnikov (1861‒1924), a geographer, botanist, ethnographer, and professor at Tomsk State University (the first institution of higher education established in Siberia), who made significant contributions to the study of the South Siberian region. The photographs were taken by Sapozhnikov during his expeditions to the Altai Mountains in 1895‒99 and later reproduced from his negatives for the Altai State Regional Studies Museum in Barnaul. The explorer gave his photograph collection and related materials from his expeditions to the museum in 1904. Each photograph is accompanied by an annotation with a geographic reference written by Sapozhnikov. The collection is unique for its complex and spectacular views, covering a variety of geographic features of the South Siberian region. In many of the photos, Sapozhnikov or other members of the expeditions are shown, struggling with difficult terrain and swollen rivers. Sapozhnikov's scientific activity was closely connected with the Russian Geographical Society, to which he was elected in 1898.

Amur Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folklife (101 items)

Investigations of the zeya river in 1907-1909 (101 items).

Izyskaniia reki Zei v 1907-1909 gg. (Investigations of the Zeya River in 1907-1909) is a unique integrated collection of documentary photographs that presents a vivid picture of the state of the Amur region up to 1909. The album was prepared in 1909‒10 by the mechanical engineer Vladimir I. Fedorov (1876‒1956) on the instructions of the waterways administration of the Amur basin. Its 100 photographs show natural scenes, indigenous peoples, settlers, river transport, and Russian surveyors at work. The photographs are captioned. The Zeya River is one of the most important tributaries of the Amur River. It rises in the Stanovoy range in the Russian Far East and runs southward and slightly to the west for 1,242 kilometers before joining the Amur near Blagoveshchensk.

Berdsk Historical Art Museum (153 items)

Berdsk in siberia during the 19th and 20th centuries (153 items).

A collection of 153 photographs and documents held in the Berdsk Historical Art Museum, drawn from the personal archives of people who lived in the town of Berdsk in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection offers glimpses into everyday life, the atmosphere, and the activities in Berdsk, a major center of grain processing at that time. The photographs show groups of students and teachers, local mills, people at work in agriculture and industry, soldiers, and children and youth.  Most appear to date from the early Soviet era. The documents include tickets, ration cards, membership cards, and other items relating to farming, trade, crafts, mining, and so forth. Berdsk is located in Novosibirsk Oblast in central Russia, along the Novosibirsk Reservoir just south of Novosibirsk city. Founded at the beginning of the 18th century as a fortress, it became a city in 1944.

Center for Documentation of Tomsk Oblast Recent History (101 items)

Tomsk regional committee documents regarding deported baltic peoples (101 items).

A collection of 101 documents from the archives of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union relating to the mass deportation to Siberia of Baltic peoples from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The documents, which date from the period 1941–60, are nearly all stamped "Secret." They shed light on such aspects of the deportations as the numbers of people involved, how the reception of deported peoples was organized, the resettlement and placement of deportees, material support, methods of ideological control and the assessment of the communist authorities of the ideological and political influences on the deportees, and the eventual lifting of legal restrictions on these population groups. The Soviet Union invaded the Baltic countries in the summer of 1940 and the deportations of Baltic peoples were carried out the following year, just before the Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Estimates of the numbers of deported citizens of the Baltic countries vary, but probably about 50,000 were sent to camps in Siberia in this period. The deportations were aimed out eliminating resistance to communist rule and targeted the political and intellectual elites in the Baltic countries. Deportations were halted following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but a second mass deportation of Baltic peoples to Siberia occurred after World War II, in March 1949, as the authorities sought to stamp out continued resistance to Soviet rule.

Igarka Museum of Permafrost (82 items)

Dead road: construction project 503 (82 items).

A collection of materials related to the Salekhard‒Igarka Railway, an unfinished Soviet railroad sometimes called the “Dead Road.” This railroad was intended to unite European Russia with the northern regions of Siberia and to facilitate the export of minerals from the industrial city of Noril’sk. Construction began in 1949 but was abandoned in 1953 after Stalin’s death. Stalin had ordered the construction of the railroad without heeding the advice of specialists, who knew that a railroad built on permafrost would be difficult to maintain. Stalin considered the railroad strategically necessary to facilitate the defense of Russia’s northern coast; however, actual demand for the railway was low. Construction was divided into two projects, number 501 and number 503, and was carried out by prisoners of the infamous gulag system. According to eyewitness accounts, conditions in the camps of these projects and in Yermakovo, the central settlement of construction project 503, were better than in most parts of the gulag system. This collection consists of photographs, documents, maps, letters, and memoirs housed in the Igarka Museum of Permafrost. Photographs depict daily life in Yermakovo, a settlement near Igarka, abandoned buildings and railroad equipment, and musicians and actors of the projects’ cultural and educational divisions. Many of the photographs were taken by Walter Ruge (1915–2011) and depict his wife Irina Andreevna Alferova. Ruge completed a ten-year sentence as a political prisoner in 1951 before he was released to live as an exile in Yermakovo, where he met Alferova, a fellow exile. The collection’s documents and maps provide information about the planning and construction of the railroad and the administration of the camps, while the memoirs and letters describe the experiences of prisoners, exiles, and civilian residents of Yermakovo and the camps.

Institute for the Study of Buddhism, Mongol, and Tibetan Culture of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (95 items)

Albazinskii prison. materials of archaeological research (95 items).

A collection of 95 drawings, color photographs, and slides documenting the results of the archaeological excavations at the fortress of Albazin, the first Russian settlement on the Amur River (at the present-day village of Albazino in the Amurskaya Oblast). The Russians established the fort at Albazin in 1651, and it soon became the largest fortified settlement of Russian pioneers in the Amur region. In 1686, after a long siege by Manchu troops, Russian Cossack troops surrendered the fortress. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, concluded in 1689 to establish peace between Russia and China, the fortress was demolished and the territory around it transferred to China. The photographs, slides, and drawings in the collection show views of the remains of the towers, walls, residential buildings, and household items discovered during the excavations. They offer insight into the economic activities, construction methods, and armament of the Russian soldiers and settlers of the 16th century.

Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (405 items)

Photographs from archeographic expeditions to the schismatic monasteries on the upper malyi enisei river (tuva, 1966-75) (43 items).

The schismatic monasteries along the headwaters of the Little Yenisey River came into being in February 1917, when one of the splinter groups of the well-known monastery of Father Nifont moved to the Tuva (or Tyva) area, near the Mongolian-Russian border, from the Ural region. The Tuva copy of the Genealogy of the Schismatic Sect, composed by Father Nifont between 1887 and 1890, contains an appendix by Father Palladii, the head of monasteries in Tuva, laying out this succession of 20th-century monastic fathers-superior in Tuva: Nifont, Sergii, Ignatii and Palladii. Father Ignatii died in prison before World War II; shortly thereafter, Father Palladii’s brother committed suicide while under arrest by jumping into the frigid rapids of the Little Yenisey. Father Palladii was arrested three times, but he was able to escape (from exile in Krasnoyarsk and then from the camp near Vladivostok where the poet Osip Mandel’shtam is known to have perished). Toward the end of his life, Father Palladii was director of the Tuva monasteries, having gained the consent of the authorities to assume this position by promising that he no longer would object to military service for Old Believers. Father Palladii was a skilled transcriber and binder of manuscripts and early printed books who owned a large library of these materials. In 1966 he acquainted Novosibirsk archeographers with previously unknown and unstudied literary works composed in the Urals and Siberia from the 17th to the 20th centuries by Old Believer schismatic writers. The residents of these monasteries refuse to be photographed. They explain this refusal in the following way: upon christening, a person acquires an invisible aura around the head and, after death, this aura serves as a pass into heaven; the aura is diminished each time the person sins, and it is further weakened by photography. Outside monasteries, however, this prohibition is not enforced nearly as strictly, even in the families of spiritual teachers.

Photographs from Archeological Expeditions to Old Believer Monasteries (Rudnyi Altai, Headwaters of the Uba River, 1970-71) (42 items)

The monasteries of the Pomorskie Sect of Old Believers, visited by archeographers from Novosibirsk, were the successors to the Pokrovskii women’s monastery built there at the very beginning of the twentieth century with the financial support of Savva Morozov, a well-known textile mill owner who belonged to the Pomorskie Sect. (During this same period he was also financing underground Bolshevik-Leninist organizations.) Old photographs of the nuns at this monastery have been preserved.This monastery traditionally maintained close religious and economic ties with the local peasantry and the wealthy farming families of Old Believers in the Altai. The prosperous Altai peasantry offered stiff resistance (including armed resistance) to Soviet rule and the policy of “war communism” and collectivization. The harsh repression of this resistance took a toll on the Altai Old Believer communities and their book collections. For example, on the northern slopes of the Altai, in Uimon Valley, and on the Koksa River, where the richest Old Believer farms were devastated, a large collection of manuscripts and early printed books also was destroyed. A few miraculously spared sixteenth-century volumes were among the most valuable discoveries of the expeditions by the specialists from the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. When Siberian archeographers began travelling to the Altai Old Believer communities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they found that the former prosperity was long gone, and the other valleys that had flourished before 1917 had become nearly depopulated. This was an ideal location for the secretive settlements of hermits, many of whom had once been nuns of the Pokrovskii monastery, while others had come from all parts of the country, e.g., Kuban’, which had maintained intensive correspondence with the Pomorskie Sect.In their way of life, the adherents of the Pomorskie Sect in Altai were less closed than, for example, the Tuva schismatics. Many of the monastery residents were quite willing to be photographed. The photograph taken of the superior of the main monastery, Mother Afanasiia, was placed alongside the icons in the chapel after her death.

Photographs from the Trial of the Dubches Hermits (6 items)

A collection documenting the trial in the early 1950s of the Dubches hermits. The hermits were associated with Old Believer monasteries persecuted by the communist authorities in what was then the Soviet Union. In 1937‒40 these monasteries were secretly relocated from the Ural Mountains to the left bank of the Lower Yenisey River and the Dubches River and its tributaries. Playing a large role in this effort was the men’s monastery of Father Simeon, whose writings traced the history of the monastery beginning in the 18th century, when it was led by the famed Hegumen (father superior) Maksim, the author of numerous polemic works. Along with the monastery of Father Simeon, nuns from the Permskii convent (on the Sylva River) and Sungul’skii convent (near the city of Kasli, Southern Urals) also relocated to the Dubches region. This secret move took several years. At the new site, the taiga (coniferous evergreen forests) was cleared for buildings and vegetable gardens. Several families of peasant adherents who migrated with the monasteries helped to erect a chapel, along with a building to house a rich collection of old books (more than 500 volumes, including a parchment manuscript and some 16th-century printed books). In 1951 the monasteries were spotted from the air by the Soviet authorities and subsequently demolished by a punitive detachment. The hermits associated with the monasteries and the peasants who had supported them were arrested, and all the buildings, icons, and books were burned. The Krasnoyarsk Office of the Ministry of State Security conducted an investigation and put 33 persons on trial. All those indicted were convicted under Articles 58-10 part 2 and 58-11 of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic criminal code and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 to 25 years. Alexandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote about these events in his classic Gulag Archipelago. Two of those arrested perished in Soviet concentration camps: Father Simeon and Mother Margarita. After the death in 1953 of the dictator Joseph Stalin, the others were granted amnesty on November 12, 1954.

Special Settlers in West Siberia in the 1930s (311 items)

The commemorative album “Soviet Narym: Opening of the West-Siberian North by Labor Settlers, 1930-36” contains statistical, narrative, cartographic, and illustrated materials relating to the people who were forcibly settled in the Narym region by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s. The album, compiled in 1936 by the secret police of West Siberia as the result of a government investigation, sought to document for Moscow the opening of the Narym region by labor settlers. Housed for a time in police archives, the album later fell into private hands during a “purge” of these archives, but since 2002 has been in the custody of the Sector on the History of Sociocultural Development, Institute of History, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Irkutsk Municipal History Museum (572 items)

Materials from the ethnographic expedition of p.p. khoroshikh in 1927 (257 items).

Presented here is an album of 167 photographs and 89 drawings made during the 1927 expedition in the Balagansk District of the Irkutsk region by the famous Siberian ethnographer and archaeologist Pavel Khoroshikh and local history specialist Petr Trebukhovskii. The materials in the album detail the different aspects of the economic activities of the Russian and Buriat population, types of houses and farm buildings, tools and daily activities, and various aspects of children's upbringing. Together, these illustrations are the richest source of material for studying the life of the peasant population of the region before the kholkhoz (collective farm) period of the Soviet era; forced collectivization began in 1928. The Balagansk District is located in the south-central part of Irkutsk Oblast, on the left bank of the Angara River. It was settled by Russians from 1655 onward, and has long been inhabited by the Bulagat, a Buriat tribe whose name derives from the Buriat word for sable hunter.

Photography in Irkutsk (136 items)

This collection contains 136 photographs of Irkutsk from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The photographs show views of both the city of Irkutsk and countryside of Irkutsk Province; methods of transportation; and the citizenry--including their way of life, social activities, and forms of entertainment.

Russians in Harbin, 1920s-1940s (from the Archive of V. P. Ablamskii) (110 items)

Vladimir Pavlovich Ablamskii (1911-1994), a figure-skating champion from northern China, was also a famous Harbin photographer and photojournalist. This collection contains Ablamskii’s photographs depicting the life of the Russian immigrant community in Harbin.

The Baikal Region at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century in the Photographs of I. A. and V. I. Podgorbunskiih (69 items)

This collection presents a series of photographs taken by the Podgorbunskiis. The father, I. A. Podgorbunskii, was a priest, teacher, scientist, and local historian. The son, V. I. Podgorbunskii, was an archaeologist. Their photographs of the Baikal region depict the scenery as well as the way of life and culture of local residents.

Irkutsk State University (364 items)

Peoples of siberia: the buryats and yakuts (152 items).

This collection consists of two photograph albums from the early twentieth century, with pictures presumably taken by I. Popov. The album “Views of the Yakutsk Region” contains 151 photographs. Subjects include the Lena River shore; various forms of river transport--including boats, rafts, trade barges, and steamships; post offices along the Lena highway, and transport by horse and reindeer. The album “Peoples of Siberia” contains twenty-seven photographs depicting Yakuts and Buryats, everyday life, festivals, meetings, housing, utensils, and hunting accessories. Several of the photographs are signed with the initials “I. P.”

Views of Hunting Grounds in Irkutsk Oblast (72 items)

Vidy okhotugodii Irkutskoi oblasti (Views of hunting grounds in Irkutsk Oblast) is an unpublished album of photographs depicting hunting grounds along the Lena River in southeastern Siberia. Subjects shown include hunters, river scenes, hunting scenes, dogs, horses, and winter dwellings in the Kazachinsko-Lensky, Zhigalovsky, and Kachugsky Districts of the oblast, along with family photographs of the local Tungusic people. Each photograph is accompanied by a handwritten caption. Taken by the art critic V.N. Troitskii in 1930, the photographs offer insights into the nature, economic activities, and life of the indigenous and Russian populations of Siberia at the turn of the 1920s–1930s.

Views of the Akatuy Hard Labor Camp (48 items)

Presented here is an album of 47 views of convicts and structures at the Akatuy Prison, one of the main centers where political prisoners were held in the Russian Empire during the late-tsarist period. The album belonged to Isaiah Aronovich Shinkman, a physician and member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who was incarcerated at Akatuy from 1906 to 1911. The prison was located at the Akatuy silver mine in Nerchinsk okrug (district) in the Transbaikal Territory of Siberia. Thousands of political prisoners were exiled to Siberia from European Russia and from Poland, Finland, Latvia, and Estonia (all then part of the Russian Empire) following the repression of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Criminal labor convicts and political prisoners had long been sent to Nerchinsk to work in extracting lead-silver ores in the region’s mines. The American explorer and journalist George Kennan (1845–1924) visited Akatuy in 1885, and wrote about his experience in his book Siberia and the Exile System (1891), a scathing critique of the system of prisons and prison camps in Russia. The album is held by the Irkutsk State University in Irkutsk and was digitized for the Meeting of Frontiers digital library project in the early 2000s. The photographs it contains offer glimpses into the day-to-day existence and activities of the political prisoners in Siberia in the years before World War I and the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Views of the Trans-Baikal and Irkutsk, a Photo Album by N. A. Charushin (54 items)

This album consists of fifty-three photographs by the Siberian photographer N. A. Charushin. Most of the photographs were taken on the Udunginsk and Circumbaikal Roads and represent images of bridges, rail stations, quays, ferries, and other construction.

Jewish Autonomous Region Museum of Regional History and Folklife (35 items)

Materials of the collection of professor b.l. bruk (35 items).

A collection of documents, photographs, maps, and printed works relating to the life and work of Professor Boris L’vovich Bruk, a well-known Russian agronomist who did much to study and develop agriculture in the Russian Far East and the central regions of Russia. In 1927, Bruk headed the expedition of the Committee on the Land Management of Working Jews (KOMZET) to the thinly populated Birobidzhan region to study the possible resettlement there of Jews from European Russia. The collection also includes the report issued by KOZMET after the conclusion of the expedition. The materials in the collection reflect the life and career of Bruk, his scientific activities, and the propaganda activities of the Soviet state relating to the introduction of modern agricultural technologies into the peasant economy. They also provide information on the nature, climate, and economy of the Birobidzhan region. Located in the Russian Far East near the border with China, the Birobidzhan region was established in 1928 by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as the Jewish Autonomous Region of the Soviet Union.

Kamchatka Regional Unified Museum (469 items)

Kamchatka in the early twentieth century (297 items).

This album contains 296 works by such photographers as René Malaise, S. I. Beinarovich, I. E. Larin, and other, unknown artists. Larin lived on Kamchatka from 1917 to 1934 and was a prominent communist and the first chairman of the regional soviet. Malaise was a member of a Swedish expedition to Kamchatka in 1922-23. The album itself belonged to Mikhail Petrovich Vol'skii, chairman of the Kamchatka regional soviet in the 1920s and 1930s. This album offers a glimpse of life in the Russian Far Northeast in the first third of the twentieth century. It includes nature scenes of Kamchatka, views of Petropavlovsk and other population centers, and images of the indigenous peoples of Kamchatka and neighboring territories--their occupations and their material culture.

Photographs from the Eastern Reaches of the Russian Empire (44 items)

This collection consists of forty-four photographs of Sakhalin Island and the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The photographs depict streets, individual buildings, panoramas of populated areas, and local people, including convicts and prisoners. The collection offers insights into the economy, society, and way of life in this remote corner of the Russian Empire around the turn of the twentieth century. The identity of the photographer is unknown.

The Kamchatka Photo Album of B. I. Dybovskii (128 items)

This photo album belonged to Benedikt Ivanovich Dybovskii (Benedykt Dybowski), 1833-1930, a well-known Polish zoologist.  Dybovskii was exiled to Siberia, for taking part in the Polish uprising of 1863-64; he remained there until 1877.  He returned to Siberia in 1879 and served as the Kamchatka district physician until 1883.  Dybovskii studied the environment and fauna of Baikal, Priamur'e, and Kamchatka.  The album presents views of the port of Petropavlovsk and other settlements in Kamchatka as well as photographs of the people of Kamchatka--merchants, craftsmen, peasants, Cossacks, and Kamchadals.  The album holds 127 unique photographs, which provide a clear image of the city of Petropavlovsk, the historical events associated with it, and its people in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Kemerovo Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folklife (302 items)

Civil war in the kuzbass (103 items).

This collection contains documents and photographs from more than thirty participants of the Russian Civil War in the Kuzbass, including commanders and commissars of the Red partisan movement. Among the unique items in the collection are materials relating to the circulation of money in Siberia (that is, the new currency introduced by the Kolchak government) and the photograph album, “Development of the Anzher Coal-Mine District in 1918-23.”

Documents and Photographs from the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Society (199 items)

The “Kuzbass” autonomous industrial colony was created in 1921. It was organized by American workers, who took on the obligation of inviting from the United States and Western Europe some eight thousand skilled workers and specialists to industrialize the Kuzbass. The Soviet government turned over to the colonists a number of Kemerovo mine shafts and an unfinished coking plant. To recruit volunteers to work in Siberia, a “Kuzbass Bureau” was opened in the middle of New York City, and an information bulletin began to be published in the United States. Between January 1922 and December 1923, however, only 566 persons arrived for work in the Kuzbass. The colonists included emigrants from America, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Australia, Jamaica, Indonesia, and other countries as well.

Krasnoiarsk Krai Museum of Regional History and Folklife (501 items)

Everyday life of yenisei province, late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries.

This collection includes more than four hundred photographs of daily life in Yenisei Province in the late tsarist period. Photographs include peasants, Cossacks, and high-ranking officials.

Letters from the Decembrist Revolt

Presented here is a collection of 78 letters written between 1838 and 1850 by Decembrists and their wives. The letters were written from places of hard labor and settlements in Siberia and are addressed to Iakov Dmitrievich Kazimirskii, a manager at the Petrovskii Factory. The writers include I.I. Pushchin, V.L. Davydov, A.I. Iakubovich, A.Z. Muraviev, N.A. Bestuzhev, V.V. Vadkovskii, A.P and M.K Iushnevskii, I.S. Povalo-Shveikovskii, E.I. Trubetskaia, S.G. Volkonskii, I.I. Gorbachevskii, M.F. Mit’kov, and E.P. Obolensky. The Decembrists were a group of Russian revolutionaries who led an unsuccessful uprising against tsarist authority in December 1825. They were primarily members of the upper classes with military backgrounds. After the suppression of the uprising, 289 Decembrists were put on trial. Five–the leaders –were executed; 31 were imprisoned; and the rest exiled to Siberia. Many wives of the Decembrists accompanied their husbands into banishment in Siberia. The collection is held in the Krasnoyarskskiy Krai Museum of Regional History and Folklife. The letters came to the museum in the 1930s from the Krasnoyarsk Regional Library as part of a collection of documents assembled by the famous bibliophile-merchant Gennadii Vasil’evich Iudin. Most of the letters were published in the book Sibirskie pis’ma dekabristov: 1838-1850 (Siberian letters of the Decembrists: 1838-1850), compiled by T.S.  Komarova and published by the Krasnoyarsk Book Publishing House in 1987.

M. N. Khangalov Museum on the History of Buryatia (66 items)

Christianity in buryatia.

This collection consists of sixty-six photographs and documents that depict the history and activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Buryatia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It includes the papers of Nikolai, Bishop of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands; views of Orthodox churches and cathedrals; church records; confessional lists; birth registers; music manuscripts, and other documents.

Memory of Kolyma Museum (42 items)

Materials on the history of sevvostlag (42 items).

A collection of photographs, drawings, newspapers, and documents gathered in the Kolyma region of Russia. Kolyma is a northeastern region that takes its name from the Kolyma River and includes parts of the present-day Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and present-day Magadan Oblast. This region contained deposits of gold and platinum and was home to Sevvostlag (Northeastern Corrective Labor Camps), one of the Soviet Union’s most infamous labor camp systems, which was administered by a government agency known as Dalstroy (Far North Construction Trust). These materials were collected by the Yagodnoye District public historical and educational organization “Search for the Unlawfully Repressed.” This organization was founded in 1990 with the goal of locating former prisoners of the Kolyma camps. It corresponds with more than 500 former prisoners and their relatives, publishes prisoners’ memoirs, conducts local history research, and carries out expeditions to the remains of camps. The materials collected by Search for the Unlawfully Repressed became the basis for the collections of the Memory of Kolyma Museum, where this collection is housed. The collection’s photographs depict ruins of camp buildings, daily life in Kolyma, and journalists traveling in the region. Other materials of the collection include a map of Kolyma’s camps, newspapers from the region, certificates, letters, records of criminal cases, and personal files.

Museum of the History of the Norilsk Industrial Region (212 items)

The last archipelago: investigation of severnaya zemlya in 1930-1932 (212 items).

A collection of materials, including manuscripts, photographs, and a photograph album, from the N.N. Urantsev Foundation devoted to the last major geographical discovery on earth: the exploration of Severnaya Zemlya in the expedition of 1930‒32 expedition under the leadership of G.A. Ushakov (1901‒63) and N.N. Urvantsev (1893‒1985). The manuscripts and photographs offer new and previously unknown information about the harsh conditions and limited plant and animal life of Severnaya Zemlya and document the history of the expedition. As characterized by N.N. Urvantsev, this was the last polar expedition of the Nansen-Amundsen era, in which success was achieved through human endurance and perseverance in pursuing a goal using a minimum of technical and material resources. Severnaya Zemlya (meaning “northern land” in Russian) is an archipelago of four large and many smaller islands located in the Arctic Ocean, immediately north of Cape Chelyuskin, the most northerly point in Siberia. Much of the territory is covered by ice and snow. The archipelago was first discovered only in 1913 and was not explored until the two-year Ushakov-Urvantsev expedition mapped and surveyed the territory.

National Research Tomsk State University (101 items)

Drawings and paintings by pavel mikhailovich kosharov (143 items).

The Research Library of Tomsk State University and the Tomsk Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folk Life hold a collection of about 150 works by the famous Siberian artist, teacher, and public educator Pavel Mikhailovich Kosharov (1824–1902). Siberia in all its diversity is the basic theme of this collection of paintings, lithographs, sketches, studies, and drawings, which capture various remote corners of the Siberian wilderness, spectacular vistas of the Altai, scenes of numerous Siberian cities and villages, and the faces and way of life of the indigenous peoples of Siberia.

Nikolaevsk-on-Amur Museum of Municipal History and Folklife (103 items)

Nikolaevsk-on-amur in postcards during the early 20th century (103 items).

Presented here is a collection of 103 postcards of the city of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in the early 20th century. The collection provides a unique photographic record of the development of the city and of the lower Amur region in this period. The cards offer views of the architectural appearance of the old city (especially valuable, because during the Russian Civil War Nikolayevsk-on-Amur was destroyed and burnt), as well as of the culture, daily life, and occupations of residents, and of the different ethnic groups that made up the population of the region. The postcards all have printed labels on their front sides, in Russian or in both Russian and German. A few of the postcards contain written messages on the back, and have been digitized on both sides. The collection is housed in the Nikolayevsk-on-Amur Municipal Local History Museum. Formation of the collection began in the 1960s. Postcards came from former residents of the city of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur and from the exchange of collections with other museums and local history specialists.

Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife (526 items)

Boris smirnov print collection (99 items).

Boris Vasilievich Smirnov (1881–1954) was a Russian artist who in 1904 traveled by prisoner transport from western Russia across Siberia. Along the way he created a series of drawings and watercolors of the people and places he encountered. Best known as a portraitist, Smirnov focused on the faces of the men and women he met, who included exiles, prisoners, settlers from Ukraine and western Russia, local military and civilian officials, peasants and merchants. His works from this period also include a handful of drawings of houses and landscapes. The sketches were made in the Ural Mountains, Irkutsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, and in villages along the route. The details of Smirnov’s journey are sketchy. Some accounts say that he traveled along the Great Siberian Road as a volunteer on the way to the front in the Russo-Japanese War. Other accounts say that he was an exile, possibly sent to Siberia for refusing to be conscripted into the army. The Great Siberian Road, depicted in several of Smirnov’s drawings, was the route from Moscow to China via Siberia. Smirnov’s collection of 99 graphic items is preserved in the Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife. The collection was acquired by the museum from the artist in 1950.

Ethnographic Artists' Sketches from the 1920s and 1930s (96 items)

The graphics collection of the Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife includes the works of such famous Siberian painters as Dmitrii Inokent’evich Karatanov, Natal’ia Nikolaevna Nagorskaia, Aleksei Vasil’evich Voshchakin, and Grigorii Gustavovich Likman. These lesser-known drawings and watercolors were done in the field in the 1920s and 1930s. They include both ethnographic sketches and first-hand depictions of the young, fast-growing Siberian megalopolis.

Native Peoples of Siberia (212 items)

This collection includes more than two hundred photographs taken during scientific expeditions into the most remote wilderness regions of Siberia at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. This selection illustrates the life of seven indigenous groups from East Siberia: Kets, Dolgans, Buryats, Yakuts, Even, Evenks, and Toffalars.

Photographs from the Ethnographic Expeditions of Natal'ia Nagorskaia (20 items)

The well-known Novosibirsk ethnographer and graphic artist Natal’ia Nikolaevna Nagorskaia (1895-1983), while on the staff of the Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife (NGKM), made a number of ethnographic expeditions to Khakasiia, Gornaia Shoriia, Turukhan krai, and the Altai. The NGKM collections preserve the materials from her expeditions, including field sketches, expedition journals, photographs, and artifacts of the material culture of the native peoples of Southern Siberia.

The Road Building Department of the Tomsk District. Railroad Construction in 1909 (49 items)

The road building department of the tomsk district. road construction in 1906-1908 (50 items).

Presented here are two albums preserved in the Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife containing photographs documenting various stages in the construction of dirt roads in the Tomsk region by workers and engineers of the road-building department of the Russian Resettlement Administration. The albums date from 1906–8 and 1909. The Russian state paid for the construction of roads, such as those depicted in the albums in order to connect settlers with a railroad line, a navigable river, or commercial-industrial centers. The overall purpose of the road-building program was to promote the colonization of the taiga (moist coniferous forest regions) of Siberia. The albums show the construction of roads in the region between the main line of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Chet’ and Kandat Rivers in Tomsk gubernia (governorate), a distance of 170 versts (about 182 kilometers).

Omsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife (371 items)

The first western siberian agricultural, forestry, and commerical-industrial exhibition in omsk, 1911 (157 items).

A collection of photographs documenting the First West Siberian Agricultural, Forestry, and Industrial Trade Exhibition, which took place in Omsk in 1911. The exhibition was held from June 15 to August 1 of that year, and was a significant event in the life of the Siberian region. Nothing on this scale or this level of ambition had ever been staged in Siberia. The collection includes photographs of the exhibition organizers, general views, and images of pavilions, exhibits, prize-winning livestock, crowds at a musical event, and even an aviator and his airplane. Also included are drawings made by the engineers and architects for several of the pavilions. The photographs provide insights into the economic and social development of Siberia in the early 20th century and show a dynamic and self-confident region.

Types of Buildings in the Cossack Settlements (48 items)

Types of cossacks: siberian cossacks on duty and at home (74 items), views of the cossack territories (92 items).

Presented here are three albums depicting the territories, culture, and way of life of the Cossacks living in the steppe regions of western Siberia and present-day Kazakhstan. These albums were created for and exhibited at the First West Siberian Agricultural, Forestry, and Commercial-Industrial Exhibition in Omsk in 1911. The albums were part of a collection of photographs assembled between 1891 and 1918 by the museum of the West Siberian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society in Omsk. The photographs in the albums were taken in 1909 by N.G. Katanaev (son of Colonel G.E. Katanaev) during a journey to Cossack settlements in Stepnoi krai (later the oblasts of Ural’sk, Turgai, Akmola, and Semipalatinsk). The Cossacks began serving in garrisons in fortified Siberian towns from the late 16th century onward. In 1808 the Cossacks in these outposts were organized as the Siberian Cossack Host, a military force of mainly cavalry regiments that subsequently took part in the Russian conquest of Central Asia as well as in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904‒5 and in World War I. Omsk was the administrative center for the host, which was headed by an ataman appointed by the tsarist authorities. The host was abolished by the Soviet authorities in 1920.

Phototext Foundation (196 items)

Materials of the ethno-photo expedition: people on the frontier (196 items).

This collection contains photographs from the international photographic expedition, “People on the Frontier,” to the Saian-Altai region from June 12 to July 4, 2002. The photographs tell stories about such topics as the peoples of the region, their religions, steppe roads, and everyday life. Photographers who participated in the expedition included Heidi Bradner (Panos Pictures, London), Vladimir Dubrovskii (Novosibirsk), Sergei Il’nitskii (Moscow), Andrei Kobylko (Novokuznetsk), Aleksandr Kuznetsov (Krasnoiarsk), and Aleksandr Sorin (Moscow). The expedition, which began and ended in Novosibirsk, covered 7,000 kilometers and included stops in Biisk, Gorno-Altaisk, Ust-Koksa, Ust-Kan, Ongudai, Ulagan, Kosh-Agach, Tahsanta, Aktahs, Buiisk--Kemerovo, Abakan, Kazanovka, Askiz, Kyzyl and Maiskii, Talon, Tulesh, Kilinsk, and Belovo.

Private Archive of Sergei Nikolaevich Chashchin (85 items)

Firefighting in irkutsk province (85 items).

This collection of photographs and documents from the private archive of Sergei Mikhailovich Chashchin relates to the establishment of a firefighting service in eastern Siberia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It includes materials about early firefighting equipment, the organization of a Siberian firefighting team, and the leaders of Siberia’s first firefighting service.

Siberian Museum Agency (247 items)

The russian far east in modern photography (165 items).

A collection entitled “The Russian Far East in Modern Photography,” which documents several regions of the Russian Far East at the beginning of the 21st century. The Russian Far East encompasses a large geographical area that borders the Pacific Ocean and stretches from the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the northeast to Primorsky Krai in the southeast, along the borders with China and North Korea. The collection includes several photographs by the famed researcher and photographer Vitalii Aleksandrovich Nikolaenko (1938–2003), who spent more than 30 years observing and studying the brown bears of the Kamchatka Peninsula and was eventually killed by a bear while carrying out his work. Also included are photographs of Sakhalin Island by Moscow-based photographer Aleksandr Vladimirovich Sorin, of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands by Aleksandr Mikhailovich Bermant, of Primorsky Krai by Vladimir Mikhailovich Kobzar’, and of Kamchatka by Irina Vladimirovna Stakhanova. The photographs depict the varied natural landscapes of the Russian Far East, including the geysers and volcanoes of Kamchatka and the coastlines of Russia’s Pacific islands. The collection also captures the work of the region’s fishermen, daily life and recreation in its settlements, and its wildlife, including Kamchatka bears and Amur tigers. The collection was gathered for the Meeting of Frontiers digital library project in the early 2000s.

Timeless Chukotka (82 items)

This collection entitled “Timeless Chukotka,” which was created by Moscow photographer Aleksandr Vladimirovich Sorin (born 1965) and Novosibirsk journalist Artem Gotlib. In June and July of 2003, Sorin and Gotlib undertook an expedition to the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the most northeasterly region of the Russian Federation. Chukotka is characterized by a low population density, an untouched and mostly mountainous natural landscape, and a harsh Arctic climate. About half of the region’s territory lies north of the Arctic Circle. Transportation by airplane is more efficient and more widespread than travel on the region’s few roads. Sorin and Gotlib initially planned to travel by barge along the Anadyr’ River, but the complications of transportation in Chukotka led them to alter their plans. Their eventual route took them from Anadyr’, the administrative center of the region, to the tundra settlement of Ust’-Belaya, and on to the settlements of Bukhta Provideniya, Sireniki, and Novoye Chaplino on the shores of the Bering Sea. Sorin and Gotlib concluded that conventional concepts of time and punctuality have little meaning in Chukotka, which explains the word “timeless” that they used in naming their collection. The photographs depict the daily lives of the people of Chukotka, as well as its settlements, coastlines, and natural landscapes. The collection was gathered for the Meeting of Frontiers digital library project in the early 2000s.

State Archives of Novosibirsk Oblast (130 items)

Construction and views of the circumbaikal railroad. 1900-1904 (58 items).

In the second half of the 19th century, Russia underwent a period of extensive rail development that culminated in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Akin to the great railroads to the Pacific in both the United States and Canada, Russia's transcontinental line was intended to supply and populate Siberia as well as deliver raw materials to the rapidly developing industries west of the Urals. Working against an ambitious timetable and under severe conditions of climate and terrain, the Russians effectively united the European and Asian parts of the empire by completing this herculean project. The engineering plans provided for the sequential construction of six basic segments. The fourth of these was the Circum-Baikal Railroad from Irkutsk to the eastern side of Lake Baikal. This album of 56 photographs in the Collection of Documentary Materials on the History of the West-Siberian Railroad (1890s–1978) in the Novosibirsk Oblast State Archive documents the construction of this part of the line. The photographs focus on engineers and workmen building tunnels and trestles along the route.

Construction of the Middle-Siberian Railroad. 1893-1898 (20 items)

This photographic collage is from an 18-page album in the Collection of Documentary Materials on the History of the West-Siberian Railroad (1890s–1978) in the Novosibirsk Oblast State Archive that documents the construction of the Mid-Siberian Railroad from Novo-Nikolaevsk (present-day Novosibirsk) to Innokentievskaia near Irkutsk, with a spur line to Tomsk. The collage features portraits of the men responsible for the construction of the line, overlaid on photographs showing the construction process.

Views of the West-Siberian and Ekateringburg-Cheliabinsk Railroad (52 items)

This album of 50 photographs from the Collection of Documentary Materials on the History of the West-Siberian Railroad (1890s–1978) in the Novosibirsk Oblast State Archive documents the construction of the West Siberian railroad and the railroad between the cities of Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk. The images, by the artist and printer Artur Ivanovich Vil’borg (born 1856), include views of railroad bridges over the Ushaika, Tom’, and Lebiazh’ia Rivers, the passenger depots at the Tomsk, Ob', and Oiash stations, and portraits of engineers and other personnel involved in the railroad construction.

The State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (113 items)

Tsarist patents, 1899-1917: urals, siberia, and the russian far east (113 items).

This collection consists of a selection of tsarist patents awarded to residents of the Urals, Siberia, and the Russian Far East in the final years of the empire. These documents are a valuable source of information about the opening of the Siberian and Far Eastern regions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and technological progress in Russia--the state of industrial development, the organization of industry, and the extent of mining and mineral excavation.

Tobolsk Museum of History, Architecture, and Preservation (239 items)

Drawings and illustrations by mikhail stepanovich znamenskii, 1858-1891 (239 items).

A collection of 239 drawings and illustrations made by the 19th century Siberian artist Mikhail Stepanovich Znamenskii(1833–92) between 1858 and 1891. From the West Siberian city of Tobolsk, Znamenskii was a well-known local historian, archaeologist, ethnographer, artist, and master of satirical prints and drawings. The collection reflects almost all aspects of his work. It includes drawings of artifacts from archaeological finds in the territory of West Siberia, sketches of nature, people, and cities, a few maps, and several satirical albums with caricatures and humorous sketches of everyday life of the people. Together, the illustrations in the collection give a portrait of the people of and physical conditions in West Siberia in the second half of the 19th century.

Tomsk Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folklife (422 items)

Photographs by i. s. fateev: the tym river selkups in 1938 and 1940 (177 items).

This is a collection of prints from glass negatives shot by Ivan Stepanovich Fateev. The photos were taken in the Tym River region on two expeditions organized by the museum director, Petr Ivanovich Kutaf’evyi. Fateev captured the way of life of a group of Narym (southern) Selkups living in close proximity with their Evenki neighbors during the period of aggressive Sovietization of West Siberian native peoples.

The Civil War in West Siberia (45 items)

This collection contains unique documentary photographs relating to the Russian Civil War in Siberia. The photographs highlight the anti-Bolshevik (“White”) movements, underground and partisan activities in Tomsk Province, and the establishment of Soviet rule in Tomsk. The collection also includes material about the punitive expeditions of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. Most of the photographs were acquired by the Tomsk Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folklife in the 1920s and 1930s from the Research Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin and Nikolai Mikhailovich Iadrintsev Collection (110 items)

This collection consists of diverse materials belonging to Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin (1835–1920) and Nikolai Mikhailovich Iadrintsev (1842–94), two prominent Siberian scholars, social and political activists, and leaders of the regional-studies movement. The materials include their correspondence with friends and social activists (eighty-five items), photographs from N. G. Potanin’s expedition to Mongolia in 1899 (seventeen items), and photographs from the journal of Nina Aleksandrovna Adrianova, who was the daughter of Aleksandr Vasil’evich Adrianov, a specialist in regional studies (eight items).

Maps from the Tomsk Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folklife (48 items)

The Tomsk Oblast Museum of Regional History and Folklife (TOKM) map collection represented in the Meeting of Frontiers project numbers forty-nine items on 117 pages. The collection was built quietly throughout the history of the museum. The bulk of the collection consists of nineteenth-century regional maps of Tomsk, Tobolsk, Irkutsk, and Enisei guberniias, land-use and road maps, and maps of Siberian cities.

V. I. Surikov Museum of Art in Krasnoiarsk (321 items)

Works of d. i. karatanov, a. g. vargin, and a. p. lekarenko from their expeditions to siberia (321 items).

This collection presents sketches, drawings, watercolors, and paintings by three well-known Krasnoiarsk artists, Dmitri Innokent’evich Karatanov, A. G. Vargin, and Andrei Prokofievich Lekarenko, produced during their expeditions to Siberia in the 1910s and 1920s. These works are located at two institutions: V. I. Surikov Museum of Art in Krasnoiarsk and Krasnoiarsk Krai Museum of Regional History and Folklife. Karatanov (1872-1952) studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts but left the Academy in 1896 before finishing his course of study to return to Krasnoiarsk. He began teaching at the High School of Arts in Krasnoiarsk in 1910; many well-known local artists studied under him. The main theme of his work was the Siberian landscape. He was named an “Honored Artist of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic)” in 1948.  Very little is known about Vargin. The 110 drawings that he made during his trip to Siberia with A. A. Savel’ev are his only surviving works.  Lekarenko (1895-1974) studied under Karatanov and V. A. Favorskii, and was one of the founders of the local artists union “New Siberia.” He also taught at the High School of the Arts in Krasnoiarsk as well as at the Surikov Academy of Arts in that city. In 1967 Lekarenko was awarded the “Order of Honor” and named “Honored Artist of the RSFSR” for his dedication to educational work.

V.A. Obruchev Museum of Kyakhta Regional History and Folklife (71 items)

Russian-chinese cross-border trade (71 items).

A collection of 71 items (photographs and negatives on glass) made in the late 19th century and early 20th century by the famous revolutionary-populist and social and political activist N.A. Charushin (1851–1937) and by N. Petrov. Charushin began serving a hard labor sentence in the Transbaikal Territory in 1878. The materials in the collection illustrate aspects of Transbaikal history in this period, with a particular emphasis on the tea trade with China, which at that time was one of the main branches of the economy of the region. The photographs show various technological processes of growing and preparing tea, sections of trade routes, as well as views of China, Mongolia, Buryatia, and various towns and villages of Transbaikal, as well as images of local people of different ethnicities and nationalities. Several of the photographs, including one of the large and imposing Russian consulate, were taken in Urga, at that time the capital of Outer Mongolia (and known today as Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia).

V.K. Arseniev Primorsky Regional Unified Museum (267 items)

Photo archive of geologist mikhail alekseevich pavlov (125 items).

A collection from the family archive of prominent geologist Mikhail Alekseevich Pavlov (1884–1938). Pavlov was born near Ekaterinburg and completed his schooling at the Nikolai Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo (present-day Pushkin) in 1905. He went on to study geology at Saint Petersburg University and participated in many field expeditions. While still a student, Pavlov took part in the attempted expedition to the North Pole in 1912‒14, which was led by the Arctic explorer Georgii Iakovlevich Sedov (1877–1914). Along with his school and university friend Vladimir Iul’evich Vize (1886–1954), who served as the expedition’s geographer, Pavlov collected a large body of scientific data on the northern archipelago of Novaya Zemlya. After finishing his education, Pavlov worked as a geologist and teacher of geology. He devoted most of his career to the geology of the Far East, working as an employee of the Far East Geological Committee (Dal’geolkom) in 1919–31. Pavlov was arrested in 1931 and in 1938 was executed after exhaustion prevented him from reporting for work in the labor camp where he was a prisoner. Such a fate was typical for representatives of the Russian intelligentsia in Stalinist Russia. Many photographs in this collection were taken by Pavlov himself, while others are unattributed. The photographs date from approximately 1875–1929. They depict Pavlov’s geological expeditions in Siberia and the Far East, expedition participants, views of nature, Pavlov during his school and university years, and his family members in various years.

Photographs of Georgii Iakovlevich Sedov's Expedition to the North Pole (59 items)

Senior Lieutenant Georgii Iakovlevich Sedov (1877–1914) was a hydrographer and surveyor who devoted much of his career to exploration of the Northern Sea Route north of Siberia. The son of a poor fisherman, Sedov succeeded in becoming an officer of the Imperial Russian Navy, an unprecedented achievement for someone of his modest origins. This collection, consisting of an album and individual photographs from the family archive of geologist Mikhail Alekseevich Pavlov (1884–1938), depicts the expedition undertaken by Sedov in the years 1912–14. The members of the expedition departed from Arkhangelsk in August of 1912 on the sailing vessel Saint Martyr Foka, intending to travel to Zemlya Frantsa Iosifa, from where they would attempt to reach the North Pole by dog sled. The expedition relied on private means, which contributed to the shortages of fuel and food that led to its failure. Sedov, whose health was already failing when he set out for the pole by sled in early 1914, died before reaching his objective. The members of the expedition nonetheless carried out extensive surveying and scientific observations while wintering on Novaya Zemlya in 1912–13 and made significant contributions to knowledge of northern geography. Many photographs in the collection were taken by Nikolaj Vasil’evich Pinegin (1883–1940), the artist and photographer of the expedition. Other photographs are attributed to Pavlov, the expedition’s geologist, who over the course of his career conducted a great deal of geological research in Siberia and the Russian Far East. The photographs show the expedition’s departure from Arkhangelsk, the members of the expedition on the Saint Martyr Foka, the harsh conditions endured by the expedition in winter, and views of the Arctic.

The Family of Yul Brynner Photo Album (83 items)

A collection of 82 photos from the archive of Yul Brynner (1920–85), the famous Hollywood actor, Academy Award winner, and Vladivostok native, preserved in the V.K. Arseniev Primorsky Regional Unified Museum in Vladivostok. Yul Brynner, whose real name was Iulii Borisovich Briner, was the grandson of the Vladivostok businessman and public figure of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries Iulii Ivanovich Briner (1849–1920), the owner of the lead and zinc mines in Tetiukh (present-day Dalnegorsk) and the shipping company and ship-repair shops in Vladivostok. Iulii Ivanovich had six children: Leonid, Boris, Felix, Margarita, Maria, and Nina. Boris Iul’evich (1889–1949), the father of the future Oscar-winner Yul Brynner, continued his father's business. Most of the Briner family emigrated from Primor’e (the Primorskiy region) in 1931 and lived subsequently in China, France, and the United States. The collection dates from 1923 and the photographs, from different years, depict Yul Brynner himself and his numerous relatives.

Yakutsk State Museum of the History and Culture of Northern Peoples (123 items)

Yakut material culture in ethnographic sketches of the 1920s-1940s (123 items).

A collection of ethnographic sketches created in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic during the 1930s–1940s. The Yakut ASSR—informally referred to as Yakutia and known today as the Sakha Republic—covered a large region in eastern Siberia. It is the historical home of the Yakut (Sakha) people, a Turkic people who arrived in the region around the 13th century and still make up almost half of its population. This collection of sketches was created by Ivan Vasil’evich Popov (1874‒1945), an artist and teacher who was born near Yakutsk and received his education in Yakutsk and Saint Petersburg. Popov was born into a family of priests who had been among the first to give sermons in the Yakut language and had taken part in the writing of a Yakut dictionary. Accordingly, some of his first works of art were icons that he painted as a seminary student. Although Popov had to work as a teacher throughout his adult life, unable to support his family through his artistic activities alone, he made a significant contribution to the documentation of Yakut material culture. In addition to recording Yakut culture in his drawings and paintings, Popov documented Yakut life in photographs and contributed to the recording of oral history and folklore. This collection of Popov’s drawings depicts Yakut material culture of the 17th‒20th centuries. Featured items include furniture, interiors and exteriors of dwellings, grave monuments, hats, footwear, tools, and hunting equipment.