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Blog: March 9, 2025

 March 9, 2024     This past week, I unfortunately did not get to do as much research as I would have liked to due to other assignments and exams in my other classes.     However, in our class on Tuesday we got to share our research and breakdowns of previous capstone projects done by Fay Jones students. This was a great learning experience for us to understand which methods work in creating a successful capstone project and what didn't. For example, some capstone projects had a layout that seemed too disorganized and led to the project feeling as if it wasn't cohesive. Others also tended to seem bored based on a biased opinion rather than research. 

Capstone Case Studies

 Entry #6     These past couple of weeks, we have been tasked to investigate in groups capstone case studies done by previous Fay Jones Students. The capstone that my partners and I chose was done by Sarah Peil Winstead and is called The Work of Living Art, Empathy, and the Creation of an Aesthetics of Perception in the Early 20th Century. As we dove into this research project, we discovered it was about stagecraft and how to dissolve the barrier between the actor and the viewer so that the audience feels more immersed into the production. This was not really what we had imagined this topic being about, however, we did learn some valuable lessons from this project that we can think about moving forward in the development of our own research.      For starters, we discovered that having a more clear and concise title to our project would be vital for providing a good preview to the readers of what the research is about. Sarah did a very good job at laying ou...

Annotated Bibliography

  Bibliography Bønding, Sophie. “Places and Spaces of Pre-Christian Religion: An Introduction to Part 2.” In The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World , edited by LESZEK GARDEŁA, SOPHIE BØNDING, and PETER PENTZ, 53–62. Oxbow Books, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.5699282.10. This source is helpful to my research because it gives a lists of various religious spaces  and how their design and function promotes religion. Bowler, George. “Chapel and Church Architecture.” The Crayon 5, no. 8 (1858): 223–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/25527784. Just like the source “Church Architecture,” this source goes into detail of church forms and interiors. This will help me with my interest in what attributes from these religious sapces could be implemented into more domestic spaces.  Coomans, Thomas. Life Inside the Cloister: Understanding Monastic Architecture: Tradition, Reformation, Adaptive Reuse . Leuven University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv157bgm....

Furthering Research Questions

      This past Tuesday in class, we pinned up our latest narrowed down research questions. The three questions I had narrowed my research down to were:                    1. How can we design and construct domestic spaces that promote rest and worship?                    2. How can we use natural materials based on different climate zones to design for longevity?                    3. How does music impact the design and flow of spaces?     Because my faith is important to me, I find it helpful to reference the Bible as a driving force in my research and desire to study how we can see a correlation between Christianity/religion and domestic spaces. For example, I referenced Isaiah 32:18, which states, "My people will live in safety, quietly at home. Then they will be at rest." This verse made me won...

Literature Reviews

      This week, we were tasked with reading chapter two of Undergraduate Research in Architecture: A Guide for Students. This chapter focused on how to carefully select, analyze, and reflect on literature used in our research. It discusses how to take the works you have read while researching and turn it into a literature review. It also discusses how to organize and check the credibility of your sources. The reading also mentions the importance of having peer reviews conducted by field experts to validate our research.     I found this reading to be very helpful because it provided tips to help keep the chaos of research under control and organized. The part that I felt to be the most important was having peer reviews from those who are knowledgeable on our research topics to validate our research. I found this important because these reviews would help make sure my research stays on the right path and will also offer a different viewpoint of my research that ...

Choosing Topics & Formulating Questions

Entry #1     This week we were tasked with reading chapter 3 of Undergrad Research in Architecture: A Guide for Students. One quote that stuck out to me in the reading about research projects is, "It absolutely should be something uncertain, risky, or challenging - something that takes you from familiar practices and assumptions to new and surprising ones." This stuck out to me because even though we have only just begun our research project, it is most definitely unlike any other challenges I have faced in my academic career. The reading also discusses how if the questions we are posing for our research can be answered quickly, then it is not adequate for studying. I also found this reassuring because the topics I have taken into consideration I am unsure of how to answer right now, which makes me feel as if I am on the right path in my research process.      This blog will serve as a written record and timeline of my research for my architectural capstone. As ...