Preparing a Thesis Proposal

The Architecture Thesis Project is a two-fold undertaking by the graduating students

of BS Architecture. The Thesis would be a Research / Design Project with a research
project focusing on any architectural concept / ideas / principles / design approach
that would be applicable to the Design Project. The research undertaking would
generate new ideas in designing particular building types that would make the
design endeavor more innovative and creative.
Research and Design both involve processes of discovery that would lead to new

Being
creative is seeing the same thing as everybody else but
thinking of something different. It can be defined as the ability to
knowledge. Furthermore, Design is closely associated to Creativity.

take existing objects and combining them in different ways for new purposes.

Creativity can produce novel and useful ideas and solutions to

everyday problems and challenges.
The Research Project is aimed at gaining knowledge that would upgrade the quality
of our built environment and for the advancement of the architectural profession.
The Design Project, on the other hand, is viewed as an activity that would generate
proposals in changing something that already exist into something better.
The first step in the Thesis Project is the preparation of a Thesis Proposal. The
students will have to identify possible design projects to work on as well as

introduce the research project that they will relate to the design
project. This is not an easy task and before a student can come up with a credible
proposal, one should have done the following:

develop a perspective about the breadth, depth and scope of

architectural discipline

develop an awareness of general issues, opportunities, and

concerns within the discipline through readings of articles
concerning current architectural practices
choose an area of specialization from the general issues and
concerns.
become familiar with specific issues, opportunities, and
concerns within the area of specialization

 develop queries that speculate on the issues, opportunities,

and concerns within the area of specialization

The student can start initially by identifying an issue of local, regional,

national or even global concern as starting points for determining a specific
research problem,
say

Housing Backlog.

The next question would be

why is there a housing backlog?

It continues with a search for possible cause to the problem that
could have architectural significance it is due to the
inadequacies of conventional building materials and systems to
cope up with house production targets. The problem now has
become an architectural concern.
A possible architectural intervention can be deduced from the above statements

House production rate can substantially increase if

housing components can be standardized. With that, the
general problem has now been reduced to an architectural
problem focusing on the derivation of standards for
housing components.
This can still be, however, trimmed down to a more focused and specific derivation
of standards for low-cost housing components.
From the above process, a possible Design Project could be A

Housing
Prototype for a Low-Cost Community for North Rail
Settlers and the Research Project could be Derivation of

Standards for Low-Cost Housing Components.