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The fast pace of our modern lifestyle has left behind important rhythms and relationships in our daily lives, including stillness and connection to the earth. This pace is spurred by the industrialization of separating sectors of our lives, which disconnects us from what could be considered central aspects of culture and conviviality, including food and building. Food and dwelling engage the senses, particularly the forgotten hapticity of an ingredient or material; they re-engage us with what is in front of and around us, whether food or space, enhancing our understanding of their significance in our lives. This thesis explores both food and building as integral elements of life, and imagines their transformation to cuisine and architecture by uniting daily life with processes. The design of a non-profit urban farm in Sunnyvale, California creates a vibrant source of knowledge that can reconnect visitors to natural rhythms by teaching them interaction with the land, with changing seasons, with processes of food production and consumption, and with time through dwelling. As an education center it will reinforce the importance of local food culture. Specifically, an architecture of rammed earth reinforces site-based processes of human innovation, providing a rich user experience, and allowing the buildings themselves to teach visitors. The center links an understanding of our placement in the food process, to ethical future decisions which will balance our use and enjoyment of resources.

“The task of architecture is to make visible how the world touches us” - Merleau PontyArchitecture is an intimate experience that has to be appreciated and comprehended as images of body and skin. However, modernist ideas and the technological culture have separated the senses distinctly allowing the human body to become a mere spectator of built objects. In today’s virtual world, a sensorial exploration of space has the potential to evoke a transparency of time, space and feeling; thereby reinforcing human existence.The thesis explores man’s perception of the built environment and the language of materials to create a rich sensual journey. That is, in shifting our attention from the object to the experience of the object, the project strives to reconnect to humanity, relating to the human body and culture.The design project involves the creation of a series of architectural interventions along a pedestrian street in Over the Rhine neighborhood, Cincinnati. The sensual journey with nodes of episodic moments shall address the thesis agenda of enhancing architectural experiences.

Abstract: A new method for the preparation of seven-membered carbocycles via cobalt-mediated [5+2] cycloaddition methodology is presented. We have demonstrated that Cp*Co(η5-pentadienyl)+ systems undergo cycloaddition reactions with alkynes in a diastereocontrolled and high-yielding process. When acetylene is employed as the cycloaddition partner, unprecedented Cp*Co(η2,η3-cycloheptadienyl)+ complexes were isolated as the cycloaddition product under kinetic control. These allyl/olefin species were further transformed to the thermodynamic Cp*Co(η5-cycloheptadienyl)+ complexes. Also described are two methods for the preparation of high-valent Co(III) η5-pentadienyl complexes, a compound class that has been under-reported in the literature. This work fills this void and provides a valuable view of the structural properties of η5-pentadienyl complexes as a function of the substitution pattern. The incorporation of tethered pronucleophiles onto the pentadienyl ligand allowed the preparation of fused bicyclic structures of relevance to natural product synthesis. Both conjugated and unconjugated cycloheptadiene species were prepared, made possible via the differing cycloheptadienyl complex hapticity. The oxidative decomplexation of the organic products is also described. Initial steps towards a divergent pronucleophile-bearing pentadienyl synthesis were also undertaken. The mechanism and structure/reactivity relationships for the [5+2] cycloaddition process were studied via density functional theory calculations. These investigations revealed the existence of several convergent reaction pathways on the potential energy surface, and provided a new rationale for the η2,η3→η5 isomerization, thereby explaining the low activation barrier for the isomerization of 2-butyne cycloadducts. Of interest is the elucidation of a radical-type pathway, calculated to be of high energy for the Cp* ligand system, yet energetically competitive in the Cp complex reaction manifold. Further, computations on the Cp system demonstrate a potentially viable pathway on the triplet energy surface, suggesting spin-forbidden transitions may play a role in the mechanism. These observations provide an explanation for the differing cycloaddition efficiencies in these two pentadienyl systems. Calculations also suggest that reaction chemoselectivity is determined during the rate-limiting alkyne complexation step; the energetics of this process being dominated by steric interactions between the pentadienyl substituents and the ancillary ligand.