Between Dec 19, 2024 and Jan 2, 2025, datasets can be submitted to DRUM but will not be processed until after the break. Staff will not be available to answer email during this period, and will not be able to provide DOIs until after Jan 2. If you are in need of a DOI during this period, consider Dryad or OpenICPSR. Submission responses to the UDC may also be delayed during this time.

Browsing by Author "Torkelson, Jacob"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    "The Embattled University" Student Protest + Architecture, 1960s-1970s, University of Minnesota
    (2017-05) Ghoshal, Shreya; Torkelson, Jacob
    The 1960s and 1970s, often referred to as the ‘protest years’, were a period of great unrest on university campuses nation-wide. Students protested the Vietnam War, the draft, civil rights, and other social equity issues, all of which reflected the shifting ideals of the rising ‘babyboomer’ generation. The scholarship surrounding the student protest movement is often discussed through the lenses of political science or sociology. Analyses of the era rarely acknowledge how architecture influences protests; most discussions of the student protest movement, in fact, completely ignore the physical settings of demonstrations. This study addresses this gap in scholarship by arguing that the design of the built environment contains controls and affordances for protests, using the University of Minnesota as a case study and a microcosm of greater social trends across the nation. It further argues that students repeatedly used certain spaces on campus—whether consciously or not—based on stylistic, spatial, or programmatic factors. The symbolism of the institution —embedded in campus architecture— influenced the locations chosen for rallies, as documented by archival resources such as student newspapers and photographs, and by oral histories of students from the era. Student unions, administrative buildings, armories, and auditoriums were found to be particularly charged spaces that demonstrators adopted or adapted to reinforce the meaning of the protests. These findings were then diagrammed onto University of Minnesota spaces in order to visually represent the information analyzed in a way that could be presented as part of an exhibition on architecture’s role in protests.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The ‘Embattled University’: Student Protest and Architecture at the University of Minnesota in the 1960’s and 1970s
    (2017) Torkelson, Jacob; Ghoshal, Shreya
    During the 1960s and 1970s, universities across the country experienced unprecedented growth and social upheaval as the baby-boom generation asserted its values by protesting for civil rights and student power, and against the Vietnam War. While much is written about student activism during this time, scholars seldom examine these protests through the lenses of architecture and campus planning. This study contends the designed environment of the university embodies the cultural and social values of the institution. Therefore, students used buildings, landscapes, and spaces throughout campus as places of protest against the values embodied within the architecture. Using the University of Minnesota as a microcosm of national trends, this thesis aims to find out why specific spaces on campus are chosen as nodes of protest, in order to understand the role of architecture in shaping activism. These locations—the Armory, student union, administration building, and auditorium—contain controls and affordances for protests that influenced why these spaces were repeatedly chosen for student activism. The design, association, and program of these buildings and the spaces around them, principally elements of massing, scale, ornamentation, and association, created a stage in which protests gained legitimacy and visibility for their causes. Archival materials used for this exhibition—particularly newspaper clippings, photographs, and oral histories—validate and characterize these findings. Further analysis and diagramming were presented with archival materials as an exhibition entitled “The Embattled University”, to highlight the relationship between architecture and activism.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Post-World War II Temporary Classrooms at the University of Minnesota: The Student Experience of the Built Environment
    (2017) Torkelson, Jacob
    This essay tells the story of temporary classroom buildings at the University of Minnesota. These structures constitute a significant forgotten narrative in the architectural history of campus.