Architecture Commons^™

Springfield's Legacy: A Vision For A Transformative Transit-Oriented Union Station District, Keith Benoit, Nigel Cummings, Caitlan Davis, Kinjal Desai, Marcos Gonzalez, Jiaqi Guo, Anna Kellerman, Olivia Ashjian James, Bryce Lloyd-Hahn, Stephen Mccusker, Chris Ramage, Jessica Schottanes

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

This urban design studio developed concepts around equitable transportation Union Station in Springfield, Massachusetts. The work creates a vision for the Union Station District, a revitalized mixed-use walkable neighborhood adjacent to the restored transportation center. It emphasizes reusing the city’s historic street grid in new, forward thinking ways that enhance neighborhood connectivity. The plan creates physical and social networks that bring together diverse groups of residents and visitors. The Union Station District will be a place that offers a range of non-automobile transportation options to residents and visitors and will help transforming an area characterized by vacant lots and empty …

Resilient Architecture: Adaptive Community Living In Coastal Locations, Erica Shannon

Masters Theses

How can architects design for coastal inundation caused by climate change, what are the methods and strategies currently being implemented as a response to coastal inundation, and how can these strategies influence the design approach for a self-sustaining community that can survive and thrive in a low-lying coastal area?

Climate change is caused by an expenditure of planet-harming resources being improperly or inefficiently utilized and consumed. This can lead to a rise of global sea level and an increased severity of storm surges.

Resilience is defined as the ability to overcome challenges and difficulties. Coastal resilience is the ability for …

Springfield Climate Action & Resiliency Plan Vulnerability And Resilience, Elisabeth Hamin, August Williams-Eynon, Catherine Ratte

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

The Ark: Grafting Productive Programs Onto Contemporary Waste-Space, Caryn Brause, Carey Clouse

Caryn Brause

As the intertwined issues of climate change and resource scarcity profoundly alter the shape and scope of urban life, emerging designers must be positioned to respond in meaningful ways. This paper documents a research and design project that foregrounds several key design considerations for the future city: the expanded role of animals, the necessity for communal spaces to share knowledge, tools, and materials, and the waste-spaces that can be appropriated for that purpose. In doing so, it critically considers how we can prepare future design professionals to propose architectural and landscape program types that have yet to be invented, to …

From Fail-Safe To Safe-To-Fail: Sustainability And Resilience In The New Urban World, Jack F. Ahern

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Abstract: The extent to which the 21st Century world will be "sustainable" depends in large part on the sustainability of cities. Early ideas on implementing sustainability focused on concepts of achieving stability, practicing effective management and the control of change and growth-- a "fail-safe" mentality. More recent thinking about change, disturbance, uncertainty, and adaptability is fundamental to the emerging science of resilience, the capacity of systems to reorganize and recover from change and disturbance without changing to other states-- in other words, systems that are "safe to fail." While the concept of resilience is intellectually intriguing, it remains largely unpracticed …