Architecture Commons^™

The Built Landscape And Ecological Behavior: Patterns For Readdressing Environmental Thinking In Residence Hall Design, Sarah Keogh

Theses and Dissertations

This research addresses how architectural design processes and practices are implicated and/or reflected in social constructions of ecological thinking. It is generally recognized that human behaviors are affecting climate change and giving rise to a plethora of ecological issues; yet a transformation of widespread behavior has not yet followed. This raises questions. In the field of architecture, how can the built landscape function to encourage and support sustainable behavior patterns?

Looking at universities as locations that are embedded in their urban contexts and have influence both on their surrounding communities and on year after year of students who pass through, …

Optimal Design Of Green Roofs: Mathematical Model And Experimental Evidence, Jing Hong

Theses and Dissertations

Green roofs ease the heat island effect and decrease stormwater runoff. Optimizing green roof design helps achieve these goals more efficiently. This dissertation proposes energy and mass models of green roofs and validates them through experimental evidence.

The energy and mass transfer models proposed in this dissertation can be programmed in any simulation tools, and benefits architects and engineers optimizing their green roof design. The mathematical models of green roofs were validated by the measured soil temperature and water content of the Golda Meir Library green roof.

Using energy and mass balance models, this research found the effects of the …

An Investigation Of Daylighting Performance In Sidelit Spaces, Zhe Kong

Theses and Dissertations

The positive influence of daylight on people’s work and well-being has been confirmed in many studies. However, excessive daylight causes discomfort glare, which decreases work productivity, impairs occupants’ vision, and may even cause headaches. Substantial studies explored glare by correlating physical lighting measurements and subjective evaluations. With the development of High Dynamic Range (HDR) image techniques, dynamic changes of daylighting distributions can be effectively captured. Consequently, more studies paired HDR image techniques with subject evaluations to explore glare. However, studies merely relying on field measurements are not only time-consuming and labor-intensive but may also disturb occupants. To address these problems, …

Community Perspectives On Neighborhood Characteristics And Home-Buying Decisions, Madhuri Sharma

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

This paper analyzes households’ perceptions of neighborhoods according to Brown and Chung’s framework of Market-Led Pluralism (M-LP). Using household survey responses from 100 respondents in Columbus, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I empirically test MLP’s utility in understanding consumers’ decision making processes on where to live and who to live with. Consumers from all races/ethnicities ranked these attributes similarly, closely aligning with the M-LP. The quality of schools, safety of neighborhoods, price and affordability generally mattered to all consumers. However, African Americans’ perceptions of certain attributes as more valuable than others’ are likely due to their lower socio-economic status and the …

Reducing The Environmental Impacts Of Building Materials: Embodied Energy Analysis Of A High-Performance Building, Layla Qarout

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to assess the embodied energy and carbon emissions of structural building materials, and determine environmental savings associated with construction. In common architectural practice, the analysis of the environmental cost of materials is typically not taken into account. This can be attributed to the lack of available data, loyalty to conventional construction methods, and complexity of embodied energy calculations. Although efforts are made to ensure accuracy of the information contained in energy databases, they are based on public domain sources and the “best” energy and carbon coefficients, with no guarantee to accuracy. Therefore, it is …