Architecture Commons^™

Pitching Change: Micro-Community Of Higher Learning, Christopher Chaphe

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Being around sports growing up has given me some experiences that have shaped who I am today. Playing and watching sports is a common activity amongst my friends and family. These events spark engagement and camaraderie between us. The stadium in which these sports are played within are a key component to this engagement. They bring people together to enjoy and root on your favorite teams along side thousands of other fans.

Stadiums today are becoming a remarkable instrument to generate communal spirit besides marketing, recruiting and hosting games for universities. The iconic design of these stadiums has become more ...

Bookscapes: A Study In The Interconnectivity Of Landscape And Narrative Visualization And Communication In Landscape Architecture, Tonya Randall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

The fields of landscape architecture and literacy have the potential to be linked through a simulated environment. Through this connection, opportunity for education arises. This thesis creates and describes a program called Bookscapes, which presents a narrative inside a simulated landscape for the purpose of communicating landscape architecture/urban planning principles.

Bookscapes is a stand-alone computer program designed using theories in education and guidelines for virtual and restorative environments (including Huang’s elements, Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory for restorative environments, constructivist theory of situational learning) and the revolving design process in landscape architecture’s communication to clients through 3D ...

Fluid Urbanism: Connecting The Tennessee River Mega-Region, John D. Koelsch

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Usu Equine-Assisted Activities And Therapies Facilities Designed Master Plan, Lindsie C. Smith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

Equine-Assisted Activities and Therapies (EAAT) is recognized as a therapeutic approach for persons with disabilities. The USU Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences Department provides EAAT instruction and services; however, they do not have the appropriate facilities to model best-practices in the delivery of these services. This design research entailed the development of a phased masterplan to support the instruction and delivery of equine-assisted activities and therapies in an innovative and accessible environment that supports animal-assisted intervention and natural equine behaviors.

The methodology used to approach the master plan design was derived from Norman K. Booth’s (1990) design process, as ...

Dramatic Play Affordances Of Outdoor Settings For First And Second Grade Children With And Without Disabilities, Nicholas R. Leschofs

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unstructured play is crucial for children’s development. Dramatic play is play involving a transformation of objects, actions, or self-identity. During dramatic play, children may operate at more advanced cognitive levels than they do in non-dramatic play, thereby furthering their cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Interactions among children with and without disabilities are valuable opportunities to further a children’s development.

This study compared dramatic play behaviors among first and second grade children with and without disabilities to determine which play settings encouraged children to engage in quality dramatic play. Eighty-nine six-to-eight-year-olds were observed during lunch recess daily on an ...

Exploring Park Quality In Urban Setting With Environmental Justice, Alternative Measurements, And Social Interaction, Shuolei Chen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With rapid urbanization, urban green resources, such as parks have become important assets for quality of life in urban settings. Parks provide urban residents with both physical and psychological health benefits through various mechanisms such as physical activity and social interaction. Quality is an important non-spatial dimension of urban parks and has started to gain attention among researchers. To better understand park quality in an urban setting, additional knowledge should be explored. This dissertation studies the quality of urban parks from three different perspectives: 1) the equal distribution of park quality resources and its relationship to environmental justice issues, 2 ...

Rural Sustainability In The Intermountain West, Mary L. Oliver

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Assessing the sustainability of communities is important for planners and citizens alike. Sustainability plays a central role in forming healthy, successful communities and in planning for responsible growth and development. Most current sustainability evaluations favor urban environments due to their high densities and resulting efficiencies, leaving rural areas labeled “unsustainable” because of their decentralized growth patterns. Characterized as “not urban,” they fall short of urban sustainability benchmarks (Isserman, 2005). The importance of rural sustainability to both small communities and regions leads to the question: how can rural sustainability be characterized and assessed?

This study applies a comparative assessment model to ...

Walkability Of Suburban Retrofits Of The Washington Dc Area: Immersion Into Qualitative Constructs, David Sweere

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The majority of the United States population is living in the suburbs, and yet the suburban built fabric has developed with spatial conditions that have failed to prove their efficacy on environmental, social or economic terms. Most contemporary architectural and urban theorists agree that the suburban condition is inherently problematic. In a 2010 Ted Talk, architect and urban designer Ellen Dunham-Jones discusses the problematic state of the suburban built condition, citing dependence on the vehicle, sparseness of built form, environmental costs, transportation costs, and even increased obesity rates (Dunham-Jones 2010). Because the suburbs comprise the majority of our “urbanized” areas ...

Water, Waste, And Race: Designing For Change On The Shelby County Landfill, Elizabeth Peterson

LSU Master's Theses

Historically, landfills have been viewed through an environmental lens as sites for technical remediation, employing scientific or engineering strategies for testing, mitigation and capping. They are more rarely viewed as cultural landscapes, places with histories of habitation and use, or as potential sites for design. This thesis investigation examines the Shelby County Landfill in Memphis, Tennessee from a cultural landscape perspective, opening up a dialog and opportunity to think about this site and other waste sites in a more layered and culturally rich way.

This research contributes to discussions within the field of landscape architecture that present waste landscapes as ...

The Siltcatcher: A Sediment-Capture System For Wetland Creation And Coastal Protection In Western Lake Pontchartrain, Andrew M. Wright

LSU Master's Theses

The West Lake Pontchartrain region faces a number of long-term environmental challenges due to anthropogenic climate disturbance and landscape modification, including sea level rise, increased storm surge risk, shoreline erosion, and wetland degradation. In response, this thesis applies recent research in the fields of landscape architecture and civil engineering to propose a dynamic, natural-systems solution for wetland creation and shoreline protection. The project envisions a series of breakwater-like structures in western Lake Pontchartrain positioned to slow water released from the nearby Bonnet Carré Spillway, causing suspended sediment to settle and create self-building and self-sustaining wetlands capable of keeping pace with ...

Thiết Kế Cho Gia Tài Nông Nghiệp: Cho Khu Tôi Ở Nu Ô Linh Đông - Designing For A Living Agricultural Heritage: For My Vietnamese Neighborhood In New Orleans East, Nguyệt Nguyễn

LSU Master's Theses

ABfdSTRACT

Versgggailles in New Orleans East is home to one of the densest populations of Vietnamese outside of Việt Nam. Following the Việt Nam War in 1975, thousands of refugees fled the country and several hundred were resettled in this neighborhood. Over time, community members rooted in a sense of home through tangible and intangible means in the landscape. Elders grow vegetables, herbs and fruit from Việt Nam in yards and vacant lots. Neighbors and and amenities are within walkable distance. The Catholic church is a focal community hub. Language and tradition are practiced at the family and the community ...

Give Us Back Our River's Edge: An Analysis Of Man Made Flood Controls Along The Mississippi River, Taylor Jacobsen

LSU Master's Theses

Settlement and engagement along a river’s edge can be seen throughout human history. The direct proximity to a water’s edge has both physical and mental benefits, as well as economic value. However, throughout the last century, cities and their citizens along the Mississippi River have become disconnected from their water’s edge; due to man-made interventions for increased flood control and advancements in the maritime industry. These interventions appeared to be prudent at the time and contributed to many cities' economies to growth, poor planning and placement of these interventions created barriers between citizens and their water’s ...

A Proposal For The Implementation Of Stormwater Art At Gvsu, Christa Fernando

Honors Projects

Although there are increasing efforts to improve stormwater management on the campuses of Grand Valley State University as an inhabitant of the Great Lakes region, there remains limited visibility and efforts for public awareness and cooperation with ecological restoration initiatives generally. The goal of this project is to describe the opportunity to implement functional art that promotes public awareness of sustainable water management practices. Methods included research into the public art of GVSU and the necessary methodology for future project execution. Various local contacts are also provided as resources for advice, connections, and funding opportunities. In this report, plans and ...

Rethinking Livability In Megacities: Applications Of Jane Jacobs’ Theories On Tokyo And Los Angeles, Kirara Tsutsui

Pomona Senior Theses

This senior thesis in Environmental Analysis compares critical infrastructure pieces in Tokyo and Los Angeles, on three discrete levels, with a particular focus on the pedestrian experience. As global population grows, with more people projected to live in urban cities more than ever, it is critical that we re-evaluate how we think about and “do” city-planning. Following Jane Jacobs’ theoretical framework, this thesis dissects what urban greenspaces, city neighborhoods, and sidewalks look like in LA and Tokyo. It analyzes, for each proxy, how two of the world’s most “developed” and largest cities have developed into the current landscape. Historical ...

Unaccepted Streets In Bayview Hunters Point: Addressing Spatial Injustice Through Public Open Space, Clare Blackwell

Scripps Senior Theses

Bayview Hunters Point is at the epicenter of environmental justice issues in San Francisco. The district has historically been the location of the city’s most polluting industries, as well as some of its poorest residents and its greatest concentration of public housing. As the city’s zoning developed over the twentieth century, the southeastern neighborhood on the bay became a patchwork of industrial and residential parcels of land, fueling spatial injustice, in particular a lack of access to public open space.

Increasing greenspace would likely address spatial injustice in Bayview Hunters Point. However, green gentrification–the consequence of resident ...

Reserved For The Whole Earth: Forms Of Evidence, Ought Anxiety, And The Futures Of Geographic Inquiry, Eric M. Robsky Huntley

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines geographic forms of evidence in the practices of landscape architects and geographers. I analyze evidence not only as an epistemic phenomenon, but as an aesthetic one, as well. Convincing an audience that the world is (or should be) one way and not another requires that knowledges be stacked, extended, and stitched together in a manner admissable to an audience. In the first two chapters, I use the case of the landscape architect Ian McHarg to examine how his approach to integrating scientific knowledge---a aesthetic response to what I theorize as 'ought anxiety'---grew alongside the environmental bureaucracy ...

A Bridge Between Earth & Sky: How The Natural World Shaped The Civilizations Of Ancient And Early-Modern Persia, Sophia Cabana

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project seeks to investigate the ways in which nature shaped the culture of ancient Persia through technology, architecture, agriculture, and art. Furthermore, this project investigates how the symbols and mentalities of ancient Persia were carried forward into the early-modern period. Achaemenid Persia and Babylon are studied as societies which influenced one another and combined to create the foundation of Persian culture as it is currently understood, which then combined in later centuries with other Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultural movements to produce the Safavid and Mughal Empires. The Safavids and Mughals imitated and revived Persian culture in order ...

Assessing The Impacts Of Laep Extension At Usu: Development Of A Model Framework, Jason G. Parkinson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over several decades, USU’s Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning (LAEP) Department and Extension specialists have engaged Utah’s rural communities through several design-based outreach activities. These activities are intended to benefit both community partners interested in learning how design can positively impact the community in tangible ways, and students, who are given the opportunity to engage with real-world projects. This study documents, evaluates, and assesses outcomes of community engagement projects undertaken by LAEP Extension to better understand the program’s impact over time and come up with approaches that will enhance the impact of future community engagement projects.

This ...

Classification Of Urban Forms And Their Relationship With Vegetation Cover In Cache County, Utah, Stephen J. Peaden

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As residential urban development increases in the western United States, few studies have shown how different urban forms influence vegetation cover. The two studies in this thesis examine how to define and measure urban form in order to understand the relationship between urban form characteristics and vegetation cover.

In the first study, urban form was defined by using past methods of identifying and measuring urban sprawl. Past studies showed the most essential metrics that define residential urban form are building density, centrality, connectivity, land use mix, and parcel size. This study reviews these metrics and proposes revised unified definitions and ...

Incorporating Natural Play Spaces Into Elementary Playgrounds For Child Developmental Benefits, Ariel L. Wright

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

Play environments are crucial to providing developmental opportunities for children and natural playgrounds provide a developmentally rich play environment. This study compared elementary school playgrounds and nature explore classrooms to determine what natural play spaces can be implemented into an elementary school playground for developmental benefits. The playgrounds were evaluated on safety, ADA requirements and what developmental affordances are encouraged through different play components. A Nature Playground Play Spaces List and handouts were developed, and a playground design exploration was conducted as an example for how the play spaces list can be used and to show what benefits can be ...

Understanding Place Through Archaeoastronomy: A Cognitive Approach, Kristin V. Landau 2007

Colgate Academic Review

This investigation argues for the establishment of theoretical foundations in the field of archaeoastronomy and its implications in furthering the study and understanding of ritual and place of the ancient Maya. First, I assert that archaeoastronomy may be used as a tool in a cognitive approach to archaeology--that is, through archaeoastronomy and the study of material remains, we can understand how the Maya conceived of and thought about objects and events in their world--because the finding of archaeoastronomically significant features can strengthen previous hypotheses and add additionally evidence about how societies conceived the cosmos. Second, I assert that archaeoastronomy is ...

Sustainability, Resiliency And Authenticity Of Rural Landscapes. The Forced Relocation Of Inhabitants At A Port In Terraba Sierpe Wetlands, Costa Rica, And The ‘Un-Ruled’ Practices In The Abandoned Landscape Of Penyagolosa Mountain, Spain., Juan A. García-Esparza, Ofelia Sanou

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

The poster presented hereby is intended to establish a lively debate on the eventual interpretation of the dynamics in two specific rural landscapes and how their analysis depends on the ability to appropriately select and assimilate the transformations of the place. The two cases expose potential problems that arise when interpreting and managing these rural landscapes. Interpretations can be ‘colonial’ or ‘indigenous’. These approaches, therefore, aim to question why space is sometimes constructed under ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ interpretations of imaginaries, behaviours, expressions, and adaptations which result in characteristic experimentations and transformations of the rural landscape.

In this realm, the approach ...

Kc 5.1: Traditional Systems And Methods Of Rural Landsconservation In Mali And Africa // Systemes Et Methodes Traditionnels De Preservations Des Paysages Ruraux Au Mali Et En Afrique, Alpha Diop, L. Cisse, M. Dembele

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

Rural landscapes in Africa and elsewhere constitute a precious heritage for rural communities, which have since the onset of time been able to develop endogenous techniques, systems and practices for the development and preservation of natural and cultural landscapes. Within African territorial entities, culture and nature are harmoniously interconnected and their management and preservation are based on systems created and transmitted from generation to generation according to socio-cultural environments and contexts.

Based on ancestral social and religious practices, traditional systems and methods for preserving rural landscapes are more focused on a community-oriented approach.

Several traditional methods, systems, practices and approaches ...

Panel 12. Paper 12.3: El Camino Tierra Adentro As A Rural Landscape, Graciela Mota, Pilar Rincón Mtra., Sara E. Narvaez Martínez Ph.D

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was the Royal Inland Road, also known as the Silver Route. The inscribed property consists of 55 sites and five existing World Heritage sites lying along a 1400 km section of this 2600 km route, that extends north from Mexico City to Texas and New Mexico, United States of America. The route was actively used as a trade route for 300 years, from the mid-16th to the 19th centuries, mainly for transporting silver extracted from the mines of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and San Luis Potosí, and mercury imported from Europe. Although it is a route that ...

Panel 12. Paper 12.2: Public Policies, Cultural Landscape And Rural Development, Cecilia Calderón-Puente Dr., Zazanda Salcedo Gutierrez Msc

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

This panel incorporates two case studies of cultural landscapes and their management in Mexico and Bolivia. According to a new vision of government after the Mexican Revolution, it’s established in Mexico, in addition to the “ejidos”, a policy of production and settlement in rural areas, based on the generation of irrigation systems. Thus, from 1926 to 1940, “agricultural cities” are designed in the country, among which is founded, in the southern area of the northern state of Chihuahua, a city named Delicias, whose main objective was the production of vine and cotton. However, by 1960, there was a change ...

Panel 12. Paper 12.1: Rural Landscapes And Urban Development In Latin America, Leonardo B. Castriota, Betina Adams Msc

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

Within the expansion of the concept of heritage, in the last decades, some new ideas have gained a decisive and innovative role. "Cultural landscapes", for instance, adopted by UNESCO since the early 1990s, inextricably combines the material and immaterial aspects of the heritage concept, that formerly was often thought separately. It also enhances the significant interactions between man and the natural environment. Thus, this concept seems to offer a rich perspective when applied to the traditional ideas in the field of conservation. Considering the historical centres, for example, its’ perspective could be significantly broadened, allowing interpretations that focus on the ...

Between Agriculture And Delight: Villas, Gardens And Agricultural Landscape In Northern Italy, Raffaella Laviscio, Lionella Scazzosi, Laura Pelissetti, Renata Lodari

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

The villa-garden as core of agricultural enterprise spreads in the North of Italy particularly since the second half of the XVII century. Throughout the eighteenth century, there was the flowering of large stately villas that, in addition to villas of delight, are configured as "centers of capitalist investment in the land economy and as centers for reorganization of the agricultural landscape in large rural estates" (Sereni 1961, p.289). Thus, some of the Royal House's Residences in Piemonte also affect the structure of the surrounding land where the gardens and parks became the core of the land shape to ...

Panel 5 Paper 5.3 Rural Intangible Cultural Heritage And Ethnic Tourism: Experiences Of Yunnan, China, Junjie Su

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

China is an active player in the international arena of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). While China is transforming from an agricultural country to an industrial country, rural heritage, either tangible or intangible, is facing tremendous challenges and opportunities. Among Chinese provinces, Yunnan in Southwest of China can be regarded as the best case to investigate the issues of protection, use and transmission of rural heritage as Yunnan is a unique province of China because of its ethnic cultural diversity and geographic diversity. Based on literary studies and fieldworks, this paper illustrates history, cases, theories and practices in the protection and ...

Panel 5 Rural Intangible Cultural Heritage, Junjie Su, Mohamed Badry Kamel Basuny Amer M.A., Xuanlin Liu

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

Rural areas is the place where rural intangible heritage is found rich and diverse, whereas vulnerable to fast social, cultural, political and economic transformations, in particular in developing and underdeveloped areas. Although the concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has been established in UNESCO and accepted by many ICH Convention signatories, it has not been consistently adopted and implemented from international level to local level without divergencies. An analysis of rural ICH is to analyse how rural traditional culture, memories and past are used by different stakeholders for current society. (Re)defining rural ICH is a way to both rethink ...

Panel 11. Paper 11.3: Views Through Rose-Colored Glasses: The Need For Diverse Lenses To Support Rural Landscape Heritage, Steve H. Brown Dr, Cari Goetcheus

Rural Heritage - Landscapes and Beyond / PATRIMOINE RURAL: Paysages et au-delà

The ICOMOS-IFLA Principles Concerning Rural Landscape as Heritage (the Principles; 2017) provide a comprehensive outline of the fields and work required to better recognise and safeguard rural landscape heritage. The Principles acknowledge that the field of heritage conservation cannot sustain rural places and traditional rural heritage landscapes on their own, but must engage with a diverse breadth of disciplines to support and safeguard these spaces. The Principles seek to address loss and adverse changes to rural landscapes and their associated communities through the recognition, safeguarding, and promotion of their heritage values. They aim to promote an appropriate balance between economic ...