Architecture Commons^™

Belén’S Plaza Vieja And Colonial Church Site: Memory, Continuity And Recovery, Samuel E. Sisneros

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This is my capstone project for completion of a Post MA certificate in Historic Preservation and Regionalism. I received the degree in Spring, 2019. The project involves recovering the legacy of a historic colonial church site in Belén, New Mexico. The work involves the descendant community’s sense of place and the continuity of memory and sacredness of Belen’s first church and original plaza.

Aftermarket Supermarket | A Speculative Retrospective, Alexander Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

In the preface to Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology, media theorist Eric Kluitenberg writes that “the delusion of the new”1 pollutes our theorizations of new media. This sort of technocratic fetishization of emergent technologies can only amount to a surfatial investigation of its effects or capabilities. Architectural investigations of virtual reality and other new media systems suffer from this tendency as well. Content-based experimentation and criticism obsess over the simultaneously exciting and daunting prospects of what we can now do or make with recent digital developments. There’s definite value in such endeavors, but frankly, in the grand …

Future Oriented Sustainable Design. Design Purpose: What Is Design And Who Is It For? [Please Note: This Is A Large File And May Be Slow To Download.], Barry Sheehan

Academic Articles

In November 2016 I was asked to make a presentation at the Future Oriented Sustainable Design International Conference in Wuhan in the People's Republic of China. My topic was Design Purpose: What is Design? And who is it for?

The presentation examines the wider aspects of design and its categories and asks who were are actually designing for.

I made a powerpoint presentation that I narrated in English whilst it was simultaneously translated into Chinese for the attendees at the conference. On my return to Ireland I created a soundtrack to accompany the presentation slides for people to watch the …

A Framework For Assessing Alternative Agro-Ecosystems: Finding Multi-Functional Solutions For Sustainable Urban Landscapes., Thais H. Thiesen Ms.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Creating sustainable urban landscapes in light of growing population pressures requires interdisciplinary multi-functional solutions. Alternative agro-ecosystems described as food forests, permaculture gardens, and/or edible landscapes among others could offer potential ways to address the social, economic and ecological goals of various stakeholders simultaneously. The present research used a unique rubric, the Permaculture and Agro-ecosystems Sustainability Scorecard (PASS) that combines existing agricultural and landscape sustainability indicators in order to assess alternative agro-ecosystems. The rubric evaluates provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services such as pollinator presence, biodiversity, pesticides and fertilizer use, carbon sequestration and human interactions. The PASS was used to …

Creating A Successful Wayfinding System: Lessons Learned From Springfield, Massachusetts, Yanhua Lu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The masters project presents findings from recent work the author completed related to wayfinding, and wayfinding systems. This work began as part of a graduate urban design studio, followed by work as a research assistant at the UMass Design Center in Springfield, on a new “demonstration” wayfinding system installed in Springfield, Massachusetts. The wayfinding project was done in association with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the Springfield Office of Planning and Community Development, was implemented with the main goals of improving public health by encouraging more people to walk.

Wayfinding systems are increasingly seen as an important part of …

Networks Of Opportunity: Public Engagement Survey Results, Sammi S. Gay, Derek J. Krevat, Stephanie Carlisle, Justin Gilmore, Gianpaula Hulten, Alexandra 'Ola' Smialek

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

The Project for Public Spaces notes, “People who use a public space are the ones who know, from experience, which areas are dangerous and why, which spaces are comfortable, where traffic moves too quickly and how certain aspects of a space could be improved” (2011, p. 13). Therefore, public engagement was a core part of our project. As previously stated, one major objective of this project is to propose safer paths to school for students. This objective stems from the fact that no bus services are provided to children who live within 1 mile of an elementary school, 1.5 miles …

Networks Of Opportunity: A Citywide Vision For Pedestrian And Bicycle Pathways In Chicopee, Massachusetts, Stephanie Carlisle, Ambica Chadha, Daniel Fontaine, Sammi Gay, Justin Gilmore, Gianpaula Hulten, Derek Krevat, Shuo Li, Alexandra ‘Ola’ Smialek, Melody Tapia

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

The goal of the Master of Regional Planning Studio is to develop a student’s techniques for collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing spatial and non-spatial data and then presenting that collective data in a manner (i.e., report, video, presentation, and charettes) that is understandable to academics, professionals, and the public. Planning Studio allows students to integrate knowledge from coursework and research, and apply such knowledge to resolving representative planning problems. At UMASS Amherst, these problems are found in neighborhood, rural, urban, and/or regional settings.

In the fall of 2016, the City of Chicopee gave the Regional Planning Studio four directives that aim …

Powering Forward: A Vision For The Turners Falls Canal District, Desiree Demski-Hamelin, Kellie Fenton, Brett Gallagher, Kenneth Kirkland, Jeremy Price

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

The goal of the Master of Regional Planning Studio is to develop a student’s techniques for collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing spatial and non-spatial data and then presenting that collective data in a manner (i.e., report, video, presentation, and charettes) that is understandable to academics, professionals, and the public. Planning Studio allows students to integrate knowledge from coursework and research, and apply such knowledge to resolving representative planning problems. At UMASS Amherst, these problems are found in neighborhood, rural, urban, and/or regional settings.

In the fall of 2016, the Town of Montague’s Department of Planning and Conservation gave the Regional Planning …

Decentral Park, Garrett Wineinger

Architecture Senior Theses

In this thesis, I will contemplate the necessary process of weaving the large landscape into the urban fabric. As stated within Anita Berrizbeitia’s essay, Re-placing Process, in the book Large Parks, “Yet for all their susceptibility to the ebb and flow of urban circumstances, large parks remain fundamental to cities, not only because they take on infrastructural and ecological functions displaced from densely built centers but because they are distinct, memorable places. They absorb the identity of the city as much as they project one, becoming socially and culturally recognizable places that are unique and irreproducible. Those large public parks …

Transforming The Wku Office Of Sustainability's Front Yard Into An Edible Landscape, Alexandra Hezik

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Since moving to 503 Regents Avenue in Fall 2013, the WKU Office of Sustainability has served as a sustainable best practices demonstration home for the WKU and Bowling Green communities. Not only does the house in which the Office of Sustainability is located serve as an educational tool for people, but also the landscape. In May 2014, the WKU Community Garden was established in the backyard. The transformation of the Office of Sustainability’s front lawn into an edible landscape began on April 1, 2015. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate an alternative to conventional lawns.

Ogden College Of Science & Engineering Newsletter (Summer 2016), Cheryl Stevens, Dean

Ogden College of Science & Engineering Publications

No abstract provided.

Exterior Of Dinand Gets A New Look, Evangelia Stefanakos

Civitas Branching Documentation

This article describes new art installations and landscaping which enhance the exterior spaces of Dinand Library at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The murals, "Civitas Branching" and "Lungs of the Planet," are collaborative art projects created by students of the College and members of the Worcester community. They were installed in April 2016. A dedication ceremony was held April 20, 2016.

The Zoning Map And American City Form, Steven Thomas Moga

Landscape Studies: Faculty Publications

This paper investigates a common mode of visual communication in planning practice, the use of maps to regulate urban development. Holding equal legal status with the text, the zoning map was invented in the early twentieth century as a tool for implementing municipal policy and, although debated, modified, and sometimes repurposed over the past nine decades, it remains standard. Mundane and largely taken for granted, the zoning map itself has aroused little scholarly interest. However, as an image of the city and as a graphic intermediary used in administrative processes, it reveals how planning thought is embedded in planning tools.

Collaborating With Catastrophe | A User's Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Farming, Patricia Cafferky

Architecture Senior Theses

“Collaborating with Catastrophe” contends that architecture has the capacity to visually manifest unseen forces through design’s reaction to them, allowing people to more fully comprehend and engage the intangible. Climate change, arguably the largest threat to modern day humanity, is not visible, existing only as a collection of data and patterns in a statistical construct. Taking stock of the present day failings of society in the face of crisis, this thesis then extrapolates a potential future dystopia precipitated by man-made pollutants in order to engage the problem at its most severe. Architecture is then able to make the toxic visible …

Other Wildernesses, Other Realities | A Framework For Shrinking Cities, Alyssa Goraieb

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is an experiment to imagine the possible realities that emerge from a redefining of the "idea of wilderness".

Wilderness is an idea.

Its definition is slippery. It is neither a physical place nor a state of being (as the "-ness" suggests). Wilderness is a human construct defined by varying cultural and social attitude. This fluid meaning drove numerous paradigms throughout American history - from eighteenth century romanticism's sublime doctrine to today's environmentalism.

Inspired by past American paradigms, this thesis invents five other wilderness ides that exist as a parallel alternatives to our own. Each produces a …

Absorbency In Tidal Resiliency | The Thickened Pier, Shauna Strubinger

Architecture Senior Theses

The inevitable truth of climate change has placed coastal cities at great risk. Past natural disasters in the United States such as Hurricane Sandy and Katrina, displaced many people because these communities’ only protection was their failed infrastructure.1 Although hard and soft infrastructure strategies have addressed the rising sea level, architecture at the building scale creates static surfaces and divisions that are slow to adapt to flooding and leave little to no room for the ambiguity of tidal flooding and storm surge. Though numerous areas are at risk of sea level rise across the globe, the Chesapeake Bay area is …

Umass Amherst Campus Green Infrastructure Planning, Meilan Chen, Zhuoya Deng, Joseph Larico, Bin Liu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Conventional stormwater management methods are a major problem in urban areas that can result in erosion, sedimentation, flooding and in the contamination of natural waterbodies that can be harmful for wildlife and costly for humans. This project will focus on the integration of green infrastructure and UMass campus planning with the goal of solving stormwater management issues on campus. We propose a series of green infrastructure interventions that will increase infiltration and time of concentration, reduce peak flows of runoff, and filter sediment. These interventions will allow for the removal of catch basins and pipes, reduce pavement, and add vegetation. …

A New Vision For An Old Institution: Addressing The Challenges For Urban And Peri-Urban Agriculture At The Waltham Experiment Station, Kevin C. Hartzell

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Urban and peri-urban agriculture has a new place in (sub)urban landscapes because of the suite of ecosystem services it can provide including, but not limited to; increased local food production, waste recycling, stormwater infiltration, and reconnecting urban dwellers to their food source. The University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Waltham Experiment Station, located in Waltham, Massachusetts, is poised for redevelopment as a model for multi-use urban agriculture production, research, and education as well as a living laboratory to monitor and document the ecosystem services provided to the surrounding community. This project will focus on educational and research categories within the theme of …

Resilience At Umass Amherst: A Sustainable Sites Initiative Inspired Master's Project, Nelle Ward

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

A new movement to plan and design monitorable green stormwater infrastructure is beginning to emerge. Faced with the imminent effects of climate change, "sustainability" is becoming a more important part of municipal long-term planning and design strategies. Accumulating evidence demonstrating the myriad of environmental and aesthetic of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) has given rise to programs that offer sustainability guidelines such as the sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) guidelines. SITES encourages resilient landscapes that are designed to: maximize ecosystem service benefits, be monitored for benefits or lack thereof, provide educational opportunities, and improve human health and well-being. In using these wholistic …

Claiming Market Place, Michael J. Abate, Alex Hentnik, Cameron J. Roach, Christopher M. Rucinski, Taylor Shulda, Nicholas Mcmenamin, Andrew Woodward

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

CLAIMING MARKET PLACE UMass Amherst Design Center in Springfield

Department of Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning

The Senior Urban Design Studio developed a tangible vision for the revitalization of downtown Springfield through creating ideas for the underutilized Market Place block and reconnect it to the urban fabric. We carried out small-scale, temporary urban design installations as wayfinding interventions in the spirit of “tactical urbanism”. These interventions had a real target: the students’ work supported the opening of the Holiday Market in the Market Street block from Thanksgiving to Christmas. The interventions were taken one step further with the development of …

Sustainable Architecture Design: Environmental And Economic Benefits, Michael Babcock

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines the movement of environmentalism, and its impact on architecture and construction. During an interview with a professional architect, a basis for research of sustainable design was devised, when he explained that “good” architecture attempts to holistically integrate the external and built environment. Presently, the main measurement for sustainability is energy efficiency. Therefore, architects constantly implement new technology in an attempt to unify both the external and built environment in an energy efficient manner. Furthermore, this thesis provides an environmental and financial cost analysis of implementing sustainable design and build. Research shows that the life cycle and up-front …

Ogden College Of Science & Engineering Newsletter (Spring 2016), Cheryl Stevens, Dean, Ogden College Of Science & Engineering

Ogden College of Science & Engineering Publications

No abstract provided.

Airborne Lidar Acquisition, Post-Processing And Accuracy-Checking For A 3d Webgis Of Copan, Honduras, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Maria Grazia Spera, Michael Auer, Nicolas Billen, Lukas Loos, Laura Stelson, Markus Reindel

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeological projects increasingly collect airborne LiDAR data to use as a remote sensing tool for survey and analysis. Publication possibilities for LiDAR datasets, however, are limited due to the large size and often proprietary nature of the data. Fortunately, web-based, geographic information systems (WebGIS) that can securely manage temporal and spatial data hold great promise as virtual research environments for working with and publishing LiDAR data. To test this and to obtain new data for archaeological research, in 2013, the MayaArch3D Project (www.mayaarch3d.org) collected LiDAR data for the archaeological site of Copan, Honduras. Results include: 1) more accurate archaeological maps, …

Umass Amherst Green Building Guidelines V.2 And Leedv4, Kylie A. Landrey, Ted Mendoza, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Somayeh Tabatabaee, Nariman Mostafavi, Ray Kinoshita Mann, Jeffrey Dalzell, Ajla Aksamija

Campus Planning Reports and Plans

Facilities & Campus Services supports sustainability and energy conservation initiatives by providing in-house resources to campus staff as well as designers, contractors and other consultants working with the University. The UMass Amherst Green Building Guidelines v2 and LEED v4 provide a framework for approaching new construction and major renovation projects at UMass Amherst that are undergoing LEED v4 certification by focusing the conversation on those green building aspects that are most important to the campus. They are intended to be the beginning of a dynamic conversation between designers, environmental consultants and constructors, university stakeholders, and users of new high performance …

Greening Cities In An Urbanizing Age: The Human Health Bases In The Nineteenth And Early Twenty-First Centuries, Theodore S. Eisenman

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Publication Series

Defined here as the introduction or conservation of outdoor vegetation in cities, urban greening has bloomed during periods of intensive urbanization. This was true in the nineteenth century and it seems to be the case again today, as a range of greening practices is co-arising during a third, and perhaps final, period of global urbanization. Human health has been a recurring theme underlying the enduring aspiration to integrate nature with city. Using change over time as a conceptual frame, this paper offers a comparative assessment of municipal greening in the nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing on the potential implications …

Using Systematic Observations To Understand Conditions That Promote Interracial Experiences In Neighbourhood Parks, Amy Hillier, Bing Han, Theodore S. Eisenman, Kelly R. Evenson, Thomas L. Mckenzie, Deborah A. Cohen

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Publication Series

We analysed observations from 31 neighbourhood parks, with each park mapped into smaller target areas for study, across five US cities generated using the System for Observing Play and Recreation in the Community (SOPARC). In areas where at least two people were observed, less than one-third (31.6%) were populated with at least one white and one non-white person. Park areas that were supervised, had one or more people engaged in vigorous activity, had at least one male and one female present, and had one or more teens present were significantly more likely to involve interracial groups (p < 0.01 for each association). Observations in parks located in interracial neighbourhoods were also more likely to involve interracial groups (p < 0.05). Neighbourhood poverty rate had a significant and negative relationship with the presence of interracial groups, particularly in neighbourhoods that are predominantly non-white. Additional research is needed to confirm the impact of these interactions. Urban planning and public health practitioners should consider the health benefits of interracial contact in the design and programming of neighbourhood parks.

Novel Urban Ecosystems: Concepts, Definitions And A Strategy To Support Urban Sustainability And Resilience, Jack F. Ahern

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Publication Series

The 21st century is already known for unprecedented and fundamental changes and new trajectories - think climate change, global economics, migration and population growth. The world is now predominantly urban and will become increasingly so until mid-century when global population is expected to stabilize at around 70% urban. The world has entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the impacts and artifacts of humans are recognized as a geologic force. In this "Century of the City, - for the world to be sustainable and resilient, cities must be an essential part of the solution - and novel urban …

Publications From The Mastering Mills Symposium, Center For Economic Development

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

Through the Center for Economic Development's research, consulting and technical assistance efforts, it has become increasingly apparent that increased knowledge concerning the revitalization of old mills and mill communities is necessary. The problem is particularly acute in smaller communities and in areas of slow growth, where problems and solutions are addressed differently than larger towns near urban locations. The purpose of this symposium was to gain an understanding of the methods that can protect and enhance mill character and the economic viability in mill communities. It included several presentations, panel discussions, and opportunities for audience involvement. Presentations and any supplemental …

3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Prediction Of The Root Anchorage Of Native Young Plants Using Bayesian Inference, Ryan Wai Man Yan, Lin Zhang, Flora T. Y. Leung, Ka-Veng Yuen

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

The maximum vertical uproot resistance (Pmax) of a plant can be used to indicate its stability. Attempts were made to predict the Pmax of a plant empirically from some of its size parameters. In practice, an infinite number of empirical models with different complexities can be formulated. This study presents a Bayesian model class selection method to evaluate the plausibility of each empirical model among a list of model candidates. The models were ranked to identify the most plausible one. A database of vertical uproot resistance of four shrubs and trees native to Hong Kong was first compiled by performing …