Architecture Commons^™

Flourishing Foliage: Exploring Hail City's Diverse Botanical Landscape, Asmaa Elantary Dr.

Journal of Engineering Research

This research explores the role of native plants in enhancing the distinctiveness of cities in Saudi Arabia, focusing on a specific case study of Al-Samra Park. The study aims to investigate the prevalence and effects of non-native and native plants in the park and their contribution to the uniqueness of the landscape. A questionnaire was designed and implemented to gather data, and the park's plant composition was examined.

The findings indicate that non-native plants dominate Al-Samra Park, while native plants are scarce. However, the abundance of non-native plants offers various benefits to park visitors. Some non-native plants possess medicinal properties, …

Water Wise Landscape Practices: A Case Study For The City Of Gering, Christina E. Land

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

This professional project is founded on my education, experiences, and networks. I have had the opportunity to use what I have learned thus far and be challenged to look at public planning from a different perspective. In partnership with the City of Gering I was able to get knee deep in the facility planning of the city owned property which is home to the Community Ever Green House. The project reviews how the property is integrated into the community and the impact it has. Then, identifies opportunities to improve overall functionality with a closer look at addressing hazard mitigation using …

Building Hygge In-Roads Into Incremental Living, Tanisha Kalra

Masters Theses

Housing is one aspect of architecture and urban planning that has constantly been improved and redefined to suit the needs of people during the time periods they have been living in. People have taken significant steps in establishing how they want to live in retrospect to the times, according to their values and needs. Today, more architectural research may address the understanding and production of a healthy way of living than any other aspect of placemaking. It is no surprise that so much effort supports this spatial concern, which contributes to a fundamental building block of shared cultural definitions.

The …

Identity And Placemaking Of Modern Roman Piazzas: Case Study Analysis Of Piazza San Cosimato, Piazza Testaccio, And Piazza Cavour, Lauren Lamker

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The more we understand the patterns of how people use space, the better we will be able to forecast the outcomes of new public space initiatives. Studying public life can be done in a similar way to how meteorologists can fairly accurately describe the weather (Gehl 2013, 2). The goal of this analysis is to better understand the patterns evident in these successful spaces so that more similar spaces can be developed in the future. Can exemplary public spaces be used to forecast new projects? Rome has a high density of successful public spaces, and this case study will focus …

Vacant To Vibrant: Transforming Vacant Lots In North Philadelphia, Olivia Anne Sinclair

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The City of Philadelphia has addressed the need to utilize vacant lots in the city’s comprehensive planning document, Philadelphia2035 (PCPC, 2010). The document encourages designers to use sustainable practices to reincorporate these abandoned lots back into the fabric of the city. Through partnerships with local organizations in Philadelphia, guidelines and suggestions were created to guide Philadelphians while they revive abandoned lot spaces. In the neighborhood of Nicetown-Tioga, Philadelphia, there is a large amount of vacant lots leaving the area blighted and without resilience. This study accepts Philadelphia’s invitation to use design strategies to be applied to vacant lots within the …

Olympic Gardens After The Games, Kaylee O'Brien

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis begins with an intense study of landscape and the garden. In addition to research on the historical, theoretical, and contemporary conditions of the garden, the thesis investigates the architectural and landscape conditions of the Olympic Games. Specifically looking into issues including Olympic Legacy, Olympic Gardens, and urban interventions associated with Olympic Parks, the project aims to understand ways in which these subjects can be studied, analyzed, and reapplied in the context of a new architectural design. This combined research into gardens and the Olympic Games serves as a foundation for the thesis design project, providing strategies and ways …

In Present Past: Sun Tunnels And The Historic Reconstruction Of Vision, Patrice M. Capobianchi

Theses and Dissertations

The following study investigates how Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels makes effective use of time and land to reprogram the modern viewer’s eye. By utilizing sculpture that is reminiscent of pre-historic observatories as an observational framing device against the landscape topography, the artwork succeeds in presenting a historic reconstruction of vision.

Skater Conscious, Jeremy Bowen

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Skateboarding is made possible by the built environment, but without architecture necessarily being designed for its occurrence. Without knowing it, designers have created environments that facilitate a social and artistic culture to thrive. And this has happened – for the most part – in leftover pieces of landscape, infrastructure, and urban settings. Skaters move through and experience space in unique ways. While their boards enable this experience, there is more; most spaces are not designed for them – and some are even designed to keep them out – but, nevertheless, skaters persevere through invention and creativity. Skaters actively search for …

Vincent Van Gogh's Wheatfields And Piet Oudolf's Meadows: Color, Contrast And Change In The Landscape, Erin A. Cox

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone investigates the unique relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and planting designer Piet Oudolf's vibrant use of color and contrast in their work as it relates to their perception of the landscape. The project is mainly a comparison of the two artists, exploring Van Gogh's use of complementary colors and brushstroke techniques to create vivid contrast in his renderings of agrarian landscapes, and Oudolf's parallel approach to creating painterly meadows and prairie gardens. The project focuses on Van Gogh’s study of wheat field landscapes, which are essentially the same in structure and composition but can be used to compare …

The Art Of Healing The Landscape: Creating A Sense Of Place With Phytotechnology, Tia Novak

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This project builds on previous work completed as part of a masters project by Matt Hisle under the guidance of Frank Sleegers in Hadley, Massachusetts at an abandoned Getty gas station. The previous project sought to integrate phytotechnology into a “comprehensive experience that provided connectivity and educational purposes” and used Phyto by Kate Kennen and Niall Kirkwood as a framework for applying six phytotechnology typologies (referred to as phytotypologies) in the design (Sleegers & Hisle, 2017).

This project also explores the site’s historical, social, and ecological sense of place and the application of phytotechnology as garden art to create a …

The Sea Ranch: Unforeseen Failures And Statewide Successes Of An Ecologically Conscious Coastal Community, Robert Daley

Senior Theses

The term “residential development” or “planned community” brings to mind images of a stereotypical suburbia. The planned community of The Sea Ranch, along the Sonoma County coast in Northern California is a direct challenge to the suburban ideal. Construction of the nearly 1500 homes began in the late 1960s and continues to present day. All of the homes must meet specific design requirements including being ecologically sound and they must fit within the landscape. The strict architectural elements is what provides the distinct look of the community. The construction of a housing development along a ten-mile strip of untouched and …

Surveilled, Rachel Swetnam

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Debord's "Society the Spectacle" and Delouze’s Deleuze's "Society of Control" both imagine a dystopian future for humanity in a world governed by excessive self-advertisement and mass surveillance. This thesis begins with the observation that, sadly, their two visions have become a reality. Current technologies log our movements through GPS satellite data, and photographs taken by closed-circuit security cameras, or by passers-by on a public street, are constantly cross-checked against databanks of previously-compiled biometric profiles. Every movement and transaction is digitized and recorded, accessible to ever-widening networks of information exchange and surveillance. These data-networks are altering the manner by which people …

Raaxo: A Post-Refugee Landscape, Bailey M. Riales

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

raaxo: a post-refugee landscape

sited in dadaab, kenya // raaxo is a transformation of the current landscape that works with harsh conditions of sun and wind to provide spaces of dwelling and gathering, improving refugee comfort by initiating a sense of community. tall, mechanical screens protect against the strong desert winds, while also creating a build-up of sand. overtime, the sand build-up forms an exterior barrier around the community and dwelling spaces, and creates a façade on the interior. Other designed screens are placed opposite the formed community spaces, providing shade from the desert sun for the refugees. throughout 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 …

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 …

Culinary Biologique And Cartographic Anxiety, Adam Lamar Buchanan

Masters Theses

The 21st century’s most dominant characteristic, and greatest challenge, is the explosive growth of the world’s population. Swelling at an exponential rate, the increasing physical distance between the acts of growth and consumption yields an agrarian system that is highly unsustainable… a crisis looms in the future!

This crisis is most easily detected in images of the Earth taken from satellites. These recently recorded pixels of reflected light taken from the cherished Icarian vantage point have been acquired and perfected over the past five decades. Ultimately, these lightning speed revelations show patterns that emerge as broken relationships that can be …

The Role Of The Landscape In The Socialization Of Cohousing Communities: A Study In Western Massachusetts, Emilie Marques Jordao

Masters Theses

The cohousing movement started in the United States in the 1990’s and since then has spread to over 160 communities throughout the country. This type of community is characterized by small dwelling units, high housing density, shared facilities such as a common house, shared commons and grouped parking. These are pedestrian-oriented communities with car circulation restricted to the outskirts of the neighborhood. Cohousing settlements have the goal of promoting social interaction and sustainable living through design, programming, and shared ideals. Many design characteristics, such as house proximity, density, building height and size, the location of parking, the availability of common …

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 …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

Resilient Future: The Cultural Riverfront Edge In The New Capital, Amaravathi, In Andhra Pradesh, India, Priyanka Malik

LSU Master's Theses

India faced the bifurcation of a united Andhra Pradesh state into the state of Telangana and state of Andhra Pradesh or Seemandhra, on 2nd June 2014. Since the year 1948, the city of Hyderabad remained the capitol of united Andhra Pradesh. However, post the bifurcation, the two states are required to share Hyderabad as their administrative capitol for ten years after which the city of Hyderabad will be the centre for the state of Telangana. The state of Andhra Pradesh is thus building a new capital Amaravathi, along the banks of Krishna River. The name of the capital is borrowed …

Community Identity: Place And The South Knoxville Waterfront, Nicholas Joseph Burger

Masters Theses

“With the loss of tactility and the scale and details crafted for the human body and hand, our structures become repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, and unreal” (Holl 29). Our built environment is full of constructs which are unsuccessful on a number of levels proving why it is critical to concentrate on a sense of place and identity. A great place is described as one where people gravitate towards, a place for everyone, something that is memorable, and a space which evokes a story (Placemaking Is...). South Knoxville, Tennessee, the selected site of this thesis, will test the concept of place …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Tehran's Empowering Protean Spaces, Sara Khorshidifard

Sara Khorshidifard

As a recent citizen I noticed Tehran's urge for new kinds of public spaces. So, I initiated a dissertation that outlined a call for "protean space." Cities need protean spaces as a means to empower people, places that offer social interaction and support--spaces that are safe, accessible, and intriguing. Protean spaces empower people to create places for personal and interpersonal relationships, make social connections, gain information, and build trust across varied networks. My dissertation examined how planning and design practices can enhance the possibility of protean spaces and therefore increase their number. While my research concerns Tehran, all cities benefit …

Darndale Park Report, Ciaran Cuffe, Daniel Blanchfield, Andrea Culjak, Meadhbh Ní Lochlainn, Orla Gilleece, Lin Zhao, Niall Thomas, John Lucey, Zainab Mansary

Students Learning with Communities

No abstract provided.

The Tendril, Nicole Flinn

Landscape Architecture

This modular vineyard took the traditional understanding of growing wine grapes and turned it on its side. A site that was once covered completely in vines is transformed into a tower-like form to maximize space and growing potential. By performing these practices in a controlled environment every element is carefully manipulated for desirability.

Designing For A Resilient Waterfront, Laura Festa

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project will use soft infrastructure systems to create a more environmental, technical, and economically resilient waterfront development. The threat of rising sea level will become the framework for a flexible and holistic design between architecture, landscape, and soft infrastructure. By arraying the activities of recreation, ecology, and urban development along the waterfront and combining these design strategies with a soft infrastructure system, the coastline of East Boston has the potential to become a precedent for other urban waterfronts vulnerable to sea level rise. By rethinking the division between landscape and infrastructure to form a soft infrastructure system, solutions can …

Agri[Culture]: An Alternate Paradigm For The American Landscape, Melissa Erin Morris

Masters Theses

Throughout the Appalachian region, one can experience the vast disappearance of the American landscape as we know it. Whether driving through the rugged coal mining towns of Virginia, or the suburban sprawl taking over the rural farmland of Tennessee, it becomes clear that this is a spreading epidemic. Without an appropriate balance of urban, suburban, and rural areas, we begin to loose the landscape which has always been so closely linked to this country’s cultural and physical identity.

This thesis focuses on the agrarian Appalachian culture with a proposal for a project rooted heavily in cultural identity. With programs based …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Tehran's Empowering Protean Spaces, Sara Khorshidifard

Theses and Dissertations

As a recent citizen I noticed Tehran's urge for new kinds of public spaces. So, I initiated a dissertation that outlined a call for "protean space." Cities need protean spaces as a means to empower people, places that offer social interaction and support--spaces that are safe, accessible, and intriguing. Protean spaces empower people to create places for personal and interpersonal relationships, make social connections, gain information, and build trust across varied networks.

My dissertation examined how planning and design practices can enhance the possibility of protean spaces and therefore increase their number. While my research concerns Tehran, all cities benefit …

Larc 331: Site Systems Iii: Landscape Implementation—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Bret Betnar

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

LARC 331 Site Systems III: Landscape Implementation is a 3rd year undergraduate course that focuses on the implementation of landscape architectural designs. The course is the final in a 3-course Site Systems sequence. In LARC 331, students take the final design proposal from the previous semester’s Site Design studio, LARC 210 or 211, and develop a set of construction documents for that design.

The research question asked through this inquiry is as follows: Can the inclusion of a drawing and building exercise improve students’ understanding of The Ten Fundamentals of drafting? It is believed that by including an additional drawing …

Landscape And Sustainability: Three Residential College Buildings In The Tropics, Adi Ainurzaman Jamaludin, Ati Rosemary Mohd Ariffin, Nila Keumala Daud, Hazreena Hussein

Hazreena Hussein

Three residential colleges located in a university campus at the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and built in different decades were selected for landscape studies with respect to species and position of the trees, as well as the effects of the current landscapes as a shelter in reducing solar radiation on buildings, as a pre-assessment for the Low Carbon Cities Framework (LCCF) and assessment system. These landscape settings were carefully studied through on-site observation. The name and location of the mature trees were redrawn and visualised with standard normal photographs. These studies revealed that the old residential college landscape is …

Cascade Garden Residence Landscape Performance Benefits Assessment, Bo Yang, Pamela Blackmore, Chris Binder

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

Cascade Garden is a tranquil, high-altitude residential property, designed to preserve the area's natural setting and ecosystem while meeting the property owner's requests for outdoor amenities. The project involved dismantling an existing house and siting a new home integrated into the landscape with minimal site disturbance. The site features an existing pond, which was planted with riparian vegetation and modified to support trout habitat and supply water for landscape irrigation. Because of the harsh, high-altitude climate and presence of wildlife, plant species were carefully selected to ensure high growth levels and low maintenance. Most of the traditional lawn was replaced …