Architecture Commons^™

Beyond Burial - Transforming Death: A New Ritual Of Farewell And The Ecological Return Of The Body To Nature, Chang Xie

Masters Theses

Burial and funeral culture have been shaped by human self-awareness and reflect an anthropocentric worldview. The modern funeral industry's multi-billion-dollar enterprise is based on the principle of protecting, sanitizing, and beautifying the corpse to promote the idea of human exceptionalism. However, this practice overlooks the natural process of decay and the potential beauty in returning the body to the earth, with which the body shares the same chemical basis as the earth itself. Modern science has provided Eco-friendly green burial methods, such as soil modification, ice burial, and water burial, making it suitable to contribute to natural ecology using human …

Revival On The Stronghold, Katherine Evans

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This proposal is an architectural landscape that commemorates a cultural history while providing a cultural understanding for others of the unjust actions against Native Americans throughout history. Through a series of spaces sited in the South Unit of the Badlands, South Dakota for the Oglala people of the Pine Ridge Reservation, this proposal will be an experiential and spiritual journey echoing the religious practice of the Ghost Dance, which contributed to the Wounded Knee Massacre killing 250 Native Americans in 1890. The Ghost Dance was a ritual practiced and believed to encourage the coming Messiah to save the Native Americans, …

Layers Of Staro Sajmište [Re]Opening Dialog, Jared Samuel Wilkins

Masters Theses

This research analyzes and tests the application of a process driven memorial intervention on the contested territory of Staro Sajmište, Novi Belgrade’s former 1937 International Exposition Fairgrounds that was adapted into a concentration camp in 1941. Today, Staro Sajmište exists as makeshift living for an impoverished community. Traditional memorial and conservation efforts have been attempted on the site over the last 60 years; however, none have achieved an appropriate depth of impact. I propose to revisit Staro Sajmište through an intervention not recognized as a literal memorial, but rather as the transformation and re-appropriation of the urban fabric into an …

Remembering Paul Procopio - Compendium, Julius Gy. Fábos, Nicholas T. Dines

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

This tribute to Paul Procopio started after the visit of Nicholas Dines, Julius Fábos and Mark Lindhult after Paul's funeral ceremony with the aim of creating a more complete picture of Paul's important role in shaping the emerging Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning after the retirement of Ray Otto in 1965. The assembled reflections represent the comments of contemporaries, colleagues, former students, and current department faculty, as well as those from his daughters.

This compendium will be made available to the University of Massachusetts Library and will be added to Paul’s papers, which will serve to inform our …

Structural Engineering Students For Haiti: A Student-Run, Student-Initiated Organization For The Benefit Of The Haitian People, Andrew Jimenez, Alex Daddow

Architectural Engineering

On August 2nd 2012, a group of 10 students from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo traveled to Léogâne, Haiti to construct a bell tower for the Saint Rose de Lima Parish. The trip consisted of four days of construction, and three days of touring. The seven days in Haiti were a result of three months of planning by a student-run, student-initiated group called Structural Engineering Students for Haiti, or SESH. The following report documents the planning, execution and lessons learned from this trip. The planning included everything from fund raising to disease prevention. The trip was successful because the bell …