Architecture Commons^™

Wayfinding Streetscapes : How To Integrate A Wayfinding System Into The Streetscape, Improving Public Transit And Pedestrian Mobility, Lu Zhang

Masters Theses

This is a thesis investigation in 3 phases, integrateing wayfinding system into streetscapes by effective spatial planning and environmental communication, aiming to improve public transit and pedestrian mobility. Considering streets as one of the major sites of city life, they play a critical role in the process of daily information flow and communication. This entire thesis tests the possibility of adding a new layer into streetscapes as both a city infrastructure and a method to raise people’s awareness towards a certain site.

Alleyways As Avenues, Rebecca E. Ladd

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the possibilities of in-between spaces bounded by the realms of public and private experience in an urban environment, specifically situated in Downtown Providence, RI. This thesis begins by questioning the meaning of what public space is and how we as humans choose to inhabit space that has been given a particular program or quality. What allows a person to feel that he or she has ownership over a public space? Through the interdisciplinary lens of Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture, the subsequent phases will analyze how people in Downtown Providence perceive and utilize space within the city …

Narratives Of Public Space : A Manifesto For Future Urban Landscape In Manhattan, Jaehong Chung

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the history of public space and how it has changed over time. Looking specifically at how social, historical, and advances in technology have influenced and changed the meaning and use of public spaces. Studies of history and its characteristics and case studies check the validity of paradigm of public spaces in Manhattan. The modern features of Manhattan have been completed over 200 hundreds years with Industrial revolutions and influx of immigrants. Due to these reasons, the main focus was to track of causalities among life style changes, social paradigms, and changes of urban landscapes.

As cities developed, …

Surveillance City In A Post 9/11 Era, Wanting Dong

Masters Theses

Surveillance City in A Post 9/11 Era is a thesis investigation trying to understand our privacy, perceived safety and public realm in the large context of evolving terrorism worldwide by promoting a conversation about how surveillance would change our city, our new relationship with the city under surveillance, and how people will live with surveillance in the future.

Phase one seeks to understand terrorism and terrorist attack in general, and the opportunities and limitations of the existing security design strategies that have been implemented by US government. In phase two, a specific investigation direction is determined and a series of …

Culturally Integrated Space, Jing Wang

Masters Theses

The topic of this thesis is the urban public space responses to new residents in old neighborhoods. In phase 1, the GIS collection of demographic changes of New York and typology studies about existing urban parks asks the question: how might urban parks better integrate the new residents into old neighborhoods? This question helps choose the Sunset Park Neighborhood as the study and test site. In phase 2, the site analysis including history, climate, and the park usage of Sunset Park Neighborhood, leads to a preliminary proposal of a new urban park typology for better integrating the new residents into …

Viaduct Landscape, Juanru Wang

Masters Theses

Thesis question: can spaces under viaducts become objects of appreciation; can design promote their original characteristics?

This thesis focuses on the space created by the elevated transit infrastructure in urban areas. In recent years, the spaces under viaducts attract attention in the field of landscape architecture. There are many successful practices that transfer the negative space under viaducts to popular urban plazas. Most of those designs, however, may simply regard spaces under viaducts as dangerous spaces or as obstacles in the city. Nevertheless, the scale and spatial characteristics of the spaces under viaducts are not in other public open spaces …