Architecture Commons^™

Reinvigorating The Hill In Turners Falls, Ma, Patrick Burns

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This masters project will focus on the site of the Hillcrest and Sheffield Elementary School campus in the "The Hill" neighborhood of Turners Falls, MA. This project aims to create a vision of possibility for an underutilized neighborhood amenity. This project reviews social, demographic, physical data of the neighborhood in Turners Falls as well as research on play, nature play, outdoor experiential learning, and the local ecology of Montague Wildlife Management area. To execute this goal, the study aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Revitalize an underutilized space into a neighborhood asset;
• Improve elementary school campus reinforcing a positive learning …

Bournewood Hospital: Designing A Healing Landscape, Winfield Henry

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Currently in the United States there are 51.5 million Americans suffering from mental illness (Mental Illness, 2021). With trends having been on the rise over the past decade, particularly for depression and anxiety, and showing a significant jump during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial that behavioral health hospitals utilize all available treatment methods (Daly et. al., 2021, & Goodwin et. al., 2020). While the outdoor environment has played a role in mental and physical healthcare since the 11th Century, it has been largely lost until the late 1900s. Through research and evidence-based design, a holistic approach to healthcare is …

Massachusetts Complete Streets Program: An Exploratory Spatial And Social Equity Analysis, Toriellen Swistak

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The effects of transportation planning on equity are often overlooked or not prioritized, sometimes resulting in an inequitable distribution of infrastructure investment with disparities in access. This paper examines the characteristics and distribution of approved Complete Streets projects across Massachusetts using social and spatial methods to analyze trends across socioeconomic demographic data. The methods applied include buffering techniques in GIS software to analyze population data within a half-mile radius of approved projects from 2016-2019. The half-mile measure of proximity is used as a proxy for access, in which descriptive statistics and regression models examine in detail.

Correctional Landscape Studies: Improving The Restorative Potential, Allyson Fairweather

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons and jails. On average, one-third of former offenders will return to prison for re-offence within three years of their release (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018). This cycle is known as recidivism, and demonstrates a major reflection of the criminal justice system’s failure to provide rehabilitation that meets the needs of the incarcerated population. However, horticultural therapy in prison may offer a sliver of hope. Also referred to as Green Prison Programs (GPPs), studies indicate that participants in these programs gain valuable job …

Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming An Urban Industrial Area And Creating Community, Yincheng Zhang

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Like many metropolises around the world, urban renewal in New York dominates the process

of urban development due to the scarcity of urban land resources and the ever-expanding population of New York. In the history of New York’s urban expansion, with the continuous expansion of the city’s outer edge and industrial relocation, industrial land originally on the edge of the city is gradually surrounded by residential areas.

The large area of vacant land and building also limits the further development of the region.

How to reuse the existing infrastructure and brownfield with the highly degraded environment is

particularly important for …

Uncovering The Potential Of Peabody's Hidden North River: A Greenway For Social And Ecological Connectivity, Mitch Johnson

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Project Goal Demonstrating the opportunity to strengthen both urban and ecological qualities, this project has the goal to transform an old industrial corridor in downtown Peabody into a green corridor integrating stormwater management, habit restoration, recreational, and catalyst for urban development.

The site’s location at the downstream end of existing creeks combined with its proximity to the Salem Sound makes this an extremely sensitive area to flooding events. This design proposal transforms this risk into an opportunity by restoring this former industrial site to its former function as a floodplain within the existing North River Watershed. In a phased process, …

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 …

Just Big Enough: Imagining The Future Of "Small Home" Residential Design With A Master Plan At The Nexus Of Affordability And Sustainability, Maggie Kraus

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Communities everywhere are experiencing significant and unpredictable shifts in the social and physical infrastructure of their landscapes. In the midst of a cultural, political, and ecological moment which has no precedent, it seems as though many of our contemporary crises have one thing in common: they will either be alleviated or drastically exacerbated by the alliance of professions working to improve the built environment. Now more than ever, the world is in need of designers, planners, and policy-makers who are willing to use this moment of great change as momentum to imagine a new era of community development, one which …

Restoring Landscape Experience: Research & New Design For The Battlefield Landscape Of Minute Man National Historic Park, Kathleen O'Connor

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This project looked critically at the landscape design of three specific battle locations located in Minute Man National Historical Park: Meriam’s Corner (West Entrance), Paul Revere Capture Site, and Parker’s Revenge (East Main Entrance). The landscape re-designs address three specific goals: 1. Make the landscape central to the visitor experience. 2. Enhance the interpretation of the 1775 landscape of specific sites too often overlooked or passed by. 3. Transform the overall experience of the park through limited interventions at specific sites. The landscape at Minute Man National Historical Park is at present not conveying its historic significance or landscape character …

Using Phytotechnology To Redesign Abandoned Gas Stations, Matt Hisle

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Hazardous pollutants that exist in contaminated soils represent a threat to human, animal, and environmental health if left unmanaged. Phytoremediation in the U.S. was generally named and formally established in the 1980s and applied as an alternative method using plants to cleanse contaminated soils on site in a more economically and environmentally friendly way than removing contaminated soils off site. High expectations and mixed performances with failures outnumbering successes led to a crash of phytoremediation with a decline in environmental research funding by the early 2000s. “Phyto”, a book by landscape architects Kennen and Kirkwood (2015) recently reintroduces the subject …

Innovative Waste Water Strategies In The Landscape: The Application Of Green Infrastructure Principles In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Kellie Fenton

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Context Wastewater management is an issue that every community faces. Whether a small-scale septic tank or a large-scale centralized wastewater treatment plant, these systems are often insufficient in accomplishing their singular purpose: cleaning water. This results in the contamination of hydrological systems. In its focus on the intersection of the natural and built environment, the practice of landscape architecture may include the design of wastewater management systems. This project demonstrates how landscape architecture principles applied to waste water management systems provides both ecological and human benefits. Goals The goal of this project is to find ways that waste water systems …

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 …

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 …

Creative Placemaking: A Case Study Exploration Of How Creative Economy Strategies Can Provide Potential Opportunities For Revitalization In Downtown Chicopee, Ma, Laura Selmani

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Chicopee, a former industrial center in western Massachusetts, is experiencing a stagnant economy, high vacancy and a steady loss of population. City of Chicopee wants to increase downtown visibility and bolster its economy by attracting in the area people constituent of creative class. This research represents an attempt to identify creative strategies to develop the neglected downtown of Chicopee. After more than a century of economic blight, vacancy and declining population, the city wants to research and exploit the potential of arts and culture as means to a physical, social and economic revivification of its downtown.

A key aim of …

Revitalization Of An Urban Riverfront To Revitalize The Socio-Economic Conditions Of Springfield, Ma, Sneha Rasal

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The City of Springfield, Massachusetts is one of the largest cities in western Massachusetts, and was established on the Connecticut River for trading and as a fur-collecting post. In 18th and early 19th century, it experienced an industrial boom and became a regional financial center. Springfield became a major railroad center and grew to become the regional center for banking, finance, and courts. However, in mid-19th century Springfield suffered due to the flooding of the Connecticut River and the disinvestment in industry. These resulted in an urban sprawl as people started moving away from heart of the city.

Now, once …

Eastern Pioneer Valley Greenway/Greenspace Planning: The Applications Of Geographic Information Systems To The Regional Greenway/Greenspace Planning Process, Yongbin Sun

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The public agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGO) have made major stride in acquiring, planning and managing of valuable public lands in Eastern Pioneer Valley Region. The nine communities of the region have recognized that they need to coordinate and perhaps integrate their efforts to increase mutual benefits from such integration. Indeed, these towns are poised to create a unique greenway network which could maximize nature protection, outdoor recreation and historic preservation.

The purpose of the study is to integrate each town's effort to create the Eastern Pioneer Valley Region greenway/greenspace system or network that links the nine communities, protects the …