Architecture Commons^™

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 …

Acknowledging Our Past: Race, Landscape And History, Alea Harris, Kaycia Best, Dieran Mcgowan, Destiny Shippy, Vera Oberg, Bryson Coleman, Luke Meagher, Rhiannon Leebrick Ph.D., Phillip Stone

Student Scholarship

This book is the product of nearly a year's worth of student research on Wofford College's history, undertaken as part of a grant by the Council of Independent Colleges in the Humanities Research for the Public Good initiative. The research was supervised and directed by Dr. Rhiannon Leebrick.

"Guiding Research Questions:

How did Wofford College and its early stakeholders support and participate in slavery?

How is the legacy of slavery present in the landscape of our campus (buildings, statues, names, etc.)?

How can we better understand Wofford as an institution during the time of Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era? …

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 …

Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, Lauren Paljusaj, Anne Savage

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Creative Works Winner

Most of us know Nevada beyond the Strip. It’s a place of houses, of shopping plazas, of movie theaters, and grocery stores. A place of hotels that are also places of work. A place of basins, ranges, vistas, and nature. A place of personal history. For Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, curators Lauren Paljusaj (ENG BA ‘20) and Anne Savage (CFA BA ‘22), draw on photographs found in UNLV Special Collections to uncover the intimate visuality of a Nevada of past centuries. The exhibition focuses on how the imaged built landscape of early 20th century Southern Nevada …

The Experience Condition: Experiencing Alternate Futures, Holly R. Craig

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

A B S T R A C T I n t r o In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt states that the human capacity for new beginnings is marked by the launch of the first satellite into space in 1957. Arendt recognizes this as an ‘event, second in importance to no other, not even to the splitting of the atom’. The minatory threat of technological enterprises, the advent of automation, virtual and cosmic colonization, climatic changes, and todestrieb or ‘death drive,’ belong to a scope of events that impel new forms of experiences. (1)(2)(3) Narrative Architecture will be used …

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 …

New England Pathway To Recovery: Drug And Alcohol Addiction Treatment Center Around Nature In Rocky Hill, Connecticut, Michael P. Lombardi Jr.

Architecture Theses

In the United States, particularly in New England region, there has been an increase in drug overdoses. This drug epidemic includes an escalation in heroin use and rise in the number of opioid deaths each year. In order to improve the situation there needs to be a change in the way individuals with drug and addiction problems receive treatment through counseling and therapy, as well as other programs and activities. This change would create a positive influence and make the world a better place and allow everyone to enjoy life everyday.

The purpose of this project is to create drug …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the issue of lacking self-identity and missing narrative under contemporary Chinese architecture discipline. Using ancient landscape paintings as design source, this project aims to create an environment that provides personal experience and exclusive meaning from a participant’s point of view instead of an omniscient view.

Paintings are selected from different dynasties and artists, but all based on one important cultural theme: Reclusion. Thus, the reconstructed narrative would provide a tranquil environment for inhabitant to have a temporary retreatment from the city life through making, seeking and thinking.

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 …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Thesis Prep

In this thesis, we will continue to address the issue of self-identity and missing narrative in contemporary context. Differently, we will use landscape paintings as our design source to revive the narrative quality. We will use the methodologies developed from the research to deconstruct the selected landscape paintings, transform them into narratives, and reconstruct the narratives into architecture.

By extracting events, atmosphere, and spirits from original painting narratives, and by borrowing the principles of paintings to transform them into sequences, we will set up architectural narratives in contemporary context for people to experience.

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Border Land, Zhuocen Yao

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to explore the issue of the conceptual space for the establishment of difference: the border, in both literal and phenomenal term. What can architecture do to change the way we perceive borders. How can the border politics construct border architecture and can the new border architecture in another way result in new border politics. How can we transform the indeterminate nature of the border from a threshold that demarcates into a new in between landscape typology that mediates between the need for quality space of hosted events and influences and security?

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.

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 …

Enhancing Sensory Environments Of Crematoria, Tanya Bhatia

Architecture Thesis Prep

How can technology today enhance or amplify the social interactions of people in crematoria through the simulation of nature? Crematoria typically, are religious and neutral spaces appropriate to those who want to participate. One of the most significant aspects of crematoria is location. Most crematorium complexes today are located next to either a noisy motorway or in an industrial park. The reasoning behind this is usually to make sure it is not open to the public for viewing unless they want to be a part of it. Usually the crematoria end up in an open landscape, but have walls that …

Unveiling The Rural Landscape, Carolina Jimenez

Architecture Senior Theses

Within the past 50 years, industrialized farming has transformed America’s rural and agricultural landscapes. These two landscapes have taken on increasingly divergent cultural representations in language, paintings and photography. Architectural interventions within the rural landscape can act as a device to reveal these differences. In this way I am engaging in four interrelated discourses.

Defining the Rural | Linguistic, Painting, Photographic Representations In order to define the rural landscape, it is essential to understand the way it has been constructed by cultural representations in language, painting and photography. Images of nature mediate that which is outside of us, translating environment …

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 …

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 …

Capitol Valley Ranch Landscape Performance Benefits Assessment, Bo Yang, Pamela Blackmore, Chris Binder

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

Capitol Valley Ranch, a one-acre home site situated on a larger working cattle ranch, is nestled into a rural high-altitude Colorado landscape. The design for the property required an integration of functions. A working ranch with horses, stables, and a barn coexists with a residence, thereby retaining traditional practices that preserve regional culture and open space values. The intimate and social spaces conducive to outdoor living and entertaining assimilate with the architecture and echo the site's naturalistic setting at 8,000 ft above sea level. In order to preserve the agricultural heritage of the valley, the design limited site disturbance, adhered …

The New Ruins Of North Cyprus, Jim Roche

Articles

This article is a critical commentary on the speculative physical development that occurred in North Cyprus in the period following the defeat of the Kofi Annan Plan (2004) for a political settlement for the islanders.

The rejection of the Annan V Plan by Greek Cypriot voters, and its acceptance by Turkish Cypriots, was interpreted and manipulated by certain political forces and vested interests in the TRNC as a carte blanche to ‘improve’ by development, property with Greek Cypriot title deeds. After the failed referendum the physical development of North Cyprus escalated at a gigantic rate. According to one ex-patriot: “In …

(Im)Permanent Landform Built: The Edge Between "Natural" And Man-Made, Katharina Hoerath

Architecture Senior Theses

"I believe that the paramount interconnectedness between architecture and site should become apparent when examining the theoretical constructions, physical, metaphysical, and sensual dimensions. Having chosen the sites at two different threshold of erosion (Matterhorn and Holderness Coast), I claim that the gray zone between “natural” and man made needs to be addressed in an intriguing way to create an aesthetic form responding to landform change over time. This thesis offers an opportunity to contextualize past events and to provoke and imagine something new. Architecture as the permanent, solid element determines the edge towards the solidifying landform. Moreover, this topic provides …

Re-Thinking The Green Belt: Sustainability And Development In Growing Cities, Maria Saavedra

Architecture Senior Theses

One of the major goals of this research is to study the relationship between nature and technology as urban generators. I agree with Lisa Tilder and Beth Bostein, who state that instead of using architectural technology to return nature to some impossible, pre-human pristine state, we should consider fully employing the power of architecture to produce new forms of nature. Instead of thinking about the River’s edge as a natural and physical barrier between the water and the city, we should consider it as an opportunity to challenge the image of nature, exploring how it limits or furthers our social …

The Lovely And The Wild: Considering Naumkeag, Carol Waag

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper investigates Fletcher Steele’s ideas about nature, and the fitness of gardens, in order to guide and support a reinvigoration of Naumkeag. Its aim is to highlight the protection of ecological resources while preserving aesthetic and historic integrity. This topic is particularly timely as The Trustees of Reservations are in the process of completing an extensive and unprecedented restoration plan, which will be carried out over the next five years. The Trustees have a long history of historic preservation and ecological conservation. This paper explores how these two aspects of their work can be integrated at Naumkeag, with particular …

Process And Making Of Landscape, Joseph Wood

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis seeks to focus its study on geological processes in nature as a tool to both make and read the landscape as if it were a novel; to uncover its myths and to allow the viewer to interpret its past. As Brad Cloepfil of the architecture practice Allied Works has stated, "A landscape that took some ten million years to form, millions of years before the appearance of man, is thereby nudged toward that most unique of human capacities; language." I claim that by extending the definition of making, earth driven processes can be used as tools to study, …

Riverside Ranch Landscape Performance Benefits Assessment, Bo Yang

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

Riverside Ranch was one of the first homesteads built in Colorado's Roaring Fork River Valley in the 1880s. The project site was a stop for the railroad and stage coaches travelling to nearby Aspen and a successful agricultural and ranching operation for decades. In the mid-twentieth century, the site transitioned into use as an asphalt mixing plant for the Colorado Department of Transportation. When the landscape architect began work, the site was essentially a brownfield in need of rehabilitation as it was host to multiple rundown historic buildings and remnants of the asphalt plant. The design team reconstructed the landscape …

Re-Thinking The Green Belt: Sustainability And Development In Growing Cities, Maria Saavedra

Architecture Thesis Prep

"One of the major goals of this research is to study the relationship between nature and technology as urban generators. I agree with Lisa Tilder and Beth Bostein, who state that instead of using architectural technology to return nature to some impossible, pre-human pristine state, we should consider fully employing the power of architecture to produce new forms of nature. Instead of thinking about the River’s edge as a natural and physical barrier between the water and the city, we should consider it as an opportunity to challenge the image of nature, exploring how it limits or furthers our social …

Park Avenue & Us 50 Redevelopment Streetscape Performance Benefits Assessment, Bo Yang, Yue Zhang, Pamela Blackmore

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

The town of South Lake Tahoe experienced undisciplined development, which created traffic congestion, limited connectivity to recreational assets, and negatively impacted the scenic and environmental quality of Lake Tahoe and the region. In response, strict environmental regulations were developed, which subsequently ceased development activities. Faced with serious environmental and economic problems, residents, officials, and developers jointly revised development regulations and worked to strategically deploy development monies to give the town a new future. Today, the town's Park Avenue Corridor with its wide sidewalks, interconnected plazas, consistent architecture, gondola, intermodal transit center, street furniture, and integrated stormwater management is a national …

Charles City Permeable Streetscape Phase I Landscape Performance Benefits Assessment, Bo Yang, Yue Zhang, Pamela Blackmore

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

The Charles City, Iowa, Green Street project addressed serious issues with street deterioration and nuisance street and adjacent yard flooding for a 16-block residential area. The project combines durable permeable paving materials with sustainable stormwater Best Management Practices, while maintaining the historical character of the neighborhood. By integrating stormwater management, the City was able to leverage additional funding that would not be available for conventional street reconstruction. Because of the success and the lessons learned in design and maintenance, the project has spurred additional phases in adjacent neighborhoods and serves as an important blueprint for others considering similar sustainable stormwater …