Architecture Commons^™

Pluzina: The Issues Of Documenting A Vernacular Landscape, Elizabeth Brabec, Kristina Molnarova

Elizabeth Brabec

This paper studies the remnants of medieval pluzina, a historical Central European field pattern dating to the 13th or 14th century A.D. In medieval Czech, pluzina meant the crop fields, meadows, pastures and roads belonging to one village. Today, pluzinas are visible as patterns of long, narrow fields defined by hedgerows. Due to the hedgerows making the pattern visible, pluzinas are attractive parts of farming landscapes, similar to bocage landscapes found in Northern England, Scotland or Brittany. During the last 150 years, the majority of these landscape structures have vanished, owing either to the intensification of agriculture, or abandonment to …

Identifying Cultural Attitudes And Values In Community Landscapes, Elizabeth Brabec

Elizabeth Brabec

Understanding culture and its attitudes and values towards space, place and nature is a critical aspect in determining appropriate approaches to a wide variety of planning actions. Actions such as gaining support for protected areas, designing new developments, and integrating tourism facilities in existing communities all depend on an understanding of cultural norms and values for their success. But understanding the relationship between cultural attitudes and culturally defined space can be difficult, falling prey to the observer’s own cultural norms and biases. This project uses a method based on individual interviews and expert observation of physical traces, to develop an …

Local Surface Water Policy Under Conditions Of Climate Change, Elizabeth Brabec, Elisabeth Hamin, Chingwen Cheng

Elizabeth Brabec

Climate change means two things for local stormwater managers – that storm events will become more severe, and rainfall will, in many instances, become more erratic, causing enhanced periods of drought and flood. Two approaches are needed to deal with the eventualities: mitigation and adaptation.

While urbanization increases stormwater runoff and decreases the lag time of stormwater discharge, there is also a resulting lack of infiltration and reduction in evapotranspiration (Brunke and Gonser 1997). Stormwater detention, retention and infiltration have attempted to compensate, resulting in the concentrated point location infiltration of stormwater, which replenishes groundwater and baseflow. Equally important to …

Slave Landscapes Of The Carolina Low Country: What The Documents Reveal, Elizabeth Brabec

Elizabeth Brabec

Although much has been written about slave life in the antebellum south, comparatively little is understood about the physical setting of slave communities and their day-to-day life. Due to the lack of written documentation and few sketches, paintings or other images, the documentation of the physical setting of slave life is more difficult to compile than that of the plantation owners or even indentured servants. By completing a structured analysis of existing documentary evidence for a specific region of the South, the low country of South Carolina, the myths and realities of slave life in this region can be clarified. …