Environmental Design Commons^™

Continuous Extremes: Architecture Of Uncertainty In Poland, 1945—, Cayce Davis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

In this thesis, architecture situates between extremes. The dichotomies of destruction and construction, mobility and fixity, performance and reality, inside and outside, and form and time frame architecture and the processes through which it is made. The context is Poland in the fallout of the year 1945, when Warsaw’s unique, nearly total destruction and the ascendance of a new communist regime raised the political stakes of architecture. The thesis focuses on a cast of characters in architecture and related artistic disciplines—individuals haunted by the traumas of their own pasts, negotiating a Polish state that created oppressive limitations through artistic mandates …

An Archaeological And Spatial Exploration Of Yard Use At The Oval Site, Stratford Hall Plantation: A Mid-18th-Century Mixed-Use Site On The Northern Neck Of Virginia, Delaney Resweber

Student Research Submissions

The Oval Site (44WM80) is located on the grounds of Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia and was excavated by the Department of and Center for Historic Preservation at Mary Washington College/the University of Mary Washington between 2001- 2014. The Oval Site was one component of a larger eighteenth-century plantation and is comprised of four structures. These buildings are currently interpreted as an overseer’s house, a barn, a kitchen, and an unidentified building. The kitchen had also served as a quarter for the enslaved Africans and/or African Americans that worked on this site. Using methods developed in landscape archaeology …

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …