Landscape Architecture Commons^™

Folding (And Unfolding): A Site-Responsive Strategy For Reusing Construction And Demolition Waste, Jennifer Ansley

Masters Theses

Discarding—in its most reductive formulation— is a sorting operation that makes distinctions between materials (as well as objects, people, communities, and landscapes) based on perceived value. In her book Waste of the World, Nicky Gregson, therefore, argues for a more careful collection-curation strategy that revalues and re-signifies “waste” to make it available for repair and reuse. Gregson, however, points to limited space and infrastructural capacity as a potential barrier to the development of new material handling strategies. My design responds by proposing a network of walls and paths that operate in each of the sites I’ve identified as an …

Bilateral Vertical Urbanization, Yifan Huang

Masters Theses

Bilateral Vertical Urbanization envisions a bright future for urban development. Metropolises are currently facing the dilemma of dense population, small living area per capita, long commuting times, traffic congestion, and other urban problems. My thesis proposes an innovative urban development strategy, suggesting the redevelopment of underground space resources in cities to improve urban space utilization and help alleviate the crisis of overcrowding. San Francisco, the shining jewel on the West Coast of the United States, is facing this dilemma, as well as the long-term risks of devastating earthquakes and rising sea levels.

My urban planning methodology points out that we …

The Runis: How Can Social Remidation And Environmental Remeidation Be Linked Throguh Architecture?, Tayu Ting

Masters Theses

This thesis delves into the integration of social and environmental remediation through innovative architectural strategies, focusing on the adaptive reuse of an abandoned copper smelter plant in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The project confronts the site’s industrial legacy by deploying contemporary programs that cultivate a productive, sustainable, and community-oriented environment. A pivotal aspect of the redevelopment is a phytoremediation system utilizing wetlands to purify toxic metal-contaminated water, thus restoring ecological integrity and providing clean water to the community.

At the heart of this transformation is the artistic integration of glassmaking, where flowers and plants that have absorbed metals through phytoremediation …

Beach Autonomous Zone, Carl Garvey

Masters Theses

This thesis project responds to issues surrounding beach erosion on Long Island’s Atlantic Coast by envisioning policy and design decisions that activate a destabilization of the shoreline and a managed retreat away from beaches. Contrasted to methods and goals of conventional coastal engineering, a beach autonomous zone sets an extended, moving setback in which coastlines are treated, in effect, as conservation easements, allowing for and encouraging beaches to return to more natural states. On four sites of different scales representing different built beachfront conditions, I visualize the negotiations between human desires and the needs of a beach that arise under …

Small Islands Commons: Retrieving Territory, Identity And Rights In The Bahamas, Fangzhou Zhao

Masters Theses

The Earth’s surface area comprises 71% ocean and 29% land. This vast disparity has led to the conceptualization of the Earth as a collection of interconnected islands, a perspective that challenges traditional views which often portray islands as isolated, marginal, or primitive. These narratives have been further complicated by the effects of climate change, which positions islands as vulnerable and in need of attention.

This research seeks to explore new socio-cultural contracts with territories to achieve bio-socio-spatial justice. It aims to maintain sustainable and equitable relationships between governments and local communities, focusing on addressing historical inequalities. By examining landscape-based strategies …

Equivision Habitat: The Collective Dreamworks, Shixuan Zhou

Masters Theses

近年来，武汉这座充满活力的城市在经济快速增长的同时，也经历了重大的社会变革。城市的天际线不断扩大，新的商业和住宅区正在迅速涌现，吸引了更多的中产阶级家庭。作为武汉的长期居民和观察者，我看到了这种向中产阶级社会转变的诱惑力，但我也敏锐地意识到随之而来的社会成本。武汉向中产阶级社会的转变不仅体现在消费水平的提高和生活方式的转变上，更重要的是，体现在城市空间和社区角色的重新配置上。曾经为低收入居民提供住房的旧社区正在被改造成高端公寓和商业空间。虽然这种转变改善了城市的整体形象，但也导致了原住民的流离失所。这种深刻的变化凸显了中产阶级化的双刃剑性质。在这种背景下，我开始关注那些被这一进程边缘化的人的声音和需求。老年居民失去了熟悉的社区环境，年轻人尽管渴望加入新兴的中产阶级，但仍在为高昂的生活成本而苦苦挣扎。这种日益加剧的社会分层，让我深刻反思了城市更新的公平性和可持续性。本文提出了一种基于集体所有权和通过社区土地信托进行管理的社区模式。这种模式将土地所有权从个人转移到社区集体，确保开发活动优先考虑社区的长期福利，而不是短期的商业收益。其目的不仅是提供经济适用房，还旨在培养一个具有共同愿景的社区，探索在城市发展的同时维持社会多样性和包容性的方法。

Detroit Jazz Geographies: Marronage And Speculative Urban Futures, Denzel Amoah

Masters Theses

The Detroit Jazz Clubs of the 1920s-1960s existed as an emblem of marronage, or as an escape from a colonial world, becoming a spot of refuge and freedom for Blacks living in Detroit. There they were able to create a subculture that was antagonistic to hegemonic norms.

Currently, Detroit is on the precipice of a new development plan, titled ‘Detroit Future City” which aims to revitalize the city through the bolstering of industrialization and commerce. The history of Detroit has shown the dangers of what industrialization can do and alternative modes of development should be explored.

To honor the legacy …

Fluid Futures: The Revitalization Of Yangzhou Through Its Historical Waterways, Feiyang Wu

Masters Theses

In China, cities such as Yangzhou, which in pre-modern times played central roles in the political, cultural, and economic functioning of the country based on their geographic location, proximity to water-based trade routes, and connections to the imperial court, are today facing uncertain futures due to waterways no longer being critical to trade, and government-driven development being focused on first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. With this, the working-age population migrates from smaller cities toward these urban giants, leaving behind aging relatives, a less robust and diversified economic base, and few attributes other than cultural tourism that …

Cities Of Tomorrow Future Urban Planning Strategies, Jingyu Ge

Masters Theses

What is the goal of urban planning? Urban planning aims to increase the urban’s resiliency. During development and achieve a balance between nature and humans. In other words, the purpose of urban planning is to achieve an urban condition that supports a quantity of urban living while being equitable, adaptable, and resilient in the short and long term together. The tipping point is a term that is used to measure the vulnerability and prevent a city from achieving its urban planning goals.

This thesis will start with an urban planning theory generation and bring a new understanding of a good …

Starting From Ecotone Reconnecting Fragmented Mission Hill, Xinyi Cai

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to address the spatial fragmentation of Mission Hill. As an old, crowded and chaotic neighborhood in Boston, Mission Hill is a microcosm of Boston's history. Four hundred years ago, Mission Hill was an ecological ecotone which consisted of a series of transitional landscapes, located on the border of a peninsula surrounded by salt marshes. Today, the history of ecotone has been hidden. Landfill, segregation, gentrification, and climate change have caused fragmented spaces, weak connections, and poor accessibility. Meanwhile, the fragmentation of public open areas has also disrupted people's interaction with one another, and the spatial spirit of …

Cracks Of The City: Crack As An Invitation For Informality, Yusha Miao

Masters Theses

随着城市的扩张和发展，城市规划将效率和易于管理放在首位，从而创造出干净、整洁和无障碍的空间。街道更宽更平坦，建筑物更统一，公园更开放。

然而，这种“美丽”城市的愿景却忽视了各类非正式、非主流人群的需求，抹杀了部分人的表达和生存空间。

城市变得不那么包容，失去了基于当地历史和背景的非正式活动所带来的魅力和灵活性。

如果城市采用更加松散和多孔的规划方法，为非正式活动提供潜在场所，例如带来氧气和光线的缺口，非正规经济和那些被推到边缘的经济体将有机会蓬勃发展。设计师不应完全站在制定规则和秩序的立场上，而应提供自发产生活动的可能性。通过接受非正式城市空间不可预测和不受控制的性质，我们可以为这些地区注入新的活力。

本论文通过引入几种增强裂缝的干预措施来挑战现有的城市体系，作为对非正式性的邀请。我的建议涉及打破不同表面的界限，模糊用途和功能。

使用选择性的“阈值”使一些空间变得模糊，甚至更难接近或欢迎，并使它们的用途不明确。它可以创建一系列只对愿意进入的人开放的“城市秘密花园”。这些地方是有选择性的，并且具有更多样化和非正式使用的潜力。

As cities expand and grow, urban planning prioritizes efficiency and ease of management, resulting in clean, uncluttered and accessible spaces. The streets are wider and flatter, the buildings more uniform, and the parks more open.

However, this vision of a "beautiful" city ignores the needs of various informal and non-mainstream groups, and obliterates the expression and living space of some people.

Cities become less inclusive, losing the charm and flexibility that come with informal events based on local history and context.

Informal economies and those pushed to the margins will have the opportunity to …

Arctic Resilience: Adaptive Networks Of Self-Sufficiency, Jingjing Cui

Masters Theses

As the impacts of climate change reverberate across the globe, there is an increasing focus on communities already grappling with high environmental stress, limited resources, isolation, and economic challenges. Among these communities, the Arctic region stands out not for its population size, but for the threat posed to their traditional ways of life by the melting polar icecap, rising seas, changing ecology, and shifting migration patterns of vital wildlife. Many communities are living on shorelines being lost to the sea, having been moved there decades earlier by government and oil corporation dictates. Now facing impending relocation again, these communities have …

Temporary Urbanism-Spatial Democracy In The Temporary City, Shijie Li

Masters Theses

This thesis is committed to exploring and discussing the way people behave in the temporary urbanism, perceive and deploy their space arrangement rights and how this nourishes relationships between people, between people and society, and brings a greater sense of spiritual identity and belonging to people.

The modern city is the result of the spatial distribution of material production, urban space is political and oriented to the distribution of power, and citizens are deprived of the subjective qualification and right to participate in the creation o f urban cultural space. Many factors have led to the monopolization of human participation …

Appropriate That Bridge: Appropriation As A Way Of Intervention, Haochen Meng

Masters Theses

Appropriation is an action of intervention in many fields, including legislation, culture and design. To appropriate something (or someplace) means to violate its original ownership and claim it, which in most cases is illegal. However, appropriation doesn’t have to be an illegal act: it can be permitted by the authority and become a “reuse” of an object or space. For example, street dining is often authorized by city governments, so they indicate a transition of the ownership of the street from the vehicles and pedestrians to the restaurants and diners. In architectural terms, appropriating a space (or structure) mostly equals …

Public-Ish, Aliah Werth

Masters Theses

Climate change affects public space, and architecture must establish tenets that prioritize pedestrians in this difficult era. Greywater re-use can be a mechanism for creating shade, and in turn, public space.

As heat waves grow more intense, the vast swaths of asphalt that connect commercial zones pose greater risks to public health and to urban vitality. This thesis records the typical material, spatial, and lived conditions of strip malls in urban heat islands, and demands more from infrastructure in public-ish space.

Heat violence weaves through Los Angeles’ built form. Parking space minimums, required setbacks, and height restrictions pull buildings away …

Urban Succession: An Ecocentric Urbanism, Anthony Kershaw

Masters Theses

Through the development of canals and parks along with the denigration of the unmaintained, humans have worked to curate a natural environment designed by and for themselves. These urban typologies have defined boundaries, suppressed resources, and fragmented habitats. This thesis will work in opposition to current notions of the canal, park, and unmaintained to develop a new model for multi-species green infrastructure that embraces succession and views maintenance as a facilitation of natural processes rather than preservation of a singular condition.

The green infrastructure in question will more specifically be referred to as an ecological corridor: an ecocentric habitat connecting …

Making Pla(Y)Ces: Softening The City Through Play, Shivani Pinapotu

Masters Theses

Cities that grow naturally over time integrate spaces of gathering that allow for serendipitous happenstance. However, the cities we design today instruct and codify through intentional planning and design; they assign use, hardening specific function to place. Such strategies lead to spaces devoid of spirit, inculcating in city-dwellers to a sense of disconnect from the city.

In contrast to this, the places we make as children, express our intuitive, direct, and unselfconscious relationships with space and one other. These spaces embody softness through their malleability and adaptability, borrowing from the world around them and imbuing the ordinary with imagination. …

Celebrate Scarcity: Water Harvesting As Cultural Keystone, Jiajun Ni

Masters Theses

As Phoenix, Arizona’s population has been increasing intensely in recent years, the city is facing a potential water crisis because of the over-extraction of underground water and a gradual decrease in water supply from the Colorado River. To solve the crisis, Phoenix has promoted water-saving lifestyles for citizens and built aquifers to capture stormwater and floods. However, these decisions are not inherently sustainable since they are too costly and centralized without enough consideration of different community contexts. Therefore, we need to rethink the water-efficiency system that is zoomed into the community level.

This thesis explores a water-collection model that is …

City As Cemetery, Siqiao Zhao

Masters Theses

The traditional funeral service industry has enormous environmental and financial costs. In contrast, green burial, and Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), accelerate the human body’s degradation and reduce toxic substances in the land, assuming responsibility for our burden on the earth. They provide a gateway between us and the processes of nature and ask us to set aside self-consciousness to accept our oneness with the universe. By gifting our bodies back to the earth, where decomposition enriches soils and nurtures the growth of other life forms, we honor those who have transitioned to another state by continuing the cycle of renewal. …

Liquid Border, Yingfan Jia

Masters Theses

A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.

Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water …

Modern Nomadism ——A Network Of Reciprocal Moorings, Jinting Liu

Masters Theses

The wave of modernization and the impact of globalization have gradually dissolved the traditional nomadic way of life^[1]. However some people still choose to live a nomadic lifestyle for quality of life or economic reasons, but they are still under huge cultural and political pressure. According to the National Institutes of Health(NIH), there are 164 million migrant workers in the world, which can be thought of as modern day ”nomads”.

This paper focuses on seasonally migrating Mexican farm workers without a permanent home, exploring how they can be provided with a “mooring system” and, through different forms of …