Environmental Design Commons^™

Mapping Grounds For Reparations In Jaraguá Peak, Laura Pappalardo

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

For the Guarani Mbya, ka’aguy (Atlantic Forest) is sacred. Yet, only 12 percent of the Atlantic Forest original coverage remains. A portion of that is in Jaraguá Peak. The Peak is also the highest point within São Paulo, located in the northwest region of the city. Anyone who lives in São Paulo knows Jaraguá Peak as a point of visual reference—the only forested area rising above dense urbanism. Two hundred years ago, São Paulo was ka’aguy. Now, the city occupies part of Guarani territory, which spans across the borders of what is now known as Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and …

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 …

The Role Of Aesthetics In Classroom Design: Implications For Engagement And Equity, Giuliana Barraza

Master's Theses

The desire for achieving greater equity in education has been a prevalent topic of research, with many studies indicating that the current education system in this country is designed in a way that exacerbates initial inequities and has a negative impact on student motivation and engagement (EOCD, 2012). While existing scholarship mostly discusses equity and engagement through the lens of curriculum and instruction, the power of physical classroom environments and aesthetic elements present in those environments is less explored. With student populations becoming more diverse, there is a greater need for new tools for teachers to utilize in pursuit of …

Planting Power Or Planting A Paradox? Urban Agriculture, Gentrification, And Community Development In Oakland, California, Elissa M. Mann

Master's Projects and Capstones

Urban agriculture has long been used as a tool for promoting food justice and urban sustainability in municipalities across the globe. From vertical and rooftop growing operations to community and residential garden plots, the idealistically transformative nature of urban agriculture is becoming an increasingly popular subject among scholars, city planners, policymakers, and activists alike. A handful of cautionary scholars, however, have begun to uncover the elusive role that food justice oriented urban agriculture projects can play in facilitating gentrification and displacement in low-income communities. My capstone project focuses on the relationship between urban agriculture and gentrification, specifically asking: How does …

Anthesis: The Blooming Of The Las Vegas Strip, David Navarrete

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

The diversity of thought throughout the HD Studio always produces great synergy between projects with overlapping areas of interest. Here, we see a question about why Las Vegas' public green space lags behind other cities' lead to more questions (and answers) about how the pedestrian experience along Las Vegas Boulevard could transform from a predominantly car-centric space into a sidewalk experience that extends the excitement of resorts' interiors to the outside. Like other theses that explore everything from public promenades to places for social media posts, the work of David Navarreto calls on lessons learned from urban planning, landscape architecture, …

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

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

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 …

Unveiling Women’S Needs And Expectations As Users Of Bike Sharing Services: The H2020 Diamond Project, Andrea Gorrini, Rawad Choubassi, Federico Messa, Wafaa Saleh, Augustus Ababio-Donkor, Maria Chiara Leva, Lorraine D'Arcy, Francesco Fabbri, David Laniado, Pablo Aragon

Articles

Within the objectives of the H2020 DIAMOND project, the paper investigates women’s needs and expectations as users of the bike-sharing service managed by Syndicat Mixte Autolib et Velib Métropole in the territory of Paris Region-Petite Couronne (France). The paper presents a thematic literature review focused on gender inclusion in bike-sharing schemes. The proposed methodological approach is based on (i) Geographic Information Systems for the analysis of geolocated open datasets related to land, sociodemographic and mobility characteristics of the areas surrounding each docking stations. This was aimed at identifying a short list of suitable bike-sharing docking stations, which were further characterized …

H2opulent, Reese Zimmerman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This project is an experiment on resilience, in an attempt to set forth guidelines for a new architecture that is designed with water, for water, and against water. The intent of this project is to create a self-sustaining architectural model that will exist entirely detached from dry land in order to mitigate the affects of flooding and water level rise.

For this project I am analyzing projects in three categories: land, water and hybrid. Land includes projects built along the coast on solid ground, water includes projects that either float on top of the water or are built on stilts …

Revival Of The Dead Zone- Ecotourism Within The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, Angelina Damaj

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Since the nuclear accident, Chernobyl has been abandoned for 30 years. 30 kilometers around Chernobyl was evacuated and it has left the area to become a dead zone. In actuality the dead zone is full of life. Plant and animal populations have expanded and thrived, and people have slowly started to reenter the zone. The exclusion zone has become a new ecosystem.

With more people coming into Chernobyl for tourism, there is higher risk of the ecosystem being threatened. My thesis will explore ecotourism within the Chernobyl exclusion zone. My proposal is an urban design that is shaped by ecotourist …

Building With The Floods, Kim Khanh Quan

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Throughout Vietnam's wet season, flooding is a reality that residents face annually. Vietnam's wet season is known to cause serious detriment to communities, and severe weather conditions are becoming more frequent due to climate change. The annual high tides are rising every year. Flooding within dwellings can already reach up to waist or shoulder height and even beyond. Blocking the floods with dikes and other structures can only help to an extent. Water will go somewhere. Elevating a structure also has a limit - many residents have already elevated the ground level of their home to the maximum height that …

Head Space: An Exploration Into Design Code, Gaylon Lerch

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores the field of medical research for data to support the assertion that today’s coding standards are not performing in a way that fully addresses the needs of occupants of the built environment. This thesis will pull from the fields of psychology, physical medicine, and architecture to establish what current codes are, how they are deficient, and how they can be rectified, improved upon, or added if not already existing. The method used to establish the criteria of basic needs for healthy human function is established through understanding of how light, sound, and overall spatial quality effects the …

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 …

Wood City: Timberizing The City’S Building Blocks, Community Design Center

Community Design Center Project Reports

Exogenous forces are reshaping building markets among the 19 real estate product sectors comprising most of America’s built environment. The real estate development value chain is being recast in sectors like fuel retail, fast food, grocery, and warehousing, while new venture-capital interventions are hybridizing housing, hospitality, healthcare, and the senior services markets in value-adding ways. Meanwhile, pockets of low-density metropolitan fabrics—the non-downtown environments encompassing suburbs, small towns, villages, edge cities, exurban areas, and rural areas, which house 85 percent of America’s population —are densifying in response to consumer demand for walkable, mixed-use environments. Disruptions are driving innovation in each of …

Terra Dispositions: A Lithospheric Investigation Of Wet-Matter, Alec Rovensky

Architecture Senior Theses

Human intervention of the landscape by damming, filling wetlands and over-extracting is resulting in the rapid perversion of water bodies through the desertification or flooding of terrain and the ensuing contamination of reservoirs. In turn, these changes are disrupting ecosystems, reshaping geological borders, and causing irreversible damage that poses a threat to clean water supplies. As humans exert agency over local hydrology, there is scarce consideration of the ensuing ecological consequences. This thesis aims to expose the ecological transformations of territories laced with human agency by examining the residues left by water in order to deviate from the misplaced nostalgia …

Collage, Perspective, And Space: The Consequences Of The Method Of Mies Van Der Rohe, Daniel Barker

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The method in which architects design space has the capacity to shape the manifestation of the built work. Architect Mies van der Rohe is one of the most noteworthy designers to exhibit this in his method of design: collage. This inquiry investigates the connection between the collages and the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, and how his use of collage defined the language of the architecture he created.

The investigation studied the collages and architecture of Mies van der Rohe through a design process investigation. Collages were made in the same language as Mies and used as a …

Evaluating Planning And Management Of Natural Resources Within The Utah State Park System, Erin K. Mann

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A change in management style, combined with increased visitation and the advanced age of guiding documents used to describe conditions and goals (known as Resource Management Plans) in Utah’s State Parks, are leading park managers to potentially not fulfill the objectives stated in their Resource Management Plans. Using a research tool known as “content analysis,” we analyzed the Research Management Plans of ten sample parks and found that written plans had strong priorities and goals regarding the care and management of natural resources. Significant findings included strong emphasis on resource protection, data collection, and research. Pre-written questions were asked of …

On The Computational Efficiency Of Les And Hybrid Rans-Les Models In Building Aerodynamics, Aly Mousaad Aly, Faiaz Khaled

Faculty Publications

Large-eddy simulation (LES) has proven to offer superior accuracy in regards to predicting surface pressures compared to the Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) models. However, the primary impediment is the high computational cost associated with LES. The authors attempt to investigate the computational cost and accuracy by employing different sub-grid scale (SGS) models in LES and hybrid RANS-LES models. One of the prerequisites of accurate pressure estimations is to ensure a horizontally homogeneous empty computational domain. This study aims to compare the computational competence qualitatively and quantitatively using an empty domain in regards to the ability to maintain horizontal homogeneity. The …

The River, The Residents, And The City: A Holistic Vision Study For Logan River's Upper Reach, Lisa Aedo

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The three-mile Upper Reach of the Logan River starting at the USU Water Lab to the 100 East bridge has been negatively impacted by residential development and diversion for agriculture and industry. A task force comprised of faculty at USU, professionals, government and city officials, and concerned residents has developed a Conservation Action Plan focused on twenty-two baseline indicators which, if improved, can help rehabilitate the river. This thesis looks at the factors that created the current challenges and seeks to provide a holistic vision with design solutions to address said challenges in alignment with that Plan. A literature review …

More Than Just A Fantasy: Literary Fantasy As An Architectural Tool, Kae Schwalber

Architecture Senior Theses

Fantasy literature world building can suggest and support alternative paths for architectural practice using the super stimuli of fantasy “otherworlds” to promote and create more “placed” spaces and improve the wellbeing of communities. According to Edward Relph, the United States has had an issue with “placelessness” since the 1950’s, where building typologies are nationally distributed and rarely localized. Literary Fantasy has created worlds so desirable that they have permeated into a multi-billion dollar industry that reaches past literature, making the consumption of fictional worlds a central behavior in modern societies. The cultural importance and success of the genre is due …

Contaminated Mycoscapes: Designing With Living Organisms, Maria Gutierrez, Elise Zilius

Architecture Senior Theses

The Anthropocene has stripped the planet of its resources, leaving behind an abundance of contamination. The built environment no longer meets the standards set by our turbulent planet. Humankind has lost the privilege of agency in design and construction. Construction methods have failed to evolve concurrently to the intense accumulation of waste; remaining firmly rooted in the materiality of the past, they have upheld architectural notions of stagnancy, cleanliness, and hygiene and ignore the rapidly changing conditions of the environment. This investigation uses contamination to fuel mycelial growth and construct emergent forms whilst executing remediation strategies for polluted sites of …