Landscape Architecture Commons^™

Eco-Concrete: Reimaging Nantucket Infrastructure System, Huaiwen Zhang

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how issues related to the increasing erosion and inundation of coastal wetlands across New England due to sea-level rise and more frequent storms threaten public and private property as well as valuable natural resources in these important coastal ecosystems. Current coastal barrier solutions are often constructed with concrete hard revetments, which have limited effectiveness, and may exacerbate erosion. Furthermore, these solutions are also not able to support cradle-to-cradle design approaches.

In studying these issues and how they affect marine and coastal life, including human and non-human coastal communities, this thesis investigates alternatives to conventional concrete solutions. Material …

Regional Food Self Sufficiency: New Visions For Productive Landscapes, Yiling Wang

Masters Theses

Food is an important resource for the survival and development of civilization. Its potential is so huge that it affects physical and mental health in an individual sense, and it affects landscapes and even public relations in a social sense. For most people, having food is never a problem that the importance of food is overlooked. However, the right to food is not equal. There are still a considerable number of people have low food access, which means…, and they may also be forced to be in an unbalanced diet leading to health problems such as obesity. A large amount …

Optics / Perception / Experience: Regenerating Agricultural Landscape Through Railways, Tianyi Xie

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between two large infrastructure systems: the railway and agriculture. It’s becoming increasingly important as unhealthy nation-wide industrial agriculture is destroying people’s health and decreasing the long-term capacity of sustainable production of food. In the discipline of landscape architecture, there is a necessity to reform our thinking to match the modern-day development in population growth, transportation and mass production. There exists vast farmlands outside our city, which support our city life with energy and food sources. How could we get people to understand its significance? In chapter I and II, the history of agriculture and railway …

Negative Carbon Growth In The Atmosphere: To Reverse The Growth Of Carbon In The Atmosphere Through Urban Reforestation, Hanchao Zhang

Masters Theses

Since the industrial revolution, with the expansion of cities, the global climate problem has become increasingly serious. The world is paying more and more attention to carbon emissions, and many landscape projects also take emission reduction and carbon sequestration as concepts. But there seems to be a lack of quantitative research in the field of landscape architecture. According to the global goal of net-zero by 2050 and emission reduction plan of Providence, RI, this project started with calculating how much carbon dioxide needed to be removed by biomass in order to achieve net-zero. It puts forward the requirement for urban …

Eco-Corridor For Wildlife: Reclamation Of Wildlife Habitat In Rhode Island, Xiaodong Yang

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to reclaim the fragmented habitats of wildlife and natural environments under the current human-dominating world. Through a series of landscape interventions, an ecological wildlife corridor will be proposed to not only help wildlife migrate without being impacted by the constructed infrastructure but also arouse humans to rethink and revalue the relationship between humans and wildlife.

The researches focus on the infrastructure’s negative impacts on wildlife, Interstate 95, and coyotes in specific in Rhode Island and ecological approaches that could potentially remedy this issue. Human infrastructure, like highway systems, has caused great fragmentation in the original wildlife habitat …

Land, Labor, Water: An Agricultural Commons In The Central Valley Of California, Jacob Lightman

Masters Theses

An Agricultural Commons in California's Central Valley examines the spatial and structural relationships between food systems, the ecologies that support them, and the unincorporated farming communities in The Central Valley. Current industrial practices in The Central Valley deplete water resources, deplete topsoil, create toxic living conditons for local communities, and undervalues farmlabor. Further pressures from climate change will inevitably cause greater instability in this food system and greater injustices towards the local communities and ecologies. The Central Valley is already a commons for Americans, as it supplies the majority of our year-round produce. Through a reevaluation of the idea of …

The Second Identity: The Human-Otters Ha-Ha - Utopia For Urban Animals, Yuxin Zhang

Masters Theses

The question of proportion between humans and urban animals is always existed but had been ignored for a while. Through COVID19,the early balance, which human as a dominant sign in the urban area seems been slightly broken and many “invisible” animals start to show up. This makes me think that is there another living mode between humans and animals.

The thesis project locates in Singapore. Asa country around by water, Singapore has countless river canal, with some of the rivers are more residential and quieter, some are famous hot tourism point. However, some of the rivers are similar, which because …

The Tek-Way: Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Catalyst To Building Resilient Communities, Smera Rose Jacob

Masters Theses

“In an era of both utopian high tech and unprecedented climate extremes, we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.^" The TEK-Way is a challenge to the long arm of globalization by looking into multi-generational wisdom, the hidden strength of every community but forgotten in the endless race for “modernization”. It inspires a new relationship of justice and coexistence by exploring and rebuilding an understanding of traditional ecological knowledge and spreading awareness of its importance and role in this era of climate change.

This thesis questions the band-aid recovery strategies of disaster mitigation through an exploration of long-term …

Re-Foresting: Cohabitation Of Human And Trees, Chengyu Ke

Masters Theses

This thesis starts with the ideological thinking of the interconnected and interdependent relationship between humans and non-humans. Taking the tree as an example, this research focuses on rethinking our urban built environment, and dynamic urban ecotones where humans and trees cohabitate.

It reframes the city from the bottom up with the consideration of root ecology and canopy ecology, focusing on this important metaphor for the infrastructure of the city. The goal is to develop healthy, productive co-dependencies between natural and man-built environments.

It proposes a utopian point of view for our cities and imagines a forest city with an asymmetrical …

Holding: Speculative Infrastructure For Fire Mitigation, Ian George

Masters Theses

This thesis proposes permanent and deployable infrastructure and devices for wildfire mitigation at different scales. Designed with consideration to the conditions in the western United States, but primarily Oregon.The primary approach to infrastructure is designing water retention systems for fire suppression and prevention. Some strategies are familiar and proven, while other proposals are new, but build off of existing practices. Interventions need to be site specific, so the types of proposals will vary in scale, location and timeline.The infrastructure should be adjustable, because the needs of a region may change periodically. Landscape systems take time to establish. Speculated infrastructure is …

A Better City For Her: Design Safer Public Spaces For Women In The United States And China, Geruihan Xu

Masters Theses

Gender dynamics in public spaces are important issues to study. Here, I challenge the patriarchy in the built environment because it intensifies the oppressed status of women in modern cities. Listening to women’s concerns is the first step of doing so. Meanwhile, I am aware that different socio-cultural backgrounds would affect women’s attitudes, preferences, and other aspects of public spaces. Thus, the thesis will be discussed in the contexts of mainland China and the United States due to the limitation of my experience.

In this thesis, I want to find out what are the needs of women in public spaces …

Rewilding Seattle: A Green Network For Both Humans And Non-Humans, Zhouqian Guo

Masters Theses

More than three hundred years ago, Seattle City was a place of wilderness, occupied by non-humans and the Duwamish Tibe and Suquamish. After the continuous human habitation of the village site, the dominance of Seattle has eventually shifted from non-humans to humans. While non-humans have been lived in the city all the time and seek a better living space.

The project proposes a multi-functional green network operating at different scales to cohabitate and reconnect between humans and non-humans. It restores natural habitat patches in existing locations of urban green spaces in Seattle City and connects them with co-habitation corridors in …

Filmic Landscape: A Performative Space With Multi-Medium, Zhihong Ke

Masters Theses

This thesis explored the idea of interdisciplinary study between film media and landscape architecture. Through the study of film theory in narrative and cinematography, and experimentation with multi-medium, in order to discover the contribution of media study and film theory in landscape architecture, and further explored a way to drive and reshape the perception and focus of humans’ experience in landscape, in order to develop a new typology of performative space with filmic experience.

The project was divided into 3 phases and 6 chapters. It started with the study of precedent cases in the field of film and landscape. Through …

Driftscape: Maximize Urban Space Uses In The Context Of Densification, Sida Zhang

Masters Theses

This study aims to explore a systematic method to stimulate and maximize the use of the urban space in the context of urban densification, expanding urban space usage in the dimension of time and space. In this context, urban space is reclaimed as the notion of overlap between public and private space in urban figure-ground.

The research focuses on Providence as a study area that encompasses different transects of the urbanized American city and faces typical densification issues. It has strategically turned the issue of densification into opportunities for improving social interactions and space utilization. The “Driftscape” principle with its …

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

Hospitality Design Graduate 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, …

A Vision For Buchanan, Andrew C. Von Maur

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

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 …

Cm Member Of Slocoe Peace Conference Center Feasibility Study, Jackson Reynolds

Construction Management

This paper describes the parking design and estimate portion of a whole feasibility study conducted by an interdisciplinary team. The interdisciplinary team consisted of three senior undergraduate industrial engineering students, and one senior undergraduate construction management student. This feasibility study was conducted for the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education (SLOCOE) to determine if it is feasible to construct a new, 400-person conference center on a site in San Luis Obispo, CA. The complete study includes analyses of the following topics: economic, utilities, traffic/road, approval from Chumash Tribe, social/historical, climate, geological, vegetation and wildlife, noise and pollution, parking, mandatory …