Digital Commons Network^™

Fostering Cultural Understanding: Mirroring Ways Of Living In Providence, Ri, Usa And Beijing, Prc, Jiarui Tina Wu

Masters Theses

Over the last several decades, the relationship between the US and China has suffered twists and turns, rooted in different ideologies and social foundations. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent surge of anti-Asian violence in the US contributed to the exacerbation of this global controversy, triggering an undeclared Cold War. However, in history over hundred years, there was a real dialogue between the US and China through business trade. The high classes in the US were used to buy Chinese export commodities, such as luxury furnitures and porcelain, and similarly, Chinese merchants bought American goods, which caused naturally lead to an …

Rural Acupuncture: Carefully Introducing Tourism Within An Underground Village, Shangyun Zhou

Masters Theses

Di Keng Yuan(地坑院) are traditional cave dwellings in northern rural China, with a history of over 4,000 years of use. Today, living in Di Keng Yuan represents poverty and lower social status. Most Di Keng Yuan are ignored and abandoned by local people more interested in urbanization and the evolution of society. Yaodi Village is facing such a challenge of hollowing, meaning 1.young rural labor flows spontaneously into big cities, resulting in increased rural aging and 2.residents living in rural areas have gradually moved to the surrounding areas, resulting in the abandonment of cave dwellings, and the village is becoming …

Katti-Batti : A Digital Tool For Young Adolescents To Transgress The Limitations Of Gender Socialization Through Empathy & Friendship, Chetan Dusane

Masters Theses

The genesis of this project lies in the personal experiences that led me to believe that the culturally learned and perceived gender roles, norms, and expectations limit a person’s health, educational, professional, economic, and social abilities.

The work began by finding the evidence connecting the learned, perceived gender roles, norms, and allied cultural expectations to the ability to think freely. The research revealed the limiting effects of gender roles and norms on self-identity, personal belief systems, and a place’s culture. The study further led to uncovering the link between limiting personal belief systems and cultural environment to the lack of …

The Portal : A Tool For Uncertain Times, Sophie Engel

Masters Theses

My thesis is about imagining a Positive Apocalypse. Not a utopic version of the end times, but one that sees hope in the end of our current systems and ways of thinking; a future where at the end of the world, instead of reaching for your gun, you reach out to your neighbors. Most renderings of the apocalypse we see in popular culture stem from patriarchal fears of loss of control, chaos. Most narratives depicting the end of the world devolve into inevitable violence and extreme isolationism.

In the industrial design world, narratives are used as a way to sell …

Beyond Conscious: The Knowing Of Self-Owned Anxiety, Wenyu Du

Masters Theses

To achieve recognition of when we might under anxiety attack, the first step is to introduce the practice of expressing ourselves with wearable devices- Nudo for users to say “no”, “I am not in a good condition” with no words, gently reveal your emotional status and give you the sense of support. Nudo works like the defense mechanism of humans and gathers our body signals that are triggered from anxiety as a recording piece that allows users to track what’s happening during every specific moment. It also works as a reminder for those who might not recognize their own anxiety. …

Wild Things: Outdoor Toys For Nature Play, John Mawhorter

Masters Theses

Kids are increasingly plagued by what Richard Louv calls Nature Deficit Disorder; the litany of physical and mental health problems that result from lack of free play in nature. Wild Things is a modular toy system designed to inspire children to engage in nature play. Its reconfigurability allows it to vary its form to match the variety of natural forms.

Made of recycled sail material and shaped like a balloon seed pod, the central spheroid acts as a hub for a plethora of smaller forms that can be attached to it or each other via simple velcro straps. The abstract …

Inter - : Design For Fostering Action-Oriented Awareness Towards Sustainable Transition, Elena Danlei Huang

Masters Theses

In order to meet the need for sustainable transition, it is vital for the general public to be aware of the social and ecological interconnectedness within existential climate crisis, local sustainable development, and urban individual’s behavioral patterns. As a method to rebuild interconnectedness, this thesis explores design interventions for fostering action-oriented awareness towards sustainable transition. Jumping out from the current paradigm, it tries to connect the audience to alternative conceptual representations. An integrated theoretical model built around a local contextualized issue is proposed in the thesis, followed by a practice-based case project focusing on Rhode Island Squid Fishery as a …

Uncertainty Wanted: Deconstructing Gender Gap In Parenting Mentality, Zimeng Xiang

Masters Theses

Gender stereotypes propagate through generations like a loop without a clear start or end, constantly reinforcing and being reinforced by the constructed, gendered system of information around us. For this project, I take the start of parenthood - the moment when new parents begin to learn everything about newborn care - as a critical point to encourage gender-neutral parenthood and eventually, to fill the gender gap in parents’ mental load.

Urban Tree Community: Living With Tree Spirits, Xueying Chen

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I want to discuss the problem of how to use landscape design to change people’s attitudes toward nature through demonstrating the interconnectedness of all living and non-living parts of the Earth, and with hope, changing people’s behavior—starting with studying trees in the urban area and people’s relationship with them.

The project aims to introduce a new lifestyle for people living in the urban areas to engage more with trees by developing more opportunities for people to interact with trees through design. I hope to build an urban tree community where people live with tree spirits and make …

Remembering Chinatown: A Fusion Of Food, Identity, & Memory, Robert Yang

Masters Theses

In 2016, the Chinese American Restaurant Association recorded a total of 50,000 Chinese restaurants operating in the United States, far exceeding the number of McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFCs, and Wendy’s combined. In the near two centuries that Chinese people have been a part of the American fabric, our food has become one of the country’s most popular ethnic cuisines. While these restaurants stand as testaments to the tenacity and entrepreneurship of the Chinese immigrant, they are also reminders of the centuries of adversity Chinese Americans have endured. The racial divisions triggered by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 have resulted …

Solastalgic Ecotone: The Critical Zone In Suspension, Bareeq Bahman

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the concept of critical zones of the shoreline to study the littoral ecosystem as a mechanism to unfold multi-scalar approaches to land-water interfaces. The investigation of the littoral is used as a tool to further understand the ground and situate it within wider landscape conditions. It focuses on the zone from the desert to the sea, its natural processes and its many layers that make it into a productive eco-infrastructure, here read through the lens of a critical ecotone where all living organisms interact. A lexicon curated from the study of the ecotone is developed to work …

Blur The Boundaries: An Aerial Coexisting System For Birds And Humans On Rooftops, Yu Fang

Masters Theses

This project takes the relationship between birds and humans in the city as a starting point and raises questions about the characteristics of the ideal relationship between humans and non-humans in the city. After analyzing Manhattan as an example of typical grid cities, an aerial ecosystem on the rooftops is proposed to answer this question and it forms the beginning of future research. As a toolkit project, I propose design strategies that can be applied to many cities by classifying and analyzing the building types and their suitability for avian habitat. Humans are a part of nature, and cities are …

Synthetic Undulation: Improving The Marine Life Quality On The Indonesian Island Of Seleyar, Shreeyaa Shah

Masters Theses

Beginning with a study on the properties and properties of plastic, this thesis examines perspectives and experiences of coastal communities forced to deal with overwhelming quantities of plastic pollution in their waters. With a focus on Indonesia, the second largest plastic polluter in the world, the study examines Selayar island’s vernacular ways of being and making as a possible way to understand and deal with the problems affecting their local marine health. Through different research methods, a complex set of factors are identified besides plastic pollution, including the decline in farming and practices that contribute to overfishing.

Through design investigation, …

Reimagining The Damage: An Exploration On Urban Brownfield Regeneration Strategies, Jun Jiang

Masters Theses

Residents of the Olneyville neighborhood in Providence, RI are at the cusp of being gentrified and forced to relocate. Revitalization of the Woonasquatucket River Greenway and the redevelopment of adjacent neighborhoods such as the West End and Federal Hill are attracting investors' attention on undeveloped post-industrial properties in Olneyville. This study aims to determine how gentrification can be reduced to minimize the impacts on the inhabitants of Olneyville Specifically, it investigates the social and physical conditions and designs potential solutions that can regenerate the urban brownfields in a way that fortifies the neighborhood from gentrification. In this context, "Regenerate" is …

Eco-Waste: Household Waste Material Flows In A Circular Economy, Erqi Meng

Masters Theses

The thesis aims to contextualize household waste on the more complete material flows it belongs to, including reciprocal relations between its landscapes of production and landscapes of landfill. Current one-way processes of waste treatment are repositioned within more circular economies which, it is argued, may also bring ecological benefits to our cities. The study focuses on a local community at Mount Hope district in Providence, RI. As part of a wider landscape framework that includes a study on consumer behaviour, a series of modular strategies are developed based on this community’s main characteristics, with an eventual goal of integrating community …

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 …

Records Of (Un)Learning, Gregory Deddo

Masters Theses

The internal processes by which we remember and learn (mnēmē) are in tension with the exterior mnemonic devices of writing, photography, and archives (hypomnēsis). Attempts to accurately record and document our lives often disrupt the living, intersubjective memory it is meant to aid. This dichotomy plays out in both the interpersonal sphere of relationships and identity, and in the socio-political sphere of history, governance, and economics. Our contemporary postmodern condition, as shaped by technologic developments, is marked by an increased skepticism about testimony, witness, and experience and a greater reliance on data-driven information and the structure …

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 …

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 …

Blue Loops, Rebecca Senn

Masters Theses

I started threading wires between objects in an attempt at connecting the fragments of my life, winding forms into spiraling webs of meaning. Bluebirds, cartoon toys, Jewish kitsch, 90’s teen angst, immaterial feeling. Wires are squeezed with plaster and smothered in paint, tightly wound, mummified, squeezed to death, or post-death, suspended in an oxygenless void, as if time stopped and all at once we could feel the simultaneity of things — the star hurtling through space, a swimmer falling into water, raindrops sliding off a pair of glasses. I spin wires, squeeze them with wet plaster, mummify them, until they …

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 …

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 …

Like Water Taught By Thirst, Emily Wilker

Masters Theses

I am interested in the practice of painting as a way to deepen one’s relationship with nature and its many ecosystems. To me, art not only illustrates these experiences of entanglement, but also is a realm for a sensorial engagement that surpasses representation. During my time at RISD, I have learned that painting can act as a generative tool, a therapeutic ritual, a release of energy, and a place to bridge connections to other facets of my life. It is through the conception, envelopment, and evolution of materials and their relationship to an anthropocentric society that I continue to investigate …

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 …

Everyone I Have Every Crowed With 2021-, Hannah Lutz Winkler

Masters Theses

I started taking walks at sunset to feel better. It was January of 2021, nearly a year into the COVID pandemic. On these antidepressant walks, I kept running into crows, participating in their own sunset ritual, hundreds of them in a raucous shimmering black net. They flew around the city, my hometown, gathering, gossiping, and ultimately sleeping together in trees. I was both intoxicated by and jealous of the nightly crow party—standing under them was my only crowd experience in nine months. For the next three months, I tracked them every night I could. My solo practice of paying the …

The Broken Thought Machine [Broh-Kuhn Thawt Muh-Sheen], Michael Dispensa

Masters Theses

A bulky, inflamed, excess volume of overactive targeted neuron choking nonsense that profits off creating fear-induced high-speed bowel movements.

My current work seeks to create space for intrusive thoughts and images that repeat, disturb, distress, and contaminate. The source of these intrusions is called the Broken Thought Machine(BTM). I use multimedia practices of drawing, sculpture, performance, and video to unearth the origins and properties of the BTM to then perpetuate its product to an absurd degree. This obsessive reiteration brings negativity to a threshold where horror and detachment can spontaneously metamorphose into humor and compassion.

The BTM can be an …

Building Narratives: Instilling Old Stories In New Spaces, Sharanya Aggarwal

Masters Theses

Here in Gurugram, tall, uniform, cold, imposing buildings loom over a newly developed metropolis, futilely competing with each other to become remarkable landmarks of the near future. Here, I close my eyes and fondly remember the celebratory streets and inextinguishable, vibrant atmosphere of New Delhi, one of the oldest cities in the country, which I used to joyfully call my home. Opening my eyes, all I see when I look outside my window are either vast spans of bare land or vertical skyscrapers and construction sites. Memories of home, objects, places, and streets are my living archive of my past …

Adaptive Reuse As Evidence Of Scientific Progress: Recontextualizing A Space For Growing Knowledge, Kayci Gallagher

Masters Theses

With the constantly evolving initiatives of astronomical exploration comes the obsolescence of instruments conceived to support research; a sure sign of the scientific process. However, architecture constructed to shelter these constantly shifting tools often remains fixed, growing incapable of supporting advancing technology. Typically, these shelters are sidelined in favor of new infrastructure. Many optical observatories around the world face this issue and must choose between preserving the past or abandoning the site altogether. That these buildings are no longer needed for revolutionary research shouldn’t be disappointing: it is a signal of human achievement, and the scientific process requires a more …

Feeling At Home: Working With The Rhythm Of The Day To Support Seniors In Urban Villages, Guoxi Zhou

Masters Theses

My focus is on the continuously growing aging population. We know the world is rapidly aging. We know countries and cities are experiencing a demographic shift. But we keep neglecting and underestimating those changes. Cities do not pay attention to and prepare for the needs of the elderly. Given that China has a huge number of seniors living in the city, I am working on the topic of how landscape architecture can support the seniors’ needs within the city’s aging population in Shenzhen. Using the urban Village of Gangxia in Shenzhen, China as a testing ground, in my thesis, I …

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 …