Architecture Commons^™

Flourishing Foliage: Exploring Hail City's Diverse Botanical Landscape, Asmaa Elantary Dr.

Journal of Engineering Research

This research explores the role of native plants in enhancing the distinctiveness of cities in Saudi Arabia, focusing on a specific case study of Al-Samra Park. The study aims to investigate the prevalence and effects of non-native and native plants in the park and their contribution to the uniqueness of the landscape. A questionnaire was designed and implemented to gather data, and the park's plant composition was examined.

The findings indicate that non-native plants dominate Al-Samra Park, while native plants are scarce. However, the abundance of non-native plants offers various benefits to park visitors. Some non-native plants possess medicinal properties, …

Water Wise Landscape Practices: A Case Study For The City Of Gering, Christina E. Land

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

This professional project is founded on my education, experiences, and networks. I have had the opportunity to use what I have learned thus far and be challenged to look at public planning from a different perspective. In partnership with the City of Gering I was able to get knee deep in the facility planning of the city owned property which is home to the Community Ever Green House. The project reviews how the property is integrated into the community and the impact it has. Then, identifies opportunities to improve overall functionality with a closer look at addressing hazard mitigation using …

Building Hygge In-Roads Into Incremental Living, Tanisha Kalra

Masters Theses

Housing is one aspect of architecture and urban planning that has constantly been improved and redefined to suit the needs of people during the time periods they have been living in. People have taken significant steps in establishing how they want to live in retrospect to the times, according to their values and needs. Today, more architectural research may address the understanding and production of a healthy way of living than any other aspect of placemaking. It is no surprise that so much effort supports this spatial concern, which contributes to a fundamental building block of shared cultural definitions.

The …

Identity And Placemaking Of Modern Roman Piazzas: Case Study Analysis Of Piazza San Cosimato, Piazza Testaccio, And Piazza Cavour, Lauren Lamker

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The more we understand the patterns of how people use space, the better we will be able to forecast the outcomes of new public space initiatives. Studying public life can be done in a similar way to how meteorologists can fairly accurately describe the weather (Gehl 2013, 2). The goal of this analysis is to better understand the patterns evident in these successful spaces so that more similar spaces can be developed in the future. Can exemplary public spaces be used to forecast new projects? Rome has a high density of successful public spaces, and this case study will focus …

Habitats And Heritage: An Analysis Of The Natural And Cultural Resource Management Of The South Carolina Lowcountry, Patricia Ploehn

All Theses

The South Carolina Lowcountry is replete with cultural landscapes, each one featuring a unique collection of natural and cultural resources. These resources are valuable for their environmental and cultural heritage, a heritage which defines and benefits the communities who call the Lowcountry home. This study presents a comparative analysis of public and private land management organizations operating in the South Carolina Lowcountry. The purpose of this study is to compare how public and private organizations are currently managing natural and cultural resources on cultural landscapes that they protect and oversee. The history of federal and private land management was investigated …

The Industrial Landscape Of Charleston, South Carolina From 1884 To 1955, Elizabeth Bellersen

All Theses

This study investigates the location and density of industrial sites in Charleston, South Carolina across the years 1884, 1902, 1944, and 1955. The purpose of this study is to draw attention to the industrial past of Charleston in order to better understand the city’s historic spatial organization and identify sites for future preservation. To do this, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps were used to find, map, and categorize industrial sites in downtown Charleston, south of Line Street. These maps were then analyzed for locational patterns and patterns of various attributes such as industry type, size, and building material. This research found …

"A Quixote In Imagination Might Here Find...An Ideal Baronage": Landscapes Of Power, Enslavement, Resistance, And Freedom At Sherwood Forest Plantation, Lauren K. Mcmillan

Northeast Historical Archaeology

In the winter of 1862, two armed forces descended upon Fredericksburg; one blue, one gray. After suffering heavy losses during the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Union Army retreated to the northern banks of the Rappahannock River, making camp in Stafford County. From December 1862 until June 1863, the Union Army overran local plantations and small farm holdings throughout the area, including at Sherwood Forest, the home of the Fitzhugh family. Sherwood Forest was used as field hospital, a signal station, a balloon launch reconnaissance station, and a general encampment during the winter and spring of 1862/1863. Throughout the roughly six-month …

Vacant To Vibrant: Transforming Vacant Lots In North Philadelphia, Olivia Anne Sinclair

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The City of Philadelphia has addressed the need to utilize vacant lots in the city’s comprehensive planning document, Philadelphia2035 (PCPC, 2010). The document encourages designers to use sustainable practices to reincorporate these abandoned lots back into the fabric of the city. Through partnerships with local organizations in Philadelphia, guidelines and suggestions were created to guide Philadelphians while they revive abandoned lot spaces. In the neighborhood of Nicetown-Tioga, Philadelphia, there is a large amount of vacant lots leaving the area blighted and without resilience. This study accepts Philadelphia’s invitation to use design strategies to be applied to vacant lots within the …

Color Schemes In Landscape Design: Color Theory, Nexhat Balaj, Shqiprim Ahmeti

UBT International Conference

Color has a basic appeal to humans and can be used by landscapers to evoke powerful emotional responses. Color may not be the most important consideration in an overall landscape, but it has a powerful visual effect and should be considered carefully for best results. Color theory in design is based on the color wheel, a standard circular illustration that shows the relationship between all the various colors of the spectrum. The Munsell color-order system is an American classifying system that is used as a standard for color notation in artistic, commercial, scientific and educational work. The Mansell system defines …

Acknowledging Our Past: Race, Landscape And History, Alea Harris, Kaycia Best, Dieran Mcgowan, Destiny Shippy, Vera Oberg, Bryson Coleman, Luke Meagher, Rhiannon Leebrick Ph.D., Phillip Stone

Student Scholarship

This book is the product of nearly a year's worth of student research on Wofford College's history, undertaken as part of a grant by the Council of Independent Colleges in the Humanities Research for the Public Good initiative. The research was supervised and directed by Dr. Rhiannon Leebrick.

"Guiding Research Questions:

How did Wofford College and its early stakeholders support and participate in slavery?

How is the legacy of slavery present in the landscape of our campus (buildings, statues, names, etc.)?

How can we better understand Wofford as an institution during the time of Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era? …

Olympic Gardens After The Games, Kaylee O'Brien

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis begins with an intense study of landscape and the garden. In addition to research on the historical, theoretical, and contemporary conditions of the garden, the thesis investigates the architectural and landscape conditions of the Olympic Games. Specifically looking into issues including Olympic Legacy, Olympic Gardens, and urban interventions associated with Olympic Parks, the project aims to understand ways in which these subjects can be studied, analyzed, and reapplied in the context of a new architectural design. This combined research into gardens and the Olympic Games serves as a foundation for the thesis design project, providing strategies and ways …

Inner City Artscape, Michelle Nguyen

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The research of this project deals with multiple disciplines such as art, culture, and social connection that ultimately benefits human development and well-being. Through the architectural urban design of the main street of Hapeville, GA, this thesis aims to solve the issues of vitalization and attraction to a main city street in a design of a residential community to activate public spaces through the work and input of the creative class and local community. Ultimately, this redesign of the main street will be a catalyst of economic growth and well-being of the local community, revitalizing a home into an urban …

Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, Lauren Paljusaj, Anne Savage

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Creative Works Winner

Most of us know Nevada beyond the Strip. It’s a place of houses, of shopping plazas, of movie theaters, and grocery stores. A place of hotels that are also places of work. A place of basins, ranges, vistas, and nature. A place of personal history. For Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, curators Lauren Paljusaj (ENG BA ‘20) and Anne Savage (CFA BA ‘22), draw on photographs found in UNLV Special Collections to uncover the intimate visuality of a Nevada of past centuries. The exhibition focuses on how the imaged built landscape of early 20th century Southern Nevada …

Garden Roses:Large Blooms, Compact, Lots Of Color In The Landscape Architecture, Nexhat Balaj

UBT International Conference

Garden roses are predominantly hybrid roses that are grown as ornamental plants in private or public gardens. A rose (Rosa canina L.) is a woody perennial flowering plant. There are over a hundred species and thousands of cultivars. This group of plants can be erect shrubs, climbing or trailing with stems that often have thorns. Flowers vary in size and shape and are usually large and showy, in colours ranging from white, yellows, reds, pinks and purples. Landscape Roses (Rosa x hybrida) are a modern category of rose developed mainly for mass planting. They are collectively …

In Present Past: Sun Tunnels And The Historic Reconstruction Of Vision, Patrice M. Capobianchi

Theses and Dissertations

The following study investigates how Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels makes effective use of time and land to reprogram the modern viewer’s eye. By utilizing sculpture that is reminiscent of pre-historic observatories as an observational framing device against the landscape topography, the artwork succeeds in presenting a historic reconstruction of vision.

Skater Conscious, Jeremy Bowen

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Skateboarding is made possible by the built environment, but without architecture necessarily being designed for its occurrence. Without knowing it, designers have created environments that facilitate a social and artistic culture to thrive. And this has happened – for the most part – in leftover pieces of landscape, infrastructure, and urban settings. Skaters move through and experience space in unique ways. While their boards enable this experience, there is more; most spaces are not designed for them – and some are even designed to keep them out – but, nevertheless, skaters persevere through invention and creativity. Skaters actively search for …

Vincent Van Gogh's Wheatfields And Piet Oudolf's Meadows: Color, Contrast And Change In The Landscape, Erin A. Cox

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone investigates the unique relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and planting designer Piet Oudolf's vibrant use of color and contrast in their work as it relates to their perception of the landscape. The project is mainly a comparison of the two artists, exploring Van Gogh's use of complementary colors and brushstroke techniques to create vivid contrast in his renderings of agrarian landscapes, and Oudolf's parallel approach to creating painterly meadows and prairie gardens. The project focuses on Van Gogh’s study of wheat field landscapes, which are essentially the same in structure and composition but can be used to compare …

The Experience Condition: Experiencing Alternate Futures, Holly R. Craig

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

A B S T R A C T I n t r o In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt states that the human capacity for new beginnings is marked by the launch of the first satellite into space in 1957. Arendt recognizes this as an ‘event, second in importance to no other, not even to the splitting of the atom’. The minatory threat of technological enterprises, the advent of automation, virtual and cosmic colonization, climatic changes, and todestrieb or ‘death drive,’ belong to a scope of events that impel new forms of experiences. (1)(2)(3) Narrative Architecture will be used …

The Art Of Healing The Landscape: Creating A Sense Of Place With Phytotechnology, Tia Novak

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This project builds on previous work completed as part of a masters project by Matt Hisle under the guidance of Frank Sleegers in Hadley, Massachusetts at an abandoned Getty gas station. The previous project sought to integrate phytotechnology into a “comprehensive experience that provided connectivity and educational purposes” and used Phyto by Kate Kennen and Niall Kirkwood as a framework for applying six phytotechnology typologies (referred to as phytotypologies) in the design (Sleegers & Hisle, 2017).

This project also explores the site’s historical, social, and ecological sense of place and the application of phytotechnology as garden art to create a …

Paculiarities Of Architectural And Landscape Designing Of Small Gardens, A. Uralov, M. Imamov

Problems of Architecture and Construction

In the article we try to summarize the experience of designing and architectural - landscape formation of small gardens around us, which we need and use almost daily. Small gardens are one of the most common objects of landscape design and landscape art.

The Sea Ranch: Unforeseen Failures And Statewide Successes Of An Ecologically Conscious Coastal Community, Robert Daley

Senior Theses

The term “residential development” or “planned community” brings to mind images of a stereotypical suburbia. The planned community of The Sea Ranch, along the Sonoma County coast in Northern California is a direct challenge to the suburban ideal. Construction of the nearly 1500 homes began in the late 1960s and continues to present day. All of the homes must meet specific design requirements including being ecologically sound and they must fit within the landscape. The strict architectural elements is what provides the distinct look of the community. The construction of a housing development along a ten-mile strip of untouched and …

Surveilled, Rachel Swetnam

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Debord's "Society the Spectacle" and Delouze’s Deleuze's "Society of Control" both imagine a dystopian future for humanity in a world governed by excessive self-advertisement and mass surveillance. This thesis begins with the observation that, sadly, their two visions have become a reality. Current technologies log our movements through GPS satellite data, and photographs taken by closed-circuit security cameras, or by passers-by on a public street, are constantly cross-checked against databanks of previously-compiled biometric profiles. Every movement and transaction is digitized and recorded, accessible to ever-widening networks of information exchange and surveillance. These data-networks are altering the manner by which people …

Paolo Soleri And Arcology: An Analytical Comparison To Frank Lloyd Wright And Louis Kahn, Henry Millard

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The city proposals of Paolo Soleri, he called them arcologies, are monumental and complex geometric megastructures intended to project great heights above desert horizons. These proposals purposefully abandon conventional notions of the city.

Soleri was physically isolated in his remote Arizona urban laboratory, Arcosanti, and philosophically detached from the professional urban design community. His proposals were often too easily understood as foreign and radical dystopian architectural metaphors meant to provoke thought more than to project an actual future. There is limited discourse on Soleri and this tends to isolate him in a vacuum, ignoring possible connections or parallels in his …

New England Pathway To Recovery: Drug And Alcohol Addiction Treatment Center Around Nature In Rocky Hill, Connecticut, Michael P. Lombardi Jr.

Architecture Theses

In the United States, particularly in New England region, there has been an increase in drug overdoses. This drug epidemic includes an escalation in heroin use and rise in the number of opioid deaths each year. In order to improve the situation there needs to be a change in the way individuals with drug and addiction problems receive treatment through counseling and therapy, as well as other programs and activities. This change would create a positive influence and make the world a better place and allow everyone to enjoy life everyday.

The purpose of this project is to create drug …

Raaxo: A Post-Refugee Landscape, Bailey M. Riales

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

raaxo: a post-refugee landscape

sited in dadaab, kenya // raaxo is a transformation of the current landscape that works with harsh conditions of sun and wind to provide spaces of dwelling and gathering, improving refugee comfort by initiating a sense of community. tall, mechanical screens protect against the strong desert winds, while also creating a build-up of sand. overtime, the sand build-up forms an exterior barrier around the community and dwelling spaces, and creates a façade on the interior. Other designed screens are placed opposite the formed community spaces, providing shade from the desert sun for the refugees. throughout the …

Mojave Unnerved, Rachel Scarnaty

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

phenomenology is rich in the preserved land of the mojave desert with only a light human touch interfering.

observed through admiration and mainly scientific analysis, it is easy to believe the ethereal qualities of the land are at their peak.

i challenge that architecture may exist within the mojave national preserve to intensify the unique sensory experiences.

tectonics form to measure and analyze the climate components that create the fantastical qualities. the architecture learns from the environmental and social history and future of each site.

i have chose four of nine main sites within the preserve: soda lake, barber peak, …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the issue of lacking self-identity and missing narrative under contemporary Chinese architecture discipline. Using ancient landscape paintings as design source, this project aims to create an environment that provides personal experience and exclusive meaning from a participant’s point of view instead of an omniscient view.

Paintings are selected from different dynasties and artists, but all based on one important cultural theme: Reclusion. Thus, the reconstructed narrative would provide a tranquil environment for inhabitant to have a temporary retreatment from the city life through making, seeking and thinking.

A Framework For Assessing Alternative Agro-Ecosystems: Finding Multi-Functional Solutions For Sustainable Urban Landscapes., Thais H. Thiesen Ms.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Creating sustainable urban landscapes in light of growing population pressures requires interdisciplinary multi-functional solutions. Alternative agro-ecosystems described as food forests, permaculture gardens, and/or edible landscapes among others could offer potential ways to address the social, economic and ecological goals of various stakeholders simultaneously. The present research used a unique rubric, the Permaculture and Agro-ecosystems Sustainability Scorecard (PASS) that combines existing agricultural and landscape sustainability indicators in order to assess alternative agro-ecosystems. The rubric evaluates provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services such as pollinator presence, biodiversity, pesticides and fertilizer use, carbon sequestration and human interactions. The PASS was used to …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Thesis Prep

In this thesis, we will continue to address the issue of self-identity and missing narrative in contemporary context. Differently, we will use landscape paintings as our design source to revive the narrative quality. We will use the methodologies developed from the research to deconstruct the selected landscape paintings, transform them into narratives, and reconstruct the narratives into architecture.

By extracting events, atmosphere, and spirits from original painting narratives, and by borrowing the principles of paintings to transform them into sequences, we will set up architectural narratives in contemporary context for people to experience.

Decentral Park, Garrett Wineinger

Architecture Senior Theses

In this thesis, I will contemplate the necessary process of weaving the large landscape into the urban fabric. As stated within Anita Berrizbeitia’s essay, Re-placing Process, in the book Large Parks, “Yet for all their susceptibility to the ebb and flow of urban circumstances, large parks remain fundamental to cities, not only because they take on infrastructural and ecological functions displaced from densely built centers but because they are distinct, memorable places. They absorb the identity of the city as much as they project one, becoming socially and culturally recognizable places that are unique and irreproducible. Those large public parks …