Landscape Architecture Commons^™

Brutalism And The Public University: Integrating Conservation Into Comprehensive Campus Planning, Shelby Schrank

Masters Theses

The University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Commonwealth’s flagship campus, is home to several Brutalist buildings. Similar to other buildings of this genre, they have gone unrecognized for their importance to the campus and their prominent architectural significance. Additionally, due to the ravages of close to 50 years of exposure coupled with limited maintenance and, in some instances, neglect they are now at a point where restorative maintenance is critical in ensuring their future contribution to the campus.

This thesis addresses the importance of creating a comprehensive, long-term plan for these buildings, by first looking to the University’s most prominent, yet …

Americanization Of Islamic Cultural Design: Erasure, Orientalism/Exoticism, And Americanization, Peter L. Stanley

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Islam arrived in North America primarily through the importation of Muslim African slaves. Subsequent suppression of the slaves, and by extension their religion and places of worship, generated a lack of understanding and misunderstanding about Islam. Over time, this misunderstanding evolved into xenophobic and orientalist representations of the religion. This Capstone project researches Islam’s roots in colonial America through the period before the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and its evolution after the Columbian Exposition, with defining time periods expressed as Erasure, Orientalism/Exoticism, and Americanization. With the help of cultural trust organizations such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the contemporary Americanization …

Apollo And Columbia: Landscape As Power In Washington D.C. And Versailles., Beau Cameron Burris

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The grounds of the Palace of Versailles and the urban fabric of Washington, D.C. are monumentally scaled, richly mythologized landscapes of power. Through massive baroque geometries, both sites impress order on the vastness of space, reframing it for the glory of their respective creators. Within these grand spaces, symbolism and iconography provide narratives of conquest, violence, glory, and fear. Stories of seemingly immortal men emerge from classical traditions of architecture and sculpture. Louis XIV and the presidents and war heroes of the United States have become god-heroes in bronze and stone, presiding over palatial grounds and public space as if …

Walkability Of Suburban Retrofits Of The Washington Dc Area: Immersion Into Qualitative Constructs, David Sweere

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The majority of the United States population is living in the suburbs, and yet the suburban built fabric has developed with spatial conditions that have failed to prove their efficacy on environmental, social or economic terms. Most contemporary architectural and urban theorists agree that the suburban condition is inherently problematic. In a 2010 Ted Talk, architect and urban designer Ellen Dunham-Jones discusses the problematic state of the suburban built condition, citing dependence on the vehicle, sparseness of built form, environmental costs, transportation costs, and even increased obesity rates (Dunham-Jones 2010). Because the suburbs comprise the majority of our “urbanized” areas …

Hut Annandale: Humblest Dwelling, Ruiqi Zhu

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Lots of us have a dream deep down in the heart: to get away from the congested cities and live in a hut in nature. French port Jean Wahl once wrote: The frothing of the hedges I keep deep inside me. In my project, he explored this dream and constructed a group of architectural structures by hand for those potential hermits. Studying at Bard College, I have found this region is a place with a great hermit culture. With the picturesque scene of nature and the location near the New York Metropolitan area, here the mid-Hudson Valley has attracted lots …