Landscape Architecture Commons^™

Restorative Urbanism: Redefining Socio-Ecosystems In Manila, Kaixin Zhang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores coastal cities and the narrow zone lying between their developing urban areas and the waters of the open sea. Worldwide, there are more than 14 cities with populations over 10 million are situated along endangered coastlines. The fact that many of these continue to experience rapid growth, are economic centers of international importance, and are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, is a matter of global concern. In this work I examine the implications and possibilities of restoring urban coastline defenses and ask how I can learn from past efforts while adapting such strategies to …

Fluid Urbanism, Huachen Zhang

Masters Theses

As we stepped into the 2020s, technologies keep emerging, such as the autonomous vehicle. We can already foresee some of the future cityscapes. Some of the largest vehicle manufactures have already road-tested their autonomous vehicles and shifted their focus to electronic powered vehicles. So what will the future city look like with new autonomous vehicle technology? What does an autonomous vehicle actually mean? What's the potential of this technology? In my thesis, I am not focusing on the impact of existing autonomous technology, but am trying to dig deeper and find its fuller potential. In my thesis autonomous technology as …

Reviving The Hollowing Rural Village: Research On The Coastal Mountainous Region Of Kaihua, China, Rui Tao

Masters Theses

My research focuses on one county in China and the regional and local structure to understand the existing flows between urban and rural areas, including both ecological, industrial and social exchanges. Kaihua county, located in north-west Zhejiang Province, is currently the poorest county economically in this region and has more migrant workers and a more severe hollowing degree.

This thesis aims to revive the hollowing rural village and improve the village’s value as a hybrid public realm - a space encouraging reciprocal flows exchanged from both “rural ground” and urban “new comers,” strengthening the ecological and social ties among water …

Energy Convergence, Xiaoyu Xu

Masters Theses

The current state of our urban systems and infrastructure is untenable in light of ongoing urbanization, population growth and complexity of modern life, including the problem of the city’s deactivation. Current systems lack the level of integration and shared intelligence that our technology advancements allow and modern life requires.

And if we understand landscape and its systems as inherently integrated and self-sustaining and essential to the optimal functioning of our cities, then we can position urban landscapes as the foundation and framework for all future urban system redesign and development.

Green Arteries, Jiapan Wei

Masters Theses

My thesis asks how transportation infrastructure in a shrinking city such as Detroit, can be redefined as a malleable, generative, efficient synthetic system that can develop, manage and distribute urban resources, production, knowledge and skilled labor.

To achieve this, the highway system can be entwined with other systems in the city, such as food, energy, media, education, and water and waste. In the process, it will be reinvigorated as an engine for the city, a center of productive energy versus mere connective tissue linking former factories to outer suburbs, ports and distant markets.

The thesis uses a “cradle to cradle” …

Dynamic Landscape: The Theatre Of Time Unfolding, Mo Kong

Masters Theses

Human’s particular perspective and scale couldn’t allow them to perceive the ever-changing quality of the landscape through their senses. As landscape architects, we lack tools to communicate and work with not only time but typically experiment with the representation of time in physical landscape images. To create a dynamic experience, what tools of representation allow landscape architects to respond to time? This thesis explores many different types of representational techniques in terms of videos and drawings and uses them in a series of experimentation back and forward to make the unfamiliar familiar. The goal of the thesis is to build …

42nd Soundscaping: Sound As Media For Reshaping Urban Ecology, Chao Li

Masters Theses

This proposal aims to draw people’s attention to our surrounding acoustic environment and shift people’s awareness from “hearing” to “listening”. In urban areas, to enrich our living experiences, people choose to get rid of the noisy environments. I believe landscape architecture always has the power to connect human’s different senses with our environment. As the most dynamic and abstract phenomenon, sound has the potential to guide landscape spatial design and modify our ecological system. The investigation focuses on 42nd Street as a primary study area which is historically one of the most iconic streets in the midtown of Manhattan, connecting …

A Material Cooperation Over Time, Diana Marcela Gallo

Masters Theses

The use of materials like clay, concrete and biomaterials have given a meaning and identity to the outcomes we produce through time. Materials absorb and release energy that passes through them. Transformation processes in materials can be revealed when they get in touch with a phenomenon like infiltration of water. Changing stages in materials and weathering, should not be considered as a negative condition but as a new opportunity to feel and perceive the same surface differently.

The illusion of permanence should be replaced by a more fluid idea that nothing lasts or keeps the same condition forever. Since all …

Flowing Garments: Textile Waste Reutilization In Landscape Design, Fengjiao Ge

Masters Theses

This thesis has focused on creating a localized response to a global problem related to globalization and fast fashion. Both our amount of post-production waste and the carbon footprint left by the garment industry’s response to a global desire for novelty and affordability, and their dependence on cheap labor, loose environmental regulations, distributed raw materials and production, and markets far from places of manufacturing has created an unethical and unsustainable supply chain model.

The strategy proposed here began with one of the places that receives much of the world’s garment waste. As a country that both produces these garments and …

Mountainous City, Yixuan Hu

Masters Theses

My thesis studies how glaciation and vegetation systems define the landscapes of Mount Gongga, and asks how these and their modes of relation and zonation might provide a model for more sustainable and fully adaptable structures to support urbanism. Using mountain systems as the metaphor, I proposed a mountainous city model focusing on efficient urban ecosystems and spontaneous human activities. By the methods of deconstructing and mimetic modeling, they triggered a series of rethinking about the formation and relation of urban spaces. The mountainous city has four distinctive vertical layered zones, which integrated with hydrological and ecological systems and vertical …

Urban Storytelling: Rebuilding The Understanding Of Place Via Immersive Narrative, Xue Gao

Masters Theses

This thesis explores a hyper reality- in this case, virtual and augmented reality- storytelling system, focused on individual readings and experiences, as a new method of place understanding.

Insertion Of ‘Green Webs’ – A Holistic Approach To Urban Tree Planting In Dallas County, Texas, Niveditha Dasa Gangadhar

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

The urban space poses many challenges for the growth and survival of trees. The urban fabric is often knitted with concrete, stone, copper, and iron, in the form of sidewalks, parking lots, buildings, wires, and pipes, which displace elements of the natural environment. This has given rise to urban heat islands, polluted air, ineffective water management, and other social problems (Nowak et al., 2010). Currently, efforts are being made worldwide to bring back the natural environment through green infrastructure strategies. Ecological inserts in the urban fabric called ‘Green Webs’ can provide environmental, economic, and social and ecological benefits. ‘Green Webs’ …

This Caught Our Attention: Very Big Dig, Colby College

Colby Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Cemetery Design, Landon Baker

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Traditional cemeteries defined as a place where the deceased are embalmed, placed in metal coffins and buried horizontally underground, are important places but have become outdated. Traditional cemeteries can be improved in terms of economic use of space, circulation, and visitor experience. Improving these aspects will make cemeteries more environmentally sustainable, more practical for people and cities, and overall improve the experience of the modern consumer.

Public Art Master Planning For Small Towns: A Study In Pilot Point, Texas, Monty Mcmahen

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

This design thesis explores the development of a public art master plan as a tool for small towns to address issues and opportunities in their communities. This exploration was undertaken through the study and design of a proposed public art master plan for the small town of Pilot Point, Texas. A public art master plan can empower communities to embrace art as a unique and vital resource to help shape and reflect the community’s cultural identity while leveraging the arts for economic development and other benefits that enhance quality of life (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010). While public art master plans …

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 …

A Functional Escape, Zachary Spero

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past two decades, the tree house has outgrown its more recent traditional role as a child’s place to play and has served many new functions. I intend to conduct research that questions how the tree house has evolved over the last twenty years based upon changes in program, technology, and relation to the tree itself. As a result of this research, I will deliver a clear understanding of tree house design best practices in the form of a manual.

The Social Lot: Reimagining The Future Of Surface Parking Lots In Kansas City, Missouri, Lauren Davis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Currently, the world is experiencing a resurgence of the urban lifestyle as humanity undergoes its third great wave of human history, the metropolitan tide. Humanity’s advancement in the past few decades has made cities the largest technology possible. In 1952, only thirty percent of the population lived in cities, and by the end of the twenty-first century, eighty-five percent of the world’s population will be urban. With this influx of population in the urban landscape, it is pertinent now more than ever for cities to redesign the city for the pedestrian.

In the 1950s, there was a predominant reorganization of …

Exploring Park Quality In Urban Setting With Environmental Justice, Alternative Measurements, And Social Interaction, Shuolei Chen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

With rapid urbanization, urban green resources, such as parks have become important assets for quality of life in urban settings. Parks provide urban residents with both physical and psychological health benefits through various mechanisms such as physical activity and social interaction. Quality is an important non-spatial dimension of urban parks and has started to gain attention among researchers. To better understand park quality in an urban setting, additional knowledge should be explored. This dissertation studies the quality of urban parks from three different perspectives: 1) the equal distribution of park quality resources and its relationship to environmental justice issues, 2) …

Rural Sustainability In The Intermountain West, Mary L. Oliver

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Assessing the sustainability of communities is important for planners and citizens alike. Sustainability plays a central role in forming healthy, successful communities and in planning for responsible growth and development. Most current sustainability evaluations favor urban environments due to their high densities and resulting efficiencies, leaving rural areas labeled “unsustainable” because of their decentralized growth patterns. Characterized as “not urban,” they fall short of urban sustainability benchmarks (Isserman, 2005). The importance of rural sustainability to both small communities and regions leads to the question: how can rural sustainability be characterized and assessed?

This study applies a comparative assessment model to …

Blazing A Trail For The Future Of Paris, Texas, Ashton Wunsch

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Forest Evolution, Mengying Li

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

The forest we enjoy today is very different from the forest 100 years ago in Missouri. Forests have undergone excessive cutting during the 19th century. After that, US and state governments implemented forest regeneration programs that ensure harvests for the future. Forest can be a renewable resource if we manage it in a sustainable way. The site is separated into three parts, each part applying different strategy: selective cutting and natural regeneration, selective cutting and replanting, clear cutting and replanting. I will plant far more trees than I remove. I use a 20’ by 20’ grid to visualize the density …

Usu Equine-Assisted Activities And Therapies Facilities Designed Master Plan, Lindsie C. Smith

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

Equine-Assisted Activities and Therapies (EAAT) is recognized as a therapeutic approach for persons with disabilities. The USU Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences Department provides EAAT instruction and services; however, they do not have the appropriate facilities to model best-practices in the delivery of these services. This design research entailed the development of a phased masterplan to support the instruction and delivery of equine-assisted activities and therapies in an innovative and accessible environment that supports animal-assisted intervention and natural equine behaviors.

The methodology used to approach the master plan design was derived from Norman K. Booth’s (1990) design process, as described …

The Meeting Of Water, Trash, & Us, Xue Ying

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

The sewer system is an integral part of an urban context. It separates types of wastewater, while also making our city cleaner and more beautiful. However, these pipes clog and back up, loosening the functional system. As a result, we now face unseen daily accumulations of trash and flooding. Due to the dynamic topography in this old part of the city, the Gateway Mall is a great place to highlight the sewer system and play play with the rules of the old sewer system. Humans have built up thousands of plastic and concrete pipes underground to move the wastewater. In …

Partition & Connection, Lei Liu

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Shipping, the transportation of materials goods, is a worldwide industry that influences everyone’s life. Shipping is part of our lives. We consume large amounts of material goods, but this process also implies a huge transportation process. This is significant because the emission of carbon dioxide from shipping also contributes to climate change. On average each, person in St. Louis is responsible for enough carbon emissions to fill 3 largest size containers, by volume. Additionally, railways and highways divide our cities. These are connectors but also dividers, and I am choosing my location year railroads. My site is also near the …

Beyond Coal: Facing Our Landscape Legacy & Seeing Our Renewable Future, Danni Hu

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Beyond Coal is a park design project located at the Gateway Mall in St. Louis. Coal has been an essential source of power generation since the 1800s. Coal is a non-renewable resource and causes environmental pollution in the process of using coal to generate electricity. Since the 21st century, there has been a shift from coal to renewable resources. In Missouri, however, coal still generates more than 70 percent of electricity. Coal ash from power generation is buried underground, threatening soil and groundwater resources. Climate change is further exacerbated by the large amounts of greenhouse gases produced by power generation. …

Steam Illusion, Tianhao Xiang

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Nuclear power plants provide 20% of the electricity in the United States. Heat from Uranium and chain reactions turns water into steam to run the generator. Being close to water is an important element to select the site for nuclear power plants. Most of the water elements are concentrated in east of Gateway Mall. This factor combined with the underground nuclear shelter in 22nd Judicial Circuit Court help me determine my site. The inner design is a microcosm of the nuclear cooling tower, the design can provide a warm atmosphere in the winter for visitors but at that same time …

Bookscapes: A Study In The Interconnectivity Of Landscape And Narrative Visualization And Communication In Landscape Architecture, Tonya Randall

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

The fields of landscape architecture and literacy have the potential to be linked through a simulated environment. Through this connection, opportunity for education arises. This thesis creates and describes a program called Bookscapes, which presents a narrative inside a simulated landscape for the purpose of communicating landscape architecture/urban planning principles.

Bookscapes is a stand-alone computer program designed using theories in education and guidelines for virtual and restorative environments (including Huang’s elements, Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory for restorative environments, constructivist theory of situational learning) and the revolving design process in landscape architecture’s communication to clients through 3D modeling.

This thesis first …

Pitching Change: Micro-Community Of Higher Learning, Christopher Chaphe

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Being around sports growing up has given me some experiences that have shaped who I am today. Playing and watching sports is a common activity amongst my friends and family. These events spark engagement and camaraderie between us. The stadium in which these sports are played within are a key component to this engagement. They bring people together to enjoy and root on your favorite teams along side thousands of other fans.

Stadiums today are becoming a remarkable instrument to generate communal spirit besides marketing, recruiting and hosting games for universities. The iconic design of these stadiums has become more …

Dramatic Play Affordances Of Outdoor Settings For First And Second Grade Children With And Without Disabilities, Nicholas R. Leschofs

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Unstructured play is crucial for children’s development. Dramatic play is play involving a transformation of objects, actions, or self-identity. During dramatic play, children may operate at more advanced cognitive levels than they do in non-dramatic play, thereby furthering their cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Interactions among children with and without disabilities are valuable opportunities to further a children’s development.

This study compared dramatic play behaviors among first and second grade children with and without disabilities to determine which play settings encouraged children to engage in quality dramatic play. Eighty-nine six-to-eight-year-olds were observed during lunch recess daily on an inclusive playground. …