Browsing by Author "Katen, Brian F."
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- The Added Value of Community Engagement in Public Design for Landscape Architecture ProfessionalsProctor, Nicholaus (Virginia Tech, 2017-02-09)This thesis examines three uniquely different community engagement methods that explore the relationship between community values and the physical landscape in two Appalachian communities; Austinville, VA and St. Paul, VA. Each community engagement method is 1) introduced via literature review/case study, 2) modified from the case study to suit local conditions, and 3) analyzed for effectiveness in connecting local values and the physical landscape. I then reflected on this academic research through the lens of a three-year employment as a community development and natural asset planner with a 501(c)3 non-profit in southwest Virginia. The professional experience revealed five community systems that impacted the overall effectiveness of community engagement processes and had the potential to position communities, and their public projects, for a higher level of success. The community systems included: Capacity and Readiness, Involvement, Leadership, Communication, Frame of Reference and Community Vision. Research and professional practice together suggested that an intentional effort to understand and incorporate community values via community engagement ultimately led to more meaningful designs in the public sector.
- Apparent Preferences of Beach Users at Virginia Beach Resort ZoneMacBean, Anna Ruth (Virginia Tech, 2013-03-25)After compiling an appropriate list of beach criteria from established award programs and experts, the research landscape architect observed the Virginia Beach Resort Zone for areas of intense beach user activity. The resulting analysis of these "hot-spots" indicated that urban resort beach users visiting the recreational beach during high-use times tended to gravitate toward locations on the resort beach which were close to three needs: public parking, public restrooms, and inexpensive refreshments. This pattern shows the apparent preferences of many beach users for certain amenities.
- Artistic Action and Contemplation: Recapturing The Elements of Mystery That Make Every Round of Golf A Voyage of DiscoveryRundall, Shane (Virginia Tech, 2006-04-07)Artists think differently. They challenge the practical and apply their ideas to the contemporary world creating many journeys and excitement along the way. Without them, the world would have remained flat and as unique as black and white. This thesis investigation is grounded in phenomenological theories of aesthetics proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and John Dewey, the artistic approach of Jackson Pollock and Yves Klein, and my own perceptions of the process of creating art. The objective is to apply aesthetic concepts and principles derived from these sources to the practice of golf course architecture and expand the way we view and play in our golf course environment. Golf, unlike any other sport, is carried out over an area of awarded luck and encouraged misfortune that also happens to be a living environment. Without question, no two courses are alike. Nor is any hole on any course ever the same. Nor is any hole, even if played the very next day, going to relinquish the same experience. Daily tee and hole locations make for an infinite number of configurations; as does wind, the temperature, the condition of the grass or the suddenly drooping branches of a once upright tree. However, not all courses reach their potential and capitalize on the environments possibilities and the perception of those experiencing it. Some course designers simply place holes in a pattern to reach desired numbers of par and yardage in order to fulfill a requirement. With the unrelenting expense of land and the continued awareness of negative development impacts, the art of golf course architecture could be viewed a bit differently. By incorporating the attitude of an artist such as Jackson Pollock, or the mentality of a psychologist such as Merleau-Ponty, and revealing the possibilities of the subconscious, the golf course architect's design can do more than give shape to space. Blacksburg Country Club, located in Ellett Valley just outside of the town of Blacksburg, Virginia serves as a case study site for this design investigation. The intent of the thesis is to develop a design that addresses the technicalities of golf course architecture and the history of the profession while creating a piece of 'art in nature' that touches all the senses — the gateway to the soul. There just happens to be a game inside.
- Beauty in everyday landscapes: film as a method of investigation of sensual perception, human action, movement and landscape performance in citiesSoares Souza de Souza, Aline Regina (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-26)'I believe that works of landscape architecture are more than designed ecosystems, more than strategies for open-ended processes. They are cultural products with distinct forms and experiences that evoke attitudes and feelings through space, sequence and form.' 'Elizabeth Meyer The challenge that beauty is a superficial concern in landscape design has been examined by Elizabeth Meyer in her manifesto 'Sustaining beauty. The performance of appearance'. It is a hopeful manifesto that aims to persuade people about the idea that beauty is an important element in sustainable design. For Meyer, beauty is a secret mechanism which alters consciousness, that involves a social and cultural awareness. The main implication of this mechanism is a transformation that happens to people as they experience beauty: they shift from an ego-centric to a bio-centric perspective, as Meyer explains: 'A beautiful landscape works on our psyche, affording the chance to ponder on a world outside ourselves. Through this experience, we are decentered, restored, renewed and reconnected to the biophysical world. The haptic, somatic experience of beauty can inculcate environmental values.' Combining Meyer's assertions with philosopher Arthur Danto's idea of finding beauty in unexpected places, to look anew at the urban landscape, can beauty be found in urban agriculture? The type of beauty Meyer describes is not that of appearance. It's the beauty of experience. Authors that Meyer cites are helpful to understand this definition of beauty. Wendy Steiner explains that 'Beauty is an unstable property because it is not a property at all. It is the name of a particular interaction between two beings, a 'self' and an 'Other': 'I find an Other beautiful'. This act of discovery has profound implications. [']' It is also a dynamic experience. In that sense, Steiner goes on to explain that there is a decentering that occurs when one experiences beauty: the person is taken out of an ego-centric perspective into a more bio-centric one. This thesis presents a four part examination. Part one consists of presenting the question 'Can beauty be found in urban agriculture?', by explaining how this question was motivated by the literature review of Meyer and other authors relevant to the understanding of beauty. It introduces the site of the farmers market as a place of discovery of beauty in everyday landscapes. There will also be a presentation of research in definitions of beauty and a literature review in everyday landscapes and urban agriculture. Part two explains the methodology used for this study, including the use of film as an important means of investigation, revealing aspects of landscape including narrations, movement, time, action, and storytelling, that contribute to an experience of beauty. Part three contains case studies of films. Part four revisits the site and the concept of beauty, explaining what was learned from the studies with film. The selected site for the investigation is the farmers market in downtown Blacksburg, VA. Farmers markets, community gardens and other urban everyday spaces that involved urban agriculture had been subjects of interest throughout my research. The farmers market is an ideal setting because it gathers many elements together, such as: the various types of local produce that the farmers are selling or sharing, local arts and crafts, food produced with local ingredients, music and performance presentations, the people, their families, pets and kids who are visiting the market, various possible interactions by being at the market. So many elements are gathered in the Farmers Market because of the relationship of the rural supporting the urban, and the urban supporting the rural. The town benefits from having access to produce from local farmers, while they benefit from the support of the community for their business. However, the landscape of the farmers market supports more than the rural-urban relationship: it is a community space, a place for many forms of exchange and encounters, one can find connections with animals and people, it has aspects of a park, and it also supports local artists and performers. Film became a central tool for this investigation to capture and document inherent aspects of the landscape of the farmer's market, interactions between people and those aspects, how the space performs and most importantly to reveal beauty. Beauty in the landscape involves action, narratives, attitude, feelings, images, sensory experiences, movement and time, all dynamic elements. At the farmer's market, all these combine in complex ways to constitute an experience of beauty.
- Building on the Legacy of the Past: An Exploration into Monroe Park's Past, Present, and FutureSisson, Andrew Tripp (Virginia Tech, 2004-09-10)Increasingly, we are faced with the finite nature of space in the urban context. We struggle with a desire to preserve ties to the past and our need to create spaces that are relevant to current circumstances and contemporary social and cultural ideas. This thesis explores the possibilities of an approach to design which embraces both change and continuity, adding a new chapter to the legacy of a given place. An understanding of history as a process of development running continuously from past to present, rather than as a series of specific moments in time, provides a broader view of the ways in which the past is connected to the present. The inclusion of change as part of the past opens the way for new changes which continue the process of development. An exploration of Richmond, Virginia's Monroe Park, leading to a proposed redesign of the park, provides a case study for this approach. A combination of historical research, analysis of current circumstances, and design investigations culminates in a proposed design for Monroe Park which provides continuity with the past, embraces the present, and presents possibilities for the future.
- The City and its interfaces: An Approach to Recover the Natural and Cultural Landscape at the Beachfront in St. Augustine Beach, FloridaDazzini, Monica Mabel (Virginia Tech, 2005-05-09)The fast growth of the urban population affects city life by degrading natural and social resources. Urban developments modify resources such as forest, land, and water, but also modify the intimate relationship of people with the landscape. Many times, the damage of those resources is irreversible, and provokes dramatic changes in the natural landscape and the uniqueness of the place is missing. Despite the intense discussion that landscape architects and scientists worldwide hold about social and environmental aspects in urban environments, many questions about how to support natural and cultural landscapes, or why to keep them are not answered in the existing waterfronts and re-developments at the water's edge. For this reason, the recovering of urban waterfronts is an opportunity to promote ecologically healthy environments, address sense of place, support human gatherings, and encourage economic revitalization. This thesis and its research analyzes the components of the natural regional landscape in recovering waterfronts in order to avoid the loss of the uniqueness of a place. A section of beachfront in St. Augustine Beach, Florida that has suffered beach erosion and development pressures was chosen for the study. The result is an alternative proposal to costly dredging and beach reclamation that includes a series of tools, interventions, and landscape modifications of this threatened site. This proposal aims to return the site to a balanced and friendly landscape. Waterfronts in cities are an opportunity to reconnect communities with their cultural and geographic landscape.
- Community-based Mixed Method Research to Understand Rapidly Changing Cultural LandscapesAlisan Yetkin, Aylin (Virginia Tech, 2018-09-21)Tangible and intangible heritage values of cultural landscapes are becoming lost or transforming under the threat of rapidly changing landscapes. Researcher-oriented documenting methods are missing significant meanings of landscapes for local communities. Community-based methods can reveal both tangible and intangible heritage of landscapes without missing important values for local communities. This dissertation study proposed a community-based mixed method research to reveal and document cultural heritage or other values from the perspective of local community members in the case study area of Findikli in Rize/Turkey. Findikli's cultural landscape is under the threat of rapidly changing landscape due to newly introduced agriculture practice - tea production. To reveal lost or transformed tangible and intangible heritage meanings of the Findikli's cultural landscape, multiple community-based research methods were used for collecting data from local residents as well as those with family or community connections to the area. Community workshops, individual and group interviews, and surveys gathered information on the social and cultural relationships, as well as locations of past and present agricultural activities, land uses and built structures. Analysis of family and community photographs and aerial imagery, as well as community produced land use and cognitive maps helped place these in spatial relationship to the landscape. Results of this dissertation study made contributions to case study area with a rich archive of Findikli's traditional tangible and intangible landscape elements, and to cultural landscape studies with a method of discovering traditional cultural heritage and landscape values under the threat of change and a guidance to document them with the community-based methods to increase quality and quantity of information.
- A Constructivist Model for Public War Memorial Design that Facilitates Dynamic Meaning MakingNorden, David Todd (Virginia Tech, 2003-04-14)Many war memorials today face loss of relevant meaning to the members of their community over time, an inability to adapt to evolving historical perspectives, and a lack of ability to engage visitors in a deep and authentic way of creating meaning and understanding. New war memorials should provide opportunities for visitors to engage with them in an active, conscious, and dynamic relationship with the built site. Encouraging such a connection facilitates deep and authentic meaning making that continues beyond the site visit, and that allows the memorial's form to evolve over time in response to visitor interaction. The constructivist model for war memorial design incorporates ten strategies, and the Active Physical Interaction strategy in particular, that allow designers to create places that encourage visitors to have personalized interaction. These strategies are built on the constructivist philosophy that explains how individuals and groups of people understand the non-objective world through experience. This position was tested through the design of a Dutch World War Two memorial at Warm Hearth Village in Blacksburg, Virginia. This memorial's main features include community garden beds for cultivation by the Village's elderly residents. The concept of sharp contrast reflected in three distinct areas of the memorial recall the oppression under five-years of Nazi occupation, the celebration of liberation in 1945, and the efforts of Allied and Resistance fighters in making this liberation possible.
- The corporate plaza and the office tower: The potential for a mutualistic space-form relationshipRaghunathan, Nandagopal (Virginia Tech, 2004-05-21)Within the context of a site/place on which a skyscraper is developed, the role of the corporate plaza is usually limited to providing a base to glorify the unique form of the skyscraper (the office tower). In such case, the potential for a symbiotic relationship between the skyscraper and the plaza is not realized. In exploring the possibilities of a symbiotic relationship the first step was to research the skyscraper and its evolution. This analysis based on existing literature revealed the 'motive' behind the design and construction of skyscrapers and the reason for its strong physical image - "the corporations desire for an attention drawing device". This desire has resulted in the design of the skyscraper as an object in the urban landscape with a high degree of 'recognizability'. Although the skyscraper's character of recognizability plays an important role in the perception of the site, it fails to provide for the development of 'experiential meaning'. This experiential meaning which is a critical component for the environmental image of the site/place can be provided for in the plaza space. In order for the meaning, that is developed at the plaza, to be associated with the skyscraper, the skyscraper and the plaza should have a sense of continuity and appear as pats of a whole. To achieve this sense of continuity, the design of the plaza space needs to reflect/incorporate the elements that contribute to the strong physical image of the skyscraper as means of reinforcing the image of the skyscraper that is stored in the memory. The remainder of the thesis was to apply and test the above statement/idea in a design solution. the first step in that process was the analysis of existing plazas against the statement-case studies. the case studies reinforced a few aspects that needed to be addressed in the design of the plaza 1) reference to the imageable character can be made through the use of materials as much as shape and forms (and there might be other possibilities based on the character of the building) 2) The functional aspect of the plaza is critical for the successful use of the plaza, an assumption that supports this thesis. Once inferences were made from the case studies the next step was to decide on a site to redesign a plaza space- The PPG place in Pittsburgh. The PPG place, a complex of 6 buildings, exemplifies the postmodern movement and was designed by one of the chief proponents of the movement, Philip Johnson. The once stark and desolate plaza was refurbished recently with the addition of fountains around the obelisk in the center. A skating rink is operated in the plaza during the winter months. The design process was initiated by three layers of analysis 1) Analysis of the imageable qualities of the building 2) Analysis of the issues pertaining to the usability of the plaza 3) Analysis of the urban context These three layers of information provided a broad framework for the design of the plaza, from which the final design concept was distilled. the space that is thus designed facilitates a high degree of usability as well as a relationship to the imageability of the skyscraper, ensuring a holistic image for the site/place in which the skyscraper and plaza coexist in a mutualistic relationship.
- Creative Participation: Rethinking ReclamationHolloway, Lewis Weber (Virginia Tech, 2005-04-19)This project investigates the development of Western Man's relationship with nature by comparing and contrasting it with the relationship that Native Cultures, particularly Native American Cultures have with nature. This reveals Western Man's reliance on the concept of objectivity and the resultant objectification of the natural world. In so doing Western Man has put himself apart from the rest of the world, somehow above it. Although I do not argue that this is wholly unjust, I do argue that it has resulted in a loss of an essential component of the human experience. Creative Participation is identified as a way to bring together some of the lessons of the Native communities with the existing knowledge of Western Society. This knowledge is then applied to the practical problem of Mine Land Reclamation in Southern West Virginia. Creative Participation, at its heart, is a way to reconnect man with the reality of his connection to the rest of the world, rather than his separation and control of it.
- The Cultural-Social Benefits of Developing Green Channels: Case Studies and Demonstration in Jeddah City, Saudi ArabiaBogis, Abdulmueen Mohammed (Virginia Tech, 2015-06-11)"Creative Thinking about the future requires tension -- the tension of holding both the need and the possible in our awareness at the same time." Milenko Matanovic Constructing concrete open channels can provide a quick, efficient solution to help prevent an area from flash floods and water accumulation. However, such a solution does not take into consideration the increased land needs for housing and public open spaces, in addition to missing the opportunity for benefitting from rainwater and reusing the municipal water of cities in greening sustainable stormwater channels. The United Nations (2014) reported that 54% of the world's population is living in urban areas, and it is predicted to increase to 66% by 2050. Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia already struggles from both lack of open spaces while consuming spaces in constructing concrete open channels, only made worse by the rapid growth of population and urbanism. Although the rate of precipitation in arid regions is low, studies and evidence show that even in arid regions turning the majority of urban areas into impervious surfaces is restrictive and the result of doing so is devastating. This thesis aims to find an environmental alternative solution for an open drainage channel designed to function as a stormwater management facility as well as a central green finger for Jeddah City. It will take into consideration international and regional precedent design and future development of green channel case studies, to provide efficient design recommendations to planners and designers, who aim to redevelop constructed or proposed stormwater channels using sustainable green infrastructure practices to improve a city's livability.
- Dante, VA: Community Design CharretteClements, Terry L.; Williams, Daphne; Shi, Xiaofei; Bohannon, C. L.; Bork, Dean R.; Jacobson, Wendy R.; Johnson, Benjamin C.; Katen, Brian F.; Kim, Mintai; McGill, David; Miller, Patrick A.; Proctor, Nicholaus; Gilboy, Elizabeth (Virginia Tech. Community Design Assistance Center, 2017-02-01)The Virginia Tech Landscape Architecture (LAR) Program held the first Richard G. Gibbons Public Landscapes Planning and Design Vertical Charrette at the beginning of the spring semester 2017. All landscape architecture students from second through fifth year participated in the charrette as part of their required studio and senior project work. This endowed charrette was also supported with an Urban & Community Forestry grant from the Virginia Department of Forestry provided through the Community Design Assistance Center and funding from the town of Dante. The charrette addressed public landscape issues and opportunities in Dante, Virginia, a historic coal town located in far southwest Virginia. Students and faculty travelled to the historic coal and rail town to meet with Dante and Russell County representatives to learn about the town and its rich social, cultural, economic, and environmental heritage as well as its current challenges and opportunities. Student groups were tasked with identifying and investigating options for community revitalization using public open space. After a single week of intensive work, the student groups graphically and orally presented their ideas for Dante’s future.
- Delightful Density: The Answer to Suburbia's Missing PedestrianHorner, Jean M. (Virginia Tech, 2006-03-21)The Pedestrian is compromised in the majority of our built landscapes. Today's dominant fixture is the automobile. Pedestrian and automobile efficiency are in direct competition with each other; to facilitate one is to inhibit the other. Pedestrian functionality depends on the presence of walkable destinations, commonly referred to as multi-use areas. Pedestrian functionality is an important issue because sprawl, the current development norm, is reaching the physical limits of the countryside. Density is the positive alternative to issues we encounter as a result of low density such as increased runoff, pollution, congestion, obesity, physical inactivity, and road rage. â The alternative to sprawl is simple and timely: neighborhoods of housing, parks and schools placed within walking distance of shops, civic services, jobs and transit — a modern version of the traditional town.â 1 Improving pedestrian functionality has the ability to impact multiple aspects of our lives and improve the quality of life we experience. â We need communities that are occupied full time and that provide a world of opportunity for kids, communities that support women and men in their efforts to weave together an ever more complex life of home and work.â 2 1 Calthorpe, Peter, p. 16 2 Duany, Andres, p. 25
- Design Education Reconsidered: Faculty Perceptions of Community Engagement in Landscape ArchitectureBohannon, C. L. (Virginia Tech, 2014-12-05)Colleges and universities have been linked to society since their inception. In recent times this linkage has come under scrutiny as society's expectations of higher education have become more expansive and diverse. Over the past decade, there have been various shifts in pedagogy and scholarship in higher education, including the shift towards increased civic responsibility. One such shift is the role of universities and the communities they serve. This shift toward partnership and reciprocity is termed engagement. Community engagement has emerged as an important academic strategy used to enhance and complement traditional learning methods in higher education. According to the Campus Compact, the number of faculty members who include community engagement as part of their teaching, research, and service has increased (Campus Compact, 2012). While faculty are encouraged to incorporate community engagement into their work (Colby, Ehrlich, and Stephens, 2003), nominal research focuses on the perceptions of faculty members in landscape architecture on community engagement. This research explores the current state of community engagement within landscape architecture and identifies the benefits and barriers that foster or inhibit faculty from using community engagement as part of their teaching, research, and service. This study employed a mixed methods research design. Two sequential phases were utilized. The first phase consisted of faculty responses to the Community Engagement in Landscape Architecture Education (CELAE), which consisted of 70 questions. The second phase consisted of in-depth interviews with faculty who self selected to participate in the qualitative phase of the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data, and content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. Findings indicate faculty members in landscape architecture believe that community engagement has a positive impact on student's educational experiences, provides opportunities for research and scholarship. Faculty also reveal how faculty in landscape architecture define community engagement in regards to other terminology that is currently used in higher education to describe working with communities to solve problems. Findings from this study may be used to help landscape architecture faculty members design and develop efforts to help promote community engagement as part of their teaching research and service.
- Designing a Walkable Suburban Landscape: New Urbanism and Light Rail as MethodologiesDavidson, Kyle (Virginia Tech, 2006-04-07)The suburban landscape is a landscape of opportunity. Historically, the suburban landscape has been a desirable place for living. Because it demands the use of automobiles, it is also a landscape undesirable for pedestrians. Optimistically, through principles of New Urbanism, walkability, and mass transportation via light rail, there is an opportunity to transform the auto dominated suburban landscape into one that promotes walkability. Located in the suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia, an atypical intersection is analyzed for its characteristics of walkability. This intersection consists of several major roads converging to create a location overly dominated by busy roads and automobiles. Though there are accommodations that signify this intersection is also a place for pedestrians, a walkability checklist and a walkability study prove otherwise. The author investigates transforming this otherwise unwalkable landscape into one that promotes walkability by providing a safe, comfortable, and enjoyable experience for suburban pedestrians. Design intentions are focused on preserving much of the existing land use and not re-developing suburbia into a new urban center. Yet, through using new urbanist principles for walkability, there is the opportunity to create a new suburban center.
- Discovering the Aesthetic of Flood Control InfrastructureThomas, Jordan (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-26)Infrastructure plays an instrumental role in the shaping of the landscape across many scales and is a critical human component within the landscape, yet these systems have tended to ignore the function of appearance and aesthetics in their design. Consequently, the relationship between our infrastructure, the environment, and us has become increasingly opaque. The majority of the vast infrastructure systems that weave throughout the landscape promote a mono-functional agenda which is relegated to the background of our everyday experiences. By investigating the traditional methods of designing infrastructure, we can begin to understand how to integrate aesthetics into the design of infrastructure. This is explored through one of the largest infrastructure systems in the United States; flood control. Flood control infrastructure in is an extensive system that has formed a protective barrier between human and natural processes for over 200 years. Its largest component, the levee, is an elegantly simple structure that contains many layers of significant cultural and historic aesthetic narratives. This thesis focuses on the levee as an infrastructure that mediates between natural processes and human development and studies how it can perform aesthetically to convey new meaning and value. What is the potential of the levee to become expressive in our lives, and be designed in such a way to move us? This new infrastructural paradigm explores the implications of utilizing aesthetics as an expressive and significant function of levee design that can inform and inspire the public and define a new dialogue between man, nature, and technology.
- Drawing as Landscape Architectural ScholarshipKoliji, Hooman (Virginia Tech, 2009-05-06)Considering the vital role that drawing plays in conceiving buildings and landscapes, the question of "knowledge" in relation to visual representations becomes a matter of importance. The conventional view of drawing considers it a passive and neutral means to communicate mental concepts in visual form. The present study, however, views drawing as an essential vehicle that both enlists our critical reasoning faculties, as well as engages our senses and imagination in an integrated way to generate new knowledge. As a means to acquire architectural/landscape knowledge, drawing becomes an essential vehicle for scholarship in the field. Depending on the circumstances, drawing can capture or cast (or both). When the drawing is a recipient of the external world, it captures or catches the qualities of an actual place. When the drawing is of a space that perhaps will exist, it can bring out or cast ideas, thoughts, or sensations to an external world and eventually to that envisioned space. After a discussion of the commonalities of drawing in architecture and landscape architecture, the present study concentrates on areas that distinguish landscape drawing from architectural drawing. In the end, the personal experiences of the author, in which the drawing served both as capturing and casting mechanism, is briefly depicted.
- Drawing, Writing, Embodying: John Hejduk's Masques Of ArchitectureGilley, Amy Bragdon (Virginia Tech, 2010-02-02)The following dissertation will examine the architectural masques of architect and poet, John Hejduk. Hejduk's masques are more than the text or the drawing; like their inspiration, the Stuart Court Masque, the architectural masque is a compendium of text, symbol, history, and performance, which is meant to lead the viewer to a greater comprehension of the citizen's role in the creation of community. There has been as yet no study of the direct links to the Stuart Court Masque, the invention poet Ben Jonson and architect Inigo Jones, or what the links in Hejduk's masques to the emblem books, which are the heart of the Court Masque. The following dissertation will undertake an explication of two key Hejduk texts as means to demonstrate the architectural meaning of Hejduk's Architectural Masques as a descendant of the Stuart Court Masque. The dissertation examines Hejduk's pedagogical biography, the history of the Court Masque and emblem book (which is the basis of the Architectural Masques), Hejduk's own dumb' emblem book, Silent Witnesses, and finally, Victims, his first masque which is the application of his theory to the masque. The methodology of the dissertation involves an explication of Hejduk's texts, drawing on an understanding of his own education as an architect and educator. The examination of his two texts, Silent Witnesses, and Victims, are to be the basis for drawing out the imagination as a student and a teacher. Such textual examination is meant to encourage the reader, and future architects, of the deep influence of the past in creating art of the present and future.
- Ecological Infrastructure: A Framework for Planning and Design: "Addressing Landscape Connectivity and Wildlife Resources for Interstate Highway Systems"Baker, John Garrett (Virginia Tech, 2005-04-19)For the last century, automobiles and the roads they require have been a dominant force shaping the modern American landscape. An unrivaled interstate highway system connects major metropolitan areas and is the basis of our transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, many roadways were not planned or designed with wildlife in mind. As long linear features in the landscape, interstates can function as landscape barriers and cause significant impacts to adjacent wildlife populations. While an aggressive transportation system is being carried out, researchers have only marginally demonstrated the relationships between roadways and wildlife. In such cases, twinned interstate roadways have proven to be the greatest obstacle for wildlife resources. By incorporating ecological design theory into highway planning and design, the transportation community has an opportunity to reassess the short comings of existing highway infrastructure and improve functions of wildlife passage and landscape connectivity. Through system level approaches and analysis applied within an eco-region context, practical solutions can be developed. The following document provides a process for landscape level analysis, wildlife passage structure design and implementation for future planned interstates projects. As a collaborative effort among professionals, we can work towards improving interstate highway systems and retain the relationships occurring within the landscape. The following I-81 design and planning project offers an exceptional opportunity to reassess the inadequacies of the existing interstate infrastructure in terms of landscape connectivity, wildlife resources and public safety, and demonstrate how system level design approaches can give our roadways new shape and form.
- Ecological Schoolyards Landscapes of EmpowermentBelcher, Sarah E. (Virginia Tech, 2003-06-09)This thesis explores the ecological design of schoolyard environments. It employs a systems approach, and considers energy, hydrologic, biotic, and social systems and their interrelation. The question of how to integrate experiential learning with the school landscape is also examined, as the concept of empowerment through experience in the landscape is a strong component of this project. With insights gained from an extensive literature review, the author tests the design position through the design explorations of a single schoolyard. The design process, described herein, illustrates the potential for ecological schoolyard design.