Scholarly Works, School of Design

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/136507

Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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Students’ Perceptions of Generative AI Image Tools in Design Education: Insights from Architectural Education
Huh, Michelle Boyoung; Miri, Marjan; Tracy, Torrey (MDPI, 2025-09-05)
The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has sparked growing interest across educational disciplines, reshaping how knowledge is produced, represented, and assessed. While recent research has increasingly explored the implications of text-based tools such as ChatGPT in education, far less attention has been paid to image-based GenAI tools—despite their particular relevance to fields grounded in visual communication and creative exploration, such as architecture and design. These disciplines raise distinct pedagogical and ethical questions, given their reliance on iteration, authorship, and visual representation as core elements of learning and practice. This exploratory study investigates how architecture and interior architecture students perceive the use of AI-generated images, focusing on ethical responsibility, educational relevance, and career implications. To ensure participants had sufficient exposure to visual GenAI tools, we conducted a series of workshops before surveying 42 students familiar with image generation processes. Findings indicate strong enthusiasm for GenAI image tools, which students viewed as supportive during early-stage design processes and beneficial to their creativity and potential future professional competitiveness. Participants regarded AI use as ethically acceptable when accompanied by transparent acknowledgment. However, acceptance declined in later design stages, where originality and critical judgment were perceived as more central. While limited in scope, this exploratory study foregrounds student voices to offer preliminary insights into evolving conversations about AI in creative education and to inform future reflection on developing ethically and pedagogically responsive curricula across the design disciplines.
Linking Visual–Auditory Cues to Restoration: The Mediating Role of Perceived Biodiversity
Ha, Jaeyoung; Kim, Hyung Jin; Lekhon Alam, M. M. (MDPI, 2025-08-13)
Due to rapid urbanization over the past five decades, there has been growing interest in the role of biodiversity in supporting human well-being. While previous research highlights the role of landscape biodiversity in psychological restoration, the pathway linking visual and auditory cues to perceived biodiversity—and subsequently to restorative outcomes—remains poorly understood. This study explores how visual and auditory stimuli influence human perception, including perceived biodiversity, preference, and restorative effects, within environments that maintain a consistent level of ecological biodiversity. This study constructed 16 hypothetical environments by combining three visual factors (species evenness, vegetation height, and plant color) with one auditory factor (presence or absence of natural sound), holding actual biodiversity constant. By comparing results from ANOVA and mixed-effect modeling, our analysis revealed important contrasts between the direct and indirect effects of visual and auditory features on perceived biodiversity and restoration. Plant height and natural sound consistently demonstrated direct positive effects on restorative outcomes. In contrast, plant color and species evenness influenced restoration indirectly, mediated through perceived biodiversity. The mixed-effect model indicated a partial mediation pathway between landscape features and restorative effects—an effect not observed in the ANOVA analysis. Surprisingly, species evenness was not directly associated with restorative outcomes, but was indirectly linked via perceived biodiversity. Similarly, while color enhanced biodiversity perception, it did not directly improve mental restoration and, under some conditions, may even contribute to overstimulation. These findings suggest that the restorative benefits of nature arise not only from the ecological composition of landscapes but also from how biodiversity is perceived. Designers and planners should consider not only biodiversity itself, but also how it is presented and perceived through multisensory experiences.
Underlands(capes) in the Anthropocene
Rosier, Shaun (2025-06-10)
Invited lecture hosted by Victoria University of Wellington's School of Architecture and the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects.
Encounters with Foreign Lands: developing a sensuous empirical approach to reading depth
Rosier, Shaun (2025-03-28)
Understanding the effects of spatial scaling on the relationship between urban structure and biodiversity
Choi, Dennis Heejoon; Darling, Lindsay; Ha, Jaeyoung; Shao, Jinyuan; Song, Hunsoo; Fei, Songlin; Hardiman, Brady S. (Elsevier, 2025-04)
Consideration of spatial dependence in heterogeneous urban landscapes is crucial for understanding how urban landscapes shape biodiversity. However, understanding the linkage between urban landscape patterns, both vertically and horizontally, and urban-dwelling bird species at various spatial scales remains an unsolved question. Here, we investigated how patterns of vertical and horizontal urban landscape structure influence urban-dwelling bird species at various spatial scales in the Chicago Region. We utilize a high-density Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) dataset to exam ALS-derived metrics (foliage height diversity, canopy openness, and building volume) in relation to bird diversity. Our results show that LiDAR-derived metrics exhibited significant variation across spatial scales. The negative impact of building volume on bird species is greatest at the smallest scale (slope = -0.24 at 50 m radius), but its effect declined as the scale increased (slope = 0.00 at 500 m radius). Foliage height diversity did not influence bird diversity at small spatial scales but shows a positive effect on bird diversity over 150 m radius (slope = 0.05 to 0.11). Canopy openness changed its sign of slope from negative to positive as the buffer radius increased (between 150 and 200 m buffer radii), indicating that openness may have different roles depending on the spatial scale. Based on our findings, a buffer radius of 150–200 m was concluded to be the threshold distinguishing local and landscape-level variables in this study. In general, horizontal landscape patterns have a stronger influence on urban biodiversity than vertical structures. However, our findings suggest that enhancing the vertical complexity of canopy structures in existing green spaces could be an effective strategy for sustaining bird diversity in urban areas, particularly where expanding green spaces is not feasible. Our study enhances the understanding of urban biodiversity dynamics and provides practical implications for urban landscape management and planning.
An urbanistic approach to aggregate quarrying: a case study in Brampton, Ontario
Rosier, Shaun (Taylor & Francis, 2025-02-12)
The reclamation of urban aggregate quarries has been recognised as a serious concern for built environment design and planning fields. However, much of the literature and research centred on this challenge tends to focus on the immediate techno-scientific reclamation practices employed at a site scale often towards the end of extraction. This essay argues for a reversal of this relationship between the designer/planner and the extraction-reclamation timeline. It does so by articulating an approach based upon ‘scenario planning’ that places reclamation planning and design at the beginning of the quarry timeline rather than at the end. Further, an example of this approach in Brampton, Ontario, is analysed to determine the strengths and weaknesses of urbanistic reclamation strategies. If we pivot towards designing reclaimed landscapes from the outset, we can use such sites as the beginning point for structuring cities, rather than leaving them as holes in the urban fabric.
Comparative Analysis of Restorative Interior Design Elements: Screen-Based Versus Virtual Reality Evaluations for Future Medical Treatment Prospects
Tural, Alp; Tural, Elif (MDPI, 2024-12-31)
Given the increasing prevalence of anxiety and depression, this research aims to identify design features that enhance the sense of restoration, with the goal of supporting mental and behavioral healthcare facility design. This study employed both screen-based and virtual reality (VR) stimuli to evaluate the perceived restorativeness of different interior settings. The key variables analyzed included window view access, view content, materiality, and room geometry. Thirty-five undergraduate and graduate students assessed 16 distinct interior environments. Findings indicate that the VR presentations generally produced higher restorativeness scores compared with screen-based presentations, though this effect varied across stimuli. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that larger windows consistently correlated with higher restorativeness scores in both presentation modes. Views of water were rated as most restorative, followed by wooded areas. Natural materials were perceived as significantly more restorative than other materials, particularly in VR presentations. Varied ceiling designs, especially vaulted ceilings, were associated with evaluations of higher restorativeness compared with flat ceiling designs, with this effect more pronounced in VR. This research underscores the potential of VR technology to simulate and assess interior design interventions, offering insights into creating more effective and personalized restorative environments in mental health treatment facilities. The findings can inform evidence-based design strategies for healthcare spaces, supporting treatment processes and patient well-being.
Understanding product hibernation periods with children’s products and exploring motivations and barriers for product care to encourage their reuse
Choi, Yoon Jung; Kennedy, Brook S. (Elsevier, 2024-06-07)
Product hibernation, where end-of-life products are kept but no longer used, poses a significant barrier to prolonging product lifespans within a circular economy. Obsolete products challenge users' decision-making process for the after-use phase and are often discarded despite being perfectly functional. This is especially common in households with growing children, where children's products are outgrown but not discarded. This paper presents the survey findings of 157 hibernating children's products, and interviews with five UK families, exploring reasons for product hibernation, and related reuse barriers. An idea generation workshop further explored the owners’ reuse experience with their children's products and identified fourteen factors that suggest opportunities to shift users' perception of end-of-life product value, care and reuse for these products, ultimately reducing product hibernation. This paper makes an original contribution to product reuse knowledge with the development of a framework for understanding reuse motivations and barriers through the lens of care.
The socialization of adolescent housing awareness
Gawrys, Michael R.; Skobba, Kim (Wiley, 2024-05-03)
Adolescent attitudes toward housing are influenced by established norms, particularly preferences for single-family detached dwellings, years before making independent housing-related decisions. In today's challenging homeownership landscape, this study, guided by housing adjustment theory, explores the timing and factors shaping adolescents' awareness of housing. In surveying 12–18-year-old 4-H participants in a Southeastern state, age emerges as a pivotal factor, with awareness of housing by at least age 12. The impact of housing costs on participants' responses suggests exposure to broader affordability challenges. Analyzing these early experiences may offer educational opportunities to empower adolescents to make informed housing decisions later in life.
Urban Geologics / Topographic Spectres
Rosier, Shaun (2024-08)
The conditions of everyday modernity are saturated by an oft-unrecognised relation to mineral life and memory. The vital energies of various urbanisms are in a double bind where it is at once parasitically devouring subterranean material to fuel its growth whilst obscuring these feeding patterns. Geologic strata crushed and sifted to form concrete, aggregate, and sand. The forces of contemporary development and capitalism seek to extract material from a constructed notion of sub terra nullius. This paper argues for a return to the aesthetics of geologic material in the effort to avoid pure commodification of strata in the construction of everyday urban fields and encounters. It does so through graphic and textual accounts of two urban landscapes of extraction; Horokiwi in New Zealand, and Twin Creeks in Virginia, USA; highlighting the role of material in their surrounding built environments and potential as portals to the affective force of the underworld. We no longer understand where the material invested in concrete, benchtops, beams and columns was taken from. Revisiting the aesthetic force of strata and geologic material provides us an opportunity to re-situate our sociocultural relationships to longue durée inherent to the places in which we live, work, relax, and stand.
Problematising the Sublime: Affective Archives in Landscape Design
Rosier, Shaun (2024-10-12)
This paper brings forth the problem of bodily, affective, intelligence and its role within landscape architectural design processes. Specifically, how might landscape designers draw on their internal memory-archives of body-environment affects to help shape design decisions? Despite sustained interest in phenomenology and other theories of environmental aesthetics, the operations of spatial affective experience have remained ambiguous within design discourse. This has led to the design of spatial experience being viewed with suspicion due to claims of ‘mere subjectivity’ or a lack of rigor compared to recent trends towards universality and positivism. To counter this, this paper argues that the concreteness of affect can be made present through Deleuze and Guattari’s aesthetics of affect and assemblages. More specifically, experiences of the [landscape]sublime can be understood as an ecological encounter with intensity that disrupts our being’s ability to reference it against one’s bodily archive of affects. This disruption shocks us into determining a creative solution to the spatial and sensory problem at hand, which at first may manifest as a sense of terror. Still, as the processes of experimentation unfold, we find ourselves reveling in the joy of the creation of a new self through the processes of individuation and actualization. Through this aesthetics of affect, this paper argues that although the sublime is an ‘experiential limit case’, it reveals how other forms of landscape experience can be deciphered and made concrete through and for design.
Transforming food waste into natural pigments: Raising community school awareness of food waste recycling opportunities through co-design methods
Choi, Yoon Jung; Okumura, Hiromi; Kennedy, Brook; Lee, Chang Hee; Gendell, Avery (DRS Digital Library, 2024-06)
In a world grappling with ongoing food scarcity, the issue of food waste in US school cafeterias remains a pressing concern, often without sufficient attention given to recycling. School communities play a pivotal role in shaping behaviors, as individuals are significantly influenced by their peers' actions and opinions, making them more open to positive reinforcement. This research explores design opportunity to raise awareness and encourage food waste recycling behaviors through a co-design approach. Students are invited to participate in the interactive exhibitions, where they learn and provide feedback about the pigment-making process from food waste using a toolkit for art painting. Through sharing their experiences, students help spread awareness and foster a commitment to recycling behaviors among their peers. Engaging students as active participants in these activities shows promise as a strategy to increase awareness of food waste recycling opportunities and empower school communities to support circular food systems.
Implementation of Augmented Reality in Landscape Architectural Education: Enhancing Understanding of Three-Dimensional Space
Ha, Jaeyoung; Ogle, J. Todd; Lekhon Alam, M. M. (Wichmann Verlag, 2024-05-30)
While there is a growing interest in the application of immersive visualization technology in design work, much less is known about its role in design education. This study explores how augmented reality (AR) serves as an effective tool for understanding students' design work within three-dimensional space. In a landscape design studio course, students were tasked with producing 3D models for their site designs as a part of the design studio outcome. These 3D models were projected onto the actual sites using an AR device, `followed by semi-structured interviews. The results of this study indicated that AR can contribute to the understanding of design proposals by improving spatial awareness and relationships within urban environments. Additionally, also envisioned that AR could be an effective communication tool for conveying their design ideas and concepts.
Eye-Tracking and Visual Preference: Maybe Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder?
Miller, Patrick A. (MDPI, 2024-04-29)
The “Content-Identifying Methodology”, or CIM, is an approach developed by environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan to understand the landscape characteristics that people find visually attractive. The Kaplans did this by surveying people’s landscape preferences and then analyzing the preferences to develop sets of landscape scenes to which people reacted in a similar pattern. The underlying assumption is that a common stimulus or content exists in the photographs of a set responsible for the preference. However, identifying the common stimulus or content in each set or grouping of scenes and how it affects preference can still be challenging. Eye-tracking is a tool that can identify what the survey participants were looking at when indicating their preference for a landscape. This paper demonstrates how eye-tracking was used in two different landscape preference studies to identify the content important to people’s preferences and provide insights into how the content affected preference. Eye-tracking can help identify a common stimulus, help determine if the stimulus is a physical or spatial characteristic of the landscape, and show how the stimulus varies in different landscape contexts.
Reclamation through Extraction
Rosier, Shaun (2024-03-21)
Human-Centric Lighting Design: A Framework for Supporting Healthy Circadian Rhythm Grounded in Established Knowledge in Interior Spaces
Jalali, Mansoureh Sadat; Jones, James R.; Tural, Elif; Gibbons, Ronald B. (MDPI, 2024-04-17)
Over the past 300 years, scientific observations have revealed the significant influence of circadian rhythms on various human functions, including sleep, digestion, and immune system regulation. Access to natural daylight is crucial for maintaining these rhythms, but modern lifestyles often limit its availability. Despite its importance, there is a lack of a comprehensive design framework to assist designers. This study proposes an architectural design framework based on the review of literature, lighting-related codes and standards, and available design and analysis tools that guides the creation of lighting systems supporting healthy circadian rhythms. The framework outlines key decision-making stages, incorporates relevant knowledge, and promotes the integration of dynamic lighting techniques into building design. The proposed framework was presented to a group of design professionals as a focus group and their feedback on the relevance and usability of the tool was obtained through a survey (n = 10). By empowering designers with practical tools and processes, this research bridges the gap between scientific understanding and design implementation, ensuring informed decisions that positively impact human health. This research contributes to the ongoing pursuit of creating lighting environments that support healthy circadian rhythms and promote human well-being.
Finding the Potential in Lines: Faults, Horizons, and the City
Rosier, Shaun (2024-02-24)
Presentation of scholarly research at Virginia Tech's inaugural "Landscape First Symposium".
The impact of fashion merchandising internships on careers
Robeck, Jacquelene; Pate, Sharon; Pattison, Allison; Pattison, Jessica (2013-10-30)
This research describes the exploration, expansion, and enhancement of fashion merchandising internships from 1998-2010 in a small fashion merchandising program of 100 students in a mid-sized southern state university. This study examines the relationship of the college internship and the graduate’s current job. Academic departments continuously review curriculum and consider the inclusion, continuation, enhancement, or deletion of a college internship in their programs. Often questions arise, such as, Should the fashion merchandising program curriculum require an internship for credit; what is the value of the internship; is an internship experience measureable? Internship records were kept for 13 years at a United States public university. Number, internship placement sites, and current employment of college graduates was analyzed. The purposes of this study were to examine the components of fashion merchandising internships and assess the impact of factors such as university regulations and small town internship employers on students’ careers after graduation. This research study revealed that internships at non-local fashion businesses were positively related to successful current fashion employment. Continuation of an internship program is determined by internship placement sites, graduates’ current jobs and locations, local and non-local fashion businesses, and faculty recommendations.
Sensation and the Sublime: Revisiting the physiological basis of aesthetic encounter
Rosier, Shaun (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024)
The sublime has always been a part of Western landscape architectural discourse and design technique. Both emerged in tandem as entwined forms of experimentation with the world in 18th and 19th-century Europe. Encounters with the sublime were subjects of intense interrogation through oration, prose, poetry, philosophical inquiry, and design itself. Even though landscape architecture is deeply enmeshed with the sublime and other aesthetic encounters, the overall understanding and engagement with these notions have become hindered by cliché, generalities, and a socio-cultural trend toward the technoscientific. The reliance on Immanuel Kant’s theories of the ‘mathematical’ and ‘dynamic’ sublime has reduced the sublime to little more than Reason rescuing the subject from a failure in aesthetic synthesis or an expression of natural power. Here, aesthetic encounters are relegated to an interior subjectivity reinforced by Descartes’ dualism. This is problematic in the sense that it relegates the sublime to something that can be written off as ‘merely subjective'. Yet this is not how it was understood by the early writers on the matter, some of whom developed their thoughts from designing. This paper argues that the sublime is a physiological force as opposed to the generally held, and clichéd, psychological modality. By returning to the work of Edmund Burke, Thomas Whately, Uvedale Price, and Frederick Law Olmsted we can see that those looking at this problem afresh saw it markedly different than the contemporary canon. Here we will see that the sublime affirms the power of landscape illuminating what escapes reason’s grasp.
Understanding product hibernation periods with children's products and exploring motivations for product care to encourage their reuse
Choi, Yoon Jung; Kennedy, Brook (Aalto University, 2023-10-02)
The phenomenon of product hibernation, namely the process by which end-of-use products are kept but no longer used is a common and significant barrier to prolonging product lifespans within a circular economy. Obsolete products challenge users' decision-making process for the after-use phase and are often discarded despite being perfectly functional. Especially in households with growing children, where children’s products are outgrown but not discarded, product hibernation is the result. This paper presents the survey findings of 157 hibernating children’s products, and interviews with ten families with growing children in the UK who have moved house, exploring product ownership, reasons for product hibernation, and the various barriers for their reuse. Understanding owners’ product care motivation for re-recognizing their value and providing choices to reuse the children’s products is vital to reduce product hibernation. Further, a workshop was conducted to explore the owners’ reuse experience of with their children’s products and the factors affecting their consistent caring process which aim to encourage people to reuse these products more. Through an idea generation process, nine influential factors were identified that suggest opportunities to change users' perception of the value of the end-of-use and care for these products. This paper makes an original contribution to product reuse knowledge with the development of a framework for understanding reuse motivations and barriers through the lens of care.

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