UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item A Stream Runs Through It: Reconnecting Watershed and Landscape at the University of Maryland(2008) Bauer, Deborah Anne; Francescato, Guido; Bennett, Ralph; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of thesis: A STREAM RUNS THROUGH IT: RECONNECTING WATERSHED AND LANDSCAPE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Deborah Anne Bauer, Master of Architecture 2008 Thesis directed by: Professor Guido Francescato, Fall 2006--Fall 2007 Professor Ralph Bennett, AIA, Spring 2008 School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation This thesis investigates roles that the built environment can play in restoring the urban watershed and reconnecting a community with the landscape sheltering that watershed. The site for this investigation is Campus Creek, a stream that traverses the width of the University of Maryland, College Park campus. Until now the creek has been utilized primarily to drain storm water from adjacent paved surfaces, resulting in an eroding streambed rendered all but invisible by chain link fence, trash and dense undergrowth. The revival of the stream and adjacent ecosystems will be accompanied by the introduction of structures that employ sustainable strategies artfully, reframe the landscape, and encourage exploration while protecting sensitive resources. Three undergraduate environmental science programs will share the building and monitor the restoration of the creek. The section of Campus Creek west of the Campus Recreation Center, and adjacent areas, comprises the thesis site.Item Blue Crab Farming on Maryland's Eastern Shore(2009) Donnelly, Justin Michael; Ambrose, Michael A; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Biologists speculate that a combination of pollution and overharvesting might soon lead to the extinction of the blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay. This project investigates inland crab farming as a means by which to resurrect the region's dwindling blue crab industry and alleviate pressure on rapidly declining wild fisheries. Although the project transplants the blue crab onto land, it minimizes the impact to the plants and animals displaced. In short, the project asks us to rethink how we fish and how we farm and how they relate. The architectural proposal seeks to establish the general parameters of a heretofore untried blue crab farming operation and to apply these rules to a specific farm project in Dorchester County, Maryland. The final product consists of a series of greenhoused raceways, constructed wetlands, working meadows, a laboratory for rearing crab eggs to juvenile development, a picking/processing facility, restaurant, and modest educational facilities.Item Sustainable Heritage: Retrofitting Historic Buildings for Improved Environmental Performance(2009) Langmead, Sara Goldfarb; Simon, Madlen; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Building materials outlive people. What we build is left for the next generation as a resource and as an artifact of our own time. This thesis explores how we can alter our existing building stock to become more environmentally sustainable. By examining the common ground between the conservation of the built world and the conservation of the natural world, we can redefine stewardship for the present age. Let our built legacy express that we value history, culture, and consideration for the prosperity of future generations. As a case study, the practice of sustainable retrofitting will be implemented at an abandoned building campus in Silver Spring, Maryland. Designed in 1927 for the National Association of Dyers and Cleaners, these buildings retain their dignity despite years of poor stewardship. The site has the potential to exemplify how historic buildings can become a sustainable resource for the future of an expanding, diverse community.Item Renewing Community in College Park(2009) Kramer, Kimberly Albright; Kelly, Brian; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Calvert School served the city of College Park for more than 50 years. Now vacant, the building still sits at the heart of the historic College Park community. Adaptively reusing this well-loved building as a community center will bring new life to the building and site and provide a much-needed center for community activities in College Park. Reusing an existing building will also help to conserve economic and environmental resources, as well as preserving a visual artifact of the history and sense of community that bind the neighborhood. This thesis explores and proposes a variety of approaches to adaptive reuse and building for community, attempting to find a design strategy that suits the building, the site, the community and the proposed program, while balancing aesthetics and functionality with cultural, historical and environmental responsibility.Item A Community of Opportunity: From Homelessness to Small Business Ownership in the Nation's Capital(2009) Solether, Katherine; Eisenbach, Ronit; Wortham-Galvin, B.D.; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Washington, D.C. has one of the highest levels of chronic homelessness in the country and this population is on the rise. The broad infrastructure of homeless aid programs frequently fails to reintegrate formerly homeless individuals back into the workforce due to their unstable and often criminal backgrounds. By combining microenterprise support, retail space, and mixed-income housing, this project seeks to educate and empower formerly homeless individuals by providing entrepreneurial opportunity, a positive social network of people with similar circumstances and goals, and integration into a broad community of mixed incomes and backgrounds. By nurturing individuals, families, and small businesses, this facility will become an asset to its surrounding Southwest D.C. community and to many of the city's homeless.Item Culture | Community | Place : Sustaining cultural values: Past, Present, & Future(2009) Kunkel, Joseph F.; Wortham-Galvin, Ph.D., B. D.; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)It is fundamental that culture is embedded within the act of communication and social interaction. This thesis will examine how architecture has embodied and reinforced a tribe's central notions about their society. A focus will be placed on past architectural traditions and continued changes in built forms. This will become the framework for a process where traditions are re_Introduced, re_Defined, and re_Interpreted in a contemporary context. Through analysis and interaction with the American Indian I will seek to understand how architecture(s) can play a role in culture and the definition of a community environment. With this research, I am looking for a deeper understanding of the built environment of the Northern Cheyenne through the context of the culture, community, and place. The focus here will be to explore the community as it relates to an "Indian's" definition of living and interaction within society. Design proposals will attempt to identify and clarify the ways in which the American Indian lives and operates in a world, seen and inhabited by Euro-American ideologies. The research and data presented will challenge the thesis to understand "Dwelling" as it relates to the physical environment, built environment, and the correlation between the two.Item water & architecture(2009) Cho, Ray Allen; Noonan, Peter; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Water is an element that is both essential to life and life threatening. The dual force within water "represents the essence of Yin and Yang where good cannot exist without evil." (Toy, 7) This thesis research will question the current proposed water protection plan in the historic neighborhood of Czech village in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Instead of focusing on preventing the destructive nature of water as the only generator for the protection plan, the research will investigate and explore options where the protection methods could also create opportunities in which the water becomes an amenity; hence the development of the protection system in itself embody the dual force of water. Perhaps the problem lies within our notion of natural disaster itself. Instead of viewing flood as a disaster that needs to be overcome, we should look at it as a constant natural occurrence that we need to account for and live in harmony with and further celebrate. The investigation will manifest in three different scales; city scale, neighborhood scale, and building scale. By critically examining current master plan and introducing opportunities where the built environment can work with water and use it as an amenity rather than fight against it, I intend to explore new ways of developing floodplain protection.Item Preventing Rural Exodus through Development in the Pampas(2009) Kalil, Artur Marques; Wortham-Galvin, Brooke; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Rural Brazil has gone through a crisis in the past century. Modernization and technology shifts has left agriculture in few very mechanized hands and pushed the rural labor force into industrialized urban areas. This phenomenon is called the Rural Exodus. The Pampas, the southernmost tip of Brazil, are symptomatic of the exodus. Establishment of free trade zones along the state's borders with Uruguay and Argentina has allowed new economic opportunities and influxes of investment in the area. Opportunities to reverse emigration patterns have sprouted in small-scale projects pushed by strengthening interest in economic strategies of micro-credit and self-empowerment. These ideals can mold an architectural study of design strategies that empower the rural individual to develop from scratch a home, a business, and collectively, a community. Design through regional tectonic strategies for economic development is essential to the alleviation of the rural exodus in the Pampas.Item Explorations in Suburban High School Design: Unconventional Siting(2008) MacDonald, Adam; Williams, Isaac; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis proposes a design strategy and solution for a suburban high school prototype sited along commercial highway MD40 in Baltimore County, MD. The goal of the thesis is the design of a comprehensive high school that promotes unconventional site selection; mitigates the highway's urban role as community divider; is endowed with civic dignity; and becomes a fulcrum for strong design in the community.\nThe MD40 site offers unique opportunities. It bears the stigma of being a socio-cultural dividing line as well as a physical barrier. The surrounding region is also a target for large-scale development related to expansion at a nearby military research base. The program is focused on the workforce education needs of the military research base. Science and technology courses appropriate for this focus have been added to the curriculum along side the traditional trade and liberal arts.Item Representation(s): A Mutable Process for a Transitioning Urban Landscape(2009) LaCharite-Lostritto, Lisa; Ambrose, Michael; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)To understand the medium is to understand the affects the medium has on the changes and the scale and form of human association and action over time, not only as the medium is being introduced, but also the unconscious and unforeseeable effects the cultural matrix within which the medium operates. Marshall McLuhan Difference is not simply the collapsing [or circulation] of identity, it is also the rendering of space and time as fragmented, transformable, interpenetrated, beyond any fixed formulation, no longer guaranteed by the a priori or by the universalisms of science. Elizabeth Grosz Media can be leveraged as a way to evaluate and inform the built environment. By using media as more than just a communicative necessity, media is capable of directing process. This process seeks to construct a representational framework and narrative through the investigation and translation of cultural, historical, and conceptual contexts. Architecture, as media, functions as a perceptual tool toward the fusion of process and a meta-physical and physical experience. This thesis asks the question: How can these complex contexts create a framework within which the media operates and informs the built environment? The validity of this research in the context of the culture of architectural education is to show that architecture is more than simply applied knowledge and skills translated through conventions of visual communication. Architecture is a way of seeing and thinking that requires understanding of media beyond the idea of tool and production to an idea of performance, process, and methodology.