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 The City Symbiotic: Integrating Architecture and Hydrology in the Public Realm(2021) Piltz, Shayne Michelle; Bell, Matthew J; Hendricks, Marccus; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis approaches climate resilience through a comprehensive urban-scale system that incorporates integrated stormwater management to address sea-level rise and urban flooding, while leveraging the power of community as a tool for environmental stewardship. The City Symbiotic has dual notions. At its core, the concept alludes to a mutually beneficial relationship between the built and natural environment. This thesis will be an exploration of designing with water through the lens of climate resilience. Built structures will incorporate an integrated stormwater management network for capturing, filtering, storing, and reusing water, bettering our understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the built and natural environment by blurring the line between the two. The City Symbiotic is also a reference to the relationship between people and their environment. In this respect, this thesis approaches climate resilience through community and connection. Climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities that are the result of historical planning failures like Euclidean and exclusionary zoning, urban disinvestment, car-centric planning, environmental racism, and displacement. Reimagining the civic commons as a more inclusive and resilient center of public life can help redress marginalization and inspire environmental stewardship. The outcome of this thesis will demonstrate the value of symbiotic urban design, connecting the built, natural, and human environments to build resilience to water-related impacts of climate change.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 LA 'NOUVELLE' LITTERATURE MAROCAINE DE LANGUE FRANÇAISE ET L'ESPACE PUBLIC: LE CAS D'ABDELLATIF LAABI(2005-05-26) Babana-Hampton, Safoi; Julien, Eileen; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the strategies adopted by the 'New' Moroccan writers of French expression to creatively engage art in social and cultural debates on identity, decolonization and democracy, thus promoting the emergence of a modern public sphere through literature, against the backdrop of absolutist power and a politically repressed society. The term 'new' is understood as a defining characteristic of a certain trend of Moroccan literary writing that not so much seeks to distinguish itself from what is commonly referred to as 'colonial' writing, but that sees itself in terms of an epistemological attitude, and as an event associated with critical self-questioning and creative engagement with modernity and the colonial/postcolonial situation. The analysis of a selection of texts in our case study of Moroccan writer Abdellatif Laâbi aims at presenting a reading model that posits this literature in its relations with the evolving socio-political and intellectual environments. In order to reveal the limits and inadequacies of past approaches to the corpus of the 'New' Moroccan literature of French expression, the study draws on Habermas's notion of the 'public sphere'. For the purposes of this study, Habermas's concept allows for an interdisciplinary approach that has the advantage of exposing the intricacies of the literature/politics and literature/society relationships in the context of Moroccan society. The study engages the theories of art developed by Bakhtin, Jameson, Bourdieu, Said and others for the ultimate goal of presenting a reading model that privileges the analysis of the texts in question as literary texts seen in their relations with their context, and not as entities that are subordinate to or embedded in the realm of political activity, nor as closed entities leading an independent life of their own. The research questions raised by the thesis are set within larger postcolonial questions and themes such as the meaning of 'decolonization', the relationship between the Self and the Other, determinants of a post-independence (national) identity, the problem of language and the role of the postcolonial intellectual.