Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Architecture Without Vision
    (2015) Nolen, Elizabeth; Simon, Madlen; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    What is architecture if you cannot see? How might we perceive if we ignore our dominant visual sense to focus on inputs from the senses that we rarely engage as we move through the built environment? How might architects design buildings to fully engage our senses? This thesis began to address that question through research including a literature search, analysis of examples of architecture for visually impaired users, and interviews with blind individuals and people who work with visually impaired people. This research informed the development of a set of principles for the design of built environments that enrich the ability to people along the spectrum from sighted to blind to navigate the spaces of their lives through multi-sensory perception. These principles are tested by application to the design of a building, a Creative Co-Lab, in which blind and sighted users come together on the Baltimore waterfront to learn collaboratively about the multi-sensory ways to perceive and create space, place, and objects without vision.
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    Infusing Wellness: Eastern Traditions in the Western Context
    (2013) James, Khara; Eisenbach, Ronit; Simon, Madlen; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Wellness is defined as an optimal state of health in the mind, body, and spirit. This state is achieved through a balance of energy found in all things, including the human body. Eastern Traditions support the notion that this energy is governed by the elements of nature. Eastern architects such as Tadao Ando and Geoffrey Bawa offer lessons on how design connects humans to nature and appeals to our sense of well-being. This thesis builds on the implications of both Eastern health and design traditions to develop a building typology in the West that promotes healing in our underserved communities. It aims to heal and educate people by providing spaces for healthy, natural and preventative activities. It explores a process of design for well-being in which the users experience the healing qualities of nature in a space. The resulting wellness center acts as a threshold into nature natural environment.
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    Truth in the Experience
    (2012) Karis, Peter Joseph; Craig, Patrick; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This document focuses on the development of my artwork during my three year studio practice at the University of Maryland, College Park. It discusses the evolution of the various types of work and how they function artistically and conceptually. It culminates in an explanation of my work in the thesis exhibition, with which I have discovered the importance of the experience of an artwork as a crucial functional element of the work.
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    REINFORCING COMMUNITY: THE MEANING OF PLACE ATTACHMENT AND ITS APPLICATION IN THE REDESIGN OF LANGLEY PARK
    (2011) XING, WEI; Sullivan, Jack; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This thesis is a design study of a residential community in Langley Park, Maryland with a diverse international population, a mix of mid-twentieth century housing stock, and a car-oriented commercial center. Langley Park will experience dramatic changes over the next ten years as the proposed transit center and light rail line is realized. The study proposes a new way for landscape architects to approach community design. It suggests that by consulting the scholarship of place attachment, designers can develop design strategies and apply them in design practice. Five strategies are proposed. Following a site analysis which identified assets and problems, the author established design objectives that would enhance the community's character and repair damage caused by a lack of connectivity. This thesis suggests designers can incorporate the concepts found in the literature of place attachment and thereby develop strategies to successfully achieve the design objectives.
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    SUBJECTIVE INTEGRATION OF PROBABILISTIC INFORMATION FROM DESCRIPTION AND FROM EXPERIENCE
    (2009) Shlomi, Yaron; Wallsten, Thomas S.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Subjective integration of probabilistic information obtained via description and experience underlies potentially consequential judgments and choices. However, little is known about the quality of the integration and the underlying processes. I contribute to filling this gap by investigating judgments informed by integrating probabilistic information from the two sources. Building on existing information integration frameworks (e.g., N. Anderson, 1971), I develop and subsequently test computational models that represent the integration process. Participants in three experiments estimated the percentage of red balls in a bag containing red and blue balls based on two samples drawn from the bag. They experienced one sample by observing a sequence of draws and received a description of the other sample in terms of summary statistics. Subjective integration was more sensitive to information obtained via experience than via description in a manner that depended on the extremity of the experienced sample relative to the described one. Experiment 1 showed that experience preceding description leads to integration that is less biased towards experience than the reverse presentation sequence. Following this result, Experiment 2 examined the effect of memory-retrieval demands on the quality of the integration. Specifically, we manipulated the presence or absence of description- and experience- based decision aids that eliminate the need to retrieve source-specific information. The results show that the experience aid increased the bias, while the description aid had no interpretable effect. Experiment 3 investigated the effect of the numerical format of the description (percentage vs. frequency). When description was provided in the frequency format, the judgments were unbiased and the leading model suggested that the two sources are psychologically equivalent. However, when the description was provided in the percentage format, the leading model implied a tradeoff between the two sources. Finally, participants in Experiment 3 also rated how much they trusted the source of the description. The participants' ratings were correlated with how they used the description and with the quality of their judgments. The findings have implications for interpreting the description-experience gap in risky choice, for information integration models, and for understanding the role of format on the use of information from external sources. In addition, the methods developed here can be applied broadly to study how people integrate information from different sources or in different formats.