School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1607
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Testing the Limits: A DC Ecoblock Creates Community for Everyone(2019) Rowedder, Patricia; Gabrielli, Julie; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Loneliness is an emotional feeling that represents disconnection. With one in five people suffering from loneliness, it has become a public health crisis. Ranked second in the nation for loneliness, Washington DC is three times the national average. The transient nature of the greater DC population has created a negative perception on the city, causing people to either move on or move out. Such a progressive and influential city seems stuck in a stagnant pattern, not reacting to the constantly changing density, mobility, and needs of the built and non-built environment. This thesis aims to explore the connections of ecology and psychology of architecture through a superblock typology in an effort to battle loneliness in the nation’s capital. A superblock is a large-scale entity both extroverted and permeable composed of business, community, and other institutional programs, each different but overlapping in a common elements and connections. The superblock throughout time has been given a negative connotation because of exploited failed attempts. When using the principles correctly, however, the superblock typology provides endless possibilities and solutions to connect, engage, and ignite community interaction through strategically placed nodes of space and diverse program. If one were to take create new principle site, culture, and health specific, could a meaningful interaction and connection through a ecoblock in DC be created?Item Should We Leave? Attitudes towards Relocation in Response to Sea Level Rise(MDPI, 2017-12-04) Song, Jie; Peng, BinbinThe participation of individuals contributes significantly to the success of sea level rise adaptation. This study therefore addresses what influences people’s likelihood of relocating away from low-lying areas in response to rising sea levels. The analysis was based on a survey conducted in the City of Panama Beach in Florida (USA). Survey items relate to people’s risk perception, hazard experience, threat appraisal, and coping appraisal, whose theoretical background is Protection Motivation Theory. Descriptive and correlation analysis was first performed to highlight critical factors which were then examined by a multinomial Logit model. Results show that sea level rise awareness is the major explanatory variable. Coping appraisal is qualitatively viewed as a strong predictor for action, while threat appraisal is statistically significant in driving relocation intention. These factors should be integrated in current risk communication regarding sea level rise.Item A Framework for Understanding Sense of Place in an Urban Design Context(MDPI, 2018-04-13) Hu, Ming; Chen, RogerCreating a sense of place and community is a guiding principle in designing livable and high-quality built environments. This paper presents a framework for understanding the relationship between design and people’s perceptions about a place, within an urban design context. While a large volume of literature on sense of place (SOP) already exists, the proposed framework and its application in the design field present a unique opportunity to add new knowledge to this interdisciplinary topic. This research will investigate the empirical relationship between architecture/urban design and people’s perceptions about a place and their contributions to SOP. Urban designers and architects play important and determining roles in defining the physical qualities and the characteristics of a place. However, it has always been challenging to quantify the relationship between a physical environment and a person’s emotional experience. Three urban sites were analyzed to illustrate this framework, and four physical characteristics and four perceptual qualities were cross-investigated and analyzed. This proposed framework will help architects and urban designers to gain a better understanding of SOP and placemaking techniques, eventually helping to improve urban design quality.Item Optimal Renovation Strategies for Education Buildings—A Novel BIM–BPM–BEM Framework(MDPI, 2018-09-14) Hu, MingThe aim of this paper is to propose a novel building information model (BIM)–building performance model (BPM)–building environmental model (BEM) framework to identify the most energy-efficient and cost-effective strategies for the renovation of existing education buildings to achieve the nearly zero-energy goal while minimizing the environmental impact. A case building, the University of Maryland’s Architecture Building, was used to demonstrate the validity of the framework and a set of building performance indicators—including energy performance, environmental impacts, and occupant satisfaction—were used to evaluate renovation strategies. Additionally, this novel framework further demonstrated the interoperability among different digital tools and platforms. Lastly, following a detailed analysis and measurements, the case study results highlighted a particular energy profile as well as the retrofit needs of education buildings. Eight different renovation packages were analyzed with the top-ranking package indicating an energy saving of 62%, carbon emissions reduction of 84%, and long-term cost savings of 53%, albeit with a relatively high initial cost. The most preferable package ranked second in all categories, with a moderate initial cost.Item Literature Review of Net Zero and Resilience Research of the Urban Environment: A Citation Analysis Using Big Data(MDPI, 2019-04-24) Hu, Ming; Pavao-Zuckerman, MitchellAccording to the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, the urban environment is responsible for between 71% and 76% of carbon emissions from global final energy use and between 67% and 76% of global energy use. Two important and trending domains in urban environment are “resilience” and “net zero” associated with high-performance design, both of which have their origins in ecology. The ultimate goal of net zero energy has become the ultimate “high-performance” standard for buildings. Another emerging index is the measurement and improvement of the resilience of buildings. Despite the richness of research on net zero energy and resilience in the urban environment, literature that compares net zero energy and resilience is very limited. This paper provides an overview of research activities in those two research domains in the past 40 years. The purpose of this review is to (1) explore the shared ecological roots of the two domains, (2) identify the main research areas/clusters within each, (3) gain insight into the size of the different research topics, and (4) identify any research gaps. Finally, conclusions about the review focus on the major difference between the net zero movement and resilience theory in the urban environment and their respective relations to their ecological origins.Item Cost-Effective Options for the Renovation of an Existing Education Building toward the Nearly Net-Zero Energy Goal—Life-Cycle Cost Analysis(MDPI, 2019-04-25) Hu, MingA comprehensive case study on life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) was conducted on a two- story education building with a projected 40-year lifespan in College Park, Maryland. The aim of this paper was to (1) create a life cycle assessment model, using an education building to test the model, (2) compare the life cycle cost (LCC) of different renovation scenarios, taking into account added renewable energy resources to achieve the university’s overall carbon neutrality goal, and (3) verify the robustness of the LCC model by conducting sensitivity analysis and studying the influence of different variables. Nine renovation scenarios were constructed by combining six renovation techniques and three renewable energy resources. The LCCA results were then compared to understand the cost-effective relation between implementing energy reduction techniques and renewable energy sources. The results indicated that investing in energy-efficient retrofitting techniques was more cost-effective than investments in renewable energy sources in the long term. In the optimum scenario, renovation and renewable energy, when combined, produced close to a 90% reduction in the life cycle cost compared to the baseline. The payback period for the initial investment cost, including avoided electricity costs, varies from 1.4 to 4.1 years. This suggests that the initial investment in energy-efficient renovation is the primary factor in the LCC of an existing building.Item A Private Beach Club(1989) Blinchikoff, Laurie Jo; Schlesinger, Frank; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The objective of this thesis is to design a private beach club that architecturally blends in with its community in terms of scale and appearance. The selected club is located in the Borough of Deal, a wealthy residential community situated on the New Jersey shore between the cities of Long Branch and Asbury Park. The site of the proposed beach club is presently occupied by Phillips Avenue Pavilion, a bath house, which consists of many small rooms used for changing and storing clothing and beach accessories. I propose to remove this structure and replace it with a new facility that will include a ballroom, dining room, club room, and spa. This thesis considers four architectural issues. The first is scale. The proposed beach club should have its own distinctive presence in the community but should neither overwhelm other residences nor appear too small. The second is frontality. A building on the seashore has a public front toward the street and a private front toward the ocean. These fronts pose specific problems of entrance and service locations. The third, beach club imagery, addresses the character of the club compared to other seaside structures of similar appearance and function. The fourth issue is detailing. The construction of the beach club and the detail s of the interior and exterior spaces will be thoroughly examined.Item Invisible Crisis(2018) Goldstein, Gregory; Du Puy, Karl; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since their introduction to the built environment, mechanical systems and building technologies have been taken for granted. They are insulated, buried, removed from view, and expected to perform the single task expected of them. In 2012, David D. Cosner developed a report on University of Maryland’s continued deferred maintenance entitled “Invisible Crisis.” The University of Maryland, hosting goals to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, must make the state of its mechanical infrastructure a priority. This thesis explores the power of mechanical infrastructure to propel us into a future of integrated design. Pre-existing consolidation of mechanical elements within SCUB (satellite central utility building) structures are a point of focus. New SCUB(s) act as performative infrastructural monuments, utilizing proximity of elements to increase functionality. Occupants will be immersed in the functions necessary for campus/building operations, forming a tactile connection between university occupants and their biproducts/energy usage.Item Increasing Bus Transit Ridership: Dynamics of Density, Land Use, and Population(California Department of Transportation, Division of Research and Innovation, 2004) Banerjee, Tridib; Myers, Dowell; Irazabal, Clara; Bahl, DeepakThe study explores the possibilities of revitalizing existing urban communities, increasing transit ridership, decreasing jobs-housing imbalance, and mitigating the impacts of sprawl from transit corridor development or TCD, a variant of the more general class of TOD or transit-oriented development. We present findings of a study that focuses on the relationship between transit ridership and density and mixed land use developments along major arterial corridors in Los Angeles. Our research focuses on Ventura Boulevard and Vermont Avenue as a comparative study of two heavily subscribed transit corridors. Our analysis suggests that the predominant land use around these corridors is low-density automobile-oriented development which remains transit –unfriendly. However, the City’s policy environment has undergone favorable changes with the introduction new zoning ordinances. In light of these changes, we develop and recommend spatial and urban design strategies that productively utilize surplus and marginal space along transit corridors to accommodate future population growth. It is our expectation that the densification of the underutilized commercial corridors will create vibrant local economies, increase opportunities for market and affordable housing, revitalize retail, and lead to a fuller use of transit lines and increased ridership, a trend that we have already observed in higher density bus station areasItem Constitutional Reforms in Venezuela Foretell a Planning Revolution(Planner's Network, 2007) Irazabal, Clara