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 Urban Sprawl & Critter Crawl: Imagining a More-Than-Human Way of Living(2024) Islam, Ramisa Maisha; Williams, Brittany; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and that number is projected to double by 2050. Cities and urban transects have an important role in addressing climate change. As urban population and development grows, we also see a decline in biodiversity. Humans are not the only species being displaced. Native species lose their natural habitats due to development and seek refuge in urban areas. The complexity of cities allows for urban biodiversity to find a home, but these urban habitats are still human centered, forcing species to fit within a human designed environment. This thesis explores the balance between human living and urban biodiversity to integrate into our cities. Implementing urban biodiversity strategies and more than human design in urban neighborhoods can help to restore biodiversity and strengthen human relationships with the natural environment. Combining these concepts can reimagine the city as a shared ecosystem that serves all species. An ideal shared ecosystem can support urban living, embrace coexistence, and foster a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.Item BREAKWATER – Breaking the Cycle(2024) Mora, Adrian Bernard Teneza; Gabrielli, Julie; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How can ecological design principles prevent the erosion of the physical and social framework of low-income coastal communities? A significant portion of the world’s population is concentrated along coastlines. Direct access to the water provides access to a longstanding source of economic prosperity and a psychological connection to natural environments. However, human-influenced climate change has produced hazardous environmental conditions that threaten coastal populations, including many poor, vulnerable communities. Disparities in investment for public services, maintenance, and upkeep increases the vulnerability of these disenfranchised groups that cannot protect themselves. The built and natural environment within this diverse boundary zone between the land and sea must be redeveloped as a self-resilient ecosystem that can protect its inhabitants from climate-induced hazards. This renewal will require holistic approaches that can mitigate contemporary impacts to protect current populations at risk and adapt the built environment to better respond in the future.Item Symbiosis: Recalibrating Design Thinking for the Urban Environment(2023) Ripley, Benjamin Allan; Tilghman, James W; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Architecture is stiff, rigid, and tough to change, but in an ever-changing world, our built environment needs to be able to respond in kind. Without planning and designing for adaptability, the built environment lags behind the numerous societal and environmental dynamics that challenge our present time. Impending issues of climate change and rapid urbanization are now forcing architecture to reexamine itself and ask, how will it respond to these complex demands? In the face of this challenge, this thesis will explore a conceptually different approach to the design process that demands an inherently different product. Through an emphasis on systems thinking and development, architecture can be designed to exist within a symbiotic relationship with the natural environment, where our buildings could react and interact with the shifting nature of our culture and natural environments over time. Thus, through this strategy inspired by organic organisms, the architecture is then able to better embrace the context over time and become a truly sustainable model for urban development.Item AgroEcology Innovation District: Desiging Agricultural Urbanism at the University of Maryland(2022-06-03) Ezban, MichaelARCH 407 is a 6-credit graduate design studio taught by Michael Ezban, RA, ASLA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Architecture in Spring 2022. The studio challenged students to design the AgroEcology Innovation District (AID), a proposed new development initiative at the UMD North Campus that seeks to create and amplify new spatial relationships between agriculture and public space, human and nonhuman ecologies, and campus and urban development. AID radically reconfigures North Campus through the design of three zones: the Urban Corridor Agriculture Zone; the Campus Agriculture Zone; and Campus Cohabitation Zone. This design exercise is an exploration in “agricultural urbanism,” or urbanism in which agriculture, buildings, and infrastructure are developed in tandem, in contrast to “urban agriculture,” where agriculture is proposed for derelict areas of pre-existing urbanism. Student design strategies for the AID draw heavily from nine historical and contemporary case studies of Agricultural Urbanism projects by a range of designers.Item Livestock Teaching Pavilion at the UMD Campus Farm: Design for the Farm of the Future(2022-05-29) Ezban, MichaelPROJECT DESCRIPTION: In Spring 2022, nine architecture graduate students were challenged to design a new Livestock Teaching Pavilion for the University of Maryland Campus Farm. The work was undertaken as a 6-week project assignment in ARCH 407, taught by Michael Ezban, Clinical Assistant Professor of Architecture. The design of the Livestock Teaching Pavilion is guided by three tenets. The architecture 1) enables diverse opportunities for experiential learning; 2) fosters various agro-ecologies and multi-species interrelationships; and 3) achieves sustainability by employing historical wisdom and contemporary technologies. Alongside building design, students also visited and documented the Campus Farm, developed program analysis, explored relevant case studies, and analyzed a range of potential structural and building systems.Item (Stay)dium: Creating a community in an abandoned stadium through adaptive reuse(2020) Montecinos, Enzo Romeo; Hu, Ming; Du Puy, Karl; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Brazil’s love for soccer, their beautiful stadiums and the nation’s famous hospitality made the 2014 World Cup unforgettable for every tourist that visited. However, five years later the Brazilian taxpayers are not even close to paying off the most expensive tournament in Brazilian history. From the twelve stadiums constructed, all but four are unused, fraught with corruption allegations or serious structural problems. The stadiums have been abandoned due to loss of interest and high cost of construction and maintenance. The purpose of this thesis project is to focus on an abandoned stadium and re-purpose the structure with a mixed-use program, using sustainable strategies to bring forth a positive impact on the community.Item Change is Coming: Pre-adaptability for a Resilient City(2020) Omidvar, Ava Toosi; Williams, Joseph C; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since its inception, the Earth has been a living and evolving planet. Phenomena such as tectonic plates shifting and changes in the atmosphere have caused our ecosystems to change and evolve by natural events. Humans have been part of this ecosystem for the past 2.1 million years but have only stopped their nomadic way of life and built village settlements 10,000 years ago. Civilizations have faced many natural and human-made disasters forcing them to renovate, rebuild, or relocate. However, the frequency of these disasters through climate change will exacerbate these transformations. For many cities around the world where landscapes are being permanently affected by climate-induced landscape change, the built environment has the responsibility to adapt. How can architecture allow for change over time? When we know that intermittent floods are becoming more detrimental, how must we build our cities to prepare for living with water?Item Sustainability Through Adaptation: Reimagining Existing Spaces with Mass Timber Construction(2020) Robbs, Amber; Kelly, Brian; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In a period when it is becoming more and more apparent how we, as humans, have been negatively impacting our planet, it is important for us, as designers, to take a step back and evaluate how new methods of sustainable design can be incorporated into the existing built environment to leave a positive impression on our climate. We have discussed sustainability through design, building typologies, construction materials, and building systems but we can also explore the sustainable method of reusing the existing built environment. This thesis explores how adaptively reusing existing buildings can be a sustainable source of architecture. Buildings that have fallen into neglect and/or ruin can be revitalized through the construction method of mass timber to produce less greenhouse gas emissions during the structure’s life cycle while leaving a larger, healthier impact on our climate. This thesis explores the benefits of mass timber as a sustainable construction method and demonstrates how mass timber can be used as an alternative to steel frame construction on the site of a 1919 US Navy industrial building. The existing masonry and steel-framed structure stands as a neglected building that can be adapted through sustainable methods. By respecting the structure’s heritage and original purpose, this thesis proposes a secondary building and revitalization of the existing structure through reusing existing structures with recycled material, like mass timber. The thesis looks at opening the site to the evolving community of the Washington D.C. Navy Yard. Maintaining the site as a community gathering space, this thesis proposes a food hall program, building off the weekly farmers' markets that take place in the structure’s adjacent plaza, and aims to fill the community's need for a public civic space in the adjoining community library program. The program of this thesis aims to draw people in to explore the built environment of alternative and sustainable construction methods.Item Changing Landscapes: Farmsteads & Resort Towns(2019) Baum, Sara; Davenport, Grace; Duan, Amy; Graham, Josette; Jockel, Kathleen; Martin, Veronica; Schlossenberg, Tamara; Tariq, Hassan; Nasta, Paula JarrettIn the Fall semester of 2019, the University of Maryland Historic Preservation Studio class worked with the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) in Prince George’s County through the Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS) program. The purpose of the partnership was to create a heritage trail linking the communities of Aquasco, Eagle Harbor, and Cedar Haven in southern Prince George’s County.Item Oil to Island: Repurposing Southern California's Offshore Drilling Platforms(2019) Delash, Michael Dollar; May, Lindsey; Du Puy, Karl; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis aims to explore an untapped opportunity that exists between the industries of energy generation as we move beyond the fossil fuel era as society tries to change course for a more sustainable and positive future. Within this scope, the goal is to focus on offshore oil platform structures and reimagining them in a context of sustainable energy generation. The primary objectives are to design a satellite campus for the southern Californian universities to learn from the unique site and conditions of the platforms. This thesis will explore the potential of the offshore oil platform in a new light, not as a symbol of the fossil fuel industry as it is today but of a pinnacle of a sustainable design and production.