Thesis (M.S.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (June 29, 2006) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

A tese aqui proposta resgata a ecogênese a partir da obra paisagística de Fernando Chacel, que desenvolveu a regeneração de paisagens pela recuperação de qualidades ecossistêmicas originais. Sinaliza para a pertinência de aliá-la aos conceitos de lugar, resiliência e transdisciplinaridade. A trandisciplinaridade é tratada, com base na concepção de Basarab Nicolescu, como uma abordagem científica que articula os saberes que estão entre, através e além das disciplinas. A pesquisa utiliza como metodologia a pesquisa bibliográfica qualitativa e na análise de dados, emprega a hermenêutica dialética. Conforme Maria Cecília Minayo, a hermenêutica envolve: compreensão como categoria metodológica; liberdade, necessidade, força, consciência histórica, todo e partes, como categorias filosóficas fundantes; e, significado, símbolo, intencionalidade e empatia como balizas do pensamento. A dialética é desenvolvida por meio da articulação das ideias de crítica, de negação, de oposição, de mudança, de processo, de contradição, de movimento e de transformação da natureza e da realidade social. Nessa dimensão reflexiva, esta investigação busca a ressignificação da ecogênese inicialmente apresentada e a sua complementação na forma de uma ecogênese transdisciplinar. Sugere-se com esse percurso a positividade e a concretude de um redesenho do conceito de ecogênese como possível referência para as concepções paisagísticas nas cidades e como forma de criar lugares capazes de qualificar a vida urbana, com diferentes repercussões na relação entre seres e ambiente. / This dissertation rescues the concept of Ecogenesis from Fernando Chacel’s work, who developed landscape architecture regeneration method through original ecosystem qualities recovery, comprising the concepts of place, resilience and transdisciplinarity. According to Basarab Nicolescu, trandisciplinarity is dealt as a scientific approach that links types of knowledge that are between, through and beyond disciplines. The investigation work uses as methodology qualitative bibliographic research, and in the data analysis, dialectic hermeneutics. According to Minayo, hermeneutics involve: understanding as methodologic category; liberty, necessity, strength, historical awareness, parts and whole, as ultimate philosophical categories; and meaning, symbol, intentionality and empathy as landmarks of thought. Dialectics is developed through linking the ideas of critics, denial, opposition, changing, process, contradiction, movement and transformation of nature and social reality. In this reflexive dimension, this work pursues the resignification of ecogenesis as initially presented and its complementation as Transdisciplinary Ecogenesis. This way, it is suggested that positivity and concreteness of a redesigning in ecogenesis concept can be a possible reference for urban landscape design and a way to create places capable of qualifying urban life, with different repercussions in the relationship among beings and environment.

Athens insists on representing white marble as the material embodiment of the city, and consequently white marble is persistently present in mythologies of the city. This thesis argues that in perpetuating these myths that make consistent appeals to idealised ‘white places’, the reciprocal and mytho-poetic relationship between marble’s materiality and the Athenian metropolis is progressively over-simplified. The result of this particular, reductive historiography is that today the contemporary opsis (architectural surface and image) of marble stimulates an emotional (pathetic) perception of the material that, by extension, fosters a marble-image of Athens that is truly pathetic. This pathos is clear if we consider the violent gestures that accompanied a series of recent anti-austerity riots in which rioters deliberately tore marble veneers from numerous modern and contemporary urban edifices. Despite the apparent senselessness of this act of dissent toward the superficiality of the current Athenian politico-economic apparatus, these actions in fact exposed the superficial manner in which the material has been employed to re-present Athens as an imaginary place. This thesis regards the perceptible absence of marble brought (inadvertently) to the surface during these riots as an opening to a deeper understanding of marble’s materiality. ‘Following’ the agency of marble’s matter, this Architecture by Design thesis presents three potential ways of re-instituting what matters in Attica’s marble. Firstly, the thesis advances a theoretical argument for the mutually constitutive relationship between marble and Athens, where obsolete illustrations and a priori dogmas regarding notions of matter and materiality, image and opsis, landscape and ecology are challenged (Vol. 1). Secondly, the thesis presents a re-presentational visual archive as an expressive essay of both marble’s opsis and of Athens’ marbleimage (Vol. 2). Thirdly, the thesis evokes the poetics of marble as discourse along with a portfolio of architectural design as it materialises a series of speculative design propositions that are placed in specific charged contexts across the broader Attic (metropolitan) landscape, and which address practices of marble concerned with the marble-image of Athens (Vol. 3). Read in conjunction (or in disjunction), these three means of re-situating marble’s materiality within its inherently aesthetic and, by extension, political ground mobilise the material’s asperity. In this way, the material’s intrinsic textures, tensions and differences are projected into the making of marble’s opsis —an opsis that in turn re-informs and enriches the making of Athens’ imageries.

A tese aqui proposta resgata a ecogênese a partir da obra paisagística de Fernando Chacel, que desenvolveu a regeneração de paisagens pela recuperação de qualidades ecossistêmicas originais. Sinaliza para a pertinência de aliá-la aos conceitos de lugar, resiliência e transdisciplinaridade. A trandisciplinaridade é tratada, com base na concepção de Basarab Nicolescu, como uma abordagem científica que articula os saberes que estão entre, através e além das disciplinas. A pesquisa utiliza como metodologia a pesquisa bibliográfica qualitativa e na análise de dados, emprega a hermenêutica dialética. Conforme Maria Cecília Minayo, a hermenêutica envolve: compreensão como categoria metodológica; liberdade, necessidade, força, consciência histórica, todo e partes, como categorias filosóficas fundantes; e, significado, símbolo, intencionalidade e empatia como balizas do pensamento. A dialética é desenvolvida por meio da articulação das ideias de crítica, de negação, de oposição, de mudança, de processo, de contradição, de movimento e de transformação da natureza e da realidade social. Nessa dimensão reflexiva, esta investigação busca a ressignificação da ecogênese inicialmente apresentada e a sua complementação na forma de uma ecogênese transdisciplinar. Sugere-se com esse percurso a positividade e a concretude de um redesenho do conceito de ecogênese como possível referência para as concepções paisagísticas nas cidades e como forma de criar lugares capazes de qualificar a vida urbana, com diferentes repercussões na relação entre seres e ambiente. / This dissertation rescues the concept of Ecogenesis from Fernando Chacel’s work, who developed landscape architecture regeneration method through original ecosystem qualities recovery, comprising the concepts of place, resilience and transdisciplinarity. According to Basarab Nicolescu, trandisciplinarity is dealt as a scientific approach that links types of knowledge that are between, through and beyond disciplines. The investigation work uses as methodology qualitative bibliographic research, and in the data analysis, dialectic hermeneutics. According to Minayo, hermeneutics involve: understanding as methodologic category; liberty, necessity, strength, historical awareness, parts and whole, as ultimate philosophical categories; and meaning, symbol, intentionality and empathy as landmarks of thought. Dialectics is developed through linking the ideas of critics, denial, opposition, changing, process, contradiction, movement and transformation of nature and social reality. In this reflexive dimension, this work pursues the resignification of ecogenesis as initially presented and its complementation as Transdisciplinary Ecogenesis. This way, it is suggested that positivity and concreteness of a redesigning in ecogenesis concept can be a possible reference for urban landscape design and a way to create places capable of qualifying urban life, with different repercussions in the relationship among beings and environment.

Green urban spaces are a vigorous part in cities development, all over the world (Swanwick, Dunnet, & Wooley, 2003). These spaces are persistently constructed and negotiated over a creative process, which includes a network of actors, such as clients, designers, constructors, and users. This thesis addresses this process - with a case study of landscape architects in Stockholm, and their practice of creativity. The landscape architects present one group of actors involved in the process, where they design urban spaces for the future through their creative work. It begins with a mental image, an idea, and ends with a built site, a designed space. In reference to practice theory (Ortner, 1984 and 2006) and the biosocial becomings approach (Ingold, 2013), I analyze how creativity as a practice is socially produced by history, culture and power, through the biosocial growth of the creative agent, the landscape architect. Referring to Hallam and Ingold ́s definition (2007, p. 3), I understand creative practice as an improvisational process. I argue that creativity is accumulated, i.e. a becoming practice amongst becoming creative agents. While investigating the practice of creativity through a traditional participant observation, I primarily focus on sounds, where I listen to the practice, and use it as a method of collecting empirical data. With that method, I enrich the registration of sensor impressions (Borneman & Hammoudi, 2009, p. 19) during my fieldwork, providing a sonic dimension to the knowledge of creative practice amongst landscape architects.

This project is centred around phytoremediation and is set in Glasgow. Phytoremediation is the engineered use of plants and associated microorganisms to decontaminate polluted soil and water. The goal of this thesis project is to re-integrate an abandoned post-industrial site that used to be a meat market and abattoir into Glasgow's urban fabric by decontaminating it through the use of phytoremediation. The project is centered around the application and design of this method on site.

Pollinators provide key ecological services. With one-third of our global food production dependent on pollinators, maintaining healthy pollinator communities is vital. Bees are the most pervasive and effective pollinator species, yet are currently declining worldwide, with the main cause linked to habitat loss. To combat this decline, researchers are turning to suburban landscapes to aid in pollinator conservation. Incorporating native plants into suburban landscapes has been shown to benefit pollinators. However, there is a lack of information on how different landscape designs and growing conditions influence pollinator communities. To better understand whether native plants can effectively improve suburban pollinator habitats, this research asked: 1) how does irrigation and soil composition influence the availability of floral resources, 2) which plants attract the greatest number and diversity of pollinators, and 3) how do native vs non-native landscape designs impact a residential neighborhood’s ability to support pollinator communities? Using 27 different native plant species that were subjected to a combination of irrigation and compost treatments, we examined plant-pollinator interactions in 16 fully replicated and randomized experimental plots. Additionally, we compared the pollinator communities of two newly developed neighborhoods - one using traditional, non-native plants and the other incorporating native plants into their landscape design. Pollinators were sampled during the spring, summer, and fall of 2022-2023 through visual counts of pollinators visiting open flowers. Blooming flowers for each plant species were counted concurrently to determine floral abundance. Compost addition at planting greatly increased both floral and pollinator abundance over two years, but regular irrigation did not have a clear impact. Native-based landscapes had significantly higher pollinator abundance and diversity when compared to traditional landscape designs. The results of this study show the benefits of incorporating native plants into suburban landscapes and their potential for supporting both water conservation and pollinator communities.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture