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Designers often believe that environmental design improves quality of life. Preference as an index of motivation has influences on many aspects of people. Based on a study of the relationship between actual uses and preferred outdoor environments, this research aims to deepen our understanding of place via public input and to improve the design quality of the central community garden (CCG) of high-rise flat residential areas (HRFRAs) in China. With a total of 902 respondents from six HRFRAs, the investigation was carried out in three major Chinese cities, Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, in September 2006. Analysis at a general level reveals the preferred environmental patterns and significant predictors of the respondents' actual use. The comparisons at the city level indicate the territorial differences and characteristics of each city, respectively. Analysis of the results indicated that a quiet, green environment in an informal design style was the preferred environment which would improve residents' frequency of use. Of the environmental elements, waterscape and evergreens were particularly important to users. Although both of them are important to people's actual use, the effect of the prospect indicator (perspective of the CCG looking from a resident's window) was relatively weaker than the indicator of affordances, such as exercise facilities and children's playgrounds, etc. On the other hand, the results of the study explain the gap which often occurs between landscape architects' intentions and the manner in which the elements of the design actually work, in users' opinion. Landscape designers of the HRFRAs in China need to reorder the emphasis of the design aspects and adjust the contents of the environment to satisfy users' social, functional and psychological needs.

The research is concerned with the decline and the deterioration of the Old Town of Tripoli and its heritage. Its 47 hectares of its traditional urban fabric is considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Libya. However, the Old Town of Tripoli has experienced destruction and a loss of its physical and social infrastructure, as well as in its economic conditions, as a result of neglect and a lack of awareness of the importance of this heritage. In addition to the lack of infrastructure, other contributing factors are: a poor physical environment, high density, social disintegration, the departure of the original residents and their replacement by local and international migrants, and the disappearance of traditional activities and the tourism market. The thesis aims to understand and determine the existing physical, social and economic situation of the Old Town of Tripoli by studying, surveying and analysing the historical urban fabric of the town and its inhabitants. This analysis will help to determine the reasons for the problems of deterioration and change in the Old Town of Tripoli. Revitalising the historical urban fabric is a very important process consisting of different aspects such as the physical, social and economic conditions. The purpose of the thesis is to present a suitable revitalisation programme for the re- development of the Old Town. This research, therefore, has adopted broad methods to achieve the aims and objectives in producing a revitalisation programme. The methodology that is suggested to deal with the problems facing the Old Town, and the solutions for it comes from different literature reviews and case studies. The methodology was approached both deductively and inductively. The deductive part consists of a literature review. The inductive part consists of a survey and interviews with residents of the Old Town of Tripoli and a questionnaire, followed by the implementation, application and the conclusion. To achieve these aims and objectives, the thesis is divided into four parts. The first part consists of three chapters; the first chapter covers the importance of Tripoli City and its location. The fact Tripoli is the capital of Libya provides it with a special economic and administrative importance. The second chapter includes the historical development of the Old Town in three stages: its early history, colonial history and modern history. The third chapter of the study addresses the urban structure of the Old Town and its importance as an historical core and as a main part of the commercial centre of Tripoli. In addition, this chapter presents an idea of the conditions of the physical fabric of the Old Town. The second part of the study contains three chapters. The fourth chapter addresses four case studies selected from North Africa and the Middle East. These include the historical city of Jeddah, Tunis, Fez, and Aleppo. The main purpose was to investigate and learn from the problems facing these cities. Chapters Five and Six give a clear idea about the main problems facing the Old Town of Tripoli, resulting from the field survey, interviews and observations. The poor physical condition and the economic situation of the Old Town's residents, also the fact that most of the occupants of these historic buildings are poor rural and international migrant workers who cannot afford to live in the new suburbs and to maintain these properties, causes the neglect and lack of maintenance of the traditional houses, which, in turn, leads to the deterioration of these historic properties and to the loss of social interaction. The third part of this study proposes ideas to solve the problems which were addressed in the second part. Part three contains three chapters. Chapter Seven addresses all that should be done to improve the physical, social and economic conditions of the Old Town and to attract the original people to return. Chapter Eight addresses two case studies of the city of Tunis and the city of Fez. The purpose was to learn from their experiences how they have implemented and managed their problems and to apply any learning from the Tunis and Fez studies to improving the Old Town of Tripoli. Chapter Nine deals with a comprehensive revitalisation programme. Part four consists of two chapters. Chapter Ten deals with the implementation and application of the revitalisation programme. Chapter Eleven presents the conclusion and recommendations of the whole thesis.

The mosque plays an important role in nurturing the spiritual, intellectual and social aspects of the Muslim societies. It embraces these aspects not only as a building, but also as an institution considered by this study as a holistic system, which comprises subjective values and objective components. The mosque's responses to the ever evolving pressures facing Muslims have always been expressed through its ability to support the transformation of the social and cultural forces. The main contribution of this research is to introduce a new method of understanding the mosque and its role. The research adopted an approach which extended the General Systems Theory to the Theory of Structuralism, being a holistic epistemology that recognises the element of time in responding to the dynamic nature of the mosque. To implement this approach, a number of structuralism concepts are utilised, e.g. transformation, synchronic/diachronic views, surface structure/deep structure and the laws of composition underlying the concept of genotype/phenotype. Both methods of deduction and induction are used with the aim of building such understanding. The first part sets the theoretical model in two chapters. The first chapter learns from theories of Holism, General Systems Theory and Structuralism while the second introduces Islam as religion and addresses its principles and cultural values. Both chapters build the theoretical approach that is implemented to guide the research towards achieving its aims and objectives. The second part studies the mosque in the light of the theoretical model of part one, with particular reference to Cairo, the case study of the research. This is taking place into two chapters. The first explores into the origins of the mosque, studying its subjective and objective aspects at architectural and urban levels. The second chapter traces the transformation of these aspects within the Cairene Muslim society, through different historical eras. The third part of this research is inductive, and is dedicated to the empirical examination. The main objective of this part is to test people's perception of the role of the Cairene mosque, in the light of the studied theories. A qualitative open -ended questionnaire is designed, distributed, collected and analysed to accomplish this goal. The findings of the research emerge from both its theoretical and empirical aspects. Theoretically the findings are based on the philosophical discourse and Islamic principles. Empirically, the findings come from the open -ended survey. Therefore, the conclusion responded to the aim of the research in finding method of understanding the mosque and its role as an institution in nurturing all aspects of Muslim society; following its social transformation and maintaining its rules of composition. The genotype provides a set of rules controlling the reproduction of the mosque as an institution. The rules that form the genotype of the mosque relate to a hierarchy of three levels of forces underlying its designs. These are the eternal unchangeable principles, symbolic meanings and contextual transformations. These forces contribute to the genotype of the mosque to different degrees. The formulated structuralist model could be applied to other mosques elsewhere.

This research concentrates mainly on the inhabited tissue in the urban fabric of the traditional Islamic Cities. It researches mainly the design and construction of the housing plots and places in between like yards, courtyards, streets, and markets known collectively as Al-Amer. It explores the hypothesis that this was built mainly by the decisions of the common people and enabled by principle of ownership. The objective is to complement previous studies that have tended to focus more on the great buildings of Islamic society such as Mosques, mausolea, madrasas, and khans erected by famous caliphs and sultans to memorialise their reigns and places in history. In contrast to this approach, this study examines the general urban infrastructure and architecture utilised by the common people in their everyday lives. The research is divided into four parts. The first centres on the Islamic City - its beginning, informal development, and general planning. The entire process of urbanisation or city building is examined with emphasis on the role of community decision-making and leadership formation. Thus, the rules of construction and informal urban design start to emerge as the process is explored in some depth. The second part is about land ownership as a major factor in the formation of the urban fabric of the city known as Al- Amer. This covers such aspects as the methods utilised for awarding of building plots to individuals to carry out their houses through "vitalisation" known as Ihya `a and direct allocation known as Iqta'a. The third part covers the built -up area of the inhabited urban fabric. In this regard it includes an analysis of the houses, markets, shops and other outbuildings and the spaces that separate and connect them. A great variety of interstitial shapes emerge as a direct result of applying principles and interpretations of principles of Ihya'a, Iqta'a, Hareem and Darar. These "forces/rules" have traditionally been applied to both residential and non -residential structures as well as rights -of -way, dimensions of streets, sight lines, house designs, Hareem, Darar, and other significant concerns of urban Muslims. In a sense it creates an Urban policy with guidelines accumulated through time forming the conventions which led fmally to making micro plans through a community process in programming and developing the housing model giving at the end the unique coherent structure of the traditional medieval Islamic city. The fourth part covers some other aspects of property ownership as they relate to the dynamic growth, territorial changes and the overall development of the city giving it its rich pattern of shapes and spaces and great visual interest.

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This collaborative research project explores the significance of the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as a meaningful site for contemporary society and especially for a small selection of artists who reside there, some of them, for over thirty years. The research has enquired as to the possible agency of the landscape in expressive media and the artist’s part as catalyst in the creative process. Over the last four hundred years, many representations of landscape in Western Europe, including those of the Wye Valley, have reduced human experience of topography to a vertical, flat and oblong plane. By being framed, drawings, prints and paintings have hedged in foliage, cordoned vistas and fenced off panoramas. Such depictions have arguably reduced a comprehensive, corporeally centred encounter to an ‘ocularcentric’ one. Subsequently, due to the continued nature of framing, photography, and more recently, smartphone photography has done little to dissolve the frame placed between us and the world we witness. Such photography repeatedly reinstates the visual values of others and continues to centre on the visual account of reality. A botanically abundant setting such as the Lower Wye Valley is arguably a sensorially stimulating site; a place within which to be near living (and dying) matter; investigations were therefore situated within the predominantly arboreal landscape along the Wye, roughly between Ross and Chepstow and through the implementation of a broad range of intentionally immersive research methodologies. By using auto-ethnography, observation, ambulatory interviews, researcher-led group walks and making pilot-studies, it was hoped that any resulting data would be informed by actual encounters with the material nature of the location. By adopting a physically centred approach to the study, it was the intention to elicit primary responses from participants as part of endorsing a more multi-modal approach to experiencing landscape with the intended result being a more ecologically and empathetic relationship with place.