Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Anne E. Beamish / One of the most important aspects of a public space is its accessibility and inclusivity for all people. In urban parks, this often means that a wide variety of users must be considered during the design process. Denver Civic Center Park is a historic urban park in the heart of Denver’s downtown. The park caters to a variety of people ranging from tourist, who briefly visit the park, to people who are experiencing homelessness, and call the park home. Ensuring that the needs of people varying in age, culture, and economic background is key to any urban park’s success. Semi-structured interviews, site observations, site inventory and analysis, and critical mapping helped assess Denver’s Civic Center Park’s inclusivity and accessibility. Through a combination of improved infrastructure and additional amenities, a thoughtful redesign of the historic park addressed today’s challenges with homelessness and created a more inclusive environment. Because of the historic nature of the park only specific modifications to the southern ares were made. There are two reasons to create inclusive public spaces. The first is the social mixing that comes from people of different backgrounds and cultures sharing a safe environment. Social mixing connects groups of people through passive and active interactions that are built on seeing someone or overhearing their conversations. Social interactions, that take place in a safe environment, can trigger empathy within the community and start to build relationships between people of different socioeconomic groups. The second reason focuses on the ethics of designing public space. The infrastructure and policy of a public space should not be exclusive to a “desirable” demographic, but should include all existing users and the surrounding community. Because a large portion of users in Denver’s Civic Center Park are people experiencing homelessness, the design and programmatic amenities should consider their needs and desires. Landscape architects can influence the public’s views and the way people interact with each other by designing safe and active urban public spaces. In this project I asked, what design policies and strategies could be implemented to make Denver’s Civic Center Park more inclusive and secure for all park users, including those experiencing homelessness?

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The project examines, and experiments with, how one can use historical fragments as a starting point for the design of a 7000 square meter large civic center, or house of arts and culture, in Beirut, as this is a place where the urban development has had a very different point of departure the last decades. The historical fragments in this case has been a collection of postcards of various public buildings that existed in the city between 1890 and 1970. Many times postcards are the main record of history of historical places, but this is not the main reason why I chose it as a study object. I chose it because of their purpose; to communicate a story of the place it portrays to outsiders, to people whose only knowledge about that place comes from the image on its front and the restricted number of words that can be squeezed into the small area on the back. Given my position as a foreigner working in a context that, although having visited multiple times, is unfamiliar to me, I found this an interesting starting point for the project.

Pause is a necessity within the rhythm of life. There are pauses everywhere around us; we pause when we breathe, we pause when we speak, and we pause when we think. Pause is a crucial part in the most beautiful pieces of music, it is in between our bites of food and sips of coffee. Pause is what makes life beautiful; without it the world around us will consist of a meaningless cacophony. Architecture, much like other things in life must also contain pauses to be enjoyable. The most memorable and appreciative architecture consist of spaces where once has an ability to pause and have an experience be it much needed rest, peace or a moment to think. There are many memorable places that create such moments and that I have experienced across places in Europe and United States. This experiences I studied and would like to bring to much needed places closer to home. I strongly believe that it is very important to have places of pause in our urban fabric. Thus, I searched and found a site which I believe would be most beneficial from a community center filled with opportunities to pause. The site location is being developed with a cacophony of commercial and residential construction with little consideration to what is needed in between in order to create a beautiful composition of a city; a pause in the urban fabric. / Master of Architecture

The project aims to elevate Halmstad’s historical and contemporary culture. Today, the artistic practice is conducted in separate and closed of cultural clusters. By givning the city a new addition, the Cultural Beacon, the project aims to work in two ways. The first is “to be seen”, in order to attract people of Halmstad to engage and practice its culture. The second is “to show”, in order to illuminate what already is there, and to build upon the resources in the existing cultural clusters. By doing so, the new addition does not only nurture the practice of the city’s culture, but even more important, it nurtures the exchange of culture both between individuals and the collectives, in order to create a more open and inviting city for its residents and visitors to take in. The program of the building consists of three parts. The maker space (to engage the city’s residents in cultural activities), the workers space (to support the existing cultural clusters with space for producing and rehearsing) and the exhibition space (to showcase the story of the city’s culture). These work both separately and collectively in order to link different groups of people and encourage exchange of culture.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:32:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Karina Clecia da Silva Guilherme.pdf: 1821612 bytes, checksum: 7a0b9d1beeda23ae014357b448e92d27 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-31 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This study aims to analyze the implementation and operation of Civil Center School (CCE) created during the military dictatorship period. These institutions worked in the schools of first and second degrees and relied with a Moral and Civic Education (MCE) coordinator to direct the civic and moral activities developed by CCE institutions. The legislation, school documentation and participant subjects (students and coordinators) oral histories from the 1971 to 1986 period were used. The analyses procedures were based on theoretical-methodological Edward Palmer Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and Carlo Ginsburg. Public schools documentaries in the Vale do Paraíba Paulista that stood out as educational institutions in the period mentioned were selected. Looking at the methodological point of view, it was considered the contributions of research documentary (content analysis, thematic incidence, analytical categorization) and Oral History. Results: The experiences and records exposed in the documentation reviewed revealed that the organization and participation in the CCE were striking for the subjects involved in the process and, of variously form, students, teachers, coordinators and directors of MCE performed the experiment of relationship with the military regime / O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a implantação e o funcionamento dos Centros Cívicos Escolares (CCE) criados durante o período da ditadura militar. Esses órgãos funcionavam nas escolas de 1º e 2º Graus e contavam com um orientador de Educação Moral e Cívica (EMC) para dirigir as atividades de moral e civismo desenvolvidas pelas instituicões. Utilizou-se como fonte a legislação, a documentação escolar e relatos orais de sujeitos participantes (alunos e orientadores), no período de 1971 a 1986. Os procedimentos de análise foram embasados nas concepções teórico-metodológicas de Edward Palmer Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm e Carlo Ginzburg. Para a pesquisa documental, foram selecionadas algumas escolas públicas localizadas na região do Vale do Paraíba paulista que se destacaram como instituições de ensino no período. Do ponto de vista metodológico, consideraram-se as contribuições da pesquisa documental (análise de conteúdo, incidência temática, categorização analítica) e da História Oral. Resultados: as experiências relatadas e os registros expostos na documentação analisada revelaram que a organização e a participação nos CCEs foram marcantes para os sujeitos envolvidos no processo e que, de formas variadas, estudantes, professores, orientadores de EMC e diretores realizaram a experiência da relação com o regime militar

The focus of this two year master’s thesis in Library- and Information science is the study of two Swedish Public Library buildings with the examples Lomma and Halmstad. The main goal and purpose of the thesis is to try to uncover which views and values of the public library are expressed in the examined libraries; and to what extent these views manifests are shown in its architecture. The theoretical framework is based on Raymond Williams’s cultural concepts of effective, dominant culture and the two extremities of this culture, called residual and emergent cultures. A second aspect is Yi-Fu Tuans concepts of Space and Place. The study also uses a historical background of Swedish Public Library Buildings. By close reading and textual analyses, the empirical study focuses on the municipalities’ documents surrounding the building of the library buildings in Lomma and Halmstad. The architectural perspective is studied through the architects own documents and architectural journals discussing the built Library Buildings. Results show that the technological advances of the time these libraries were built has put them in a position of change, which also is visible in the architecture. The libraries in Lomma and Halmstad function as civic icons of the community and the architecture is very dependent of the places where they are situated. The expressions of the two libraries differ in details but the overall result show that the values exhibited behind the building of the examined libraries is a part of a historical residual culture, functioning as effective and dominant. The conclusion of the thesis is that the expression of the architecture is however a part of an emergent culture. The buildings aim to comprise the values and display the diverse causes in its architecture. The buildings seek to manifest the ideal activity and working of the modern Public Library.

La volonté d’inscrire l’apologie monumentale que représente le Centre civique de Bucarest dans une histoire urbaine et sociale nous a poussé à analyser les raisons qui ont guidé sa mise en œuvre et, plus largement, à reconstruire le fil narratif de l’histoire bucarestoise à travers l’héritage bâti prestigieux de la ville. C’est ainsi que nous nous sommes intéressés aux rapports entre édification des bâtiments et espaces remarquables et (re)construction d’une identité nationale roumaine, depuis de la déclaration d’indépendance jusqu’à l’intégration européenne perçue comme reconnaissance suprême de l’État roumain. Ce travail analyse donc les techniques d’instrumentalisation de la production architecturale et urbaine dans la définition et la promotion de l’identité nationale. Il complète également le peu d’études scientifiques traitant du Centre civique, à la fois emblème et stigmate en raison des efforts exceptionnels octroyés pour sa construction. Enfin, il aborde la question de la réception d’un ensemble « idéologiquement chargé » et, plus largement, les divers emplois faits des héritages urbains par les régimes politiques qui se sont succédés à la tête de la Roumanie. / This paper aims to place the monumental apology represented by the Civic Center of Bucharest in its urban and socio-political context. Therefore we have analysed the reasons and decisions that led to the way it was conceived and set up, and in addition we have tried to rebuild the narrative of the history of Bucharest through the city’s prominent built heritage. For this reason we have looked into the relations between the fact of erecting buildings and remarkable spaces and the (re)construction of a Romanian national identity, beginning with the Declaration of independence and ending with the European integration, the latter standing for the supreme legitimacy granted to the Romanian State. Therefore this research engages into the analysis of the mechanisms involved in using architectural and urban productions as instruments for defining and promoting national identity. In addition it fills a gap of almost non-existent scientific work dealing with the Civic Center, which is, due to the exceptional efforts engaged in its construction, in the same time Bucharest’s emblem and scar. Finally, it deals with the question of the reception of “ideologically charged” buildings, and more generally, with the fate of urban heritage inherited from totalitarian regimes.

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