The objective of this practicum project was to explore the role of interior design in transforming unused urban space into public opportunities for gathering. This was achieved by extracting design guidelines from theoretical concepts of space and place, interiority, and immersion. In doing so, subsidiary concepts of interactivity, placemaking, boundaries and thresholds were also examined in order to help achieve the overall goal of transforming in-between space within the city of Winnipeg into meaningful opportunities for spatial and social interaction. It is the intention of the project that these newly designed spaces will help to foster spatial opportunities for pausing that will help to engage the users of the space with one another, the city of Winnipeg, and in turn create a sense of place.

The space occupied by New Media is elusive. Its inherent omnipresence is yet another example of the loss of physicality of the information age. The contemporary gallery⎯- the white cube -⎯functions as a pseudo-religious tomb; suspending art-objects in limbo, without reference of time and space. Exhibition spaces for art have functioned to house the object for hundreds of years. But suddenly, the object has dissolved, slipping through the art museum’s desperate grasp. The following is a study of the tridactic exchange of art, the participant, and three-dimensional space. At the site of the city’s birth, new structure and cherished relic converge: erasing and re-writing, veiling and un-veiling, concealing and revealing, spaces evolve and dissolve, growing a continuously fluid environment. The result is an Interior Design driven solution for displaying New Media: a hybrid model that synthesizes the ubiquitous museum and the stable institution, forming what will become The New Gallery.

Across the globe, the historic (built) environment is counted among a country's most precious cultural commodities, which despite its popularity remains exceptionally vulnerable and in constant danger of deterioration and decay. Due to an unusually high density of historic structures in need of protection coupled with a strong property and construction sector, this issue is more prominent in the UK than in other developed country. Built environment professionals regularly encounter historic and protected structures in their professional practice and exhibit a general tendency towards principle support of the concept of conservation. Nonetheless, the heritage discourse and with it the discussion of architectural conservation principles, issues and implications in relation to other built environment professions is, by and large, woefully absent from formal professional education at the tertiary level. This thesis investigated various forms of conservation education in respect to their nature and extent in the context of UK undergraduate built environment degrees in a mixed-methods research approach. The findings suggest that while practitioners as well as educationalists and building conservation specialists all agree to the importance of conservation to both cultural fabric and built environment sector, neither shows concrete tendencies to introduce the heritage discourse into (built environment) higher education on a wide scale. Conservationists prefer to focus their heritage appreciation programmes on young children, while practitioners and built environment educationalists claim building conservation education to be of little relevance to their professional education. In between, the average built environment student is released into professional practice woefully unprepared for encounters with historic, let alone protected structures. This thesis proposes to include adult learners at tertiary level into the built heritage discourse on a much wider scale by suggesting the development of a curriculum for novice conservation education and a subsequent Conservation Game as a custom-created digital teaching and learning tool building on the principles of experiential and game-based learning to be implemented in higher education institutions across the UK. Modelled on Dawid W. Shaffer's Epistemic Games, the theoretic and conceptional background behind the Conservation Game is laid out as an interactive and engaging simulation of conservation practice to introduce conservation novices to concept and practice in a risk free, fun environment with the aim to increase baseline building conservation understanding and appreciation in young UK built environment practitioners.

The sustainability of cultural heritage management of the resources is strongly related to support from local community via participation. It is evident that active community involvement can improve local residents’ quality of life based on better environment, social and economic conditions. However, there is little research into the question of whether the involvement of local community in heritage management derives from a genuine interest and desires to protect and conserve their local heritage assets. In the case of Malaysia, a truly local community collaborative approach is often limited due to the ways in which the community in question is conceptualised and involved in the process. In other words, local community involvement is extremely rare because they have been neglected especially in the decision making process. This has created a negative relationship between local community and government authorities in resource conservation. Therefore, it is pivotal to investigate the influence of the local community attachment towards heritage, in order to understand the local community involvement in heritage management. The attitudes and perceptions of three groups of respondents were examined by using the concept of heritage trail development, as an illustrative example to triangulate the relationship between local community involvement, government administrative structures and tourists’ experiences. The results revealed that, despite the fact the local community is highly attached to the heritage assets; the level of community involvement in cultural heritage management in Malaysia is low due to operational, structures and cultural limitation to engage the local community in both management and tourism development in the Melaka World Heritage Site. This is to say that the participation approach in Malaysia is highly controlled by the centralised government structure. The research recommends that the authorities consider implementing two major improvements in order to develop and maintain a system of sustainable cultural heritage management: Firstly, to overcome the limitations of community participation in the decision making process. Secondly, to consider the community attachment towards cultural heritage elements, before developing tourist attractions in heritage settings, in terms of residents’ emotional and functional attachments.

Buildings account for about 40% of global energy consumption and contribute 30% of all CO2 emissions. This research project investigated extant office building development in Abuja, Nigeria with a view to establishing typical energy performances. Energy end uses were critically analysed to identify energy saving potentials. The research evaluated design variables that can be used to facilitate low energy building design and determine enhanced performances in the Nigerian and regional context. The research initially adopted a case study approach that involved fieldwork surveys and walk-through energy audits in which 22 office buildings were investigated belonging to four performance based categories developed for the research. Also, based on a building inventory survey form developed for this research, building information obtained included the buildings physical components, energy use management and energy end uses. This enabled typical energy performances of the office building categories to be deduced using three widely used indicators; the Energy Use Index (EUI), the Energy Cost Index (ECI) and the Carbon Emission Index (CEI). Also, disaggregated energy end use showed an average distribution pattern of air conditioning, lighting, equipment and building services in the ratio 59%, 15%, 43% and 4% respectively. This showed the potentials of energy savings by reducing cooling load. With the aid of computer based simulation (using IES-VE software) the research further evaluated the impacts of nine architectural design variables (identified from design guidance for low energy buildings as well as design recommendations for tropical climates) on building energy consumption using simplified models of the case study office building categories. From all these, an impact hierarchy of the design variables was deduced and the appropriate low energy design strategies were developed. This showed potential energy savings of up to 20% was achievable. Also benchmarks for enhanced building performance targets for all the categories were proposed for the furtherance of a sustainable built environment in a developing world context.

This study explores the career of British architect Oliver Hill (1887-1968), focusing mainly on the twenty year period from 1919 to 1939. The interwar era marks the most productive phase of Hill’s oeuvre, embracing the unprecedented changes in architecture and society. As a figure marginalised by recent Modernist historiography, Hill is commonly viewed as an eclectic architect of lightweight concerns. Hill’s Modern buildings are seen as poor relations to the work of the fêted Modern Architectural Research group, a view this study seeks to redress. This new research into Hill’s oeuvre will reveal the significant role he played in the development of British interwar architecture. Hill’s complex position is assessed in terms of national tradition and modernity. A study of Hill’s formative years draws out the constant cultural threads that shaped the core of his architectural outlook. Key forms of precedent and influence, studied and assimilated by Hill, are investigated and set within a wider context to evaluate the avant-gardism of his approach. Analysis of Hill’s response to architectural journalism and cultural theory of the period seeks to identify his place within contemporary movements. In light of these strands of influence, selected Hill buildings and texts are compared and contrasted to establish his position within the interwar British milieu. This thesis contributes to current discourse, which seeks to challenge the view that modernity and tradition represent binary opposites. Using Hill’s career as a touchstone, it chronicles the shifting definition of modernism in 1930s Britain against the theoretical perspective of writers, such as Pevsner and J.M. Richards.

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As subway ridership around the world increases the typology has an opportunity to play an increasingly important role in the daily routine of urban dwellers. Underground spaces pose unique psychological and physiological stresses on occupants; therefore, an opportunity exists to rethink the subway station interior to respond to experiential and existential conditions of the traveler. This practicum aims to address these issues by redesigning an existing subway station that responds to convergence of picnolepsy, non-place, and biophilic design methodologies. Project goals include a design that focuses on experiential and emotional qualities to create a more exciting and comfortable space without impeding existing efficiencies.