In the 1960s and 1970s, Canadian music educator R. Murray Schafer developed the field of soundscape studies, later introducing the “soundwalk”: an empirical method for identifying a soundscape and its components through the activities of walking and close listening. Human activity in a soundscape, or a soundwalk, is known as anthropophony: a category of sounds produced by humans, including language, vocalizations, and musics. In this individual oral presentation, the primary researcher will share her experiences in creating a framework for her Master’s in Appalachian Studies Applied Project at East Tennessee State University. The soundwalk method will be adapted into a series of recorded “soundhikes.” During these hikes, the primary researcher and her participants will engage in a series of interviews in areas designated as state parks and national forests in the Upstate of South Carolina. These oral histories (with English-language translations, when applicable) will be submitted to the Archives of Appalachia, and will be used in the primary researcher’s ongoing research on Appalachian representation in the region’s protected spaces. As these protected spaces have reached nearly one hundred years of existence as “state parks” or “national forests”, the demographics of the people visiting them have changed drastically. The lenses of Critical Race Theory and Feminist Disability Theory will be used to explore these new demographic realties, and to advocate for resources benefitting those who have self-reported any of the following while attempting to enjoy Appalachian nature spaces: barriers to access, feelings of fear, or experiences of rejection. The ultimate goal of the oral history soundhike project, influenced by the principles of Public Sphere Theory, is to feature present-day voices which have not been historically included in Appalachian “nature narratives,” leading to increased representation in the field of Appalachian Studies. Though data collection has not yet begun, it is the hope of the primary researcher that this information will have a pragmatic application. Applicable portions of this project will be submitted to agencies, located in South Carolina’s Upstate region, which have indicated an interest in attracting more diverse stakeholders. The finished project will advocate for more diverse language and cultural resources and programming in protected nature spaces.

Kandidatprojekt i Arkitektur 15 hp. Skolan är placerad på en plats kallad Mälarängen söder om Stockholm. Tomten ligger mellan områdena Mälarängen, Bredäng och Fruängen och har ett stort naturområde aldelles utanför tomten. Själva tomten har en höjskillnad på 7 meter och har en orörd skolgsdel med tallträd, orörd  mossa och en höjd, resten av tomten är berarbetad med asfalt och gräs. Mitt fokus i projektet är att bevara den vilda naturen som finns på platsen och genom arkitektur framhäva den. Jag vill även att naturen ska vara närvarande inne i byggnaderna och att gränsen mellan inne och ute ska suddas ut. Därför har har skolan stora fönsterinsläpp med utblick över natur. Längs huset går också ett trädäck där man har möjlighet att flytta ut undervisningen utomhus om man så vill. Tomten består utav olika uterum som byggnaderna ramar in; dammen, bäcken, klippan och skogen som har olika karraktärer. Tanken i skolan är att man ska kunna röra sig mellan dessa olika rum och byggnader. / Candidate Project in Architecture 15 hp. The school is located in a location called Mälarängen south of Stockholm. The plot lies between the Mälarängen, Bredäng and Fruängen areas and has a large natural area of ​​aldelles outside the plot. The plot itself has a height difference of 7 meters and has an untouched part with pine trees, untouched moss and a height, the rest of the plot is prepared with asphalt and grass. My focus in the project is to preserve the wild nature that exists on the site and highlight it through architecture. I also want the nature to be present inside the buildings and that the boundary between inside and out is to be blurred. Therefore, the school has a large window lash with a view of nature. Along the house there is also a wooden deck where you can move the outdoor teaching if you wish. The plot consists of different outdoor spaces as the buildings enter; the pond, the pelvis, the cliff and the forest that have different carecteristics. The idea of the school is that you can move between these different rooms and buildings.

This thesis focuses on reimagining what Beckholmen could be in the future, once reactivated throught architecture in both a natural and social sense. It addresses the damaging shipyard activites that have taken place over time and the public disinterest in this neglected central spot of Stockholm.

Nature, as the major consideration of the Organic Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, has constantly been favored as a path for a pure soul to communicate with the spiritual. Inspired by Wright's Organic Architecture and Traditional Chinese Garden, this thesis celebrates the beauty of Nature in Pandapas Pond, Giles County, VA, where a "Water Garden" is created on the open space defined by its water. Formally, the whole garden complex takes the inspiration from lotus flowers floating on the water, which could be thought of as an "organic system of architecture." / Master of Architecture

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Humans perceive the natural world in a subjective and sensual way, yet over time science has turned the study of nature into a progressively objective pursuit. The Aviary of the Reverend William J. Long is an installation of anthropomorphic bird dolls that examines the roles of science and sentiment in our interactions with the natural world.

Notre mémoire vise à mettre en lumière le rôle crucial que joue le thème de la nature dans l'œuvre de Merleau-Ponty. Nous y défendons une lecture continuiste de son corpus, situant, à la jointure de ses différentes phases, la persistance de l'interrogation sur la nature et sur le monde naturel. De ses premiers écrits sur la psychologie du comportement à son projet ontologique tardif - culminant dans son ouvrage inachevé Le visible et l'invisible - Merleau-Ponty cherche avec insistance à se frayer un chemin vers le versant inarticulé du monde vécu, à poser le regard sur ce qui précède et sous-tend la solidité et la cohérence du réel. Une telle entreprise, visant le « naturel » comme ce qui se trouve en dehors de nos réseaux humains de signification, doit se déployer à rebours des positivismes traditionnels qui tendent à introniser un seul pôle de l'expérience - le sujet ou l'objet - au statut de fondement du réel. Ce qui singularise le concept merleau-pontien de nature, c'est qu'il est avant tout le lieu où tente de s'exprimer un paradoxe irrésolu : la nature est ce qui résiste pleinement à notre humanité sans pouvoir être envisagé en dehors de celle-ci. Notre mémoire cherche à comprendre la genèse proprement phénoménologique de ce paradoxe de la nature, en mettant en lumière l'apport crucial des textes de Husserl à la critique merleau-pontienne des différents positivismes, critique qui reprend l'idée de « monde vécu » pour rompre définitivement avec l'idée d'une nature comprise comme théâtre objectif sur lequel se déploieraient une productivité humaine, une histoire, des vies subjectives et une culture intersubjective. Nous suggérons que la reprise que fait Merleau-Ponty des écrits de Husserl le pousse à envisager le questionnement sur la nature non-humaine comme une interrogation du versant « sauvage » de l'expérience qui, plutôt que de se trouver figé en dessous de l'histoire humaine, est à comprendre comme une productivité dynamique toujours à l'œuvre dans l'expérience vécue, une pré-objectivité aux avatars multiples qui participe à la détermination ouverte du réel. / This thesis is an attempt to shed light on the crucial role that the notion of nature plays in Merleau-Ponty's work. By approaching the philosopher's corpus as a unified movement built of several phases, we argue that his persistent interrogating of nature and the natural world can be understood as the hinge that articulates together all of its different moments. From his early writings on behavioral psychology to his late ontology - which culminates in his unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible - Merleau-Ponty consistently seeks a way to grasp the dimensions of lived experience which have not already been articulated, to thematize what precedes and subtends the solidity and coherence of the reality that we experience. Such an endeavor, seeking nature as what lies outside and beyond our human networks of signification, unfolds in contradistinction with the classical positivist ontologies that tend to elevate a single pole of lived experience - either the subject or the object - as the founding term of reality. What characterizes Merleau-Ponty's concept of nature is that it resists such hypostases by remaining the locus of an unresolved paradox: nature is what fully resists our humanity without being conceivable outside of the boundaries of our humanity. This master's thesis seeks to unfold the phenomenological genesis of this paradoxical view of nature by highlighting the crucial contribution of Husserl's writings to the Merleau-Pontian critique of positivism, a critique that takes the idea of "perceived world" to definitely divorce the traditional conceptions of nature as an objective theatre stage upon which unfolds a human productivity, a history, a multiplicity of subjective lives, and an intersubjective culture. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty's taking up of Husserl's writings brings him to comprehend the interrogation of non-human nature as an investigation of the "wild" aspect of experience. The latter, instead of being conceived as a fixated entity that lies underneath human history, is to be envisaged as a dynamic productivity that is always at work across lived experience, a pre-objectivity which takes various shapes, and which participates in the open-ended determination of reality.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / This dissertation addresses the first and most fundamental question in environmental philosophy: how should we conceive of the human place within nature? The title derives from the moment in Descartes’ second meditation when he considers what he believed himself formerly to be: a rational animal. Inquiring into what animality and rationality are would send him down a slippery slope, and he decides that he does not have the time to waste on such questions. Prioritizing the rational over the empirical, the metaphysical distinctions that follow precipitate a pivotal episode in the rise of modern science and technology: a disembodied intellect is freed to discover and manipulate the laws and forces at work in nature, conceived mechanistically. While generating many positive advances, for instance in anatomy and medicine, that break with Aristotelian ontological suppositions also marks the beginning of centuries of violence toward the animal within, not to mention the animals, or animal-machines, without. In response, many contemporary environmental thinkers swing the metaphysical pendulum in the opposite direction. Troubled by the consequences of an implicit mind-body dualism, they assume some rendition of its early modern antithesis, Spinozist ontological monism. God, or Nature is understood as comprising a single substance, with all other beings conceived as modifications of that substance. Such ontological humbling is supposed to produce an ethical humility, putting the human back in its place as one humbled part of the larger whole. Our concern is that without important qualifications, such ontological humbling merely provides another justification for man’s modern conquest of nature, in accordance with instrumentalizing, human-centered ends. If the human is conceived as merely one more species among others, we boast an equal right to act in accordance with the powers of our own natures. In response, we develop a thesis that builds from insights in the works of Maurice Merleau- Ponty. We argue that Merleau-Ponty’s thought is characterized by an “archeological,” or origin-directed orientation, according to which he eventually theorizes a phenomenological analogue to Spinoza’s ontological monism: his instigating insight is that both the perceiver, or the subject, and the perceived, or the object, derive from a common ontological fabric. Beginning from insights indicative of a contrary, but complimentary orientation present in Merleau-Ponty’s early works, we begin to construct a “developmental” account to balance out his increasingly “archeological” path, introducing qualifications that orient his thought in an ethical direction. The integrative ethical ideal that we propose entails a developmental, rather than regressive “descent” of the animal slope (le versant animal), without undermining or denying ethical capacities and responsibilities that are specifically human. Drawing from the works of Schelling’s middle period to which Merleau-Ponty turns in his late lectures on Nature, we argue that we must acknowledge tendencies toward violence and domination present within nature itself—and, consequently, present within us, as part of nature—such that becoming fully human would demand the overcoming of those tendencies in the service of a higher ethical ideal. Taking a cue from Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, we propose an integrative ideal of self-giving love. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Consolidating a library within the old patio of a building that for more than 100 years has undergone constant transformation is a challenge. Putting a roof over an area that was clearly defined to be open and under it a large library is a great opportunity. Due to its large area, a discussion was opened about implementing light on the surface of the ceiling, in a subtle and abstract way, aligned with the environmental parameters of the city. The white ceiling that appears to be suspended but is supported by large windows then became a White canvas for a play of lights brought on by daylight during the day and electric light for the long hours of darkness. Through qualitative and quantitative methods such as meetings, observations and surveys, the perception of the users was evaluated, and after tests, models and digital analysis, an intervention was defined on one of its facades that allows that ceiling to be reconnected with the natural and especially with the light. Exploring with elements such as the use of color or the management of reflections results in simple elements that can also be implemented from the architectural design, as support for lighting design.

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