It is my intention to plan for the types of activity carried out by future inhabitants of vertical farms. Through a twenty-six storey high building,a conceptual farm with housing for the producers, situated amongst dense urban fabric of Baltimore Maryland, architecture is explored. Utilizing form, order and space, architecture has a responsibility to construct the interalia or main theatre of human function. The architect has a fiduciary responsible to determine the design and purpose of the stage, setting limits on the types of drama that the inhabitants play. From spacious rural cultivator with evocative farmhouses, to confined urban neo-farmer, the stage for dwelling is extremely critical to determine. These displaced farmers do not perform all typical city functions, but they are confined as city dwellers. For them, it remains critical to be connected with nature and neighbor. Urban farmers need housing that enhances their quality of life. Rather than imposing regulated apartment space for one inhabitant, the city comes forth to them in a different light, with many open neighborhood spaces for interaction and farm activity within a merging dual structure. The dialog the two concepts (city dwelling and farming) play as they join, dwell on a relationship of graphic tools such as rotation, scale, thickness and transparency. Further opportunity exists to investigate the act of labor(natural) and work (physical) of the urban neo-farmer, in a tall building in an effort to provide insight to their human condition. One activity that is part of being an urban neo-farmer may be the practice of cleaning off boots and placing them in lockers before returning home after a long work day. / Master of Architecture

The human form becomes the bearer of my inspiration, revealing a cosmology within itself, appealing to the idea of understanding the body and implementing its essence into architecture. The lessons found in the tectonic of one's body will assist in discovering an integral logic that may translate in the design of the building. Living organisms inspire architectural posture that generate my architectural ideas. Architecture considered, in a very natural way reflects humans. I try to find a methodology inspired by natural organisms, finding the human body the most beautiful and functional of all natural objects. The structure begins to illustrate the innovation of the materials being employed to a different type of solution to a structural problem. The truth of materials, and honesty in the expression of structure reflect the movement of the object. / Master of Architecture

A house was designed to express the clearing in which it stands. The site was analyzed in terms of the elements that lend themselves to architecture. The character of light, space and order contribute to the overall design of the house. Thus the house can be said to be an expression of the natural beauty of its site. / Master of Architecture

The following thesis project explores the design of a nature center and planetarium within Rock Creek Park, in Washington, DC. The project evolved from a desire to re-imagine a relationship with nature in a way that allows conversation, reflective thinking, and allows one's sense of wonder to enter a place which is between science and myth. The design of the nature center and planetarium was developed by investigating the dualities which exist within and around the site, such as earth and air, day and night,and winter and summer. The goal was to create a building which is fully embedded in the site around it, to create a unique environment for exploration and conversation, and a place to contemplate one's relationship with nature. / Master of Architecture

This paper explores the intersection of healing, movement, and landscape architecture, focusing on the concept of therapeutic movement. Drawing from the author's background in both landscape architecture and dance, the research investigates how outdoor environments can be designed to facilitate healing through mindful movement practices. By examining existing outdoor spaces designed for various purposes such as recreation, yoga, tai chi, and other forms of mindful movement, the study seeks to understand how landscape architects can integrate therapeutic movement into their designs. The research is centered on a design project situated in Blacksburg, VA, proposing the seamless transformation of unused areas to a nature park tailored for therapeutic movement, adjacent to actively used recreational areas. Throughout the paper, the author engages with topics including the human experience of landscapes, the therapeutic value of movement, and the design considerations for creating healing landscapes. By analyzing practices such as Dance/Movement Therapy, Yoga Therapy, and Tai Chi, the paper offers insights into how landscapes can enhance healing benefits and foster a deeper connection to oneself, community, and the landscape. The proposed design guidelines aim to inform future landscape architecture projects, contributing to the field's understanding of designing spaces for therapeutic movement and promoting holistic well-being. / Master of Landscape Architecture / This paper dives into how nature, movement, and designing outdoor spaces intersect to promote healing. The author, a student of landscape architecture and a dancer, looks at how being mindful about movement outdoors can help people heal. They study existing outdoor areas used for things like yoga and tai chi to see how landscape architects can create spaces that encourage healing through other types of movement, like dance. The research focuses on a project in Blacksburg, VA, where they suggest turning unused areas into a nature park specifically for therapeutic movement, next to places where people already go for recreation. The goal is to give guidelines for future projects in landscape architecture that promote well-being through movement and nature.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore relationships within different worlds. These include the relationship within the world of family, both mine and those of people I am close to; the relationship between the worlds of the material and the metaphysical; between the worlds of waking and dreaming; between the worlds of humanity and nature; and finally, between the worlds of good and evil. The poems are also meant to examine the lines between these seemingly disparate worlds. especially in instances when the lines become blurred, as they do so often for me. The work is influenced heavily - and oftentimes constructed entirely out of- dreams, which I've experienced in vivid color and detail nearly every night of my life. It also draws upon my experience as shaped by different environments, which include nature, my ancestral homeland of India, and, of course, my dreams. Most importantly, this work is my attempt to bring to light the hidden magic in these worlds, environments, and relationships, to remind people of the powerful magic that is infused in all things, and how the smallest details in life can continue to influence us well after we'd ever expect them to.

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.

L'oeuvre de Rousseau n'a eu de cesse de se poser la question de la nature humaine car il n'est pas naturel pour l'homme de vivre en société. La nature de l'homme est faite pour qu'il vive dans la singularité, or, il vit à présent dans la pluralité. Avec le Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes, on comprend très vite que ce changement a eu pour l'homme des conséquences néfastes. En vivant avec ses semblables, l'homme a chuté vers son malheur. Car l'homme à l'état de nature était heureux. Comment et pourquoi un tel changement a-t-il eu lieu ? Avec le Contrat Social, il cherche un remède au malheur humain, de façon à ce qu'il retrouve son bonheur perdu, en vivant cette fois avec ses semblables, dans une société qui lui correspond. Cela doit passer par une dénaturation de l'homme, faisant de lui le peuple, le souverain, le sujet, mais surtout le citoyen de l'État.

Measurement of relative near-view scenic beauty and prediction of changes in scenic beauty with timber stand management, grazing, and downed wood management are necessary to integrate scenic beauty into the multiple use decision-making framework. Although traditional landscape quality assessment procedures are of limited use in measuring or predicting the relative scenic beauty of near-view forest scenes, extension of psychophysical methods to measurement of forest scenic beauty offers an approach to effectively incorporate scenic beauty into forest management. Biological and physical variables were inventoried at sites within ponderosa pine timber stands in northern Arizona. Four color slides, also taken at those sites, were later rated for scenic beauty by groups of people, and the ratings were scaled to provide scenic beauty estimates per site. Highly significant multiple regression models, expressing scenic beauty as a function of the biophysical variables, accounted for up to 60, 50, and 80 percent of the variance in scenic beauty for pre-harvest sites, post-harvest sites, and pre-harvest timber stands, respectively. It seems possible at this point to specify a general ponderosa pine model, to be calibrated for specific damage-free areas within the Southwest. Herbage and large ponderosa pine contribute to scenic beauty, while numbers of small pine trees, mechanical ground disturbance, and downed wood, especially as slash, detract from scenic beauty. Areas of northerly aspect, lower overstory density, and less tree clumping were preferred. Moderate harvest tends to improve scenic beauty once the stand has recovered from obvious harvest effects. The recovery period can be greatly reduced by slash cleanup. Grazing can seriously detract from scenic beauty. Up to a point, over the range of practical timber stocking levels, increasing stocking results in greater net present worth from timber, forage, and water yields minus management costs, and lower scenic beauty. Beyond that point both net present worth and scenic beauty decline.

Nine teenage participants and two adult guides were followed throughout a 10 day white water canoe trip to investigate the relationship between their impressions of connection with nature and the canoe trip experience, and their interactions with nature and the canoe trip experience. Themes providing a description of these relationships were identified and three major findings emerged. The first was that multiple themes mediating participants’ connectedness with nature did so both towards connection and disconnection. The second was that participants’ state of comfort was related to an impression of connection with nature while their state of discomfort was related to an impression of disconnection from nature. The third was that the relationship between participants’ connectedness and interactions with nature differed depending on the context (e.g., nature versus civilization). Possible directions for future research include investigating changes in participants’ conception of nature and the relationship between comfort and connection with nature.