The goal of this practicum is to promote urban integration through the design of a ballpark development in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. The project focuses on baseball’s wide appeal and status in American culture as a catalyst to provide new development and meaningful places in the downtown. The new ballpark and supporting new development are then tested in an urban and site design scheme. The methodology for this project takes place in two stages: creating a conceptual framework followed by planning and design. The conceptual framework looks at the city and its corresponding spatial components to derive the key tools needed to promote urban integration. These include continuous built form, mixed and intensive land use and sustained and diversified activity. The conceptual framework also seeks to understand the game’s stature in America and its influence in American culture. The next phase is to look at the characteristics of the game and at how they could influence the design and development of a downtown through urban and site design. The design uses these characteristics to generate meaningful places in the downtown. The planning and design section of the practicum takes place in three stages. The first is the selection of the site and to pursue an inventory and analysis of its immediate context. The second stage is to create an urban design masterplan that addresses the opportunities and constraints revealed in the analysis. The masterplan uses a new ballpark together with new built form, land uses and activity to strengthen the urban integration of downtown Minneapolis. The final stage is an illustrative site design of the ballpark, public open space and a lighting element that displays the influence of baseball upon making new places in the downtown. The site selection examines actual potential ballpark sites identified by the Minnesota Twins. The objective is to choose a site where a ballpark would have the greatest positive impact on the downtown. The site selection process evaluates three sites in Minneapolis. The sites are judged based on their proximity to the downtown core, their surrounding building ensities, and the pedestrian and vehicular activity. The process leads to the selection of a site on the northwest edge of the downtown in an area with high built density. The project uses a framework based on Lynch’s (1960) spatial components (districts, paths, nodes, landmarks and edges)to reveal and understand the spatial fabric of downtown Minneapolis. The major obstacle that is addressed in the design is the lack of connectivity between the ballpark site and the downtown. The study area is composed of 4 different districts; each with their own set of land uses, building densities, and character. The 3 major paths in the downtown with the heaviest pedestrian and vehicular traffic do not connect to the site of the new ballpark. The transit systems (bus and light rail) are extensive but do not run to the new ballpark site. Baseball laid the conceptual framework for an urban design concept that promoted urban integration...

According to Environment Canada, across the country there are currently over 1400 abandoned gas station sites that are contaminated. Unbeknownst to local residents, many of these sites are undergoing remediation. Temporary interventions called remedial landscapes can be designed by landscape architects to communicate to the public the remediation activities, which are otherwise hidden from view. Environmental psychologists note that pro-environmental behaviour stems from increased awareness of environmental degradation. Furthermore, by presenting first hand information in the form of a landscape, people can make their own decisions concerning their role in unsustainable practices. This thesis posits that by experiencing remedial landscapes, people will change their environmental attitudes and or behaviours. Remedial landscapes also offer opportunities for public art and further exploration of alternative forms of remediation. It includes not only precedent studies of other remedial landscapes, but a public perception survey concerning a gas station undergoing remediation in Kerrisdale, Vancouver. The survey indicated that the remediation of contaminated sites is a community concern and that the remediation should be made more visible. Participants also agreed that the use of a designed landscape would be a viable tool for communicating the status of the site. This research informed a set of design guidelines for the Kerrisdale ‘test site.’ A remedial landscape has been designed using these guidelines and is included as part of the thesis.

The aim of this MFA Research Documentation is to present the ideas behind the photographs produced during the MFA Degree. In Chapter 2 I will briefly analyse photographers who have influenced or provided structure for my practice. In Chapter 3 I will detail my earliest work and follow with an analysis of the recent projects completed within the research time frame for this MFA Degree. These recent projects have been summarised under the following headings: Transition, which explores the different stages in the architectural construction and deconstruction process in particular sites that would generally be considered unpresentable - sites that are in either a state of decay or dereliction or a state of re-building; Frontier, which looks at new housing developments in outer Sydney suburbs and examines the influence of social imperatives and relevance at a time when aspects of environmental concern are at the forefront of social commentary; and Monolith, examines the remnant modernist vision of high-rise residential architecture, in Sydney and London. Land Mark Architecture ??? in an age of non-discovery is the urban landscape of landmarks and marks on the land. They should be viewed in the context of documentary photography. I have ignored the buildings that are deemed landmarks, and by following a less obvious path, have explored local, unclassified, and aesthetically uncertain areas of the built environment.

Thesis (M.L. Arch. - Landscape Architecture)--University of Arizona, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-68).

Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Guelph (Canada), 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.L.A.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-246). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M. Landsc. Arch.)--University of Washington, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [154]-158). Also issued in print.

Thesis--Cologne. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 226-234).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oklahoma State University, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.