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I am interested in creation, the root of what architects do whether they are designing a master plan or a detail. The interesting thing about architecture is that an architect's creation does not exist in a vacuum. Numerous forces operate on the vision of an architect before it can become a reality; the most important being the building's context. Architecture without a site is conjecture and speculation and though it may have its place in some realm of study, it can never be real. For an idea to be manifested, it must be built someplace on this Earth and therefore I believe that architecture is a response to the context of the site. The site informs the architect on the material of the building's construction, how the building is oriented with respect to the sun, how and when the sun is allowed to enter the building, and how the building is approached and therefore entered. The context pushes and pulls on the building, informing the design process and demanding responses. The city offers a context dense in built structures and rich in history and architectural precedence. These parameters should be ever present in the mind of the architect during the design. A good design should respect and enhance the urban situation in which it resides as well as provide a useful scaffold for the architect to build from. By limiting the architect and forcing the integration of the new building with the existing context, the urban condition spurs ingenuity and can actually simplify the endless possibilities of architectural space. A rural site offers a different set of parameters under which the architect must operate. The shape of the land commands the largest influence on a rural design, should the architect look for contextual clues. The rural site can also set the architect free and allow a building to be a pure manifestation of the architect's mind, leaving the building program as the only constraint. The intent of the thesis is to investigate how architects design. How does a building come into existence? By designing two buildings at opposite ends of a contextual spectrum I hope to raise questions in my own mind about how context influences the decisions that are made in the design process. Recognizing these different sets of parameters can lead to a better understanding of context as a guiding force that shapes architecture. / Master of Architecture

The project evolved from a series of questions regarding the possibilities/interactions between building and site. The project consists of housing, a chapel and the relationship to the land they occupy. / Master of Architecture

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This thesis is located within the discourse of pedestrian performance, an area of research which has emerged from a recent proliferation of site-based works that are concerned with walking as an aesthetic and performative practice. However, my research seeks to expand the field beyond studies of site-based performances. Through placing emphasis on the action of walking itself within performance, I argue that pedestrian performance is an umbrella term for a host of performances that utilise walking. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, I present a mapped journey of pedestrian performance, with each chapter in my thesis acting as a waymarker. Each waymarker is shaped by a distinctive spatial arrangement, plotting a journey from the theatre to the site. Although there is a sense of chronology in this journey, its structure lies principally in the subtle shifting of the spatial arrangement of the performer and audience. The first waymarker is that of the theatre, where I examine the manner in which the journey has been staged and the kinesthetic empathy of a seated audience. I then move to the overlooked staging of promenade performance, exploring the varying tensions incurred by putting an audience on their feet. From here I investigate the familiar territory of site and how walking allows us to distinguish between site-specific and situation-specific performances. Finally I address the non-site, illustrating how this theory of land artist Robert Smithson, can enhance our understanding of a recent wave of pedestrian performances which involve journeys to sites that cannot be reached. I close this thesis by presenting a more cohesive illustration of pedestrian performance, illustrating its varying incarnations within an expanded field. Such an expansion of the landscape allows the pedestrian performance scholar to discern between the different ways in which walking and the journey motif has been utilised in performance. Furthermore, it also reveals a legacy of this mode of performance which predates its popularity in site-based works, enabling a dialogue to occur between scholars of both theatre and performance studies.

Student Number : 9903519M - MSc research report - School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies - Faculty of Science / Goldsmith’s is a newly discovered fossil and archaeological site 4km south-west of the famous Sterkfontein Cave Site, in the buffer zone of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. It preserves one of the rare occurrences in South African fossil cave sites of stone artefacts with associated fossil fauna. Thirteen artefacts from two Stone Age cultures are represented within the site: namely the Earlier Stone Age and the Middle Stone Age. Eleven stone artefacts represent the Earlier Stone Age, dated to ca, 2-1 million years within the Sterkfontein Valley sites, while two artefacts represent the MSA. The stone tools from both cultures are not embedded in breccia and may have originated from decalcified breccias, or alternatively from slope wash. Various faunal taxa were recovered including bovids, primates, carnivores and others. Carnivores are the most highly represented, followed by bovids. Analysis of bone surface modifications indicate that the majority of the bones are slightly weathered, and some bone specimens are also abraded, suggesting that they may have accumulated through slope wash. The high frequencies of carnivore remains, including Dinofelis and a representation of most carnivore body parts, support a possible death trap scenario. The fauna suggests a palaeoenvironment with open woodland or savannah within the vicinity of a closed environment.

Thesis (M.S. in environmental Science)--Washington State University, December 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 27).

This study utilizes a multidisciplinary research approach integrating the sciences of archaeology, geology, pedology and paleoclimatology. Deeply stratified and radiocarbon dated sedimentary sequences spanning the last 10,000 yr B.P. are reported for the Cremer site (24SW264), south-central Montana. Previous investigations at the site revealed an archaeological assemblage with Early Plains Archaic through Late Prehistoric period affiliations. Expanded testing of the site integrates the existing cultural record with new data pertaining to Holocene environmental changes at this northwestern Great Plains locality. Detailed pedological descriptions were made along three trenches excavated at the site. The combined soil-stratigraphic record indicates that distinct intervals of relative landscape stability and soil development occurred at the site at ca. 10,000 yr B.P., 7,500 yr B.P. and intermittently throughout the last ca. 6,000 yr B.P. Periods of significant landscape instability (upland erosion and valley deposition) occurred immediately following each of the early Holocene soil forming intervals identified above, and episodically throughout the middle to late Holocene. The impetus for early Holocene environmental instability is attributed to generally increased aridity on the northwestern Great Plains. Comparative analyses of site data with both regional environmental proxy records and numerical models of past climates (General Circulation and Archaeoclimatic models) are made to test the findings from the Cremer site. The collective paleoenvironmental evidence indicates that the period of maximum post-glacial warming and aridity occurred at the Cremer site during the early Holocene period (prior to ca. 6,000 yr B.P.). These data also indicate that the existing archaeological assemblage from the site is younger than ca. 6,000 yr B.P., although future excavations may reveal cultural sequences associated with the earliest dated soils at the site. This geoarchaeological study of the Cremer site should contribute to a much needed research base in this sparsely studied region. / Graduation date: 1999

Nesting success is an important vital rate affecting the reproductive fitness of birds, and predation typically is the single most important factor affecting nesting success. Presumably, birds should nest in locations that maximize nest survival. If specific nest characteristics increase the probability that a nest will hatch, natural (phenotypic) selection could favour use of sites with these features, producing nonrandom patterns of nest site use. Alternatively, birds that are highly selective in nest site choices might be at a disadvantage if predators learn to forage preferentially in these locations and improve their efficiency in depredating nests; in this case, random nesting patterns could be favoured. Finally, it has been hypothesized that predation pressure can influence nest site selection patterns of entire bird communities. If predators develop a search image to hunt for bird nests, then nests that are most similar to each other, irrespective of species, should sustain higher mortality. To evaluate these hypotheses, I quantified nest site selection patterns of multiple species of ground-nesting dabbling ducks in areas where predation pressure was normally high, and compared these patterns to those on areas where predation was relaxed. Predation pressure was experimentally reduced by removing common predators of duck nests and females (mainly red foxes, coyotes, skunks and raccoons) on some study areas and not on others (controls). Predator removal and natural causes produced a 10-fold difference in duck nesting across study sites, allowing for investigation of effects of predation pressure on nest site selection of ducks. Coarse scale habitat selection patterns were similar to results reported in previous studies; blue-winged teal and northern shoveler were found more often in native grassland than in other habitat types, while gadwall and mallard nests occurred more frequently in shrub patches when compared with other habitat patches. A difference in nest site characteristics was observed between hatched and depredated nests for gadwall and northern shoveler but not for blue-winged teal and mallard. However, in all species, the nest site selection patterns were non-random. Thus, the process of nest predation did not shape patterns of nest site choice. Contrary to predictions, inter-specific overlap in nest site features was not related to predation pressure: nests that overlapped most with features of other species did not suffer higher predation, nor did inter-specific overlap in nest characteristics decrease during the nesting season. These findings were inconsistent with the hypothesis that community-level patterns of nest site use are differentiated as a result of predation pressure. Long-term work on nest site use by individually marked females of numerous ground-nesting bird species would be informative, as would experimental studies of other hypotheses about factors affecting nest site choices in birds.

Nesting success is an important vital rate affecting the reproductive fitness of birds, and predation typically is the single most important factor affecting nesting success. Presumably, birds should nest in locations that maximize nest survival. If specific nest characteristics increase the probability that a nest will hatch, natural (phenotypic) selection could favour use of sites with these features, producing nonrandom patterns of nest site use. Alternatively, birds that are highly selective in nest site choices might be at a disadvantage if predators learn to forage preferentially in these locations and improve their efficiency in depredating nests; in this case, random nesting patterns could be favoured. Finally, it has been hypothesized that predation pressure can influence nest site selection patterns of entire bird communities. If predators develop a search image to hunt for bird nests, then nests that are most similar to each other, irrespective of species, should sustain higher mortality. To evaluate these hypotheses, I quantified nest site selection patterns of multiple species of ground-nesting dabbling ducks in areas where predation pressure was normally high, and compared these patterns to those on areas where predation was relaxed. Predation pressure was experimentally reduced by removing common predators of duck nests and females (mainly red foxes, coyotes, skunks and raccoons) on some study areas and not on others (controls). Predator removal and natural causes produced a 10-fold difference in duck nesting across study sites, allowing for investigation of effects of predation pressure on nest site selection of ducks. Coarse scale habitat selection patterns were similar to results reported in previous studies; blue-winged teal and northern shoveler were found more often in native grassland than in other habitat types, while gadwall and mallard nests occurred more frequently in shrub patches when compared with other habitat patches. A difference in nest site characteristics was observed between hatched and depredated nests for gadwall and northern shoveler but not for blue-winged teal and mallard. However, in all species, the nest site selection patterns were non-random. Thus, the process of nest predation did not shape patterns of nest site choice. Contrary to predictions, inter-specific overlap in nest site features was not related to predation pressure: nests that overlapped most with features of other species did not suffer higher predation, nor did inter-specific overlap in nest characteristics decrease during the nesting season. These findings were inconsistent with the hypothesis that community-level patterns of nest site use are differentiated as a result of predation pressure. Long-term work on nest site use by individually marked females of numerous ground-nesting bird species would be informative, as would experimental studies of other hypotheses about factors affecting nest site choices in birds.