The purpose of this dissertation is to gain an understanding of the subjective perceptions and methods of framing used by various entities to understand the concept of the contemporary publicness of the publicly open space. The main research methods of this dissertation include 1) a systematic literature review and 2) the Q-methodology, which is a useful method of illuminating cognitive characteristics according to the internal criteria of individuals. By doing so, this study emphasizes the importance of everyday discourse and perceptions of publicness and public spaces. First, the literature review reveals that various statutes or actions have related to the realization of contemporary spatial publicness across contexts. Drawing a line between "continuous" and "new" characteristics of contemporary spatial publicness proves abstruse. To distinguish the two, this study will delineate the predominant positions on new characteristics of contemporary spatial publicness, derived from three distinct types of conditions: (1) prerequisite conditions, (2) subjective conditions, and (3) practical conditions. Findings from the systematic literature review of 49 published articles show that types of spatial publicness are divided into three categories: (1) subjective publicness, regarding who ultimately takes responsibility for publicness; (2) procedural publicness, in terms of whether democratic procedures are being followed; and (3) contextual publicness, regarding whether publicness conforms to social values. Since the type of spatial publicness can vary depending on how it is interpreted, these key dimensions of publicness adequately provide answers to discursive questions about what constitutes spatial publicness. This study also systematically categorizes the attributes of contemporary spatial publicness expressed in the academic literature. Measured items of spatial publicness stem from three key dimensions, each containing three elements: (1) procedure (openness, communication, and democracy); (2) contents (commonality, distribution, and sustainability); and (3) features (accessibility, quality, and specificity). Lastly, as a result of the Q-analysis, the perceptions of the general public toward the concepts of spatial publicness are divided into five types. Factor A is the open condition-oriented group, Factor B is the critical communication-oriented group, Factor C is the distribution value-oriented group, Factor D is the diversity recognition-oriented group, and Factor E is the instrumental discussion-oriented group. This study is expected to provide a foundation for publicness research to promote the realization of socially oriented values in the future. Another Q-set of 40 images showing analysis of publicly open spaces illustrates that three opinion groups have been classified: an experience-based group (Factor AA), a green-preferring group (Factor BB), and a convivial atmosphere-based group (Factor CC). This research provides helpful insights for the planning of publicly open spaces as well as the design and public engagement process, along with baseline data that can be used to enhance policymakers' and design professionals' understanding of people's attitudes toward spatial publicness and preferences for different publicly open spatial types. / Doctor of Philosophy / We live in an era where private and public spaces are hard to distinguish. Private spaces, such as a shopping mall, have been lauded as a parody and a caricature of an authentic public space. Locations without authentic public places, such as suburbs or rural areas, shopping malls are one of the few places that are spatially substituted as, and utilized as, public spaces. This research centralizes spatial publicness by congealing various insights from disciplinary fields with acknowledgement that an absolute, universal definition is nearly impossible to achieve. While utilizing publicness in a single register of meaning reduces its multidimensional nature, it also allows for a unified explanation by isolating a particularly relevant aspect to publicness in a given space. In this way, utilizing publicness opens up the potential to clearly conceptualize public spaces over obscure and esoteric definitions that limit practical applicability. This dissertation poses a broad question, "what makes a public space public?" In other words, it asks "how can conceptualize and measure the publicness of publicly open spaces?". Appropriations considered in relation to the micro-practices of place indicate that the spatial publicness is planned, designed, practiced, and contested in different stages and scales, and that the consequences of these relationships are interwoven and observed in space. Accordingly, the spatial publicness is contingent and in constant flux. Users practicing publicness are affected not only by larger policies that grant them physical and social accessibility, but also by spatial experiences such as unconscious togetherness or desired places. As appropriations reveal, spatial publicness is not a product of or compatible with planning, designing, or using space, nor is it only an effect of each stage of the production process, such as rules, forms, or behaviors. Rather, contemporary spatial publicness is affected by the interstices between these processes. Therefore, the spatial publicness of each case can be described in terms of different emergent meanings based on the levels and types of appropriations.

Architecture can be related to narrative in many ways. Architecture talks about the form, function, materiality, circulation, environment of artificial space. Narrative has its media, form, method, genre, rhetoric, in order to describe a series of related events or experiences. People are the users of all architectural spaces. The experience of space is always manipulated by the designer from the beginning of the design phase. It is the designer who creates and develops this process, just like the writer, who creates written narratives. In this thesis, I did abundant research on the common ways to complete a written narrative. One type of the rhetoric device, Anadiplosis, which is always used in poetry and lyrics, is the way to create a transition between adjacent sentences and emphasize this transition by repeating the last word of the preceding clause in the next. The downtown area of Savannah, Georgia in the U.S., which was designed by James Edward Oglethorpe, is almost equally divided into 30 smaller wards, most of them with a square in the middle and surrounded by either residential or commercial structures. However, as the Colonial Cemetery was existed before the city sprawled to its nearby area, resulting in two wards that have unique layouts that do not have a typical square. The cemetery, although filled with lawn and trees, has totally different functions and atmosphere compared with these squares, This cemetery creates an important relationship with its adjacent urban area, which is separated by a wall. History of Yellow Fever pandemic and civil war, which is strongly related to the cemetery, were explored during the research. The site is located in a current vacant space outside the east wall of the cemetery. One section of the site would have had a square as part of Oglethorpe's ward design principles. This thesis creates an anadiplosis between the cemetery and the city, as a transition between the sacred and the secular realm. In addition to extending the missing square to the site, this thesis also includes a building that acts as a memorial, while contributing to the urban design and commercial functions of the neighborhood. When people walk from one side to the other throughout the building, the transition is created floor by floor, and each of their functions are both overlapped with the preceding and the subsequent one. Mutual sight lines are also created to remind people of this transition. / Master of Architecture / Architecture can be related to narrative in many ways. For people, the users of architectural spaces, the experience of a space is set during the design phase. The designer, who creates and develops this process, is like a writer who works with written narratives. This thesis is the result of research on various types of the idea of narrative and their relationship to written narrative. One type is Anadiplosis, a rhetoric device used in poetry and lyrics along with other narrative forms. It is the way to create a transition between the adjacent sentences and emphasis this transition by repeating the last word of preceding clause in the next. Downtown Savannah, which was designed by James Edward Oglethorpe, is almost equally divided into 30 smaller wards, most of them with a square in the middle and surrounded by either residential or commercial structures. However, the Colonial Cemetery existed before the city's expansion, resulting in two wards that have unique layouts that do not have a typical square. This cemetery creates an important relationship with its adjacent urban area, which is separated by a wall. The site is located in an existing vacant space outside and adjacent to the east wall of the cemetery. One section of the site would have had a square as part of Oglethorpe's ward design principles. This thesis creates an anadiplosis between the cemetery and the city, as a transition between the sacred and the secular realm. In addition to extending the missing square to the site, this thesis also includes a building that acts as a memorial, while contributing to the urban design and commercial functions of the neighborhood. When people walk from one side to the other throughout the building, the transition is created floor by floor, and each of their functions are both overlapped with the preceding and the subsequent one. Mutual sight lines are also created to remind people of this transition.

This thesis proposes guidelines for reestablishing the historic canal system on Rattanakosin Island, Bangkok as a public space system and a connector of key public spaces. The study examines the historic value and cultural symbolism of the canals through evolutionary morphological analysis, establishing that the canals are primary structural elements in the city, since they have retained the integrity of their physical form over time, and have come to hold cultural meaning for the Thai people. The canals have also accommodated different functions over time, in response to a changing urban context. There is potential for them to accept new functions as recreational spaces, connectors of key public spaces, and as tourist destinations. Typological analysis of structural characteristics of the canals yields seven canal types that have potential to accommodate public space functions. The study proposes guidelines for the seven canal types that will enhance these potentials and ensure the preservation of the canals' physical form. / Master of Landscape Architecture

This thesis proposes that sensory experience should play an important role in setting up a direct relationship between people and the natural environment, and it is based on the premise that contemporary urban public space ecological designs. Are often deficient in this regard. In order to develop a design methodology that addresses both ecological function and sensory experience, the author examine both contemporary western ecological design and classical Chinese garden design. The former focuses on the ecological functions of the environment, while the latter typically emphasizes the sensory qualities of the landscape. Drawing from the strengths of both approaches, an experience-oriented ecological design framework is proposed with the goal of improving human experience in urban public spaces. The framework emphasizes both sensory experience and ecological functions in two phases of the design process — site analysis and site design. The framework is applied to a design for Bridge Park in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. The design is evaluated to assess efficacy of the framework for the design urban public spaces that address both sensory experience and ecological processes. The evaluation suggests that the framework could be an effective tool for designers, and also draws conclusions regarding the potential role of sensory experience as a tool for creative discovery in the design process. Finally the paper raises questions regarding the desirability of employing sensory experience as a didactic tool to enhance environmental awareness. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Where are the boundaries between past and present, dream and reality, private and public, action and perception? Upon these opposites, we journey through our lives. If the purpose of architecture is more than the construction of a shelter, then architecture also is a reflection of these contradictions in a human mind. The goal of this project is to illustrate how the notion of life's journey is similar to the experience of theatre, and how the architecture of the theatre can answer the questions above. / Master of Architecture

Abstract The public space is often perceived as more unsafe for women than for men and it is therefore a question of gender equality. Opinions differ on how the public space should be changed to improve women’s feelings of security. This case aims to discuss the possibility to change the physical environment to create a safer public space for women. This study is a case study focusing on the so called Stationstunneln located on Järnvägstorget in Umeå municipality. Stationstunneln was inaugurated in 2012 and had the aim to increase both women and men´s perceived safety in the public space. The tunnel has with its shape, lighting etcetera, aimed to increase security. This is as mentioned a gender issue and the topic is important to be able to continue the work for a more equal society. The result of this study is based on six semi-structured interviews and has a qualitative approach. The interviews were conducted with six female respondents who all have a relation to Stationstunneln in Umeå municipality. Three of the respondents also had a relation to the previous tunnel located on Järnvägstorget called Hagatunneln. The interviews have been analyzed through thematic analysis. The results of the study demonstrate that light and people in motion is the key factors in what makes the respondents feel safe in public spaces. All of the respondents agreed that Stationstunneln compared to Hagatunneln was seen as bright and had people in motion and that was some of the reasons why they felt safe in Stationstunneln. They also thought the place felt welcoming and safe when it comes to the trafic which also made them feel safe in and around the tunnel. However, many of the respondents said that they didn´t feel safe in and around the tunnel during the evenings because of the people occupying themself there at night. Overall, the respondents agreed that the design was important for their perceived safety in the public space. Keywords: Public space, safety, women, physical environment, tunnel, gender equality.

This dissertation shows how organizations, including local government and police, and residents within Seattle, Washingtons East Precinct define and police the contours of community, neighborhoods and public space. Under the rubric of public safety, these players create territorial geographies that seek to include only those who fit the narrowly conceived idea of a neighbor. Territoriality is exercised against the social Other in an attempt to build a cohesive community while at the same time excluding those who are seen as different or as non-conformant to acceptable behaviors in the neighborhood. This research provides a framework through which to examine how community policing produces an urban citizen subject and an idea of who belongs in public space. This work also combines discourses of abjection and public space showing how the two are linked together to form a contingent citizenship. Contingent citizenship describes a particular relationship between geography and citizenship. As I frame it, contingent citizenship is a public citizenship where one must conform to a social norm and act in a prescribed, appropriate way in the public sphere or fear repercussions such as incarceration, public humiliation or barring from public parks. This dissertation, through a synthesis of the literatures on abjection, public space and social control, provides an empirical example of how community policing controls, regulates and/or expels those socially constructed as the Other in public space. This dissertation also brings a geographic lens to questions of abjection, public space and social control. This dissertation is a comprehensive survey and analysis of how discourses surrounding public space produce a space that is exclusionary of those who are not conceived as citizens by structures intact within the city. This research shows how not all citizens (in the legal sense) fit the socio-cultural model of citizenship. Such contingent citizens are subject to more surveillance and policing in public space. Additionally, this research contributes to growing literature regarding how abjection plays into representations and understandings of public space.

Apie ėjimą pasivaikščioti. / On going for a walk.

Boksburg’s landscape is home to many left-over, forgotten, and wasteful spaces which offer no return. This dissertation will explore these elusive landscapes, and through design, breach one of these thresholds. Humans long for refuge. Nature should return. This dissertation explores the theory of ‘liminality’. This theory was used to understand the notions related to event. The application of the ‘liminal’ occur in a transient and a material manner. The three narratives, within this dissertation, that marry this theory are: the ‘cloud’, the ‘wetland’ and the ‘landscape’. The youth culture of Johannesburg seeks release from the quotidian. Can an understated city on the East Rand of Gauteng host a public space that caters for different user groups? Can this public space be appropriated for events? Can this public space supply Johannesburg with a definition for a ‘beach’ in a landlocked city? The architecture is to conjure a sense of liberty and choice within the users and the role of architecture is to create a platform for diversity. The design aims to construct a place where society can re-create itself; where nature can reconcile the damaged environment; and where event can serve to produce ephemeral architecture to make [other\younger\ better\greener] worlds.

Abstract: Access (the modern paradox): Borders, much like Architecture, can be described in one of two ways. The one is the simple way, and the other a more complex – but unsettling – way that is open to contradiction. On the surface, a border is a threshold or boundary that constrains the separation of two or more entities. Yet, the more complex understanding is harder to define and because of that it requires limitations, or a different point of view to be able to comprehend. In the case of defining architecture, it can be seen that Architecture is: the art and science of building. Although, this isn’t actually the case, if it was the case practicing Architecture and designing buildings would be easy. There is a complex, more pluralistic way of interrogating Borders and Architecture. Put simply, borders define themselves in the eye of their user. This means that a border to a sociologist, or anthropologist, will be read in a completely different way to an engineer, or will be read differently by a geographer to an immigrant. It becomes obvious that there can never be a complete, all encompassing understanding of what a border is, or can be. A border will always be limited in one way or another, and will always be contested once it has been mapped on to paper. Could there possibly be a way to subvert, dilute or transgress a border or the notion of a border though architecture? Is there an architectural intervention, either physical or metaphysical, that could take on the role of the subversive, dilutor or transgressor? Can a border become actionable and create a place of ACCESS? / MN (2016)