The proposed project aims to transform the selected site and buildings at Rissik Station to new uses, along with the restoration and reuse of historical buildings. This amounts to a recycling and improved use of existing resources. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Architecture / unrestricted

Cities in developing world are inadequately equipped with public spaces. The increasing urbanizations trend is attracting more people to come to the cities without having proper sustainable plan for public spaces. However, this social public place holds the important function for urban well-being and collective recognition. This is the place where human can participate as fully fledged social subjects in complex civic life. Unfortunately, in most cases the provision of public space in these cities is always neglected or poorly integrated in planning legislations. So, in many cases community people make their own ways of social interaction that gives public space a new definition. Khulna, one of the divisional cities of Bangladesh, is going through the similar developing country situation. Lack of fund and space restricts development agencies to make new public spaces in this city. On the other hand management and coordination challenges between multilevel planning authorities also making existing public spaces malfunctioned. Sustainably planned, created and managed public spaces are hence urged for the cities of developing world to get livable and healthy urban environment.

Storgatan 2.0 is a study and design concept investigating the need for change of the main pedestrian street of the city of Växjö, in South Sweden. In order to propose a basis for discussions, and work as an inspiration for further renewal ideas, the design concept presents various, initial redesign visualisations of the site, Storgatan pedestrian street. The theoretical framework of this study leans on conducting urban studies with human-centred approach to city development. The exploratory research phase of the project was performed through several methods, including site observation, interview, and a survey for the local citizens. Also, relevant secondary research and necessary investigation of the context, Sweden, are part of the study. In the end, the project focuses on sorting and analysing the data, by using various visual thinking tools as a method. The outcome of the project is a proposal visualising the possibilities for Storgatan, based on the research results. The visualisations are not meant to provide detail-oriented final solutions, but defend the potential of Storgatan to become a stronger version of the main pedestrian street – an enjoyable, pedestrian-prioritised public place that is actively used and shaped by the citizens.

Since the 1990s, a trend in the UK museum sector for developing community partnerships has witnessed a ‘participatory drive’ that aims to embrace social diversity by engaging communities in the co-creation of exhibitions and other museum work. In this context, the Internet broadly, and social media in particular, are seen as complementary to museum processes of reciprocal exchange and public access. However, as this thesis stresses, treating the Internet and social media as complementary and convergent with the participatory drive in museums is assumptive and has been under-analysed, and its difficulties and complexities understated. In this context, this practice-based research carefully unpicks and critically analyses naturalised assumptions about online resources and social media practices in museums by tracing the cultural history through which the participatory museum has developed and contrasting it with the much later sociology of the Internet. The participatory drive is seen to be mediated through society’s agencies for local governance, healthcare and education services, as well as neighbourhood groups and families. These structures act then as a bridge organising people in space and time. In turn, museums’ digital practices often assume similar social organisation in their approach towards public engagement. However, the distributed architecture of the Internet has the effect of compressing time with space, enabling group organisation and public spaces to bypass society’s structures and instead place the individual at the centre of a network of relationships that self-organises according to the social capital displayed in online behaviour. Accordingly, the thesis argues, there is anapparent mis-match between museums on the Web and the online public, which affects negatively public engagement online. By bringing Bourdieu’s theories of social space and social capital into the realm of the Internet, drawing on cultural historical activity theory and reflecting on a research residency at the Whitworth Art Gallery, this thesis goes on to examine why museums find it challenging to engage with online publics. Its research practice aimed to ‘open’ the digital collections of the participating museum into the same time and space as the online public. This included triggering, following, documenting and critically reflecting upon processes, challenges and actions of digital engagement and the people involved in them. The thesis reflects on the research practice’s organisational and cultural challenges, which relate to the fact that it contradicted the museum’s existing departmental organisation and symbolic representation of public access and engagement. It goes on to argue that when digital practices of museums are attuned to the ecology and spatial structure of the online public, the outcomes are misrecognised as unrelated to museums’ core practices of social inclusivity. Instead, the argument continues, museums need to open up to emerging concepts of digital public space and publicness, in order for their digital practices to be relevant to online publics.

Architecture is explored here as a series of effects that influence the experience of living on earth. A work of architecture is a kind of terminal of effects that produces certain experiences for those who encounter it. How a place is programmed and built brings various movements into play: human, animal, plant, geological, metereological, hydrological and so on. The site of exploration is the Walker Spruit valley in the City of Tshwane. The site of intervention is a vacant piece of land bordering the Walker Spruit in Sunnyside and is explored as a place where these various movements intersect to put humans in various relations with each other and their surroundings. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Architecture / Unrestricted

The maturation of the public sphere in Argentina during the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies was a critical element in the nation-building process and the overall development ofthe modern state. Within the context of this evolution, the discourse of disease generatedintense debates that subsequently influenced policies that transformed the public spaces ofBuenos Aires and facilitated state intervention within the private domains of the city’sinhabitants. Under the banner of hygiene and public health, municipal officials thusEuropeanized the nation’s capital through the construction of parks and plazas and likewiseutilized the press to garner support for the initiatives that would remedy the unsanitaryconditions and practices of the city. Despite promises to the contrary, the improvements to thepublic spaces of Buenos Aires primarily benefited the porteño elite while the efforts to rootout disease often targeted working-class neighborhoods. The model that reformed the publicspace of Buenos Aires, including its socially differentiated application of aesthetic order andpublic health policies, was ultimately employed throughout the Argentine Republic as theconsolidated political elite rolled out its national program of material and social development.

Studien utfördes på uppdrag av Öresundskraft och handlar om nya offentliga biogasdrivna multifunktionsmoduler som kommer att placeras i Helsingborgs nya stadsdelar i H+ området. Arbetet utfördes delvis i Helsingborg där en enkät fördelades inom stadsdelarna som omfattar H+ området.  Syftet med studien har varit att utforska hur multifunktionsmodulerna borde utformas för att kunna främja de 16 svenska miljökvalitetsmålen, för att vara attraktiva och hållbara och för att kunna främja energibeteendet hos användare. Resultaten visar att det finns olika tolkningar kring vad som gör en offentlig plats attraktiv och hållbar. Slutsatsen är att utformningen av de nya offentliga uterummen borde kunna främja måluppföljningen av de svenska miljökvalitetsmålen, om designen stödjer de. Dock behöver multifunktionsmodulerna stödjas av resterande utformning av H+ området och H+ områdets miljöprofil, för att kunna bidra till det. / The study was conducted on behalf of Öresundskraft and is about new public biogas-driven multifunctional modules that will be located in Helsingborg's new districts in the H + area. The study was carried out in Helsingborg, where a survey was distributed within the areas that comprise the H + area. The purpose of the study has been to explore how the multifunctional modules should be designed to promote the 16 Swedish environmental quality objectives, to be attractive and sustainable, and to promote the energy behavior of users. The results show that there are different interpretations of what makes a public place attractive and sustainable. The conclusion is that the design of the new public space should be able to promote the goal to follow-up the Swedish environmental quality objectives, if the design supports them. However, the multifunction modules need to be supported by the remaining design of the H + area and the H + area's environmental profile, in order to contribute to it.

Il s’agit de repenser les rapports entre littérature et aveu religieux dans le cadre d’une archéologie de l’autofiction contemporaine. En prenant en compte la construction mythique et fantasmatique du « Roman du XIXe siècle » comme paradigme du livre public, cette thèse envisage la scène romanesque de confession comme le lieu d’un métadiscours : ce dernier a pour objet le bouleversement des rapports entre espace public et sphère intime après le tournant de l’expressivisme romantique. Ce bouleversement nous paraît avoir été illustré diversement par six autrices et auteurs issus des espaces anglais, français et russe : Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Brontë, George Sand, Fédor Dostoïevski, Maxime Gorki et Georges Bernanos. L’étude comparatiste de ces six œuvres déplace la question générique des confessions littéraires en resituant leurs scénographies dans la tradition religieuse et romanesque des mystères. La théâtralité de ces scènes de confession atteste, par ailleurs, une pénétration du mode de représentation dramatique sur le mode narratif. Ce dernier phénomène peut être abordé dans une perspective microsociologique, attentive aux inflexions historiques de la dramaturgie sociale comme aux ruptures de la présentation de soi. La scénographie des aveux imaginaires s’intègre enfin dans une histoire de l’aventure interprétative moderne et notamment dans celle de la critique littéraire, marquées, au XIXe siècle, par un processus de laïcisation de l’âme et par le triomphe d’une nouvelle culture de l’enquête. Si l’intériorité du sujet devient progressivement dans le roman l’objet d’un spectacle, elle parvient aussi, à travers les méandres de l’écriture, à se dérober aux nouvelles exigences de la visibilité. / This thesis reconsiders the relationship between literature and religious confession within the framework of an archaeology of contemporary autofiction. Taking into account the mythical and fantasmatic construction of the "Nineteenth Century Novel" as the paradigmatic public book, this research interprets the confession scene in novels as a locus of a metadiscourse, which is closely linked to the upheaval of relations between public space and intimate sphere after the expressivist turn in Romanticism. We consider this upheaval to have been variously illustrated by six authors from England, France, and Russia: Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Brontë, George Sand, Fedor Dostoevsky, Maxim Gorky and Georges Bernanos. Studying these six works from a comparative standpoint allows us to shift the generic question of literary confessions through placing this scenography in the religious and romantic tradition of mysteries. Moreover, these confession scenes’ theatricality attests to a penetration of the dramatic mode into the narrative mode of representation. It can be approached from a microsociological perspective, by paying close attention to the historical inflections of social dramaturgy as well as to the disruptions of self-presentation. Lastly, the scenography of the imaginary confessions belongs to the history of modern interpretative adventure more particularly of literary criticism, both influenced in the nineteenth century by a process of secularization of the soul as well as the triumph of a new inquiry culture. If the subject’s interiority gradually becomes a spectacle in the novel, it also manages, through the meanders of writing, to evade the new demands of visibility.

Reading the book Perform or Else by Jon Mckenzie along with the social distancing, isolation, and all the ongoing challenging and forced experiences of the 2020-21 Covid-19 pandemic era, on one hand, and my interests in performance art and physicality, on the other hand, made me think how can I create a work that represents an image of the body, the concept of action, and the idea of togetherness which are all essential for performance art, and/or for any performance. All art disciplines combine theory and practice in order to depict the relationship between bodies, art, and education, and as history proves, theory is always intended to be put into practice. The theoretical and practical in this written thesis begins with its title This Is Not a Thesis; continues by furthering the idea of Perform or Else, asking instead Thesis or Else; and goes on to serve its purpose of being a theoretical concern, a narrative, a genre in and of itself, an exercise in authorship, and furthermore, function as a documentation of documentation of my art – performance – practice. The series of written pieces, performances (rejected proposals), and images (documents) compiled here are meant to create a space between authorship and performance art. This Is Not a Thesis demonstrates the rejection and acceptance of the same thing at the same time.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to describe the relationship between the citizen and public space, and to answer the question why the topic of public space should be incorporated in secondary school curriculum. The first chapter introduces the concept of public space. I look at public space through the lens of normative theory, based on which I assess its characteristic features. In the first chapter, I also deal with the mass media and social networks, which are an integral part of public space. The second chapter focuses on urban public space. In this chapter I look for answers to the questions: what is the relationship between the citizen and the public space, how do they influence each other. The citizen and the public space are inextricably linked, because it is the citizens who transform a physical place into public space. Further, the question of the quality of public spaces is raised, to which I answer using the basic principles of architecture and urbanism. The second chapter also answers the central question of the diploma thesis: why the topic of public space should be taught in school. The third chapter presents the results of a simple questionnaire survey. It captures the opinions of interview participants on the current state of public space in Slovakia, its positive and negative...