Thesis (M. L. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes special report study entitled: Treatments of the tidal edge for appreciation. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes special report study entitled: Moving water in urban city: a study on the contemporary fountains design.

Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes special report study entitled: Urban climate improvement through soft landscape.

No other city in Europe has seen as much urban landscape changes as Berlin, Germany. How can a contemporary urban design approach along the former site of the city’s division help stitch together the physical as well as cultural disconnects and introduce a new public space in the city? The relationship between the built landscape and the social world is dialectical, with each perpetually and cyclically shaping the other. There is a direct language spoken between the architecture of a city and the inhabitants using the space. This relationship is dynamic and stands at the center of my endeavor. When studying the urban grid of a city a production of processes is found – both social and physical – creating a navigable network. “The immediate questions raised for an urban observer by its configuration are related to the communicational capacity and power of these shapes and their legibility” as they relate to the architectural quality of urban space.1 Interruption in the grid of a city can occur from a multitude of reasons: physical terrain conditions, a modernizing intervention such as a highway, urban planning programs (such as a Haussmann boulevard in Paris), or even a political play of forces that can divide a city with physical boundaries. Perhaps the most notable specimen created from political transformations was the Berlin Wall, existing from 1961 to 1989. This physical structure interrupted the building culture and social life of Berlin to an extraordinary extent and changed the urban grid of this city forever. Berlin was seeing a separation in the political positions during this time and soon their ideologies were superimposed onto the citizens. While people attempted to carry on with life as usual the cultural movements also began to divide between the East and West. While there were no physical barriers until 1961, the political ones had begun and were only strengthened by the actual separation of these two “cities”. In Berlin there are three primary phases of this evolving relationship between the urban grid and society: the historical growth of urbanism until 1961, physical division of the city into East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, and the forward motion of current design as these two worlds has physically become one again. In a general manner the aim of my urban design solution will be generated by evaluating the historical building culture of Berlin and critically applying a social theory in design to an urban architectural intervention. Key components of the project will focus around urban housing demands and cultural institutions that need a home in the city. I plan to organize public spaces in this contemporary society. Berlin has been chosen as the site for my master’s design study because it has a rapidly changing building development, a collision of nationalities, and a diverse artistic culture. / text

Thesis (M. L. Arch. - Renewable Natural Resources)--University of Arizona, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-96).

Thesis (M. L. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes special report study entitled: Portable landscape elements. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Thesis (M. L. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes special report study entitled: 'When nature exploits man-made structures ... ' : a detailed study of wall trees in Hong Kong. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

The American City is layered in differences. Over time the city has been shaped and reshaped by different cultures and identities in the urban landscape. However, difference is still consistently otherized, and ethnicity becomes excluded by society as this other. In 2010, the Latino population increased from 13 percent in 2000 to 16 percent of the total population, or 51 million people. And yet, Latinos are still particularly otherized in cities like New Orleans, where the demographics have been shifting since Katrina and the Latino population has more than doubled in size. Despite the city’s rich history of Latin American culture, the population’s identity is still ambiguous and mainly invisible to society at large. On a national level, Latinos use the everyday in urban life as an arena of resistance and cultural meaning. Neighborhoods evolve over time based on hybridity, juxtaposition and improvisation; this temporal condition is visible within a 24-hour cycle in Hispanic everyday life, where place is altered across different hours of the day, and along different paths. Utilizing this transitional element of Latino Urbanism and the emphasis on provisional social space existing along lines of difference, the project redefines building typologies to anticipate and support the growing ethnic identity. In New Orleans, the Latino community has specific economic, social and cultural needs, which the city is currently lacking, thus the project seeks to address these absences through the placemaking strategy of layered exchanges and interwoven paths, in which the tectonics of space respond to these paths, and a visual, as well as a physical, exchange occurs between, city and others. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

The Periscope and the Labyrinth is an investigation into cultural identity, consciousness and landscape rooted in the body’s experience of the city. The modern phenomenon of flânerie is used as a means of examining vari- ous sites of particular interest to queer mythology within New York and Rome via the device of personal ‘derives’ or drifts inspired by a legacy of city writing, whereby the particular relationship between identity, place and space becomes clear. The flâneur has been essential to previous writings on the topic of ‘queer space’ in that he is one who ‘relies on the ambiguities of the modern city, and the uncertainties that linger in the fleeting experi- ence of a backward glance.’ It is these very ambiguities that associate the flâneur as the quintessential ‘cruiser.’ Yet the potential of the flâneur lies in his ‘alchemical’ abilities. A contemporary interpretation of alchemy is used through out the thesis as both a psychological method for understand- ing the ‘union of opposites’, as well as a reading of the parallels between individual and collective identity as they relate to particular sites. These archetypal opposites are typified by the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus; the duality of their characteristics exemplified by the metaphor of the title in which the conscience of the ‘Apollonian eye’ of the flâneur within the labyrinth of the Dionysian underworld’ describing the alchemical teachings which underpin this work.

The Periscope and the Labyrinth is an investigation into cultural identity, consciousness and landscape rooted in the body’s experience of the city. The modern phenomenon of flânerie is used as a means of examining vari- ous sites of particular interest to queer mythology within New York and Rome via the device of personal ‘derives’ or drifts inspired by a legacy of city writing, whereby the particular relationship between identity, place and space becomes clear. The flâneur has been essential to previous writings on the topic of ‘queer space’ in that he is one who ‘relies on the ambiguities of the modern city, and the uncertainties that linger in the fleeting experi- ence of a backward glance.’ It is these very ambiguities that associate the flâneur as the quintessential ‘cruiser.’ Yet the potential of the flâneur lies in his ‘alchemical’ abilities. A contemporary interpretation of alchemy is used through out the thesis as both a psychological method for understand- ing the ‘union of opposites’, as well as a reading of the parallels between individual and collective identity as they relate to particular sites. These archetypal opposites are typified by the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus; the duality of their characteristics exemplified by the metaphor of the title in which the conscience of the ‘Apollonian eye’ of the flâneur within the labyrinth of the Dionysian underworld’ describing the alchemical teachings which underpin this work.