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This thesis is an investigation of landscape as boundary: a study of its formation, inhabitation, and symbolic meaning. The study is situated in a valley located south of Jerusalem’s Old City walls; known as both Gei Ben-Hinnom and Wadi al- Rababa, it is an ethnic, cultural, socioeconomical, and mythological boundary. In the ethnically polarized Jerusalem, valleys often act as boundaries between Jewish and Palestinian populations. For nineteen years an official no-man’s-land divided the Hinnom/Rababa Valley, a result of an armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan. Since the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem to Israel, the valley has transformed into a boundary between the two populations. Responding to this boundary, the thesis addresses an urgent need for a wastewater treatment facility, proposing new infrastructure as a vehicle to explore the ability of architecture to embody multiple narratives. By documenting built form, geology, hydrology, history, and mythology, the thesis illustrates the Hinnom/Rababa Valley as the space of the in-between, neither east nor west, bridging the urban hilltops with the underworld. The boundary partakes in both and neither sides simultaneously. Building on its multiplicity of meanings – of its ‘stories so far’ – the thesis attempts to re-imagine a new relationship to the ground.

This thesis is an investigation of landscape as boundary: a study of its formation, inhabitation, and symbolic meaning. The study is situated in a valley located south of Jerusalem’s Old City walls; known as both Gei Ben-Hinnom and Wadi al- Rababa, it is an ethnic, cultural, socioeconomical, and mythological boundary. In the ethnically polarized Jerusalem, valleys often act as boundaries between Jewish and Palestinian populations. For nineteen years an official no-man’s-land divided the Hinnom/Rababa Valley, a result of an armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan. Since the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem to Israel, the valley has transformed into a boundary between the two populations. Responding to this boundary, the thesis addresses an urgent need for a wastewater treatment facility, proposing new infrastructure as a vehicle to explore the ability of architecture to embody multiple narratives. By documenting built form, geology, hydrology, history, and mythology, the thesis illustrates the Hinnom/Rababa Valley as the space of the in-between, neither east nor west, bridging the urban hilltops with the underworld. The boundary partakes in both and neither sides simultaneously. Building on its multiplicity of meanings – of its ‘stories so far’ – the thesis attempts to re-imagine a new relationship to the ground.

This body of work explores the World’s Columbian Exposition 1893 and looks at how African American challenge the built environment of the Fair. The African American community contested the white constructed spaces by reimaging and claiming them for the self. At the Fair, black subordination was achieved and was maintained by the unabashed use of white power structures. After Reconstruction Black people began to turn to racial solidarity as a means of survival. Prior to Emancipation Blacks had been segregated and denied equal participation in the larger society regardless of their individual achievements. The result has been that race pride had, to a large degree, been conspicuously absent. The Fair pushed African Americans towards greater solidarity through inadvertently promoting pride in their racial heritage. Through examining the Fair, this work illuminates that the World’s Columbian Exposition 1893 served as a nexus for pivotal African American movements. I argue that the fair served as a turning point for African Americans and sparked radical movements that focused on Black independence at home and abroad. The Fair became a pivotal site of protest that paved the way for the Black Nationalist Movement, Pan-African Movement, the creation of the National Association of Colored Women, and the New Negro Movement.

This dissertation is based on my research into distinction processes (Calhoun, 1994; Cerulo 1997) between tourists and inhabitants of West Sumba in Eastern Indonesia. The imaginiaries (Castoriadis, 1987; Strauss, 2006; Lacan, 1977; Anderson, 1991; Salazar, 2012) of West Sumbanese people about foreigners also emerge from diving rumors (Bysow, 1928; Allport and Postman, 1947/1965). Their origins, dissemination, and sharpening processes, as well as their consequences will be analysed herein. This case study demonstrates how mental models of otherness are formed and reified, how they clash, and for what purposes they may be utilized. It will also analyze how imaginaries influence behavior and may lead to miscommunication in West Sumba.