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Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / Placemaking for Socially Resilient Site Design is a project focused on clarifying and characterizing social resilience. This project used ethnographic methods to answer the question: what qualities of place affect the downtown community’s desires for a temporary landscape in Wichita, Kansas? Through literature review this project further defined what social resilience meant at the site scale. Social resilience was operationalized as social systems ability to maintain function while promoting social trust, reciprocity, collaboration, and character between networks of varying scales (Putnam 1995). Literature review provided the foundational knowledge on creative placemaking, a design strategy used to improve community prosperity through a sense of place and imageability (Artscape 2014). Place is determined by a user’s surroundings, and more importantly the memory of social engagement on site (Fleming 2007). Creative placemaking design strategies are valuable and specific to location. Therefore, it was imperative I incorporated ethnographic research methods to answer my focus question. Ethnographic research investigates cultural patterns and themes expressed or observed by a community (LeCompte et al. 1991). This form of research is unconventional for the typical site design process in landscape architecture. However, it proved to be effective in determining the most successful site use and organization. The ethnographic research allowed me to inventory and document user’s most desirable site needs and programming through the stakeholder design charrette and individual interviews. In November 2014 the Wichita Downtown Development Cooperation requested our team as a partner in developing a temporary landscape for downtown Wichita, Kansas. The site was already selected with the intention of becoming Douglas Avenue Pop-Up Park. Funding for this project was awarded to the WDDC in the form of a $146,025 grant from the Knight Foundation. Using an iterative community feedback process with five ethnographic interviews, I reevaluated the WDDC’s initial Pop-Up Park plan resulting from a community charrette. Recurring themes from interviews were identity crisis of downtown, outdoor preference, lack of residential amenities, negative perception of active and public transit, downtown lifestyle, Wichita as a place for families, and lack of nighttime activation. Using the recurring interview themes, I proposed a plan conducive to social resilience.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / The purpose of this study is to investigate and design public light art installations. The investigation consisted of evaluating select examples of public light installations in order to develop a typology, and designing two site-specific light art installations: one in Wichita, Kansas, and the other, in Denver, Colorado. Though public light art is found in most cities, its potential is often lost or unrecognized. In certain cases, public light art can be ‘plop art,’ which is plopped senselessly without much regard to context or experiential qualities. This project seeks to explore the different types of public light art and to find what approach or qualities should be considered when designing public light art. My approach can be described as artistic research. The methods include an apprenticeship to an artist, a precedent study, development of a light typology, an analysis of site and context, establishing a design matrix for two design projects, and an iterative process of making. Each of these methods were undertaken in order to effectively address my research question: What type of public light art is most appropriate for a specific site and how does it relate to creative placemaking? This project overlaps with a collective project group entitled Creative Place-Making, which is comprised of other fifth-year master of landscape architecture students with an underlying interest in art and design as place-making tools. Each student in the group addressed the site in Wichita, Kansas in a unique way. I addressed this site as a temporary landscape, creating an interactive light installation intended to be in place up to five years. In contrast, I addressed the Denver, Colorado site as a long term landscape, and designed a sculptural illuminating gateway. Each of these light art installations were informed by a particular set of characteristics that make each design site-specific.

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