In response to the World Commission on Environment and Development’s Brundtland Report (1987) and other documents that have brought the need to address environmental, economic, and social issues to the forefront of the awareness of the public, the Sustainable SITES Initiative was modeled after LEED certification and was formed to establish a rating system and comprehensive framework of guidelines for development. It is a collaborative effort between the ASLA, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the United States Botanic Garden. In June 2015, the Green Building Certification, Inc. of the United States Green Building Council acquired SITES and will oversee future certifications. SITES was formed to address the need for a coordinated response between all landscape design professionals, and to work in addition to and synergistically with LEED certification. This study investigates the new sustainability rating system while exploring the professional marketplace and the design processes of three landscape architecture firms. The purpose of this study is to answer the question, “How do the design processes differ between SITES certified and noncertified urban open space projects in the Puget Sound area?”. There are currently 47 landscape projects across the United States that have been certified by the SITES pilot program rating system. This is an exploratory study that examines the processes of three landscape architecture firms, with two projects within each firm: one sustainably certified through SITES, one is not certified, for a total of six case studies. By analyzing and documenting the presence and nature of patterns, similarities and differences, this study aims to strengthen the objective of SITES certification for the purpose of recognition and to validate existing sustainable landscape architectural practices. This study pinpoints the components of sustainable landscape architectural and highlights landscape architecture’s commitment to sustainable development. Landscape architecture has a rich history of incorporating sustainable practices into their work. With this new rating system, landscape projects can gain recognition for sustainable practice through marketing projects as SITES certified, as the LEED certification program exemplifies. This study can also inform future collaborations with LEED certifications. SITES currently works synergistically with LEED certification on several components, but increased collaboration will be mutually beneficial. The SITES certification process is very involved and time-consuming, and with valuable feedback from Landscape Architects, expedited certification can be possible.

My research investigates the relationship between the architectural designer and the use that he or she makes of digital media as part of the design process. My principal research question is: what is the advantage of including digital media as part of the designers' 'toolset' in the early stages of design? The context is a highly successful and high profile mid-sized Australian architectural practice. The study considers the nature of architectural designing as a creative activity and the extent to which advantages could be gained by including digital media as part of the designers' toolset in the early stages of design. Designers seem to be polarised between championing the role of digital media as part of their design processes and downright rejecting it. One such extreme position is a view that this media has either 'no place' (Martens et al. 2007:np; Sanders 1996:4-5) within architectural design and is thus seen as 'just another tool' filling at best an ancillary and service role in the design process (Kvan, Mark et al. 2004:np). This view suggests therefore that designing with digital media has hardly advanced (Corrigan 2003:86). An opposing view is that digital media can take a more fundamental place to advance design methods (Rahim 2006:1), even revolutionarily improve the design process beyond 'question and debate' (Winner 1986:6 in Steele 2001:13), resulting in a 'new architecture' (Lindsey 2001:12) and encouraging significant change in designing through semi-automated generation of design and interconnected ways of communicating (Lindsey 2001:12). Resulting from my study, I have found, however, that the more negative views (Winner 1986:6; Sanders 1996:4-5) regarding the integration of digital media into the architectural design process tend to distract from the more balanced investigation into how a designer masters an expanding architectural design practice. As a doctoral candidate I take a participant-observer position within Terroir where I have been employed for the past five years. My experiences in responding to my research question suggest that the advantage of digital media is not a question of whether or not to integrate the tools. The question is more an issue of how a designer masters an expanding design process through an approach that includes ideas, conventional media and digital media. My thesis demonstrates the changes that occurred through the integration of digital media and, conversely, possibilities to opportunistically further improve on conventional design practice. My research suggests that mutuality exists in the relationship between the designer and their digital media. Through their co-evolution, changes can occur where there is not only an integration of digital media with design, but also both media and design practice change through their integration. I also discuss how an uptake of digital media gives grounds for a new specialised ro le in practice. A new role emerged within the collaborative firm of architects, which I have called in this thesis the digital ideator. It is a role that I demonstrate as potentially being central to digital media integrated with design practice.

<p>”A designer rarely works alone”. The first sentence of Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman's chapter on design as a social process made me curious. What if a designer worked alone? What are the actual differences between working on a project alone and as part of a group? How would it influence the creative process? What would be different when coming up with ideas, meeting with clients and setting deadlines? Does the influence of another designer stifle the individual creativity or does it actually nurish it? This paper is written to answer these and other questions as well as take you through the creative process of the production of ”Daddy” - the music video.</p>

Generally, a design process involves multiple modeling and analysis interaction iterations accommodating changes and verifications. It is convenient to develop generative programs to automate some tedious and repetitive processes in order to minimize cycle times and the engineer’s routine efforts associated with various design stages. The proposed process model incorporates embedded engineering knowledge and generative Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) analysis for partial automation of product development. For improved efficiency and ease of operation, the process used a CAD/CAE integration approach with smart program development mechanism for automated modeling and analysis. A CAD/CAE integration method using a Common Data Model (CDM) containing all the required parametric information for both CAD modelling and CAE analysis is implemented. The CDM is used as a parametric data model repository and the supply source of input for those associative entities of CAD and CAE models and thus maintaining the associative dependencies among them. The pro-recorded journal file from the modeling and analysis software tool are used for rapid and easy program development of generative CAD and CAE. / Engineering Design

The purpose of this research is to identify complex cultural dynamics in theinstructional design process of a cross-sector, cross-border training environment by applying Young’s (2009) Culture-Based Model (CBM) as a theoretical framework and taxonomy for description of the instructional design process under the conditions of one case. The guiding question of this study is: How does culture, as defined by Young’s (2009) CBM framework, interact with the instructional design process in this case of a cross-sector, cross-border training program? This research uses the qualitative approach of case study and applies a cultural design framework to examine the process of instructional design by a team of designers-by-assignment in a NASA/university consortium program to train applied research and development teams for an education software company headquartered in India. Fifteen representative participants were chosen to reflect each role involved in the training program and instructional design process, including management, instructors and students. In over two years of engagement with participants, data was gathered at a NASA space center and in Mumbai, India through interviews, observation and artifact analysis. Data was analyzed to identify where components of the design process, decisions of the design team, and perceptions of the stakeholders overlap with culture as defined by Young’s CBM framework. The findings indicate that at least twenty-three distinguishable elements of culture interact across the design process in the: 1) goals and funding decisions of the client; 2) goals and design decisions of the design team; 3) perceptions of the training program of all stakeholders; and 4) the observable outcomes of the training program. The findings also offer insight into what stakeholders do or do not consciously attribute to culture. By empirically illuminating the pervasive presence of cultural interactions across the instructional design process, this study advocates for culture to be recognized as a construct of importance in our field and demonstrates the powerful capabilities of using a comprehensive descriptive model as a lens for exploring cultural dynamics in the instructional design process.

The dissertation investigates the role of autobiographical memories with emotional significance in architectural design conjecturing. The dissertation is structured as a set of individual articles (chapters), each can be read independently. To set the background to the empirical research, an overview of models of the design process, intuition in design, memory, emotion and place are presented. The empirical research consists of comparison of two case studies. Ethnographic methods were used for data collection. Direct analysis, indirect analysis (content analysis of protocols) and analysis of language for affect were used to scrutinize the data. Findings clearly indicate the utilization of autobiographical memories with emotional significance in design conjecturing. The study describes the types of autobiographical memories with emotional significance and purpose of their use in design conjecturing. In general, the dissertation study indicated that half of thought content used by architects during design conjecturing comes from their autobiographical experience. At the same time, personal experiences of students are neglected in architectural education. Overview of the current status of architectural education leads to the argument that academia is due for a paradigm change. The dissertation provides suggestion on the direction of changes in design education.

This research examines interviews conducted with more than a dozen authorities in architectural education on collaborative methodologies utilized in the design studio and identifies factors that inhibit and facilitate the incorporation of collaborative methods in the context of situated learning. This research explores the notion that the design and implementation of even the simplest architectural projects are almost exclusively collaborative endeavors requiring the expertise of a spectrum of individuals working together to achieve a singular goal. Each of these experts is highly trained in their respective areas, yet few are formally trained authorities in the skills of collaboration, including architects, individuals who are often put at the lead of design projects which include people of varied backgrounds, working styles and areas of expertise. Historically, the education of an architect has been a highly individualized pursuit, focused on the development of an individual skill set seldom requiring collaboration beyond that of student and professor. While this individualized, hands on approach to education has been highly revered by many, it often falls short of its potential and fails to recognize that the greatest design accomplishments of humankind have been the undertaking of collaborative enterprise. Furthermore, architecture students are being prepared in a manner that is contrary to the highly collaborative nature of the architectural practice they will enter without taking away from the inherent strengths of the traditional architectural education. Despite NAAB requirements for collaborative methods in the classroom, and an increasingly collaborative model of professional practice for architects, design education continues to trail woefully behind other disciplines such as business, law, nursing and medicine; each having long ago integrated collaborative study models into their curriculum. This research examines how collaborative methods including intradisciplinary, interdisciplinary and community based collaborations, can be further integrated as a formal part of the overall design curriculum and what factors facilitate and inhibit this inclusion.

This thesis is an investigation on the changing concept of space and its production, through a reconsideration of montage in the digital environment. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, collage and montage have been one of the key terms that lead the movements of art and architecture. Towards the end of the 80s, however, as a result of the introduction of the digital environment, the quality and quantity of methods of production and transfer of knowledge have increased and the flow of information has gained a noticeable importance. Through recent developments, the digital environment offers many opportunities for representation in architectural field as well as other professions. Montage, which is a technique for construction of a new meaning or entity throughout its history, now changes its character with the infinitely many opportunities digital environment proposes as well. Therefore, this thesis tries to examine the changing scope and formulation of montage in this specific environment through the example of digital compositing which is a recent design and production technique used in the field of photography and cinema. Digital compositing provides layering, editing and merging numerous elements in one frame. Through its inherent potential of decomposing time and juxtaposing different modes of realities, the concept of space and production and visualization techniques in the digital medium change also affecting the roles of the designer and the user in the process. Thus, this new formulation brings forward a new understanding of design process that acts as an interface both spatially and temporally.

The primary objective of this research is to develop a visual design process for gear trains with multiple stages of reduction and varying configurational architectures. One of the main challenges in the design of such gear trains is in the sizing of the individual gears such that high levels of performance are obtained in spite of constraints due to different gear configurations. Formal design procedures that successfully meet this challenge are developed. A key contribution of this research is the utilization of these design procedures to create sets of three-dimensional design maps. The design procedures help a designer manage more than 20 design parameters in designing for a broad range of gear train requirements (Rated torque capacity, Volume, Weight, Inertia, Responsiveness, Torque Density etc.) while accounting for assembly constraints. Each set of design maps corresponds to a given set of design parameters, some of which are held fixed and some of which are put in the hands of the designer. The latter set of design parameters are termed in this research as design knobs. They can be ‘tuned’ by a designer in order to generate new sets of design maps. The idea is that a designer, using the design information conveyed to him/her graphically through a given set of design maps, is able to then tune the design knobs to generate an updated set of design maps which reflect design solutions that are more desirable in terms of the application requirements. By adjusting the design knobs and looking at updated design maps, a designer is able to quickly assess the effect of his/her design decisions. The end result is that a single designer is empowered with the ability to quickly arrive at a preliminary design of a gear train that satisfies the design requirements. This preliminary design would be a good starting point for more detailed design development. / text

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