Built environment

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/4901

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Highways and Humor
(2026-02-05) Suskin, Gregory Scott; Campell, Christopher
This research examines whether humor effectively communicates traffic safety messages across Variable Message Signs (VMS) and social media platforms, addressing the growing but controversial practice among U.S. Departments of Transportation. Through systematic content analysis and case studies applying the Step approach to Message Design and Testing (SatMDT) framework, this thesis reveals that humor's efficacy for safety is inconclusive, and for public sentiment is highly context-dependent, varying by platform constraints, audience demographics, and message design. While humorous messages demonstrate superior attention-getting capabilities and enhance source credibility, a critical "message discounting" phenomenon creates a gap between engagement and persuasion; audiences process humorous content more deeply yet simultaneously dismiss it as entertainment rather than actionable guidance. VMS humor faces additional challenges from severe time constraints and safety-critical contexts, while social media platforms enable more sophisticated humor strategies without distraction risks.
Seattle's New Stadium District: Proposing A Socially Connected and Housing Dense Stadium District
(2025-10-02) Falinski, Elliot S; Chalana, Manish M
Currently, there are two notable problems within the urban fabric of Seattle: the lack of housing units (including housing types) and minimal social connectivity for its residents. The housing issue is part of a wider crisis across America and around the world. Within Seattle specifically, the city aims to build 112,000 new housing units by 2044, highlighting this urgent need for new construction. As for social connectivity, over the last fifty to seventy years planners and designers have largely prioritized the needs of cars in building cityscapes, rather than the people and life within the city itself. However true, in my view, the core of the issue is that we have left our most sacred urban spaces isolated and disconnected across multi-grdded obsession. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a feasible solution to the problems faced by Seattle that are mentioned above. This thesis will not be a proposal for all 112,000 housing units called for by the city, nor to address social connectivity throughout Seattle, but will act as a guide for the District's redevelopment for the City of Seattle to follow. This thesis begins with a series of analyses across Seattle detailing various aspects of Seattle's built environment. The guided selection leads into the case background of the selected site, relevant literature, a manifesto of the approach, and precedents reviewed via the lessons learned. Followed by a 3D model and renders which will be the guide to how Stadium District can be redeveloped. Seattle's Stadium District has several flaws in terms of housing and social connectivity, particularly due to its industrial past and liquefaction concerns. Despite this, the area still has potential for redevelopment. It can become a space where fans gather and enjoy life, where greenery is reintegrated into the urban environment improving livability and economic vitality. Although the modeling section of this project was only allocated enough time to create second iterations, that is not a final and more polished third iteration, the resulting model still conveys both the specific ideas and guiding principles of the redevelopment project.
Densification and Preservation: Competing or Complementary Strategies for a Vibrant and Affordable University District?
(2025-10-02) Tamaroff, Deena; Harris, Keith
This paper addresses the tension between preservation and densification, two strategies for increasing housing affordability, using a 2017 rezone in Seattle's University Distrct neighborhood as a case study. Specifically, this paper aims to understand how "naturally occurring," or sunsubsidized, affordable housing (known as "NOAH") has fared in the neighborhood since the implementation of the zoning change, which allows widespread increases in development capacity across the neighborhood. Leading up to the rezone, community groups expressed concerns about displacement risk and about changes to the neighborhood's unique character. To date, there is no clear understanding of the impact of the rezone on existing affordable units. This paper first analyzes the changes in both development capacity and development activity, measured through historical zoning data and permits issued in response to applications submitted after the zoning change went into effect, and then establishes and applies a set of criteria to identify probable NOAH properties and evaluate the extent to which they are at risk for redevelopment. Findings reveal many probable NOAH properties within a study area in the core of the neighborhood, ranging in redevelopment risk level from minimal to moderate.
Temporary Tactics for Radical Shade: Catalyzing Rapid Interventions for Extreme Urban Heat in Seattle
(2025-08-01) Fielding, Clelie Ada; Manzo, Lynne C; Stevenson, Dylan M
One of the clearest signs of human-caused climate change is rising summer temperatures, resulting in more frequent and longer-lasting heat waves. There is an urgent need for shapers of the built environment to respond with rapid solutions. This thesis explores the concept of radical shade, where shade is understood as a civic resource that should be equitably distributed, and investigates tactical urbanism as a method to create rapid design interventions for heat relief. A city-wide site suitability analysis leads to the selection of three sites in Seattle, where the design proposals explore how tactical and temporary intervention can create invaluable shade. A series of three design interventions is proposed at each site through a phased design framework which emphasizes action in the next 0-3 years. Finally, sun/shade studies are conducted on the design interventions to demonstrate that the proposals do in fact increase the shaded area on site. The thesis calls on community organizers, design activists, and governmental agencies to act urgently and collaboratively to create temporary shade structures, which have the ability to provide opportunities for radical shade.
Equitable Public Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Expansion—From the Tribal Community Perspective
(2025-08-01) Drennan, Zachary McQuinn; Stevenson, Dylan
Transportation electrification addresses climate goals but may exacerbate inequities for disadvantaged communities. Tribal communities' specific EVCI needs remain unexplored despite unique governance, cultural, and geographic circumstances. Existing Indigenous planning research focuses on transportation, energy, and infrastructure separately, lacking integrated frameworks for EVCI. Significant gaps exist in Tribal-specific investigation, sovereignty-respecting collaborative models, and appropriate decision-support tools.This research develops a community-centric, data-driven scalable mapping tool (SMT) to support Tribes in planning EVCI expansion, conducted in partnership with the Tulalip Tribes. The study employs a mixed-methods approach integrating recognition justice and sociotechnical capacity assessment frameworks, utilizing technical questionnaire protocols for collecting geospatial infrastructure data and social survey protocols for gathering community-driven data on travel patterns and electric vehicle adoption preferences. The methodology implements a four-lens analytical framework (Can Go, Cannot Go, Should Go, and Type) that organizes data inputs into a decision support system considering both technical feasibility and community priorities. The research revealed that Tribal communities exist along a spectrum of EVCI readiness, from those with no existing charging infrastructure or limited electrical capacity to those already operating charging stations and pursuing federal grants for expansion. This spectrum presents critical challenges for funding mechanisms, which must be designed with sufficient flexibility to support communities regardless of their current infrastructural position. The analysis identified significant the need for educational programming to ensure Tribal members are aware of electric vehicle usage as well as infrastructure capacity building. These findings emphasize that effective EVCI implementation must recognize the diverse spectrum of tribal infrastructural capacity while simultaneously addressing educational needs and technical infrastructure gaps.
Leveraging Machine Learning to Uncover Integrated Impacts of Urban Environment Features on Human Health
(2025-08-01) Zhang, Jiafei; Abbasabadi, Narjes
While human health is significant to sustainable development as cities keep increasing and are estimated to contain 70% of the population by 2050, the quantitative relationship of how the urban environments influence human health remains so poorly understudied due to the convoluted connection and co-effect among numerous urban factors, as well as the large-scale data integration difficulty. Previous researchers studying urban health mainly focus on finding specific urban environment feature’s influence or try to analyze the mechanisms of features co-effect on a coarse scale larger than census tract level or just with qualitative approach. Thus, this research set and reached the objectives to quantify the essential, specific and integrated relationship between urban environment and human health, and specify urban indicators’ co-effect at census tract level mainly from the urban environment’s perspective. With the development of data science, various statistical methods including Machine Learning (ML), SHAP analysis, and Pearson correlation analysis offer promising opportunities for analyzing such complex relationships, facilitated by the increasing availability of urban data by modern tools and the advancements in computational efficiency. By utilizing these methods, this research analyzes 6044 census tracts in 10 US metropolitans (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Jacksonville, San Francisco Area, Seattle Area, Washington DC Area, Boston Area) with data from 2015 to 2024, builds a framework for census tract level urban health index developed from literature review and WHO urban health indicators framework (2014), quantifies 27 urban environment features’ influence on human health indicators especially on life expectancy, and builds a high performance urban health prediction model for future intervention suggestion for policy makers, making significant meaning towards the urban planning practice.
(Re)assembling Civic Engagement through Intermediate Actors: Processes of Fostering Social Resilience through Micro-regeneration in China
(2025-01-23) Peng, Bo; Hou, Jeffrey
Urban regeneration in China has increasingly emphasized civic engagement and collaborative governance under the national framework of “social governance.” As a result, micro-regeneration has emerged as a prominent approach that not only engages diverse actors in the urban regeneration process but also provides platforms for the public to take an active role in governing their urban environments. This approach also offers resilient responses to the constantly changing urban conditions, as actors enhance their skills and capacities through engagement in micro-regeneration projects. However, existing theories and practices of civic engagement in China remain predominantly government-led and spatially oriented, often overlooking decentralized social processes. Understanding the shift towards involving professional intermediate actors as the key drivers of the programs, particularly how these actors mobilize other stakeholders can provide some insights into improving civic engagement practices as well as social resilience in various contexts.This dissertation research examines three micro-regeneration programs in Guangzhou and Shanghai, China - Everyday Spaces by People, Blooming Dongming, and Beautiful Xinhua. In each case study, the assigned professional intermediate actors have successfully engaged various actors to advance these micro-regeneration programs through design proposals and spatial interventions. Furthermore, they have encouraged the involved actors to produce spontaneous initiatives to address emergent issues. This research explores an overarching question: How do intermediate actors enroll and mobilize diverse actors through collaborative activities in micro-regeneration programs, and how does such process foster conditions conducive to social resilience? Informed by Actor Network Theory and its translation process, this research developed a framework to understand the roles of intermediate actors and how they assembled and reassembled the actor networks for their micro-regeneration programs. Through interviews, field observations, and other written materials, this dissertation argues that these professional intermediate actors served as agents, convenors, and catalysts in the micro-regeneration programs. During the processes of assembling and reassembling the actor networks, the collaborative activities facilitated by intermediate actors have enhanced the involved actors’ capacities to engage, learn, and connect. These capacities allow actors to contribute to the current micro-regeneration programs, and potentially address other urban challenges in the future. By examining the processes for (re)assembling the actor networks, this model of involving intermediate actors to enroll and mobilize diverse actors beyond governmental agencies provides insight into how civic engagement can promote social resilience through capacity-building.
The New Work of Building Operations in the Digital Age: The Impact of IoT and Digital Twins on Facility Management and Operational Practices
(2024-10-16) Dimitrov, Daniel S; Dossick, Carrie S
The technological revolution which many have coined Industry 4.0 has been marked by digital transformation which is reshaping the ways we live and work in a fundamental way. The built environment industries have been no exception to this digital transformation as technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Twins (DT) are being integrated into building operations to help solve many industry wide issues that have prevailed for decades. The integration of IoT and DT technologies into the operations phase of the building lifecycle have the potential to aid in reducing climate impacts, increasing building visibility, enhancing energy management, and increasing the overall precision and control that facility management (FM) organizations have in the buildings and campuses they manage. However, digital technologies such as IoT systems and DTs are difficult to implement and involve a higher level of commitment to systems operation and maintenance than the traditional building control systems which are prevalent in many facilities today. In addition, the digitalization of the operations phase has not been studied as holistically as other building lifecycle phases such as design and construction, making the integration of digital tools a more difficult task. Shifts to move away from existing control systems/practices and implement IoT systems or DTs to manage building operations will involve shifts in the ways people work and interact with the building’s technology and each other. What is unknown is the types of shifts that are needed to fully realize the potential of IoT and DT technology for building operations and management. The objective of this research was to identify and understand the shifts to existing FM practices from both an organizational and technological perspective that are required for the management of buildings when FM organizations shift to the use of IoT systems or DTs for operations management. This research additionally aims to understand how theories of digitalization from design and construction phases apply to the operations phase. This research used qualitative case study methods and two case studies were conducted with operations organizations. This research identifies key organizational shifts needed for integrating IoT and DTs into building operations, emphasizing breaking down disciplinary silos, developing new technical skills while leveraging institutional knowledge, new leadership requirements to guide the organizational transition, and the need to challenge entrenched and habitual standards and practices. Technical insights include new practices in configuring IoT devices, managing networks and security, and utilizing IoT capabilities for analytics and troubleshooting. The study also highlights parallels with theories of digitalization across building lifecycle phases and contributes new insights, advancing the body of knowledge in digitalization for operations.
Developing a Framework for Risk-Responsive Building Codes of Office Buildings: A Healthy Building Perspective
(2024-09-09) Bramono, Novi Triadi Iman; Lee, Hyun Woo HW
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our understanding of office buildings’ designs and operations, particularly in response to airborne transmission risks and occupants’ health. While building codes are intended to ensure safety, protect occupants’ health, and minimize risks, they lack adequate responsiveness to airborne transmission risks, including COVID-19. Additionally, there is a dearth of studies on the ability of building codes to mitigate airborne transmission. In response, this dissertation introduces a novel Risk-Responsive Framework (RRF) to evaluate and enhance building codes’ risk responsiveness, with a specific focus on providing healthier office environments. The specific objectives of this research are to: (1) identify the key factors that determine building codes’ risk responsiveness to mitigate airborne transmission, including COVID-19; (2) develop a framework to assess the risk responsiveness of current building codes; (3) apply this framework to U.S. case studies to determine their effectiveness; and (4) provide recommendations to improve building codes in preparation for future public health crises. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining qualitative and quantitative data through content analysis, expert interviews, and the Delphi method. A multi-criteria analysis method of simple additive weighting was used to weigh and rank the final factors that determine a building code’s risk responsiveness. This comprehensive approach led to the identification of four criteria and eleven key factors influencing building codes’ risk responsiveness. These criteria include prevention effectiveness, associated energy costs, and ease of monitoring, reporting, implementation, and enforcement, while key factors such as increased ventilation rates, higher air filtration, space design, clean air delivery rates, and bringing in outdoor air were identified. These factors were used to construct RRF, which aims to evaluate building codes’ effectiveness in mitigating airborne transmission risks. RRF was applied to 30 U.S. cities and 30 states to assess their current responsiveness to airborne transmission risks. The findings revealed that most existing building codes are not sufficiently responsive to these risks. Only a few states and cities scored relatively higher due to the inclusion of relevant health-focused factors, such as higher air filtration, in their building codes. This underscores the significant need for integrating health considerations into building codes to enhance their responsiveness to airborne transmission risks. This research provides significant insights by identifying gaps in current building codes and proposing the novel RRF to enhance their responsiveness to airborne transmission risks. It also highlights the importance of integrating health-focused requirements into building codes to ensure safer and healthier office environments in the post-pandemic era. Finally, this research offers recommendations to improve building codes’ risk responsiveness to future airborne disease outbreaks.
Immersive Visualization Intervention on Pull Planning
(2024-02-12) Pratama, Lucky Agung; Dossick, Carrie S
Pull-Planning is considered a brainstorming process conducted by stakeholders in construction projects. It encourages collaboration by making a stakeholder communicate and visualize the work plan for the next few weeks so that other stakeholders are aware of what activity is happening on the jobsite. This allows project stakeholders to carefully plan their work and minimize conflicts that arise from miscommunication during the project. However, as a tool in lean construction, pull planning has a learning curve and some documents may be needed to help stakeholders in completing the process. Throughout the years, several tools may have been used, whether it is a floor plan or a 3-D models, to help the pull plan process. This study aimed to explore what alternative visualization tool may be possible to be introduced to the pull planning processes. Virtual Reality was considered because the technology has been advanced enough to be implemented economically. Combined with BIM models, the VR was expected to provide the stakeholders an immersive environment in the pull planning process, which should enhance their communication process. The study also looked at how the intervention would help with the learning process to help people with less knowledge on pull planning be able participate in the process. A prototype and several studies were conducted both on professional and students. It was concluded that professionals were more akin to using a shared screen with the virtual reality screen mirrored in it. Meanwhile, as a learning tool, VR intervention can be implemented on a smaller scale such as a classroom setting with simplified scenarios to help the learning process. This study results also enforced the notion that the implementation of VR contributed to identification of errors or problem related to the model, which had been suggested by other studies. In the real of pull plan itself, study results indicated the possibility of accelerating the conflict resolution process between stakeholders through the model visualization by having the stakeholders use VR model as a visual aid tool. In a long term, this study is expected to be a point of departure for other studies that seek to further implement VR/AR/XR in a project beyond using them as a design review tool. With more developed model and hardware, the industry can potentially implement the technology in a more economical way to help stakeholders in the pull planning process.
Accessing the Alternative Food Movement: Considerations towards Disability Justice
(2023-09-27) Tyman, Shannon K.; Born, Branden
The alternative food movement makes claims to seek a more just food system, andinterdisciplinary scholarship has investigated the consequences of different facets of the movement to its transformative potential. In this work, scholars and activists have studied the impacts of race and class. Few have addressed disability in any way, let alone produced research—or activism—that comprehensively examines ableism as an oppressive structure or seriously considers (dis)ability as a category of difference. The purpose of my research is to ask how critical disability studies deepens intersectional analyses of oppression within the food movement, and specifically within urban food provisioning. Empirically, I examined three case studies in Seattle, Washington, each of which represented a different alternative food organization governance model, each of which tells a story about access, both to food and to resources that improve food access. These case studies included a healthy corner store project run by a public health department, a democratically run food cooperative, and an anarchist free market. In each case, I reflect on a particular concept key to critical disability studies: interrogating health, crip time, and interdependence, respectively. Collectively, these cases provide evidence for the relevance of a critical disability studies perspective for the alternative food movement as a whole. I conclude that critical disability studies provides both methodological and theoretical frameworks to highlight ableism and center (dis)ability. It encourages relationship-based methods such as participatory action research and provides tools to identify ableist biases. It enables recognition of normative ideologies and their impacts within the food movement, and seeks a nuanced understanding of access for different bodies. In fact, in this dissertation, I used critical disability studies as a tool to understand what is happening in the alternative food movement. Interrogating health opens a new window into the goals and the achievements of of public health. Crip time offers a way to understand inclusion from a temporal perspective. Interdependence shows up where every body is deemed equally important because we recognize different levels of need and different capacities to participate. Ultimately, this research not only offers a critique, through the lens of ableism, of oppression and marginalization within the food movement, but also demonstrates what can be gained from thoughtful engagement with (dis)ability and ableism within food studies more broadly.
Towards a Holistic Landscape: Understanding, Repairing, and Sustaining Systems
(2023-08-14) Engelke, Jennifer; Yocom, Kenneth
Landscape interventions are often designed through a human-centric lens that does not always consider the essential role that more-than-human elements, alongside other underrepresented elements, have in the holistic landscape. This research examines how systems-based thinking can shift peoples’ perceptions of how we view and understand the landscape. Systems-based thinking is organized at its most basic level into elements, interactions, intentions, and resulting function, which in this case are the processes and forms shaping the landscape. I hypothesize that through systems-based thinking and design, people can understand the landscape system holistically and consider how humans interact with and understand the landscape system around them.For this investigation, I develop a landscape biography methodology to examine how a landscape system has been altered due to design interventions, critical narratives, and human and more-than-human relationships within that system. Storytelling through design along with ecorevelatory design and community engagement serve as a framework to measure the landscape literacy, ecological literacy, and place attachment people have with these systems. Storytelling through design concentrates on how past land narratives are seen through the latest design interventions and help inform site users of system narratives. Landscape literacy measures the effectiveness of people understanding those narratives, including people–place connections, social injustices, and elemental relationships in the system. Ecorevelatory design offers an approach to make visible to visitors the once-invisible and incorporates more-than-human elements at the forefront of the intervention. This design strategy leads to ecological literacy and human understanding of the critical role that more-than-human elements play in the landscape. Community engagement inclusively builds system relationships and extends learning between human and more-than-human elements in the landscape throughout the design process. Place attachment demonstrates human-element connections by caring for the land, sharing the memories people have with the land, and exhibiting pro-environmental behaviors. Three case studies – Sweetgrass in Seattle, Hunter’s Point South in New York City, and Menomonee Valley in Milwaukee – illustrate the critical roles of this framework in understanding landscape narratives, repairing conditions for more-than-human elements of a system, and sustaining healthy system relationships for the future. Systems-based design demonstrates the need for a holistic function as the primary objective of design interventions; relationships and interactions between elements are crucial in achieving a holistic system.
IB Index: Developing a Standard Evaluation System for Intelligent Buildings
(2023-01-21) Borhani, Seyed Alireza; Dossick, Carrie
Intelligent building is a rapidly growing market in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operation (AECO) industry that aims to deploy emerging technologies and leverage data-driven decision making during the whole building lifecycle. However, there is a lack of holistic understanding of intelligent buildings and more importantly, there is a gap in standard methods and criteria for evaluating intelligent buildings. Ambiguity in knowing what makes a building intelligent and how to unpack the complex concept of building intelligence limits building stakeholders’ abilities to decide what technologies to implement in their buildings and to measure the effectiveness of their initiatives and strategies. This research responded to the current gaps by identifying the main components of building intelligence and used that finding as a basis for developing a tool (called the IB Index) for intelligent building evaluation. To do this, I conducted mixed-methods research consisting of actor-network theory and grounded theory to form the research theoretical foundation as well as systematic literature review and case studies for data collection and analysis. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by documenting the process and the essential elements of a standard whole-building evaluation system (including the building intelligence evaluation criteria, ontology, building performance criteria, and the weighting system). As the main outcome of the research, the IB Index provides the framework and evaluation capabilities (presented in three supplementary PDF documents) to understand the array of technological capabilities and intelligent building workflows and best practices and also to identify their impacts on building performance. Overall, the IB Index enables project stakeholders to evaluate, prove, and improve their building intelligence throughout its lifecycle.
Clean Energy Justice: Clean Energy Access and Vulnerable Communities toward Just Energy Transition
(2022-07-14) Min, Yohan; Lee, Hyun Woo
This dissertation proposes clean energy justice that links energy justice to clean energy access and vulnerable communities in terms of geographic distribution (distributional justice) and community attributes with respect to places, people, and equality (recognition justice). The first study of this dissertation argues that adoption attributes are different by communities and technologies. In particular, I find that rooftop solar adoption is strongly associated with housing variables and communities with lower adoption rates. On the other hand, I find that electric vehicle (EV) charger adoption is additionally and strongly associated with economic variables. Furthermore, communities in Seattle present higher variations in rooftop solar adoption than in EV charger adoption. The second study proposes that energy vulnerability can be characterized by energy resiliency associated with rooftop solar adoption and energy dependency related to energy burden. I find that city-level variations of rooftop solar adoption and energy burden are obvious even after controlling for community attributes. Furthermore, rooftop solar distribution in the Pacific Northwest major cities - Seattle, Bellevue, and Portland, presents significant spatial lag effects while energy burden shows a higher city-level variation. In addition, I identify vulnerable communities in terms of energy resiliency and energy dependency. In the third study, I introduce four energy justice domains in terms of two driving forces - technology development and equitable policies. Based on inequality and inequity associated with distributional and recognition justice, I quantify clean energy access in terms of four indices in three cities. I find that inequality and inequity of rooftop solar distribution and adoption have increased across communities in the cities over time. In conclusion, I discuss implications for future research and advocate for implementing tailored support to local communities based on the identified attributes.
Visual and Non-visual Effects of Light on Health in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU)
(2022-07-14) Cheng, Zining; Inanici, Mehlika
Only in recent years, scientists have uncovered the importance of lighting design, beyond facilitating vision. Human eyes function in a dual manner, and the second function is to facilitate healthy circadian rhythms. The photobiological research is still evolving, but preliminary findings show that light-sensing opsins within the retina interact with genes oscillating to circadian rhythms. Photoreceptors photopsin (OPN1), melanopsin (ONP4) and neuropsin (OPN5) send information that impacts health, vision, and circadian rhythms. Research in neonatal intensive units (NICU) shows that circadian light regimes can exert a positive influence on a baby's brain and eye development, and metabolic body functions. It is necessary to design, control, and manage the intensity and spectra of light in NICU settings to support the healthy development for premature babies. Currently, design guidelines for circadian lighting in healthcare settings are not well established; and there are not any tools that can simulate the neuropic light levels in built environments. Hence, this thesis addresses to a need for a tool that can predict the visual and non-visual effects of lighting decisions within a design workflow. LARK Multi-Spectral Lighting simulation tool was developed in 2015 as a Rhino Grasshopper plugin to simulate the non-visual effects of lighting. The objectives of this research are i) to further develop LARK to quantify the recently discovered non-visual opsin neuropsin along with photopsin and melanopsin, and ii) to demonstrate simulation workflows for NICU settings to perform robust and accurate daylighting and electric lighting analyses for occupants including patients, clinicians, and patient families. Sample workflows are exemplified to study the role of daylight and electric lighting in a NICU setting with the goal of improving design decisions. Different date, time, and weather conditions, spectral properties of glazing, surface materials, and electric light sources are simulated, and the resulting photopic, melanopic, and neuropic light levels are analyzed. The results of this thesis show that healthy lighting recipes, which satisfy the criteria for all three opsins, can be prescribed through dynamic commissioning practices for shading and tunable electric lighting systems, in addition to thoughtful design decisions such as appropriate glazing and material selections.
Design for a Reconfigurable Mass Timber Building System
(2022-07-14) Zhang, Chuou; Echenagucia, TomÃ¡s TE
Mass timber products like glulam and cross-laminated timber(CLT) can store / sequester carbon in building stocks for as long as the building components remain in use. For this carbon reduction to have a significant impact, mass timber products must not release the carbon emission back to the atmosphere in their end-of-life. The end-of-life options for wood products are often reduced to landfills, energy production, reprocess, and recycling facilities. Most buildings with mass timber components are not designed for their reuse or reconfiguration. This thesis is investigating mass timber building systems' design for reconfiguration, exploring joinery types, structural elements compositions, timber section areas, and steel connections. A qualitative research method is used to refine the joinery design in different aspects of buildings. This study proposed innovative joinery solutions that increase mass timber reliability and design specification for mass timber building systems. For the purposes of the prototype described in the thesis, a full-scale model was built to examine the constructability of the reconfigurable joinery.
Assessing Resilience in the Spatial Patterns and Socio-ecological Functions of the Chengdu Plain
(2022-07-14) Wu, Shuang; Abramson, Daniel
With the rapid process of urbanization, many traditional rural landscapes in the world have shrunk or even disappeared. As a special type of rural landscape, the linpan landscapes interwoven with the scattered market towns on the Chengdu Plain, Sichuan, China, and especially the Dujiangyan Irrigation District – China’s largest and one of its oldest – constitute a fine-grained mosaic in which ecosystems are traditionally well utilized for human development. With the accelerating loss of the linpan landscapes recently, there is an increasing need to broaden and deepen the recognition of their values. In this study I combine advanced geo-spatial tools with sociological interviews and built-environmental typological approaches to understand: (1) the configuration and spatial pattern of the linpan landscapes and market towns; (2) their functioning roles in delivering services; (3) the socio-economic connection of the linpan landscapes through hierarchical market towns; and (4) the resilient features of the rural societies of the Chengdu Plain in coping with external disturbance. The spatial pattern of linpan and their densities are related closely to local topography, population density, availability of water supply and accessibility to market places. Linpan are smallest in area and occur at highest densities in flat areas closest to the historic center of the irrigation system, and are larger and less densely distributed in the gentle hills peripheral to the irrigation system – suggesting that linpan were integral to the historical resilience of the irrigation system. The layouts of traditional cottages present a “line” shape, “L” shape, “U” shape, or “compound” shape with an evolutionary process of family expansion, and all of these layouts often reflect the adaptation to the surrounding environment such as the orientation of houses. As a coupled social and natural system, linpan provides multiple goods and services to the lives and livelihood of local communities including provisioning (foods, fuel woods, or water), regulating (air, temperature or pollination) and cultural (ecotourism or spiritual enrichment) services. Linpan dwellers have been integrated into a holistic society through rural markets, where public spaces provide them a commercial agora or socio-cultural platform for socializing themselves through the public exchange. Easy accessibility and cheap logistic flow contributed greatly to the development and prosperity of market towns. The alternative periodicity of neighboring markets becomes convenient for local people and puts the most disadvantaged villager within easy walking distance to one of the market towns flexibly. Public spaces in market towns provide local people an area for socializing themselves through public exchange, which are important venues for social harmonization and the “epitome” of rural development. Finally, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a shock, I assessed the resilience of rural districts in Chengdu using four categories (Health-care Index, Economy Index, Governance Index and Landscape Index) including 11 indicators. I combined the quantitative method (statistical analysis) with qualitative method (interviews) to give weight to each index. The results showed a close relationship between resilience value (R) and post-pandemic (mainly economic) recovery in rural Chengdu. Statistical analysis also shows that the economic recovery in the post-pandemic period is closely related to the strength of socio-ecological resilience. Agriculture functions as a stabilizer for the local economy in the face of the COVID-19. Among the four categories of indexes, the landscape domain contributes most to the economic recovery, but it was underestimated by both farmers and experts. Considering the pandemic has not been fully terminated, a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between socio-ecological resilience and external disturbance still needs a longer period for further verification.
The Social Life of Privately-Owned Public Spaces: Investigating the history and social outcomes of POPS—one of the most powerful tools for creating public space in modern American cities.
(2022-07-14) Harrang, Owen; Campbell, Christopher
The following thesis focuses on a very specific area of cities: privately-owned public spaces (POPS). The tools that cities and real estate developers employ to build these spaces are some of the most effective for creating public spaces in urban environments. But while the quantity of POPS has grown significantly across the county, the quality of such spaces for public use and enjoyment remained an unsettled question. The goal of this thesis is to complete an in-depth public life study on the latest iteration of privately-owned public spaces in Seattle in order to determine whether such policies result in well-functioning, vibrant social spaces. Using the framework created by William Holly Whyte for assessing social space, it investigates the social life of three plazas in the South Lake Union neighborhood in order to reach its ultimate conclusions about what works, what doesn’t, and how these spaces might be improved.
Creating Flexibility from Rigidity: A New Way of Looking at the Mass Timber Panel
(2022-07-14) Jewett, William; Griggs, James Kimo Safford
Using mass timber panels in the built environment in any capacity requires offsite prefabrication and frequently involves preassembly in a factory. On site construction and assembly is then much faster, cleaner, quieter, and less labor intensive. Yet this prefabrication can frequently remove 20% to 40% of the overall panel, which leaves a vast quantity of waste material. While treating that material purely as waste would negate much of the carbon sequestration benefit from using mass timber in the first place, prohibiting its creation would prohibit the widespread adoption of the material. This paper discusses why that waste exists to begin with and investigates the possible avenues for using that material. The aim of this thesis is to look at mass timber panels from a different perspective—one that treats them as a flexible product ripe for creativity. Innovative solutions for using small format mass timber are demonstrated with a computational design script in a case study that creates parametric relationships between envelope features and other project components. Future work on both waste reduction and changing the narrative around using mass timber panels is discussed.
A Method for Evaluating the Architectural Quality of Storefronts Using Statistical Methods
(2022-07-14) Yu, Jun; Anderson, Alex
Due to the complexity and long-life cycle of architectural projects, the evaluation of architectural performance is an irreplaceable part of design. Existing systematic building evaluation methods mainly focus on structural, environmental, and economic factors, while ignoring the establishment of evaluation systems for subjective factors such as aesthetics and context. This is partly due to the multidisciplinary complexity of human behavior studies and partly due to the difficulty of quantifying subjective data. It leads to the fact that designers and design review boards have to pay extra time and capital costs to deal with these unclear criteria. This thesis aims to establish an architectural evaluation system based on qualitative and quantitative research into different features of architectural facades, such as color, geometry, etc. Focusing on one building type, small-scale commercial storefronts, and using statistical methods, we build mathematical models to describe and predict people’s aesthetic preferences for key design criteria. We plan to leverage quantitative methods to help establish a system for evaluating aesthetic choices that design review boards can use to make their decisions more consistent across projects and jurisdictions, and to fill the gap between them and designers.

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