Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 23
-
ItemAustralian flats : a comparison of Melbourne and Sydney flat developments in the interwar period( 1998)The differences between the architecture of flats in Melbourne with flats built in Sydney during the 1920s and 1930s, suggests that these differences were manifest by factors in addition to topography. This study compares the development of architectural forms and expression in the two cities, discussing them in relation to concepts of architectural regionalism and modernism. The planning and urban redevelopment contexts result in differences in number, location, building height, lot size, site coverage, flat size, image, lifestyle and modern technology.
-
ItemSimulating recreation behaviour in complex wilderness landscapes using spatially-explicit autonomous agents( 1998)This work introduces and explores the potential of using intelligent agent based modeling and simulation as a tool for examining the complex interactions between recreators and the environment, and interactions between recreators as a means to improving the our understanding of the recreational use of wildland settings. In this research the concept of rule driven autonomous agents as surrogates for human visitors is introduced. Agents are designed to represent the actions of the individual recreators (hiking, mountain bike riding, and pink jeep tour outfitters). Behavioural rules are derived from visitor surveys and interviews conducted in Broken Arrow Canyon, Arizona. The autonomous agents can be seen to dynamically move over a GIS based model of the Broken Arrow landscape. Line-of-sight calculations determine whether an individual agent is able to 'see' other agents and are used as method to record 'actual' and 'perceived' encounters with other agents. Using agent location maps combined with the underlying GIS data the agents can be observed moving across the landscape, pausing, changing pace, lingering at a view-point etc. A discussion focuses on analysing the resulting behaviours found in these simulations and additionally to explore the influence of alternative trail alignments on recreator movement, congestion and crowding. Some potential future directions for this research are discussed.
-
ItemEquitable and sustainable development in less developed countries( 1997)There has been a perception among development planners that if economic progress continues economic efficiency and market forces will even out any inequality problems through the 'trickle-down' effect. However, in many LDCs (less developed countries) this assumption does not seem to hold. Moreover, it seems that persistent poverty and income inequality are also reflected in environmental degradation in many parts of the world. This leads to unsustainable development, both in the equitability and the environmental contexts. The aim of the research is to explore development policy for LDCs that is both equitable and environmentally sustainable, within the context of the current market economy. Two research approaches were used. First, a statistical cross-country analysis of 40 LDCs was employed. The objective was to provide a general picture of income equality and development attributes, namely: 'level of development'; 'orientation of development'; and 'balanced urbanisation' as an indicator of the spatial distribution of development. Second, a detailed analysis of development over the last few decades was made for two LDCs, Indonesia and Thailand. This was to verify the relationship between development, balanced urbanisation and income equality and to explore the relationship between balanced urbanisation and environmental conservation. The findings were then linked to decentralisation policy in the two countries. Income equality was found to have a negative relationship with level of development and a positive relationship with orientation,of development-export-led growth strategy. It also had a positive relationship with balanced urbanisation. The detailed study of Indonesia and Thailand revealed that when urbanisation was unbalanced, regional disparities in manufacturing, GDP and per capita income and environmental degradation were likely to be high. This indicates that if a government wishes to create equitable growth, one approach is to undertake regional development, targeting on balanced urbanisation. To achieve this, the government should take action on decentralisation policy. Although the findings were mostly specific to Indonesia and Thailand, the following major findings are likely to hold for other LDCs: (1) national development with little attention to equitability is neither socially nor environmentally sustainable; (2) equitable development is likely to be achieved by regional development aimed at balanced urbanisation through fiscal and political decentralisation; (3) the form of development advocated in (2) needs central government intervention although the degree of decentralisation will depend upon the particular country's conditions.
-
ItemOccult dwellings : architecture, anthropology & the possibilities of a postcolonial sublime( 1997)This thesis addresses questions of intercultural relations as they are theorized in the field of postcolonial criticism, and seeks to explore the ways in which architecture is implicated in these relations. Architecture's traditional engagement with cultural difference is shown to be negotiated through the conceptual and methodological devices of another discipline, anthropology; as a consequence the thesis exploration is developed along inter-disciplinary lines. This institutional negotiation is investigated in terms of two specific historical moments: eighteenth century Enlightenment and early-twentieth century colonial. The first moment is exemplified by the well-known relationship between the architectural theory of Marc-Antoine Laugier and Antoine Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy, and the letter's engagement with the anthropology of Joseph-FranVois Lafitau. The second moment is exemplified by the little-known architectural theory of two colonial Dutch architects working in Indonesia in the early twentieth century, Henri Maclaine Pont and Charles Wolff Schoemaker. Their work is explored with reference to contemporary anthropology through the theory and practice of James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski. In different ways the negotiation between anthropology and architecture is shown to alleviate a threat of cultural difference, leaving a legacy which remains unchallenged in contemporary debates on architecture and cultural difference. The thesis argues that this negotiation is underpinned by developments in Enlightenment aesthetics. However, it reads the latent workings of a sublime aesthetic in this institutional relationship, and seeks to exploit the more radical possibilities of this aesthetic in order to offer a mode of architectural invention which might more effectively address the cultural demands of contemporary postcolonial contexts.
-
ItemManagement of coastal aquaculture in Thailand( 1998)Intensive shrimp farming r Thailand has developed significantly since the 1980s. The industry has played an important role in the Thai economy. However, the high profit from shrimp farming has driven the industry into unsustainable development. The indiscriminate and rapid expansion of shrimp farming has created many environmental problems, such as the destruction of mangrove forest, salt water intrusion, conflicts with other uses, water pollution and land abandonment. To solve these problems, the present study aimed to answer two questions. Firstly, how can we identify potential areas for developing shrimp farms as well as other types of aquaculture which minimize environmental problems and conflicts with other uses? Secondly, how can we calculate an upper Iimit to the area of shrimp farms to avoid creating adverse impacts on the receiving environment? Based on these questions, the main goal of this research was to initiate an appropriate planning approach to sustainable aquaculture. Two models were developed: a model for the assessment of suitability of sites using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) together with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); and a model for the assessment of carrying capacity. GIS was found to be a very useful tool for the first model. Although GIS alone cannot deal with the relative importance of factors, it provides a mechanism whereby weighting can be assigned, calculated and updated. The incorporation of AHP provides an effective method for dealing with complex situations involving many factors, such as aquaculture. The assessment of site suitability deals mainly with the problems on the landward side of the coastal zone, but not with the problems of the seaward impacts such as water pollution in the receiving water. Therefore, the assessment of the carrying capacity of the receiving environment was also needed to properly address the problems of coastal zone management. Although, both models need improvements in data acquisition and further research to improve the analysis methods, the integration of the two models provides the basis for a greatly improved method for making decisions about the development of sustainable aquaculture in the coastal zone.
-
ItemParticipative techniques for urban environmental improvement( 1997)The aim of this research is to discover the characteristics for a successful participative bottom-up technique for urban environmental improvement. As we are nearing the end of the second millennium, the state of the environment is gradually being recognised as everyone's concern. Problems of air and water pollution, and rising population are even more acute in urban areas. Urban regions and urban people are facing environmental crises, some more severe than others. In some instances, urban people have responded to specific environmental problems at the local scale and have achieved some success. But often such responses tend to be ad hoc, and do not ensure continuity. Businesses and other structured organisations have used participative techniques to allow changes to take place at the lower levels of the organisational hierarchy. They have been used for several decades in the world of business, and have achieved some success. A review of different participative management techniques showed that some are structured, and some are not. Most of them rely on group interaction. It was found that two of the business techniques reviewed could be transferred to the community. They are the suggestion scheme and the quality circle techniques. The suggestion scheme is an unstructured technique and is based on individual initiative, whereas the quality circle is a structured technique and it is group-based. These techniques were adapted to the community, and were called the Community Suggestion Scheme and the Community Quality Circle. Since a trial would determine the effectiveness of the techniques in the community, a case study approach was used. The Community Suggestion Scheme and the Community Quality Circle were trialed in the community over a period of three years. The Habitat project in Western Melbourne was used as the umbrella organisation to carry out the trial. The Community Suggestion Scheme was trialed first, and was partly successful. It acted as a feeder for the Community Quality Circle. The Community Quality Circle was an unqualified success. The first Community Quality Circle formed - Habitat: Mount St. Josephs Community Quality Circle is still in operation showing that it is capable of being independent and self-managing. Certain characteristics for successful participative bottom-up environmental improvement processes emerged from the trials. Techniques need to be flexible and open to change and learning. They must take diverse approaches to problem-solving. Techniques that are group-based are more likely to succeed than individual-based techniques. Their structure should be flexible, not rigid, and techniques must be capable of self-perpetuation and self-management. The members should be given the opportunity to become familiar with each other. The support of an overarching umbrella organisation is essential for techniques to be successful in the community. Incorporating these characteristics allows the development of future participative methods for environmental improvement. The research shows that participative techniques can be used as a potent medium to instigate environmental improvement in urban areas.
-
ItemHousing and neighbourhood change : a study of attitudes and behaviour of middle-class householders in Yogyakarta, Indonesia( 1998)An improvement in public housing development in Indonesia in recent time has coincided with national development towards modernisation. Modernisation occurs in all aspects of Indonesia's everyday life, including improved education. The context for the changing role of women - in part as a result of improving education - as well as for new trends in house and neighbourhood design, is first the rapid economic modernisation pursued in Indonesian society in recent decades, and second a seemingly related cultural westernisation. The design of both house and local neighbourhood accordingly faces dilemmas relating to new economic imperatives, cultural tensions, and tensions in values relating to gender differences and the role of women. Additionally, there are changes in the context of the family and its roles and tasks, as economic modernisation interacts with the pressure of safeguarding traditional values and cultural differences. The aim of this study is to examine the question whether, in the face of economic modernisation and cultural westernisation, the persistence of traditional values and local culture is manifest in present dilemmas concerning the planning and use of the house and its neighbourhood. This question will be explored within the specific context of middle-class housing. In pursuing this aim we turn to the theory of modernisation advanced by Jurgen Habermas, and then to Nancy Fraser's critique of this theory on the grounds that it ignores issues of gender. Yogyakarta is selected as a case study, and the intention is to obtain information on behaviour and attitudes of educated middle-class people residing in the study area. Households are selected from recently developed neighbourhoods characterised by KPR-BTN housing which is typically purchased by the educated middle-class. Households interviews are employed, with a focus on examining the relations between different aspects of attitudes and behaviour. Data are obtained from 67 households, in four neighbourhoods of Yogyakarta. It is an exploratory case study where the intention is not to obtain generalisable results, nor to rigorously test hypotheses, but rather to explore the relationships between phenomena. This is achieved by reducing a mass of different variables measuring attitudes and behaviour down to a simpler set of "summary" measures, employing multivariate statistical techniques - mainly factor analysis. The analyses are accordingly more directed towards description and explanation than towards generalisation to the broader population, or towards prediction. Stated briefly, it is found that for the surveyed group there is a strong correspondence between men's and women's attitudes to issues of work, home, children and culture. There is however also a fair degree of independence between these attitudes on the one hand, and on the other hand the levels of satisfaction with aspects of the dwelling, and levels of satisfaction with aspects of neighbourhood. These findings suggest that there is an interplay of three sets of processes: (1) the persistence of local culture, most notably in the orientation to family, in ideas of respect and deference, and in a conservatism in gender relations and attitudes; (2) there is the excitement of rapid economic growth; (3) there is of course also a negative side to economic growth and "progress", as older values and culture are eroded by new, global influences. While it is not possible to extrapolate from this group to Yogyakarta society generally, nevertheless the complexities of the responses tell us a great amount about the interweaving of attitudes and behaviour affecting use of the house and neighbourhood. Furthermore, it is necessary to reinterpret Habermas's theory of modernisation for a non-western society.
-
ItemVisual thresholds for detection, recognition and visual impact in landscape settings( 1996)Although the concept of visual threshold has long been used in psychophysics, its transplanting to visual landscape research is very new. Very few studies have attempted to look at visual thresholds in landscape settings, and none has ever produced any tangible results. This study was the first to have proposed a systematic organising structure for visual impact assessment procedures via three articulated visual thresholds - visual thresholds for detection, recognition and visual impact. Three sets of visual thresholds, which were defined as the points when 50% of the viewers accomplished a requested perception task, were obtained through controlled slide-viewing testings using computer simulated images with modified visual attributes. Three contrasts, four visual sizes, two object types and four baseline landscape settings were the defined independent variables. Detection, recognition and visual preferential rating were the dependant variables. These variables were controlled, manipulated and combined using photorealistic computer imaging techniques from which a total of 88 simulations were produced. Two groups of randomly selected university students (94 altogether), half of whom pre-informed, were used as the test subjects on 88 pairs of "before" and "after" images in a strictly controlled environment. From the tests results, general and specific visual thresholds values were derived and four detailed multivariate logistic regression models for the thresholds were also established. In general, detection, recognition and visual impact thresholds were found to be around 27, 65 and 85 square minutes. But more precise results were given by the logistic regression equations which achieved an average prediction success of over 90%. Many perceptual phenomena were also observed. For example, contrast weighted visual size (measured in square minutes of angle subtended by an object multiplied by visual contrast) was found to be the determinant variable for visual detection, recognition and visual impact assessment; detection and recognition were found to be linearly related to the log visual size of the object; it was many times easier to detect an object on a darker background than on a brighter background, and pre-knowledge definitely increased people's ability to recognise objects. The term maximum visibility was redefined as the detection threshold, and the concept of perception radius (visibility, recognisability and impact threshold) was initiated and used. The obtained thresholds, equations and perceptual findings could be readily applied to landscape management systems and enable automated mapping and zoning of the maximum perception radii. Perhaps it is the establishment of the three articulated visual thresholds concepts and their quantitative definitions in landscape settings that will challenge and redefine the validity and true usefulness of the sensitivity levels and the current visibility theories upon which many existing visual management systems are built.
-
ItemLinking geographic information systems and runoff modelling for environmental planning( 1996)One of the important consequences of development plans is their effect on the runoff characteristics of a particular catchment. Environmental planners in the early stages of a planning process may wish to use computer-based hydrologic models to predict this effect and arrive at planning or management decisions in the least possible time. However, hydrologic models are seldom accessible to planners or managers because they are designed for engineers or modellers. Using them requires considerable expertise and ? great amount of time, and their data requirements and operating rules are intimidating not only to planners but to many engineers as well. Moreover, the visual display of development plans in a catchment is conventionally based on paper, and is rudimentary and fixed. The aim of this work is to develop an approach to making a conventional runoff model accessible to environmental planners by using a geographic information system (GIS). Criteria were developed for selecting from a plethora of runoff models. Using these criteria, a simple, existing runoff-routing model called RORB was selected. When using RORB, new map-based data will have to be prepared for each alternative plan to be investigated. As production of these map-based data is time-consuming and requires considerable expertise, automating it through a linkage with a GIS is a major key to making the RORB model more accessible. Because of the specific procedural requirements of RORB, criteria for selecting an appropriate GIS to use had to be developed. Using these criteria, it was established that a new GIS did not have to be developed, and an existing one called ARC/INFO was suitable. The GIS and the model were then linked using a loose-coupling design, which involved a peer-to-peer linkage architecture. The coupled system used the GIS as an automated, map-based data provider for RORB. This virtually eliminated the need for expertise in producing map-based data and reduced the production time by three quarters. The visual display of catchment models and plans was excellent. The hydrologic results obtained using the RORB model in conjunction with the automated GIS-based approach were not significantly different from those obtained by conventional use of RORB by engineers.
-
ItemArchitectural hermeneutics: architecture, meaning and art in everyday life( 1995)This work shows how comprehension of the situation if an individual work of architecture, and of what is expected of the collective mode of architecture in everyday life, could allow us to say (1) what is valuable in architecture, and (2) 'how architecture can have meaning. Moreover, the work demonstrates how a range of dramaturgical, symbol?c and typological approaches can guide architects who want to produce meaningful architectural form. Architecture such as this should enrich the lives of architects and non-architects alike