ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
We are now able to accept submissions directly in ScholarWorks. For submissions that are not doctoral dissertations or masters theses, please log in with your NetID, click the + (plus) in to the top left corner, and select the Submit Research option.
Graduate students filing for February 2025 degrees: We are now accepting submissions directly to ScholarWorks. Directions for submissions can be found in this guide. Please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu if you have any questions.
Request forms are functional. If you do not receive a reply to a submitted request, please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu.
This site is still under construction, please see our ScholarWorks guide for updates.
Featured Items
Recent Submissions
Publication Restorative Enviroments and Healing Garden at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital Northhampton, Massachusetts(2007-05)This project presents available literature on the subject of restorative environments and healing gardens. It proposes design guidelines, based on design qualities and design elements, that can be followed to implement healing gardens in healthcare facilities. It presents two case studies of healing gardens and summarizes the lessons learned from them. Following the design guidelines, a conceptual design proposal for a healing garden at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, is presented, detailing the several elements it offers plant palette of plant material that offers safety, sensorial stimulation, and can be used in zone 5 of the United States.Publication The Sounscape Planning of Mountain Park in Holyoke, Massachusetts(2010-05)This project explores the soundscape—the acoustic environment—of Mountain Park, located near the Whiting Street Reservoir and Holyoke Range in Western Massachusetts, as an opportunity to develop an outdoor amphitheater that serves as a vital cultural resource. Recognizing sound as a critical component of biological, social, and spiritual contexts often overlooked in landscape design, this study emphasizes the importance of soundscape planning in shaping community atmospheres beyond visual perception. Effective soundscape design integrates natural sounds, such as birdsong and wind, with environmental sounds while addressing challenges like noise pollution from nearby Interstate 91 through vegetation and landform buffers. Drawing on frameworks like Pascal Amphoux’s defensive, offensive, and creative approaches to sonic identity, the project advocates for managing acoustic environments as design resources to enhance outdoor experiences. The research highlights the distinction between noise control—primarily protecting indoor spaces—and soundscape planning, which manages outdoor sound environments to create engaging, enjoyable spaces. Case studies such as Red Rocks Amphitheater demonstrate the power of natural landforms in achieving exceptional acoustics and visitor experience. Technological advances in adjustable acoustic structures further support adaptable sound environments. The envisioned amphitheater at Mountain Park aims to revitalize the site as a vibrant gathering place, fostering community identity and social connection through live music performances, while promoting ecological awareness and engagement with the natural surroundings. This approach positions sound as both a design element and a social resource, offering significant cultural and political potential to enrich public spaces and community life.Publication Reclaiming the Miracle Mile: A Greenway Park Design & Land Use Strategy for Springfield’s Lower Mill River(2009-12)The City of Springfield, Massachusetts, located along the Connecticut River with a population of over 150,000, seeks to develop a strategic plan to revitalize the Lower Mill River—an approximately 1¼-mile heavily urbanized stretch between the Armory Watershops and the river’s confluence with the Connecticut River near Interstate 91. Historically central to Springfield’s industrial development, the Lower Mill River today faces significant challenges, including pollution, degraded banks, poor riparian buffers, illegal dumping, and incompatible land uses, which have turned the river into a barrier between neighborhoods rather than an asset. This project establishes a comprehensive framework to guide future design and planning efforts aimed at restoring the river’s ecological health, enhancing recreational amenities, reconnecting adjacent neighborhoods, and supporting cultural and economic revitalization. The plan envisions transforming the Lower Mill River into a vibrant ecological and recreational corridor that strengthens links to key local assets such as the Connecticut Riverwalk and Bikeway, the Armory Watershops, and Springfield College. The river’s industrial legacy, including its historic role in powering mills and the Springfield Armory, contributed to its environmental degradation, further exacerbated by mid-20th-century infrastructure developments like Interstate 91 and extensive urbanization with impervious surfaces and combined sewer overflows. Restoring the Lower Mill River’s water quality and riparian function is critical to fostering community stewardship and encouraging public engagement with the riverfront. This project’s strategic framework addresses ecological restoration, neighborhood revitalization, and cultural connectivity, offering a sustainable vision for the Lower Mill River as a key natural and social asset in Springfield’s urban landscape.Publication Redeveloping Amherst Town Center: Sustainable Zoning and Design with Form-based Codes(2008-05)Today, with 3-dimensional computer modeling and sophisticated mapping technology, a community can envision its future more readily and more realistically than in recent history. This software and technology can help communities plan to use energy-efficient construction, preserve open space, reduce dependence on the automobile, and increase the diversity, density, and affordability of housing opportunities; these tools can help communities plan and develop sustainably. Many communities, however, continue to rely on conventional zoning and traditional land use techniques that cannot take advantage of these new resources. Will sprawl ever end? Form-based codes have evolved in response to criticisms of conventional, Euclidean zoning and to utilize computer-aided drawings and models. Form-based codes are a radical approach to zoning as they primarily regulate the form of structures in the street, public realm, and other structures, while land uses are of secondary consideration. The flexibility of form-based codes provides the framework to integrate many sustainable development principles into a community’s zoning and land use regulations—form-based codes are a key component to a sustainable future. This project explores the feasibility of using form-based codes to help reinvigorate a portion of the town center in Amherst, Massachusetts, by identifying which design standards and dimensional requirements are most appropriate to transform the study area into a model of sustainable development that boasts mixed uses, walkability, multi-modal transportation and integration of green infrastructure.Publication Participation in the Planning and Design of Public Open Space(2011-05)This master’s project considers public participation in regards to design of sustainable public open spaces, and recommends methods to include them in the current landscape design practice The introduction describes the scope of the project, the definition and evolution of landscape design of sustainable open space, and sustainability. It presents the claims that landscape architects need an understanding of the ranges of participation too to deliver flexible, creative, and sustainable public projects in a capitalist economy, and that more active participation and more creativity contribute to sustainable designs. The rationale, limitations, methods, and introduction to the literature review are also presented. The literature review reviews definitions, goals, assumptions, standards, histories, claims, typologies, and practices of participatory design. It then reviews documented public participation projects. It reviews research and arguments about who participates, how power dynamics affect participation, what knowledge is needed, and how to generate it. It explores which techniques increase participation in design groups, how to translate the public’s contributions into sustainable designs, and qualifications limiting participatory design. The conclusion presents whether and how participation can strengthen possibilities for sustainable design outcomes. It presents a typology to choose the right frame to evaluate the needs of the project and take the right action, and offers an approach to participatory design processes from a social sustainability perspective. Finally, it articulates the range of participation that can be elicited and the range of designers’ and planners’ roles in evoking and deepening it.
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