Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Dissertations that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.
ORCID
Access Type
Open Access Thesis
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
Architecture
Degree Type
Master of Architecture (M.Arch.)
Year Degree Awarded
2019
Month Degree Awarded
May
Abstract
If wilderness refers to those spaces that are unoccupied by humans while architecture is one major way that humans occupy space, the terms seem to be mutually exclusive. However, this thesis argues that wilderness and architecture have a fundamental similarity: they are both ways that humans understand and relate to the world.
This thesis looks critically at the notion of wilderness by acknowledging that throughout time and history, humans have understood wilderness in innumerable different ways and, as a result, have treated those spaces that are deemed wilderness in innumerable different ways as well. It acknowledges wilderness as a “profoundly human creation[1]” and from this admission, explores the utility of predisposition as a means by which to direct the built environment’s relationship to the un-built environment.
Ultimately, this thesis argues that when humans define wilderness in a particular way and then apply that label to a space, they have made a design decision. It investigates the ways in which architecture can apply the label of wilderness to new and even unlikely types of spaces in order to expand the lens through which we, as humans, value and appreciate this Earth.
[1] Cronon, William. 1997. "The Trouble with Wilderness:; Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature." In Out of the Woods, 28-50: University of Pittsburgh Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zw9qw.8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zw9qw.8.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/14366834
First Advisor
Philip Tidwell
Recommended Citation
Lepre, Ashley, "Architecture and Wilderness: An Exchange of Order" (2019). Masters Theses. 780.
https://doi.org/10.7275/14366834
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/780