Date of Award

Spring 5-30-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)

Department

Landscape Architecture

First Advisor

Leslie Lee

Second Advisor

Eric Kramer

Abstract

Driven by the interest of the cultural meaning in the landscape architecture and the fascination of the power of the grid, the inspiration of this thesis is from the landscape architecture works that obtain both characters.

Many landscape architecture works simultaneously are expressing the cultural concern while use the grid form. Thus this thesis is exploring the association between the cultural meaning and the grid as a formal device, or to say how the grid is used to express the cultural meaning.

The investigations mainly rely on the research about historical cases.

The whole thesis process is divided into 3 phases: Phase 1 is the understanding of the co-existence of this two aspects in the landscape architecture. Through the representation of a series of cases, this idea of the simultaneous embodiment of the cultural meaning and the use of the form of grid is clarified and addressed. And the unlimited dimension by the grid--height, is put forward in this phase.

Phase 2 is the further investigation to further understand how these two aspects are associated in the landscape architecture. The relatively complete history timeline of the use of the grid is studied in this phase to understand why people adopt this form to divide and organize the space and plot. Along this timeline, several cases are especially selected to be studied and analyzed more detailedly to articulate the thesis question.

Phase 3 is based on the understanding, investigation of the previous two phases. The characteristic of the grid is abstracted in this phase and more matched cases are presented here to support the arguments. The vast potential to be free that the grid provides is explored in this phase through the diagrams. The way that the space in the city is formed based on the New York city grid is abstracted here and a new mode of the relationship between the spaces is put forward based on the question of the previous analysis.

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