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Landscape Architecture Masters Theses

Fully accredited by the American Society of Landscape Architects, RISD’s MLA program is unique in that it gives students access to a wide range of fine art and design courses on campus, along with classes at Brown University, study abroad options and a six-week Wintersession that allows for focused study on campus or off. In addition, the program revolves around environmental and global issues, with recent involvement in projects in Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ghana and beyond.

In the final year, students complete the course of study by developing a thesis and a methodology for testing their conceptual premise through a committed design project. This final requirement differs from most programs, and allows students to spend the time they need to develop a visual and written language that articulates their interests and future direction. All MLA candidates also participate in the RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition, a large-scale public show held annually.

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License .

Theses from 2024 2024

Detroit Jazz Geographies: Marronage and Speculative Urban Futures , Denzel Amoah

Folding (and Unfolding): A Site-Responsive Strategy for Reusing Construction and Demolition Waste , Jennifer Ansley

DEFINING SELF IN THE URBAN FRONTIER , YIMENG AN

Tethered by Nourishment - Exploring Sovereignty within an Urban Food Apartheid , Benjamin Bailey

Landing: body, site, material , Renata Berta

Trans-species Communication, Fueled by Efforts of Remediation , Naomi Canino

Discovering The Lightness of Being , Yuemeng Dai

Beach Autonomous Zone , Carl Garvey

Thickness of Place: Urban Stratigraphy and Rammed Earth Construction in Cambridge, Massachusetts , Alexandra Goodenough

Bilateral Vertical Urbanization , Yifan Huang

Migrating with the Salt Marsh , Yiming Lei

Settling Dust, Unsettling Ground , Olivia Newroz

Conspicuous Repair: Drawing Attention to Brokenness in Public Landscapes , Ashley Pedersen

Spirit of Place: examining chinese principles of place-making in a contemporary urban context , Junyi Shi

TIMELESS TEACHINGS & UNBRIDLED POSSIBILITIES , Ruijie TAI

Revitalizing Public Spaces: Integrating Mental Exercise into Contemporary Landscape Architecture Design , Silin Wang

Empathetic Reverberations , Tianyue Wang

A New Grounding , Corey Watanabe

Fluid Futures: The Revitalization of Yangzhou Through Its Historical Waterways , Feiyang Wu

Memory and Experiential Lab , Yufan XU

Small Islands Commons: Retrieving Territory, Identity and Rights in The Bahamas , Fangzhou Zhao

EquiVision Habitat: The Collective Dreamworks , Shixuan Zhou

Theses from 2023 2023

Starting From Ecotone Reconnecting Fragmented Mission Hill , Xinyi Cai

Arctic Resilience: Adaptive Networks of Self-Sufficiency , Jingjing Cui

Beyond the Lines , Miranda-Max de Beer

Abundance within Scarcity: Food Security in the Favelas of Brazil , Menglin Ding

Cities of Tomorrow Future Urban Planning Strategies , Jingyu Ge

Landscape De/Re-Construction through Art , Manuel Gonzalez

Liquid Border , YINGFAN JIA

FLOWS OF SOUND “Harnessing Sound As Critical Urban Resources” , Zuan Lin

Temporary urbanism-spatial democracy in the temporary city , Shijie Li

MODERN NOMADISM ——A network of reciprocal moorings , Jinting Liu

Enhancing Wellbeing In Public Landscape Through Light , Ruiqing Miao

CRACKS OF THE CITY: Crack as an invitation for informality , Yusha Miao

The Root of Culture: Human Ritual and the Soils of West Virginia , Aleece Mount

Celebrate Scarcity: Water Harvesting as Cultural Keystone , Jiajun Ni

Orchestration of Experience , Jingyi Shen

SENSIBLE NATURE: To “See” As We Once Did , Yuhan Su

Vanishing Ice , Zhehao Tang

Rebuild Relationships Between City, Agriculture and Ecosystem in the World of the Drought , Ninghao Wang

Moving In, Moving Up, Moving On : The adaptation and preservation of Chinese diasporas through food , Jieqi Yao

Watering the Soul: Reintroduction of Water to the Urban Space , Danfei Zhang

Healing the Haunted: Rituals of Mourning and Suture , Pian Zhang

City as Cemetery , Siqiao Zhao

Theses from 2022 2022

X-Era: adaptation to the future uncertainty with sustainable Indigenous wisdom , Ruoyuan Chen

Systemic design: Experiments to trigger pedestrian empathy in the urban system , Yu Chen

City of intelligent soil: systematic approach towards urban soil mutualism , Yuting Chen

To mine or not to mine? Epistemological development of the Pebble Mine landscape in Lake Iliamna area as a resilient commons system , Chenfang (Vincent) Gang

Urban vine: reimagine the scaffolding as a repair opportunity to transform the ecosystem , Shuyi Guan

Arriving in the city: reimagining the urban footholds for rural workers , Xinlei Gu

Scalability system: A tool for bioregional navigation , Lulu Hou

We walk, we live: reclaiming the rights of female and other gender minorities to the urban commons , Wenxi (Hillary) Huang

Darkness matters: understanding the ecological effects and human sensory perception of night lighting , Zitong (Shirley) Hui

Field guide to gendered public life : balancing the preservation of the existing vibrant public life with the improvement of the female experience , Christina Koutsoukou

Regenerating the ground: Using regenerative agricultural practices to increase urban food production and restore the health of soils , Yuxiao Liao

Anti-gentrification: reconnect Chinatown through culture practice , Xianzhongge (Allen) Liu

Aquatic assemblages: improving dragonfly habitat and water quality in an urban park , Yan Liu

Trash matters: material strategies for prolonging the life of single-use plastic , Zixin Li

Infection-free landscape: adaptable urban open space design during and after the COVID-19 pandemic , Weirong Luo

Offshore speculation: generative ethics for submerged lands , Leigh Miller

Design in support of playfulness , Seung Hwan Oh

Emotional experience: An exploration of reestablishing the connection with nature through novel street tree planning in Providence, RI , Xiuyan Qin

Living with fire , Mohan Wang

Farming publics: Use farming practices as a tool to de-alienate people with land , Sirui Wang

Sensory resilience in urban walkingscapes: Space making strategies for streetside public systems in neuro- inclusive city visions , Yingying Wang

Slow down: Investigating how pop-up installations transform multi-use space , Yuanrui Wang

Landscape of resistance: reimagining public space for a vibrant socio-political life , Ziyu Wang

Zoopolis: repurpose urban infrastructure to welcome invisible neighbors , Yu Xiao

The Urban fabric: upcycling textile waste into raw material for urban ground surface design , Wenlin Yang

Agricultural Landscape as cultural practice : through the lens of rice farming , Yumeng Yan

One land / one ocean: reactivate coastal commons in urban territory , Chengie Zhang

Bee stations: refueling bees and creating opportunities for education , Jinghan Zhou

Cross border conservation - China - North Korea border , Ziyu Zhou

The future of the High Plains Aquifer: addressing potential desertification in the Great Plains , Hongfei Zuo

Theses from 2021 2021

Solastalgic ecotone: the critical zone in suspension , Bareeq Bahman

The sixth migration - rural/urban "heterotopia" , Pan Chen

Inclusive multi-sensory landscape: directing visually impaired people in a perception world , Tianqi Chen

Urban tree community: living with tree spirits , Xueying Chen

Blur the boundaries: an aerial coexisting system for birds and humans on rooftops , Yu Fang

Holding: speculative infrastructure for fire mitigation , Ian George

Rewilding Seattle: a green network for both humans and non-humans , Zhouqian Guo

Mutable landscapes: diversity through the lens of the earth's biomass , Ilya Iskhakov

The TEK-way: traditional ecological knowledge: a catalyst to building resilient communities , Smera Rose Jacob

Transforming islands: a living memorial for the Marshall Islands , Chengwen Jiang

Reimagining the damage: an exploration on urban brownfield regeneration strategies , Jun Jiang

Re-foresting: cohabitation of human and trees , Chengyu Ke

Filmic landscape: a performative space with multi-medium , Zhihong Ke

Land, labor, water: an agricultural commons in the Central Valley of California , Jacob Lightman

Post-industry brownfield renewal system: precision strategy and design via the new methodology , Sirui Li

Fluid ground: imagining a floating future for Tuvalu , Yuxi Liu

Eco-waste: household waste material flows in a circular economy , Erqi Meng

Affordable Green: what cause landscape gentrification and how we deal with it , Siyu Pan

Virtuality, reality, community , Siqi Rao

Synthetic undulation: improving the marine life quality on the Indonesian island of Seleyar , Shreeyaa Shah

Community steward of the deep bay: staging Lau Fau Shan for resiliency through collective participation , Lauren Tam

Across the boundary: addressing segregation along transportation infrastructure , Ruochen Wang

Regional food self sufficiency: new visions for productive landscapes , Yiling Wang

Wandering land: landscape on space station , Xin Wen

Optics / perception / experience: regenerating agricultural landscape through railways , Tianyi Xie

A better city for her: design safer public spaces for women in the United States and China , Geruihan Xu

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Scholars' Bank

Landscape architecture theses and dissertations, permanent uri for this collection, recent submissions.

University Library

Doctoral Theses in Landscape Architecture

A chronological checklist.

The following are doctoral theses completed by individual students in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Please see Find Dissertations for more details about locating doctoral theses in general.  Check the online catalog for doctoral theses not listed here.

Burrows, Steven. Indiana state parks and the Hoosier imagination, 1916-1933/ by Steven Burrows. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2017. Found in IDEALS

Li, Dongying. Access to nature and adolescents’ psychological well-being/ by Dongying. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2016. Found in IDEALS

Li, Zheng. Managing historic mountain landscapes near a modern city: the case of the Beijing Western Hills, 1912-2012/ by Zheng Li. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2015. Found in IDEALS

Modi, Sonal Mithal Sumeshkumar. Embodied knowledge of landscape: accomodating ongoing subjective experience in the presentation of heritage landscape/ by Sonal Mithal Sumeshkumar Modi. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2015. Found in IDEALS

Holland, Martin. “Empty chairs, broken lives”: The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum/ by Martin Holland. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2014. Found in IDEALS

Williams, Douglas. Fertile ground: Community gardens in a low-income inner-city Chicago neighborhood and the development of social capital among African Americans/ by Douglas Williams. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2014. Found in IDEALS

Zhou, Xiaolu. Investigating the association between the built environment and active travel of young adults using location based technology/ by Xiaolu Zhou. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2014. Found in IDEALS

Brown, Nicholas. Landscape, justice, and the politics of indigeneity: denaturalizing structures of settler colonialism in the Alberta/Montana borderlands/ by Nicholas Brown. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2013. Found in IDEALS

Jiang, Bin. Establishing dose-response curves for the impact of urban forests on recovery from acute stress and landscape preference/ by Bin Jiang. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2013. Found in IDEALS

Miller, Abbilyn. Determining critical factors in community-level planning of homeless service projects/ by Abbilyn Miller. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2012. Found in IDEALS

Li, Chuo. Chinatown and Urban Redevelopment: A Spatial Narrative of Race, Identity, and Urban Politics, 1950-2000/ by Chuo Li. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2011. Found in IDEALS

Lee, Sungkyung. Narrated Landscape as Counterweight to Perception of Placelessness in Contemporary Urban Landscape: Re-Visioning Place in Gwangbok -Dong and Nampo -Dong, Busan, South Korea/ by Sungkyung Lee. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2009. Found in IDEALS

Lamzah, Assia. The Impact of the French Protectorate on Cultural Heritage Management in Morocco: The Case of Marrakesh/ by Assia Lamzah. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2008. Found in IDEALS

Leibowitz, Rachel. Constructing the Navajo Capital: Landscape, Power, and Representation at Window Rock/ by Rachel Leibowtiz. Dissertation (Ph.D.) – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2008. Found in IDEALS

Master of Landscape Architecture Theses

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This is a collection of Master of Landscape Architecture Theses.

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