The Society for Ecological Restoration, University of Washington Student Chapter (SER-UW), has for the past several years been restoring a forested site near the North Campus Residence Halls. After years of hard work clearing the area of invasive species, SER-UW has begun an effort to share the site and their ideas of habitat and biodiversity revitalization with the community at the University of Washington. The big question for the group now is, can we turn the restored forest into a community space for use and recreation? As the Design Intern for the group, I am utilizing my background as a Landscape Architecture student to create a design that will activate "new" space, as it was inaccessible prior to invasive species removal, and allow for an exciting interaction with, and interpretation of, a Northwest Forest experience. I have performed as a mediator for SER UW, to turn their ideas and desires for the site into design. I set to work discovering how to establish the site as an interpreted and useable site for the community. I developed drawings, diagrams, a prototype sign, and a site plan, then held a work shop with SER UW to discuss the preliminary design. From there, and through a meeting with the Campus Landscape Architect, I created a fourteen page report including details and guidelines of the site design. The design focuses on programs of community gathering and art, as well as elements implemented to influence interaction with the site. Through our design, SER UW will create a legacy at the Whitman Walk Restoration Site. The site will be sustainable from the active involvement and care of the Whitman Walk through students who grow to appreciate the site and find a sense of belonging there. Whitman Walk will grow a greater understanding of the significance of ecology in its visitors for many years to come.

Perception, pattern recognition, visual scanning, attention span, problem solving, language processing, and memory recall—these are all interrelated aspects of our cognitive information processing. While most of us have the luxury of processing the world around us under ordinary life conditions, pilots work at 30,000+ feet in the air traveling at about 500 mph. They are tasked to execute an exceptionally heavy cognitive load. Traditional displays used in aircraft navigation, however, are a source for cognitive overload. I present an innovative human-centered design approach for a primary flight display that provides accurate representation of critical data, affordances for intuitive action-perception, and predictive future-telling information. In design principles, an “affordance” is a property that allows the interaction between a person and the environment. Visual feedback is crucial for effective interaction, and good feedback allows perception to feed directly into action, which is reinterpreted back into perception, as part of the “action-perception feedback loop”. Traditional models fail to access this loop; they employ cognitive functions rather than perceptual cues. I show, using the events of the Air France Flight 447 disaster of 2009, that conceptual models that rely on cognitive models can be too slow, leading to irrecoverable situations. The proposed model uses visual affordances to facilitate direct perception. I draw insights from neuroscience. “The righting reflex,” for example, corrects the body’s orientation when the perceived reference frame does not match the intended outcome. Birds engage this reflex by momentarily dropping mid-air as a way of gaining downward velocity, before reentering their flight path. Humans naturally lack this reflex, and current displays have no cues for prompting mid-air drop. My proof of concept prototype creates a visual perception affordance that prompts pilots to naturally engage in downward velocity.

The value of property, especially in an urban environment, is extremely high, yet personal vehicles are given tremendous reign over great swathes of this land. In the historic Belltown area, wide automobile corridors cut through the neighborhood. This vehicle dominated landscape poses safety risks to pedestrians and bicyclists alike while catering to large, single occupancy vehicles. In order to create a safer and more equitable streetscape, certain factors must be taken into consideration. These include reducing parking abundance, restructuring parking prices, correctly allocating road space, and implementing human scale design changes. Through the analysis of the finances of parking, and looking at case study cities, an understanding of better parking management and streetscape design will be formed. I anticipate that the reduction of parking spaces and driving lanes, as well as the introduction of market-rate pricing for parking, will result in less congestion and accidents, will not negatively impact local commerce, and will result in a more inviting streetscape for all users. Furthermore, the fundamental issue of parking is not one that affects the Belltown neighborhood exclusively, but is an issue that persists throughout Seattle and other urban spaces. The core findings of this project may be analyzed and applied to other environments.

Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel Prize winner in Physics, once said “If you cannot - in the long run - tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.” Scientists, engineers, and others in similar technical fields have long been criticized for their inability to communicate their work in a meaningful way. How might public agencies such as Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and municipalities communicate technical information and perform outreach in a way that is digestible by the general public? Since it is estimated that demand for electrical power in the Eastside will exceed a reliable supply by 2017, PSE is conducting a public engagement campaign for their Energize Eastside project. Community representatives have been chosen to unanimously recommend one route for transmission lines and a new electrical substation through the densest portions of the Eastside community. In evaluating current literature on the electric power industry, technical communication, and public outreach, then observing and analyzing PSE’s public engagement process during community meetings, I will craft and implement an outreach plan to inform the City of Redmond residents about Energize Eastside. If residents are more informed about the project and its impacts, they are more likely to become involved. Project success will be evaluated by the number of comments to PSE regarding Energize Eastside.

This study examines the uses and needs of Third Avenue, in downtown Seattle, from Stewart Street to University Street in pursuit of possible solutions to the area’s historically bad reputation and general misuse. Using two sociological theories, Collective Efficacy and Broken Windows Theory, we examine how the social and physical attributes of Third Avenue contribute to crime and social disorder, and exacerbate the negative reputation of the area. Drawing from direct observations, interviews with key stakeholders and analysis of existing crime and transit data, we propose the main social issues of Seattle’s downtown arise from three meta themes. First, we identify four distinct user groups and discuss how the disproportionate presence of these groups impacts public perception and experience of the area. Next, we bring attention to the significant gap between the perception and reality of crime on the street; a gap that is not present when analyzing social disorder. Third, we highlight physical attributes of Third Avenue incongruent with a positive experience and inhibiting the use of existing amenities. Ultimately, we recommend improvements to both physical and social attributes to increase social engagement and decrease disorder.

In this project, I investigated whether Balboa Park, a 1,200 acre major urban park located in San Diego, California, represents an example of modernism in landscape architecture. Landscape architecture is the design of open spaces for public recreation, social-bonding, ecology and education. It is a multi-disciplinary field which embraces science and human health. The study of modernism of Balboa Park is important not only to designers and scholars, but also to people in general, since one of the most essential contributions of modern landscape architecture to contemporary life is the emphasis that landscapes are for the public, a fundamentally democratic ideal developed at a time when gardens were historically the privilege of the rich minority. First established in 1868, Balboa Park has gone through considerable changes, including during the Panama-California Exposition in 1915. As a 1,200 acre public park, which is early double the size of New York’s Central Park, Balboa Park is a crucial open space for not only the city of San Diego, but also the nation. A modern landscape architecture provides space for public recreation, offers space for public gathering and improves the urban ecology. So, it is valuable to examine whether Balboa Park represents a transition to modern landscape architecture. In order to investigate my hypothesis, which is that Balboa Park is a modern landscape architecture, I engaged the work of several scholars, including Marc Treib, who defines modernism using several “axioms of a Modern Landscape Architecture”. I tested several axioms on Balboa Park, such as “a denial of historical styles”, “landscapes are for people” and so on. Also, I compared Balboa Park to other examples of parks in California from the same time period to prove the modernism of Balboa Park.