Wednesday, February 25, 2015 11:00 am
-
11:00 am
EST (GMT -05:00)
Of
the
thesis
entitled: Open
Territory
Abstract:
Territory,
as
an
incipient
design
setting,
is
progressively
displacing
conventional
notions
of
site
within
design
research
and
practice,
and,
with
this,
the
design
professions
are
increasingly
exploring
their
agency
as
instruments
of
territorial
intervention,
formation
and
reformation;
a
disciplinary
shift
witnessed
in
recent
discourses
such
as
Landscape
Urbanism,
Ecological
Urbanism,
and
Ecological
Design.
With
this
renewed
contextual
perspective,
complexity
is
acknowledged
as
a
base
condition,
accompanied
by
an
operative
shift
toward
geographical
contexts,
techniques,
and
representations
which
foreground
systems-oriented
perspectives
with
process-driven
approaches.
Similarly,
a
pivotal
shift
in
focus
from
the
essence
of
objects
to
the
management
of
dynamic
spatial
systems
is
increasingly
taking
root.
Yet,
the
specific
methods,
tools
and
techniques
used
to
operate
within
this
expanding
field
of
practice
are
deserving
of
further
exploration
in
their
own
right,
and
it
is
this
point
that
serves
as
the
primary
motivation
for
this
thesis.
As
such,
the
thesis
proposes
a
methodological
framework
which
operates
at
the
intersection
of
territorial
design
research
and
computational
thinking,
proposing
the
use
of
methods,
techniques
and
tools
drawn
from
spatial
data
mining,
machine
learning,
and
computational
modelling
as
mechanisms
for
dealing
with
complexity
in
territorial
systems.
The
driving
motivation
in
the
development
of
this
framework
is
to
eliminate
the
gap
between
contextual
analysis
and
the
development
of
a
design
response,
by
exploring
ways
in
which
the
data
which
is
used
to
characterize
a
design
context
can
be
carried
directly
through
to
inform
a
design
process.
The
framework,
offered
as
a
black-box
system,
is
examined
by
way
of
a
specific
implementation,
using
historical
data
from
the
2011
Japan
Earthquake
and
Tsunami
as
the
basis
for
a
design
experiment.
After
exploring
each
phase
of
the
framework
–
Discovery,
Modelling,
Formation
&
Exploration
–
the
challenges
and
limitations
of
appropriating
extra-disciplinary
devices,
and
the
role
of
subjectivity
in
computational
modelling
are
discussed.
Lastly,
looking
forward,
a
recursive
implementation
of
the
proposed
framework
is
proposed
as
an
avenue
for
future
research
and
development.
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor:
Committee Members:
Maya Przybylski, University of Waterloo
Mona
El
Khafif,University
of
Waterloo
Anne
Bordeleau, University
of
Waterloo
External Reader:
Alexander Dunkel, Dresden University of Technology
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Wednesday
February
25,
2015
11:00AM
Architecture
Room 2003
(Photo
Studio)
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.