NDSU Theses & Dissertations

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Research performed to achieve a formal degree from NDSU. Includes theses, dissertations, master's papers, and videos. The Libraries are currently undertaking a scanning project to include all bound student theses, dissertations, and masters papers.

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    Hospital Gardens & Therapeutic Spaces
    (North Dakota State University, 2020) Yokom, Alicia
    The Great Plains Region in the United States has over 3,000 hospitals and clinics. Many lacking the outdoor amenities useful to individuals year-round. This study will focus on placing those amenities at the Sanford Medical Center in Fargo ND, newly constructed in 2017. Healing Gardens and Therapeutic Spaces are elements that help promote health yet are rarely built in the upper Midwest because of seasonal interest. From May to September, the weather is ideal but from October to April the cold temperatures, strong winds, flooding, and snow become an issue. An opportunity within constraint arises when designing for seasonal interest year-round through research-based design.“ Visibility, accessibility, familiarity, quietness, comfort, and unambiguously positive art” are the guiding principles put forward by Clare Cooper Marcus in Healing Gardens in Hospitals for generating successful healing gardens and therapeutic spaces. With those guidelines, I can ask: What are the central needs and concerns for the outdoor environment in a medical setting? What is desired by staff, patients, and visitors in a healing garden space? Why has this not been further explored and promoted in the Fargo area? The Sanford Medical Center serves as a medical hub for a population about 200,000, that includes the City of Fargo, West Fargo, Horace, plus the smaller surrounding towns. Being a level one adult trauma/emergency center, specializing in family birth, children’s hospital, brain and spinal surgery, heart surgery, interventional cardiology, and general surgery, gives more than enough reason to implement a place of de-stressing and quietness to the property. To obtain the highest priority elements for a healing garden and therapeutic space, a user-preference survey was provided to staff and visitors on the topics of rooftop gardens, open lawn space, types of vegetation, path usage, gardening opportunities, and more. The whole design concept for this project is so that the users have a place they want to go to, because they had a say in every aspect of it, which helps take off some of the stress, gives distraction from illness, and provides comfort through familiarity. In addition, the survey helped provide measurability to the research conducted. The project site visit will show the measurable opportunities for desired elements. Case studies, books, articles, and previous thesis proposals are influential in showing how, why, where, and when this has been done in the past. The successes and guidance of the topics mentioned in those literatures is key.
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    Love in Las Vegas: An Introduction of Spaces of Desire to Sin City
    (North Dakota State University, 2020) Meier, Noah
    “Falling in love, according to Socrates, is both madness and a revelation of the world as it really is.” - Perez-Gomez, Built Upon Love. Perhaps this is exactly what Las Vegas so desperately needs: a revelation among its inhabitants and visitors alike, a reawakening from the perpetual illusion of the Strip. It is only through understanding the city’s present identity and current function as a business that people may come to believe in what Sin City could still grow to be. Sin City blatantly advertises eroticism and desire, but many of its promises of erotic fulfillment fall flat once you pass through the elaborate facades of Las Vegas’s casinos and resorts. Through my proposal for sequential spaces of desire (placed intermittently along the Strip) I hope to provide visitors and locals alike with a new way to view love and desire. I hope to personify the city through my architecture and provide the city with a body underneath its elaborate dress, behind the glamorous facades. By developing a narrative and journey that will take participants into previously unexplored, virgin terrain, I aspire to embody emotion through architecture and provide an experience unlike any other to be found along the Strip. By pushing the limits of architectural fiction and fantasy, I hope to make the soul (Psyche) dance, intertwined once again in a loving embrace with her beloved Eros, god of desire and love. The city’s insistent demand for instant gratification and immediate pleasure has resulted in the creation of a business, not a community. Sin City may be the pleasure capitol of the world, but it knows nothing of love and meaningful encounters. Las Vegas is a city without a love story.
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    Sustainable Transportation Planning During an Era of Technological Evolution
    (North Dakota State University, 2023) Hungness, Derek John
    “Sustainable Transportation Planning During an Era of Technological Evolution” provides an in-depth analysis spanning three pivotal chapters, each focusing on the nexus of climate change, transportation, and metropolitan planning. Chapter 2 delves into climate change's role in transportation plans. The literature reviews transportation’s effects on climate change and the significance of Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) transportation planning. After identifying research gaps and ethical considerations, the chapter outlines a methodology employing Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model construction, text preprocessing, and evaluation metrics. Python’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) toolbox is utilized to analyze the contents of 42 long-range transportation plans. Semantic interpretations emphasize word frequencies, climate keywords, transportation plan similarities, and data visualizations, culminating in a discussion of the findings and research conclusions. Chapter 3 shifts to the modeling of autonomous vehicles (AV) concerning sustainable development. It reviews the implications of technological advancements on mobility, long-term planning, and urban expansion. The methodology presents land use forecasts, transportation modeling, and AV simulation parameters. Various scenarios, such as increased auto availability and decreased parking costs, are explored. A detailed discussion synthesizes these findings, leading to a research conclusion. Chapter 4 targets current MPO transportation planning activities, accentuating climate action. Data is collected via a PDF survey completed and returned by 13 of Wisconsin’s 14 MPOs. A description of the survey methodology is followed by an examination of the findings, offering key insights and latent thematic comparisons to the findings documented in Chapter 2 concerning climate action currently being taken by Wisconsin’s MPOs via their long-range transportation planning activities.
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    Using Poetic Language to Restore the American Metropolis by Examining the Difference Between What is Real and Imaginary
    (North Dakota State University, 2020) Nelson, Bradley
    Public interaction over the years has changed in many ways. Dating back to ancient roman civilization, the public life had been important to the typical man. Spreading and sharing of ideas, exchange of goods, questioning the world, were all topics that had been shared in public space with neighbors and even strangers. Today it would be accurate to state the attributes of a public man/woman have depleted. How can a urbanity encourage a positive public interaction?