Master of Landscape Architecture, The Ohio State University, 2024, Landscape Architecture

Extreme heat events have significant impacts on urban environments and their residents. They can shape the physical form of cities, influence urban planning and design, and even mold the cultural identity of urban communities. This thesis aims to investigate the interplay between extreme heat events, city formation, and cultural identity that happened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Working methods for this study will be the development of a historical narrative through the lens of extreme heat and its impacts on urban form and patterns of urban behavior. The aim of this work is to understand Jeddah's history of responding to extreme heat over time, comprehend the factors exacerbating urban heat, and assess their impacts on society and the environment in order to design an ideal residential model tailored to Jeddah's climate and meeting housing needs. This model will be derived from lessons learned from literature review and precedent analysis that are tailored to Jeddah's climate with the ambition of producing a model that can mitigate the impact of climate change on the city and other urban areas facing extreme urban heat due to climate change.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, City and Regional Planning

The development of planning strategies and application of theory to meet the needs of neurodiverse population, such as autistic adults, is limited and emergent. My dissertation assesses the process of public participation in planning and its inclusion of neurodiverse population in it. First, I will review the limitations of existing planning theory and discuss how planning theory should evolve to adequately reflect and address the needs of those with disabilities. Then, I examine what aspects of existing theory are beneficial in furthering our understanding and planning with acceptance of autistic and other neurodiverse communities. This study, using mixed methods, including a survey of autistic adults and semi-structured interviews of practicing planners, will explore the premise that special accommodation during planning public participation engagements would develop more active participation and involvement of autistic adults. These accommodations could also serve and increase the engagement of other neurodiverse populations, compared to traditional public engagement practices. The goal of this work is the exploration of possible procedural tools that can accommodate public participation of people with different cognitive abilities during public meetings and engagement in the planning and design process. I conclude discussing the policy implications of this research. The findings indicate that engagement of autistic adults into decision-making process is possible when planners provide accommodations tailored to neurodivergent participants. I suggest that changes in how planners conduct community participation meetings can start from the evaluation of participation process through Six Feelings Framework which focuses on inclusion of feelings and emotions into decision-making process. Results of survey suggest that feelings of “clear” and “free” are the most important for autistic adults' engagement, meaning that when materials and rules of participation are c (open full item for complete abstract)

MS, Kent State University, 2023, College of Architecture and Environmental Design

Biosolar roofing is an integrated roofing approach aimed to lower the 40% energy expenditure coming from the building sector. However, photovoltaic panel energy efficiency varies and panel arrangements creating sun and shade conditions will impact any existing plant community. For existing buildings, preparing for the replacement of a conventional roof or green roofs with a biosolar roofing system can offer a next generation energy solution if energy savings and vegetation opportunities can be projected. Studies have shown that photovoltaic panels increase electricity production by 2-6% due to cooling effects of evapotranspiration (Kaewpraek et al., 2021). In this study an existing semi-intensive sedum-based roof system is modelled for PV retrofit to determine beneficial synergies. This research uses a mixed methods approach of field gathered plant community data and computational analysis for energy modelling with BEM software Honeybee and EnergyPlus. The building was modeled and calibrated which showed that the green roof positively affects the building's energy performance and that adding shading above the green roof would not negatively affect the energy performance. Through four scenarios to determine the relative maximum energy production when retrofitted with PV panels and found a 32.4% energy offset for the building. However, a method to examine the increase in PV panel output when combined with a green roof was not achieved. Modeling and simulations still do not meet field study values and need to be developed further for more practical use. The plant of sun and shade roofs were categorized under by high, medium, and low insolation levels in (kWh/m2/year). In relationship to the light levels, a sedum community is adapted with locally collected green roof shade plant data and augmented with secondary publications. Presented here are the outcomes from the field studies which showed that height is not a great indicator of difference between the two plant commu (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2022, Art History (Fine Arts)

The Sea Ranch is an architecturally significant resort community on the north coast in California's Bay Area, with a master plan and aesthetic that is renowned for its treatment of the local site conditions and rural built environment. This study seeks to demonstrate that the Sea Ranch can be understood through the lens of settler colonialism in the United States not in spite of its ecological and site-specific credo, but indeed precisely because of it. In untangling the relationship between architecture, landscape, and vernacularity at the Sea Ranch, so too does the relationship between its visual and cultural antecedents begin to unravel the myth of the place. In reading the Sea Ranch's environmental and aesthetic citations through the experiences, histories, and means of survival of the land's original stewards, the Kashaya Pomo, the settler colonial framework undergirding the project complicates the ways in which the Sea Ranch's utopian beginnings were conceived of and are recounted in architectural history.

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2022, Educational Leadership

This dissertation in practice examines the absence of an advocacy framework for Black placemakers in southwest Springfield neighborhoods seeking to transform vacant spaces into vibrant pocket parks, green spaces, and community gardens. This critical community-based participatory research addresses inadequate public policies, resources, and technical assistance to create and sustain neighborhood sites for endurance, belonging, and resistance. Thematic findings indicated that systemic issues, street-level organizing, and sustainability are primary barriers and opportunities. An action intervention and change process was developed to establish the Springfield Park and Green Space Ecosystem (SPGE). The action plan focuses on a community coalition of power building, a community benefits agreement, zoning revisions, and public-private partnerships with results-based accountability.

MS, Kent State University, 2022, College of Architecture and Environmental Design

Increasing human population density in cities leads to population decline in local native plant communities. To address this condition, roofs designed to host native species offer a solution for restoring native local plant communities. Although most roof environments use engineered growing media for vegetation, a potentially more sustainable approach would be using a combination of local soils and adaptive seeds to better mimic natural habitats that may assist in creating abiotic and biotic conditions that enable plant development (Best et al. 2015; Coffman, 2009). To further an understanding of seeding rooftop environments, a field study assessing germination was conducted on two locally sourced substrates at the Lakefront Dune Roof (Lake Erie Coast, Cleveland, Ohio). The germination rates of two warm-season native species hand-seeded into two locally sourced substrates (beach stone and local sand) was observed from May 14th to August 21st, 2021. Doellingeria umbellata is a wildflower native to wet sandy prairies in Canada and the eastern region of the United States and Sporobolus compositus is a perennial grass native to dry prairies along the eastern region of the United States. Germination was recorded in four experimental treatments (4 m2): Treatment A contains thick local sand, Treatment B contains thick beach material, Treatment C contains thin local sand, and Treatment D contains thin beach material. Each treatment has varying slopes and substrate depths due to the assembly of the roof. Results show that local sand was the more productive substrate for S. compositus growth which showed a marginal germination rate in Treatment A 25.8% and Treatment C 33.2%. D. umbellata had less productive germination rates in local sand, with Treatment A 0.05% and Treatment C 0.06%, which were lower germination rates than S. compositus. I also found that beach stone was less effective at supporting S. compositus and D. umbellata combined, with the highest germination rates (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2021, History

The Gilded Age was a time of rapid change in the United States' history. In contrast to the extensive literature regarding wilderness and the founding of environmental organizations during the period, relatively little has been written about the gardens of private residences and the impact these gardens have had on today's environment. These gardens, and the individuals who designed and provided for them, were at the forefront of the introduction of many new and exotic plants to the American landscape. This thesis explores two built environments, North Carolina's Biltmore Estate and the Barker Mansion in Indiana, and how these environments and human innovation interacted in domestic spaces, as well as how that interaction went on to shape broader landscapes for decades to come.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

The Kirkbride plan for American mental hospitals first took hold in the late 1840s and remained the most popular floor plan for insane asylums for the next forty years. Kirkbride asylums were considered vital, scientifically advanced centers of mental health treatment throughout the nineteenth century, but quickly became outdated, overcrowded, understaffed, and dilapidated. Today only about one-third of the original Kirkbride buildings constructed from the 1840s to the 1890s remain standing, but their impact on the national imagination is both enormous and permanent. This thesis for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is a combination of memoir and literary journalism documenting the origins, lifespan, decline, and historic preservation of Kirkbride asylums around the continental United States, as well as the author's own experiences with bipolar disorder and psychiatric care.

Master of Landscape Architecture, The Ohio State University, 2020, Landscape Architecture

In this project I will show that urban trees are inextricably woven into a long history of projects of power that have used trees to claim, discipline and delineate urban space, and reinforce national concepts of the ideal city, ultimately alienating the majority of urban inhabitants from the space-making power of trees. While contemporary concerns for creating equitable space often focus on the territorial scale, urban trees function as atomized elements of landscape that carry meaning and are imbued with collective ideas about how space does and should function. Urban trees have often been used to support structures that reinforce colonial, racist and capitalist limitations to spatial citizenship. And, as I will show, urban trees themselves have been used to define American concepts of who is an urban citizen, and who has the right to shape public space. To reveal these histories I will identify three historic national sociotechnical imaginaries of urban trees, and track their effect on the dominant current national sociotechnical imaginary, which shapes policies like the one previously mentioned. After, I will suggest a framework for creating new sociotechnical imaginaries that support more active and vibrant forms of spatial citizenship.

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2020, Environmental Studies (Voinovich)

This study investigated pollinator use across areas of the channelized Hocking River's banks in different stages of ecological succession, according to when each area last experienced a mowing disturbance. These successional stages of growth—an associated pollinator use—were compared according to each area's community structure using metrics such as diversity, leaf area index (LAI), greatest height, percentage of native plants, and percentage of noxious plants. Each successional stage was monitored over time to assess seasonal change in both vegetative growth and pollinator use. Each area was also evaluated for both actual and hypothetical roughness scenarios to determine what impact mowing regimes—and lack thereof—might have on flood potential. Considerations were given to past studies that examined community perceptions of the channelized river, as well as precipitation and flood trends. Ultimately, this study investigated whether alternative mowing practices could be socially, economically, and ecologically beneficial, without jeopardizing flood protection. The study concluded that the ecosystem service benefits of actively managed growth outweigh the risk of flooding in the channel. It recommends that further studies, including a review from the Army Corps of Engineers, be undertaken to begin the process of restoring the channelized Hocking River's riparian zone to a more sustainable and ecologically beneficial state.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Leadership and Change

Standing by my bedroom window, looking out at the ocean, a huge wave comes and swallows up my building. Everything around me is gone, including me. I wake up. I am 13 years old and living in the Coney Island Houses on Surf Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. With ongoing anthropogenic changes to the natural environment such as sea level rise and intensifying storms, coastal communities, especially ones segregated by class and culture, are particularly vulnerable in this context that challenges a way of life, and in some instances, threatens that life's survival. This dissertation focuses specifically on what one massive storm - Hurricane Sandy (Superstorm Sandy) - left behind. This research explored how these experiences impacted the design/ planning professionals (architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers) approaches to future climate-related events, as well as the impacts upon them personally, professionally, and societally. A single, embedded case study with narrative inquiry was used to gather first-person accounts and insights into the work, thoughts, and feelings of professionals whom society relies on increasingly as climate-induced crises proliferate. Data were classified into three pillars: Personal (impacts on the self/individual, psycho-social challenges, empathy/stress), Professional (impact to professional practice, reflection on strategies post-Sandy, impact on future events), and Societal (local and global impacts, leadership). Prominent themes under the personal pillar were impermanence, emotional resilience, and dignity. Professionally, Sandy left the study participants looking toward a more reflective design practice. The societal pillar described the broader social issues that emerged from the interviews. Two significant findings were lack of equal attention to marginalized communities and lack of diversity and inclusion within the design/planning profession. As more populations are being impacted by Hurricane Sandy-like events, designers/plan (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Leadership and Change

The former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (2014), repeated the core promise in the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development, in which the General Assembly called for an approach guaranteeing meaningful participation of everyone in development and the fair distribution of the benefits of that development. To this end, partnerships are central and can lead to the dignity of the citizens involved as they participate in the development of their own communities. This dissertation research conducted in Manyatta A and B in the Port City of Kisumu, Kenya sought to do just that. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the role of participatory development planning and collaborative technology platforms of geographic information systems (GIS) and GeoDesign in strengthening sustainable development and enhancing of human dignity. The study used a multimethod design comprised of participatory action research, situational analysis, problem tree analysis, and stakeholder analysis approaches in partnership with the government, academia, business, civil society, and other stakeholders. The study shows how the newly formed government structure, post devolution, provides a functional framework to assist county and city governments to better determine and envision the future they want. This vision can be realized more rapidly through integrated planning to achieve poverty eradication and social, economic, and environmental sustainability, which are the three pillars of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The citizens of informal settlements represent those who are farthest behind and who should be given priority. This study demonstrated the potential of inclusive and participatory development planning in restoring the dignity of those groups. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/, and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu

Master of Landscape Architecture, The Ohio State University, 2020, Landscape Architecture

The Borjomi-Bakuriani region was once the center of the Soviet science of “resortology,” a system of rest and healing intimately tied to the unique physical characteristics of the alpine region. Every aspect of the landscape – climate, ecology, topography, aspect, hydrology – might be engaged to heal and restore the human body. Accessed by a specially constructed narrow-gauge railway, sanatoria complexes were interfaces between patients and the particular curative properties of this mountainous landscape. Connecting the body to this place – breathing its air, walking its relief, drinking its water – activated latent healing properties embedded in the landscape. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the associated financial crisis, agricultural and manufacturing collectives in the Borjomi-Bakuriani region were closed and sanatoria were abandoned. Built vestiges of this once thriving system of healing dot the landscape. Spring waters are still collected at their source by the few residents who remain in the villages; the status of these waters as a source of wellness and vitality remains unchanged. While the curative properties of this landscape are understood to remain embedded in place, coherence between the ecological and cultural artifacts has been lost, and opportunities to activate these healing effects are no longer apparent to visitors. Meanwhile, illegal logging and unsustainable development in the region threaten to disrupt the unique climactic and ecological conditions that constitute this health landscape. This project proposes the design of an interpretive trail that might re-inscribe coherence to this historic human-environment system. Responding to critiques of the traditional form of interpretive trail design, it explores the potentials of new strategies that might structure the design process for more effective interpretive trails in heritage landscapes. Specifically, this project asks if cultural practices that have historically structu (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Healthy food access has been a focal point for studying obesogenic environments. Food environments, often categorized as “food deserts” or “food swamps,” have long dominated the conversation in explaining racial and socioeconomic disparities of nutrition-related health outcomes. Food retail-based interventions focused on addressing healthy food access, either by introducing new large food retail venues or working within smaller food retail venues (e.g., corner stores) to increase healthy food options, have had mixed results with respect to shifting food procurement and dietary patterns within disparate populations. This may be due to a lack of consideration of additional environmental-related factors effecting choice. Current methodology for examining the food environment focuses on point-based typology of food retail outlets, such as distance to nearest grocery store or density of corner stores and gas stations. These singular point-based methods capture structural and compositional facets of the food environment, but do not capture the necessary aspects which may macroscopically shape food procurement behavior and dietary decision-making. This research seeks to define more refined characteristics that better represent the food environment using metrics from the field of ecology. This research focuses on the food environment in Cleveland, Ohio as a case study. Aim 1 uses measures of biodiversity, such as richness and evenness, to reclassify the food landscape. Aim 2 examines change in the landscape over time across three spatial dimensions (place-, space- and landscape-based) and integrates landscape metrics, such as extent, subdivision, geometry, and isolation to better capture and define change in the food environment. Aim 3 compares different imputation methods, last observation carried forward and complete cases, to test whether the metrics identified in Aim 2 are robust despite missingness. Conclusions drawn across the three aims of this study provide novel in (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2019, Art History (Fine Arts)

Inspired by the city of Detroit's substantial redevelopment in recent years – particularly the State of Michigan's capital investments in Belle Isle Park, the Detroit Zoo's proposal for a new aquarium on the downtown riverfront, and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy's plans to establish West Riverfront Park – this thesis examines the cyclical civic interest in the design of public parks and the construction of communal spaces within them through the case study of the Belle Isle Aquarium, completed in 1904. Each chapter functions as an arterial avenue within a theoretical and empirical framework which begins with a consideration of the nuanced circumstances surrounding the aquarium's commissioning, including how design requirements set forth by the Detroit Parks and Boulevards Commission combined with the European study of architect Albert Kahn to produce an aesthetic which fuses grotesque, Auricular, and Mannerist elements. Also investigated is the way in which aquatic design and international exposition culture coalesced to imbue Detroit with connections to specific histories and influenced the aquarium's embodiment of grandiosity, mystery, beauty, and spectacle. Later, the way in which the aquarium integrates museological and educatory practices to effectively train its visitors to become more civilized, worldly, and – most indeterminately – modern, is examined, thus returning the dialog to the backdrop of the contemporary.

MS, Kent State University, 2018, College of Architecture and Environmental Design

In the recent decade, using vegetation to cover the building envelope is considered as a sustainable construction practice. Green Wall Systems (GWS) are built with multiple layers which are cladded on the bare wall, using different construction materials and a variety of plants, depending on the geographical locations and climatic conditions. However, the complex cladding devices, built using many processed materials, are reported to have high Embodied Energy (EE) and Embodied Carbon (EC), which questions the sustainability of the GWS. Hence, the research focuses on eliminating the multiple layers by designing a new innovative Integrated Green Wall System (IGWS) to reduce the environmental burden associated with GWS. Further, to improve the sustainability of IGWS, the recycling and reuse potential of millions of cubic yards of sediments, dredged to maintain the economic viability of the great lakes, is investigated by fabricating eco-friendly Dredged Material - Cement Bricks (DMCB). Here, the DMCB is formulated using different experimental mixture designs that vary in the cement content (8%, 10% and 12% by weight) and compacted with different compaction pressures (0Mpa, 2Mpa and 4Mpa). Then, the mechanical properties of the DMCB are investigated by performing a compression strength test, water absorption test and freeze-thaw test as specified by ASTM standards. The promising test results demonstrated that a brick with high performance could be produced using the dredge material. Later, a prototype of IGWS is proposed using DMCB. In addition, life cycle assessment performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of IGWS made of DMCB demonstrated 56% and 72.62% reductions in environmental burden profile in comparison with conventional indirect GWS and modular GWS respectively. Moreover, a reduction in environmental profile of 62.67% and 38.99% was observed, when the bare wall (made of clay bricks) in the tradition indirect and modular GWS was replaced with DMCB.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Art

This thesis examines my work. I am interested in how we encounter and experience architectural representations. I will address how my work explores this through the typology of corporate modernist architecture as represented by the American Electric Power (AEP) building in Columbus, Ohio. I make several types of work including rubbings, laser etchings of photographs of models, text pieces, graphite drawings, and digital 3-D models. In this thesis I will analyse these practices, focusing on the rubbings, laser etchings and text pieces. I am especially interested in exploring how we see, experience and interpret architecture, and how the work complicates this relationship for the viewer. I will describe how and why I have researched and accessed the building, the kinds of work this has produced, and the implications that these different forms of architectural representations possibly might have. I am driven by the question of how I can challenge and reject the notion that there is a singular or correct way of reading architecture. At its core, my project is about how and where architecture, and its experiences, exist. A large part of my practice has been research based, in the form of archival visits and readings. These informed my work in relation to the AEP building, as well as other ideas that have not yet found artistic form. Part of this paper will describe this aspect of my work.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Dance

My thesis is offered in a workbook style. A workbook is “a student's book containing instruction and exercises relating to a particular subject (Mac Dictionary Version 2.1.3 (80.4), 2005-2009).” This thesis workbook documents the instructions and exercises developed during a Fall 2016, semester-long choreographic process called “Skogskyrkogarden-Studio-Experience,” through to the Daylight, Dusk, and Dark in process showings on November 20, 2016. Films of the showings and rehearsal processes will be available at kimwilczak.wordpress.com and/or kimwilczak.com.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Art

Methane Ghosts, a twelve-minute looping video installed in an art gallery, presents imagery of a landfill for aesthetic consideration. However, this periurban landscape was built not for scenic views, but for the impolite needs of a major metropolitan area. It is supposed to be out-of-sight, and the bureaucratic entity with which I contracted to gain access explicitly asked not to be identified. The film asks questions of the natural environment and the Sublime, while the installation asks questions of our own bodies in relation to the filmed image. This essay asks questions of institutions and the categories they set. In this essay, I consider the works of filmmakers like James Benning and Robert Gardner, the formal and material questions posed about filmmaking by critic Gilberto Perez and anthropologist David MacDougall, and the history of the Sublime in American thought, especially as related to technology and avant-garde film. This whole is framed by a consideration of my own rural agricultural childhood. Behind this fascination is a theory of the garden, a place outside traditional categories, between woods and farm, home and nature, which originally began from the first waste dumps. I consider the landfill a sort of garden, though one on a bureaucratic scale, out of reach of the individual, hidden in plain sight. Rather than explicate the minute particulars of Methane Ghosts, I have chosen instead to offer an archaeology of my thoughts during its making. So I have structured the essay as a series of fragments. Like the landfill itself, one might find such scraps and then piece together some understanding. In the scraps of this essay, certain themes occur and reoccur. Since I signed a contract, I cannot include Methane Ghosts. Instead I sketch some jobs for future work.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Design

Since the earliest days of cinema filmmakers have experimented with the temporal nature of the art form during capture, manipulation, and exhibition. This thesis paper serves as a reflective documentation of the development process for the depiction of spatial and temporal scales in the animated short film Here Be Giants. Drawing from cinematic conventions and shaped by the malleable nature of the medium of digital animation a visual language was developed to convey qualities of scale and time essential to the narrative. A foundation for decision making during the development process was informed by project-based exploration including photographic, animation, and live action video as well as influences from cinema, video games, painting, and sculpture. The result of this reflexive research is a tripartite of categories of visual cues that include environmental and atmospheric elements (clouds, the sun, star trails, etc.), reminiscent subject matter (tree growth in seconds rather than years), and cinematographic considerations (depth of field and motion blur). These categories were used to develop representations of scales of time along the spectrum of human real-time to geologic time. The result is an animated short film with a purposeful visual language steeped in cinematic convention and reinterpreted through digital animation to actualize parallel narrative strands of a human interpersonal narrative and landscape mythology.