This is a booklet with information and inspiration about precast retaining walls. The three chapters contain information about concrete as a material, how the surface of the wall can be altered, and a chapter with ideas for a new precast wall. I have obtained information through books, interviews, lectures and fairs. The retaining walls on the market do not correspond to the requirements of the Landscape Architects I have interviewed. I have therefore considered their opinions in the chapter containing my new ideas for new retaining walls.

This is a Minor field study addressing the current situation in Vientiane, Laos where focus lies on the green structures past, present and future. The city of Vientiane is growing rapidly and as a result of this there is a increasing development. The once peaceful capital known for it?s lush and green environment is standing in a crossroad where important decision must be made to preserve valuable areas. During 8 weeks inventories and observations where made resulting into a proposal for future development. The proposal is divided into three parts. The urban fringe and surrounding landscape are still quite undeveloped and have a great potential of green wedges etc. The city of Vientiane and the green network linking important recreational, commercial and cultural places. Detailed proposal over certain green objects such as parks and squares..

A geographical position and its social, cultural and political context as well as climate and specific physical characteristics define the scope for a landscape design project. This has become clearer for us in our master project where we have made a Design Program for the outdoor environment of Wollo University in Dessie, Ethiopia and analysed and reflected on the work and process. The aim for the project has been to design an attractive and functional outdoor environment for the Campus, based on the inventories and the needs and wishes of clients and users. But, the aim has also been for us as landscape architect students to gain a greater knowledge about landscape architecture and the design process by position ourselves outside our usual context. The method has been open and seeking where the site, literature studies, dialogues with people and our own experiences from the field study in Ethiopia has influenced the work. Wollo University is situated 400 kilometers north of Addis Ababa, in a mountainous landscape. It faces problems of heavy rainfall during the summer, soil erosion, a lack of essential facilities, and is still a construction site with empty spaces in-between buildings and infrastructure.

Questions concerning the Cultural Heritage must be integrated in social planning.Therefore there is a need for adequate methods for cultural environmental analysis, toreceive knowledge that is relevant in an integrated conservation. The thesis is a review ofmethods for cultural environmental analysis and discusses the qualifications necessary fora method in order to receive adequate information as well as it discusses what kind ofinformation to be considered relevant. The thesis also analyzes a specific method forcultural environmental analysis in order to exam if it has got the qualifications concludedas necessary if it is to be used in an integrated conservation. The conclusion is that amethod for cultural environmental analysis should collect information about the entireenvironment (integrated information about nature and culture, in a historical perspectiveand how it is today), about social structures, physical remains (buildings etc) and what thecollected information tell about the history of the studied area, as well as what is importantin the landscape of today. Information about how the environment should be treated in thefuture is also of importance.

During the last 100-200 years people have change their way of living and the condition and need for survival is no longer depending on the agricultural work. The forestry has replaced the farming and a lot of the natural pastural have been lost. Wessmantorp in the north part of Skåne is an old place for forestry and farming where people have been living for several hundred years. Studies of selected parts of the everyday landscape, that earlier have been settlement with small crofter?s holding, show that the changes in the landscape mostly depends on the human factor and that a lot of the cultivable soil have been replaced with spruce. Some of the areas, which the earlier dwellings were placed, still contain some remains of old house foundations and stone fences and can regard as being of an historical value. The studies provide the reader with a short background, the place as it is today and the changes of the land use in Wessmantorp.

"Landscapes for Spontaneous Sport" The main aim with this degree thesis is to show how planning and design of urban space can promote spontaneous sport. Public health and urban life would benefit from re-introducing the sport and physical activity in the townscape. The study can be seen as an "inspiration book" that focuses on the connection between sports and landscape architecture. The starting-point for the discussion is the fact that the spontaneous sport is on the decline and the main general question is how this negative trend could be broken. In particular the study asks how landscape architecture could promote and increase spontaneous sport. Good examples of places for spontaneous sports of different kinds are given, both from Sweden and from other countries, which have inspired a case study where I propose a redesign of a centrally located, but hardly used park in Skäggetorp, a suburb of the town of Linköping. .

The aim of this study is to examine the religious landscape of Brazil, and based on the theory of secularization by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart to explain why Brazilians are religious and not secular. The study is a secondary analysis that uses existing statistics to examine different units of analysis of Brazil?s religious landscape, economics and equality, etc. Based on their theory I find that Brazil is still religious due to the lack of security in the country. Brazil is insecure in terms of measures of socioeconomic equality, stable politics without corruption, and physical safety of the citizens in Brazil.

This essay is focused on Öland during the Iron Age, with focus specifically on the Roman Iron Age and the Migration period. The study takes its starting point in the large number of fortifications that was active across Öland at the time. The essays main area of investigation will be the central and southern parts of Öland as the fortifications, together with other parts of the Iron Age society around them such as graves and settlement, will be presented. The landscape in which the fortifications and their surroundings are placed will also be described. With the Migration Period being a keyword for almost all the fortifications on Öland, the subject will also be to describe if any sort of change can be seen in the settlement patterns during this unstable and troubled time.

For some time, there has been a general thought that churches built in the Early Middle Ages in Scandinavia, around the 12th century, directly replaced cult buildings or cult sites from the Late Iron Age. There are archaeologists who have criticized this and were instead skeptical that churches at all were built on places where a pre-Christian cult building existed. Several examples from Scandinavia contradict this and show a continuity of place and cult from the Late Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages. The aim of this thesis is through a spatial analysis, study Late Iron Age archaeological sites in the landscape around thirteen churches located around lake T?kern in the western part of ?sterg?tland, to see if there is a place and cult continuity from the Late Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages at the selected locations.

In the spring of 2006 a pilot project was initiated by The Rural Economy and Agricultural Societies of Sweden together with The Swedish Ornithological Society in order to increase collaboration between bird watchers and farmers. The project as a whole comprised 11 farms in South-Central Sweden. The aim was to benefit the decreasing populations of bird species related to the agricultural landscape. The purpose of this master thesis was to study how similarities and differences between bird watchers and farmers regarding opinions about nature, landscape, agriculture, birds and nature conservation have influenced the collaboration. Four of the farmers and five of the bird watchers that participated in the project were included in this study.

Environmental problems are accelerating with energy consumption and the release of greenhouse gases as the major issues. This affects landscape planning mostly through environmentally hazardous transportation and heating of buildings. In environmental work, the term "Sustainable development" is often used. This term was coined in the Bruntland report in 1987. A number of frameworks have been developed to clarify the term and to remind the user about relevant aspects of sustainability.

The overall aim is to examine how the European Union Water Framework Directive has affected the local water management in the catchment Märstaån situated in the eastern part of the lake Mälaren river basin, Sweden. The first part of the study gives an historical overview of the area with focus on how the old agricultural landscape was handling the nutrient load from farming activities by means of different kinds of wetlands. By using the concept of the procedural landscape, introduced by Torsten Hägerstrand , together with historical maps with dates starting from the 17th century, the pre-modern landscape is analyzed.  The second part is an investigation, based on qualitative data, on how the different actors in the catchment area work together to secure the water quality for the Märstaån river. The analysis shows that the Märstaån catchment river systems are mostly unchanged in the rural areas.  The exception is the mainstream section of the Märstaån river running partly underground today and the Halmsjöbäcken river that is heavily affected by the Arlanda airport situated within the catchment area.

A large part of Sweden?s green, urban landscape is covered by lawns. Approximately 80 000 ha of maintained grass lawns are part of public courtyards, schoolyards, parks, golf courses, sport fields and traffic environments. Beyond this figure, the lawn is also an essential element in most private villa-gardens. Lawns have become a universal phenomenon through the dispersion of landscape aesthetics from the Western world.

New dwellings and commercial buildings in coastal regions has for some time now been a focal point. Old industrial harbours are regenerated into modern living areas with a recreational purpose. In Sweden the marina has not taken part in this development, thus remained in the monotony and large-scale structures of modernism. This graduation thesis looks upon the marina from a landscape architects point of view, where the marina foremost is a social venue. By revealing and discussing the development of the marina, its design and environmental consequence theories of the marinas future is presented. These theories are later tested upon the costal village of Rydebäck, south of Helsingborg. The thesis is structured in three parts: marina knowledge, proposal and resources. In the first part the historical development of the marina from prehistory time to now is discussed.

This diploma work, with the title Represent and Consume the Land ?I drove following the picture of a spruce through Sweden, is presented as a film and an essay and the aim is to explore the perception of an individual with the film as the medium. To reach this, it is necessary to destabilize my own reality, to explore myself at the same time as I study landscapes and representations of landscapes. The diploma work focus on representations of landscapes of Sweden, external pictures and internal images. The picture is a very strong medium that holds and comunicate myths, about the landscape and about the nation.