This work derives from the question ?What is a beautiful road??. The question is being discussed in interviews with two employees at the Swedish National Road Administration and two former members of the ?Council of environment and beauty? at the Swedish National Road Administration. The interviews are summarized in my own discussion about the concept of ?Beautiful roads?.

The objective of this study was to contribute with suggestions of nature preservation managements of selected forest objects of high nature values managed by the Swedish state-owned forest company Sveaskog. Many forests with high natural potential are relatively rare today due to modern forestry, where wood production is the main purpose. Sveaskog?s policy is to consider and to priority nature conservation on valuable objects. This assessment includes objects that in the future may develop into nature reserves.

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.

Spending a night out in the nature is away for many to experience a slowerpace of life. Refuge cabins are a typeof open-air facility sometimes provided for more far off locations, yet it is in the vicinity of cities and towns that the opportunity for getting out into the natural environment is mostly sought after. Several nature reservs exist around Stockholm with the good intention of promoting the opportunity for outdoor activities. The aim of this study is to investigate how the provision of refuge cabins can be a means of facilitating and augmenting outdoor life experience in a proposed nature reserv to the west of Stockholm.

In the project Echoing Nature i have searched a design for an exhibi¬tion concept. That visualizes the natural phenomenon of self-assem¬bling materials in a simplified way. My question is, how can you emo¬tionally re-connect the modern man to nature and raise awareness. I assume my thesis that the experience of a natural phenomenon can inspire us to see a bigger context, provoke curiosity and generate an initial sense of belonging to nature. The result is an interactive sculp¬ture that consists of 3-dimensional Tetris blocks.

The title of this thesis is ?Accessible Landscape - boardwalks in nature areas?. The main purpose of this thesis is to show how you can increase the accessibility for disabled people by constructing boardwalks in nature areas. The platform for the thesis is a study of litterature on boardwalks, accessibility and disabilities. After defining these terms I made three excursions to three different locations in the south of Sweden. During the excursions I evaluated the boardwalks situated in each of the areas through preferences such as the construction of the boardwalk, its design and the accessibility. After the excursions I interviewed managers of the areas I visited, and people working with disability questions in the municipalities where the excursions took place. To know how to make a boardwalk accessible you need to have knowledge about certain concepts, rules and recommendations. My thesis deals with aspects such as: *Accessibility *Disability *Rules and recommendations when building boardwalks *Real life - evaluation from the excursions and interviews with the managers The result shows that accessibility is a hot topic in Sweden and a lot of improvement is being done with fi nancial support from the European Union.

The aim of   the study has been to examine the duality that I seemed to find in Karin   Broos works, primarily on the basis of her renditions of nature. The   objective is to study the duality on various plans and to examine which   traces of Intertextuality that may exist.In the study of the duality   I have taken note of how nature is presented in terms of style and form, as   well as that I have seeked cultural references pictorial and symbolic. I have   also examined the images with reference to Intertextuality. The following   questions has been applied during the work:  How is nature produced in the paintings?  What place occupies nature in relation to the people, in the works?  What is being communicated by nature's participation in the works?As a method, and as a   tool for analysis and interpretation of selected works, I have chosen to use   Panofskys iconological interpretative method. As a guide to seek relations of   intertextuality the theories of  Julia   Kristeva has been useful, which  includes thoughts  that new images are created or re-created   in relation to other images all the time and in new contexts.As a result of the   study I have found some kind of expression of balance, though it did not   seemed to look that way from the beginning.

The sites I visit turned into routines a long time ago. Everywhere someone has decided what should be there and what will not fit. I retreat into my daydreams, away from everyday life. A longing for something different, something wonderful. I decided to go where I've never been, searching for something unknown.

Since the beginning of the new millennium the world?s population has increased exponentially fast. The majority of this growth has been accommodated for by urbanization of the developing world. This in turn has lead to a wide spread of informal settlements. Thus, areas of urban slums, that have risen illegally on the marginal lands within and at the periphery of the formal city.

This essay examines the way the recurring motifs in Karin Boye's poetry might be read as expressions of queer or subversive desire. The fact that the lyrical I is not gendered in the poems opens up for a queer reading. In adherence to Sara Ahmed's notion of desire lines and sexual orientation I discuss the spatial aspects of desire, and explore the positions and movements of the lyrical I in Boye's poetic landscape as deviations from the concept of the straight and marked path, into the queer and unknown.I trace desire in Boye's poetry mainly through the themes of nature and night, and the ways in which these phenomena deviate from the normative structures laid out by the poems. Usually the motifs of night (such as fog, shadows and darkness) are associated with the fading of the senses. The night obscures the vision of the lyrical I and wraps them in heavy silence, making them experience and desire in new ways. Through motifs related to nature Boye formulates a feminine, matriarchal myth.

Landscape architects has many ways of transforming our cities and landscapes. Traditionally, most attention has been put to visual qualities. Pen and paper are well established as the way to present proposals and to analyse in the landscape architects profession and training. But are we perhaps missing out on other ways of seeing the landscape? The purpose of this paper is to present sound as a tool of transformation. Sound in public spaces has long been treated just as noise and therefore unwanted.

This study focuses the development on the protection of landscapes with old industries and how it nowadays is appreciated by the inhabitants. The overall aim of this study is to increase the knowledge about how the so called industrial landscape in Norrköping became a cultural heritage that the citizens want to protect. The study also aims to investigate the citizens´ knowledge about the industrial landscape in Norrköping, and what value they think that the place possesses. Data was collected by an information research and six qualitative interviews. The interviews where analysed by qualitative methods techniques.

The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg?s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ?nature? is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ?nature? is tentatively defined as ?that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation?, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections.

An increasing number of peole are resisting the attraction of living around nature and opting instead to spend their lives in cities. Parks and green areas play an important part in our well-being and we become fascinated with the diversity of nature, in which we find a peacefulness that is unique. Amongst other things, being surrounded by nature can reduce high blood presure, lower the production of stress hormones and stimulate the mind and our ability to concentrate. It is therefore vitally important to entice city residents to parks and green areas to improve their physical and mental well-being. Previous research has shown that humans are seeking for certain characteristics in the parks and green areas which they are visiting.

This study reviews outdoor educational activity, its contents and qualities, whose basis rests on reform educators as Dewey and Freire. These pedagogues? methodology is based on the interaction between theory and practice, reflection and action. It appears from previous research that: Nature has beneficial effects on human health; Physical activity has positive effects on schoolchildren's health and on their test scores in mathematics and swedish. Training in outdoor education for teachers has contributed to outdoor education having become part of elementary schools´ activities.The purpose of this study is to find out to what extent a School of Nature is useful for three primary school teachers´ activities.