Our environment affect us, not least gardens. By practising the ancient Chinese art feng shui, one could find tools how to create harmony and balance in gardens. By paying attention to different energies working with colours, shapes and materials one can create a nice garden with good feng shui. The philosophy, however, includes much more than what plants or what hard materials to choose in the garden. It describes different energies, the movement of energies, which we can learn to live in harmony with.

In the thesis we have shown that it is possible with current technology, to buildneighborhoods that are largely self-sufficient. We have obtained some information aboutongoing work in the field of energy efficient buildings and active house which we have usedto develop a model. The feasibility study for Ranagård we have e.g been forced tofollow laws on groundwater covered, resulting in the construction of basements for singlefamilyhome is not possible. The model that we have built up overtime has been the central part of the work. The model illustrates very well what an activehouse neighborhood means and potential of such an area.

This essay concerns the interpretation of house plans in three-aisled longhouses and hall-buildings, in Scandinavia during Iron Age. Full scale house reconstructions need a better basis of interpretations to understand the patterns of roof supporting post holes in excavated house plans. This has led to the thesis, presented here, that the layout of house plans during Iron Age is based on geometrical proportions. In order to prove this, geometric house plans were applied and compared with excavated house plans in 11different case studies, including the fortification of Fyrkat Denmark. It was found that all house plans in the case studies indicate, that the geometrical proportions 1:2, 1:3 and 2:3 of a given circle must have been used for the basic layout of the roof supporting post holes, using a compass and a straightedge.

This text answers the questions how do we define what a campus is, how the concept of the campus came to exist and how it is used today, and how the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) campus can be designed according to site conditions and the conclusions drawn from case studies at Chalmers University of Technology and Karlstad University. The purpose of the case studies is to gain insight into their campuses advantages and disadvantages. This finally results in an interpretation of how the Blekinge Institute of Technology campus can be planned. A campus is the area of land on which a college or university and its surrounding buildings resides on. Campus as a concept meant a field at first, it later evolved at American universities due to their design of college campuses.

The soil acidification and the pH-value of the soil have been discussed for many years. Many observations of the tree species effects on the soil pH have been done. We have discussed the effects on the soil surface pH-value with a birch (Betula spp. L.) admixture in Norway spruce stands (Picea abies L.).We have used data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory. We have also discussed how the wood production and the biodiversity can be increased in mixed stands, in according to the Swedish forestry act Skogsvårdslagen. Our sampling areas are located in Norrland, Sweden. The results show a significant correlation between an increased birch admixture and an increased pH-value of the soil.

In 1994 a new Forestry Act was accepted in Sweden. One of the aims of the law is to raise consideration forpreservation of biodiversity. Since the new law got accepted and some time has passed, there now lie someinterest in examining whether the law has been effective towards its purpose. Methods suitable for analysishave been examined during this study. The content of this pilot study is based around five parameters whichcan be used to validate the effects of the new law.

Churches are seen as one of Sweden's most valuable cultural heritage. They bear witness to a living tradition and gives us knowledge of society at large and therefore people's lives at different times. These buildings possesses a high value, which is shared by the vast majority, and they are protected by law. The concept of modern churches is in this essay the churches built after 1940, which is not covered by law. The older churches has therefore a cultural and historical value which the modern churches lack.About 600 churches are built after the year of 1940 and the total number of churches in the country is 3400.

At the farm Fride, in Lojsta at the Southern part of Gotland, my family runs a pig production with 80 part-integrated sows in a ?Familybox-system?. The main parts of the facilities are from the early 90´s and have done their job. The production results have the last years decreased because of new infections so we have to do something before shifting ownership! This degree thesis is meant to answer the question about which the optimal extension would be today. By studying literature, use my own experience and make lots of calculations, I try to find out different opportunities.

This study is done on behalf of Södra skogsägarna in the autumn of 2012. The main purpose of the study is to get an explanation to why some of the members are passive in their forestry, and how Södra can stimulate them to become more active. To achieve this a questionnaire study was conducted on the members of Södra in the community of Gislaved. The result of the study shows that there are many different factors that influence whether the forest owner is active or not. Examples of those factors are timber prices, the forest owner's objectives and the forest owner's financial situation. The main goal for the forest owners in the survey was to obtain high economic result and to increase the standing timber volume for the next generation.

The purpose of this master thesis is to attract attention to the undefined spaces of our urban landscape and emphasize the need of these spaces in the city. The different values of these spaces are here clearly presented so that they can be considered when real estate developers show a particular interest in any one of these undefined spaces. The term undefinied spaces can mean a lot of things. The spaces that I now choose to define as undefined spaces are neither planned nor designed. It could for instance be a piece of leftover land in between two residential areas, or as times change, a formerly planned area might be forgotten and left to its own.

Visby is a city that at first glance is of medieval origins. The popular image of scientists today is that the city was formed in the Middle Ages. According to some of the researchers Visby was formed during the Viking Age, it is based on the basis that the area has been used for a long period. Urban development in the Nordic countries is complex and there are different opinions as to why the Nordic cities emerge. It is important to shed light on the underlying process on why cities are emerging to provide clarity as to why Visby city is emerging.

The project objective was to make parts of our cultural heritage available as a resource for learning, by developing the pedagogical activities on a medieval castle, that today functions as a museum. I also wanted to explore the role of a designer in a process that aims to develop the interaction between schools and cultural institutions.By a selection of objects and locations in the castle, illustrations with accompanying texts were made, which through the children?s imaginative ability may bring them to a historical scenario. This resulted in a working material that supports the children?s activities and reflections during their visit to the castle.

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to analyse and interpret artist Hans Hedberg?s monumental, ceramic reliefs in Sweden and France. Hedberg is internationally famous for his ceramic fruits and eggs in different glaces and formats. A mostly unknown side of his artistic production is that he produced about 50 ceramic reliefs during the 1950s and up to the 1970s in public buildings. Hedberg was one of very few foreign artists in France, who, during a long period of time, produced monumental, public reliefs for the French state.

Since the demands from authorities regarding lower energy consumption havebecome increasingly strict, this puts new pressure on designers and builders, who notonly have to ensure an esthetically pleasing building, but also make sure it issufficiently efficient to pass under new laws and regulations.This thesis takes into consideration a wide range of various parameters and theireffect on a building?s energy consumption. For this evaluation a computer softwarecomparison between the two programs Autodesk Ecotect Analysis and AutodeskProject Vasari was performed.Autodesk Ecotect Analysis is better suited for studies made on individual factors whileAutodesk Project Vasari is better used in experiments regarding the geometricalshape of the stucture itself.The results from the two different software tools used, give us both differences andsimilarities. For instance, both software programs produced the same resultsregarding the importance of the windows of the buildings to ensure a highly energyefficient building, both when it comes to the windows size and their U-value..

In this paper, a navigation support approach for speech-only interaction based on auditory icons for room-based designs is presented, i.e. naturally occurring sounds that have a natural mapping to the system's underlying design metaphor. In contrast to many recent investigations that have focused on multi-modal or augmented reality systems, this paper concerns a unimodal speech and sound-only system. An auditory icon based prototype system for buildings maintenance support using a room-based metaphor was developed. The design was evaluated in a comparison with earcons and no-sound designs.