Landscape Architecture of Ball State
...can help create an outdoor microclimate. It has trees that can protect the area from wind, but in certain areas, it still lets the wind in, depending where in the space you are. The same effect takes place in this area for the sun, being sunny in some parts, and shady in others. This all occurs because of the placement of the trees and other plant life around the site. 2. As Amber Agan and I walked around campus and were looking for different types of seating, we noticed what the differences between them were and which of theses differences made some seats more comfortable than others. The five different seating areas we sat at were the following: Lafollette courtyard sitting ledges (18 H, 14 W), south side Architecture building benches (17H, 19), circular area in front of Wittenger (19H, 18W), Frog Baby sitting ledge (20H, 22W), and finally the benches on the north side of Bracken Library (17H, 19W). We decided that we thought the circular area outside Wittenger had the best seating, and frog babys sitting ledge was our least favorite. We believe that Wittenger had good seating because the seat was rather wide and it had a small back to the seat. On the other hand, frog baby almost had too large of a seat and the last few inches on the ledge slope inward toward the fountain, giving us a feeling that we were slowly falling in. Also, if it was an inch higher, our feet would be dangling off the ground. We also noticed that the benches with rounded edges were more comfortable than those with square edges because they were more comfortable on the knees. 3. The three different sets of steps we chose to compare were the large steps up from the seating plaza area at the architecture building (seven steps: 26 tread, 13 riser), the steps to the first floor southern entrance of the architecture building (six steps: 13 tread, 6 riser), and finally the steps to the entrance of the teachers college (five steps: 15 tread, 7 riser). After testing the most comfortable walk up and down each set of steps, we decided that the most comfortable to our tastes was the southern first floor entrance steps to the architecture building. The tread was large enough that out feet had room to step down and be picked up easily and the rise between each step was not a great distance, making it easy to come up the stairs. In fact, when we put the calculations into the designers formula, we found out that the total cam to a total of 25 for this set of stairs, 29 for the teachers college stairs, and 52 for the large stairs. This shows that this formula could actually be a very good assumption to what makes a good, comfortable step. 4. a.) Next, we found the percent slope of different ramps and slopes on campus. To find the data, we had to find a piece of the ramp and take two vertical heights and the distance between them. We then took the difference of the two vertical heights and divided that by the horizontal distance, more commonly known as rise over run (Vert.1 Vert.2 / Hor. = slope) The loading ramp we found to have its first vertical height at 52.75 and the second 54.75 with a horizontal distance of 18.5. This gave us, 54.75 52.75 / 18.5 or 2 / 18.5 or 1 / 9.5. This slope gives us a decimal of .105 and a percent slope of 10.5%. b.) The security entrance on the north side of the architecture building was our next stop. The first vertical height and second vertical height were 35.5 and 33.75 respectively with a horizontal distance of 22.5 between them. This data gave us our slope, which came out to be 35.5 33.75 / 22.5 or 1.75 / 22.5. This gave us a decimal of .077 and a percent slope of 7.7%. c.) Our first experience with the slope by the Teahouse was not the most productive. We found it to be a pretty steep slope and we had trouble staying on it. The first and second vertical heights were 63 and 47.75 respectively with a distance of 35 between them. We then produced the slope, 63 47.75 / 35 or 15.25 / 35. Our decimal slope turne...