Novel streetscape design research provides optimal shade benefit for cities

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA-  A recipient of the James Cox PhD Scholarship in Architecture has uncovered an innovative design approach to select and place trees for optimal shade benefit to pedestrians.

Nano Langenheim has completed her PhD and graduated from Monash University, following research that combined a pedestrian accessibility modelling tool with treescape modelling, studying both solar impact and aesthetic outcomes of different street treescape designs.

This performance-based design approach provides state and local governments with a way to address concerns surrounding climate amelioration, transport choices and population health via targeted tree planting (read more about the research).

Dr Langenheim said the opportunity that the scholarship presents is both unique and rare and thanked Plenary and the Cox family for the transformational support.

“It is difficult to overestimate the overwhelming transformative impact the scholarship has had on my life,” Dr Langenheim said.

“The scholarship, and the way it is implemented at Monash, enables a critical and powerful form of design research that is difficult to find a parallel to in other academic institutions and disciplinary fields.

“At a time when PhDs have had to become narrowly focused, the James Cox scholarship is a counterpoint. It allows exploratory, creative, propositional, transdisciplinary and open-ended research outcomes.

“It has been such a great honour to be the recipient of this extraordinarily generous gift and I hope to be able to continuously demonstrate its impact on design research in Australia over the next few decades by continuing this novel trajectory of industry relevant, transdisciplinary research.”

In 2008 Plenary and the family of James Cox established the James Cox PhD Scholarship in Architecture in honour of the late James (Jim) Cox, a founding director of Plenary.

Jim played an influential role in the development of important Melbourne public infrastructure such as the County Court of Victoria, Southern Cross Station, and the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The annual scholarship is awarded to a PhD candidate of Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) at Monash University, providing tuition fees, a living allowance and provision for international research or placement.

It is awarded to an applicant whose imaginative and experimental idea or project has demonstrable practical outcomes in the development of the urban environment.

There have been four individual recipients of the scholarship since its inception in 2008, with a fifth expected to be confirmed in the coming months.