Environmental landscaping is known to build, plan, and manage landscapes that consider the ecology of a site and produce gardens that benefit both people and the rest of the ecosystem. Landscaping and the environment are combined in landscape design planning to provide holistic answers to complex issues. Seeding native species and eradicating alien species are just a few ways humans influence the region’s ecosystem. Landscape architecture is the design of landscapes, urban areas, or gardens and their modification. It comprises (...) the construction of urban and rural landscapes via coordinating the creation and management of open spaces and economics, finding a job, and working within a confined project budget. There was a lot of discussion about global warming and water shortages. There is a lot of hope to be found even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. AI is becoming more significant in many urban landscape planning and design elements with the advent of web 4.0 and Human-Centred computing. It created a virtual reality-based landscape to create deep neural networks (DNNs) to make deep learning (DL) more user-friendly and efficient. Users may only manipulate physical items in this environment to manually construct neural networks. These setups are automatically converted into a model, and the real-time testing set is reported and aware of the DNN models that users are producing. This research presents a novel strategy for combining DL-DNN with landscape architecture, providing a long-term solution to the problem of environmental pollution. Carbon dioxide levels are constantly checked when green plants are in and around the house. Plants, on either hand, remove toxins from the air, making it easier to maintain a healthy environment. Human-centered Artificial Intelligence-based web 4.0 may be used to assess and evaluate the data model. The study findings can be sent back into the design process for further modification and optimization. (shrink)

In this volume, Bilsel argues that the museum has produced a modern decor, an iconic image, which has replaced the lost antique originals, rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of Antiquity.

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the (...) second one, in which a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

Once the province of film and media scholars, today the moving image is of broad concern to historians of art and architecture and designers of everything from websites to cities. As museums and galleries devote increasing space to video installations which no longer presuppose a fixed viewer, urban space becomes envisioned and planned through "fly throughs," and technologies such as GPS add data to the experience of travel, moving images have captured the attention of geographers and scholars across the (...) humanities and social sciences. Their practice of "mobility studies" is remaking how we understand a contemporary world in relentless motion. Media theorist and historian Anne Friedberg (1952-2009) was among the first practitioners of visual studies to theorize the experience of vision in motion. Although widely influential beyond her own discipline, Friedberg's work has never been the subject of an extended study. The Moving Eye: Film, Television, Architecture, Visual Art and the Modern gathers together essays by renowned thinkers in media studies, art history, architecture, and museum studies to consider the rich implications of her work for understanding film and video, new media, visual art, architecture, exhibition design, urban space, and virtual reality. Ranging from early cinema, to works by Le Corbusier, Sergei Eisenstein, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Pierre Huyghe, to theories of the image in motion informed by psychoanalysis, theories of the public sphere, and animal studies, each of the nine essays in the book advances the lines of inquiry commenced by Friedberg. (shrink)

This book critically examines the philosophy of the term 'transgression' and how it shapes the utopian vision of contemporary urban design scenarios. The aim of this book is to provide scholarly yet accessible graphic novel illustrations to inform narratives of urban manifestos. Through four select case studies from the UK, Cyprus and Germany, the book highlights the paradoxes and contradictions in architecture and provides detailed evaluation of the limits and contemporary forms of sustainable urban regeneration. The book proposes an (...) 'utopian urban vision' approach to social, political and cultural relations, trends and tensions both locally and globally, and seeks to inspire an awakening in architectural discourse. The book argues that the philosophical undermining of transgression is the result of a phenomenon from a different perspective -- its philosophical background, its social construction, its experimental research process and its design implications on the city. As such, the book provides a critical examination of how architectural design interventions contribute to sustainable urban regeneration, gentrification and can impact local communities. This book provides a significant contribution to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as early career researchers working in architecture, planning and sustainable urban design. It offers effective guidance on adopting the state-of-the-art graphical illustrations into their own design projects, while considering contradictions between architectural discourse and the philosophy of transgression. (shrink)

This paper investigates the substation inspection problems of multimobile robots for large power stations in smart microgrids. Most multirobot inspection robots generally face the challenge of path planning, while the current widely used biological excitation neural network methods often have the defect of the neuronal active field near boundaries and obstacles. To end this, we propose an improved biological excitation neural network method for path planning based on a detailed architecture and ontology framework, through which the single-point inspection, multipoint (...) inspection, and full-area inspection tasks of substations in smart microgrids can be well completed. Simulation results show that the designed IBENN-based multirobot collaboration inspection system can effectively shorten the path as well as the number of turns and then show better performance than most existing results when implementing various substation inspection tasks. (shrink)

In the last decades, researchers have been considering some fundamental issues such as energy saving, global warming, greenhouse emissions, and non-renewable energy to make models of house environmental standards to achieve a suitable consumption pattern for saving energy. In architecture, using natural energy is one of the essential pillars of design because it was one of the criteria of designing, which was considered on climate and geography, and it has been a high performance of climate adaptation in the modeling (...) of traditional houses. In this research, Azerbaijan is selected to evaluate the practical features of traditional Iranian houses designed in the cold climate, and criteria for developing sensible solutions to achieve a suitable design model for energy saving are provided. The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate and identify the features of climate design in traditional houses in a cold climate, which are suitable residential buildings for energy management, and to identify the components affecting energy saving. The data collection method is based on checklists, observation, considering the orientation, density, solar radiation angle in the region, documentary, analysis of maps, and adaptation of the architectural plan of the studied houses with the pattern of solar radiation in the area. This research discusses the design criteria for future structures and their adaptable measures based on the obtained results. Finally, it is declared that the traditional architectural design model follows the region’s climatic conditions, and considering the current climate and energies, traditional houses were designed; therefore, the best model for maximum use of available energy is climatic design. As a result, suggestions are made regarding residential architecture design to save energy. (shrink)

The article scrutinizes the impact of the 1968 student protests on architectural education and epistemology within the Italian and American context, the advocacy planning movement and the relationship of architecture and urban planning with the socio-political climate around 1968. It aims to demonstrate how the concepts of urban renewal and ‘nuova dimensione’ were progressively abandoned in the USA and Italy respectively. It presents how the critique of these concepts was related to the conviction that they were incompatible with socially (...) effective architecture and urban design approaches. The article sheds light on the complexity of the reorientations that took place in both contexts, taking into consideration the impact of student protests, and the 1968 Civil Rights Action the architects and urban planners’s task on the curricula of schools of architecture. It also investigates certain counter-events and counter-publications in the USA and Italy, shedding light on how they reinvented the relationship between architecture and democracy. It reveals the tensions between enhancing equality in planning process and local bureaucracy in the case of advocacy planning strategies. (shrink)

A multi-disciplinary study of the house that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein built for his sister in Vienna between 1926 and 1928, this book weaves together ideas taken from a number of disciplines_sociology, political science, aesthetics, architecture, urban planning, and philosophy_to develop a complex, multifaceted interpretation of the purpose and design of the house, which, in turn, is used to ground a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophical works emphasizing their mystical nature and practical purpose.

Accompanying an exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, this book is the most comprehensive catalogue on the work of this internationally recognized architectural firm.

This article connects value-sensitive design to Gibson’s affordance theory: the view that we perceive in terms of the ease or difficulty with which we can negotiate space. Gibson’s ideas offer a nonsubjectivist way of grasping culturally relative values, out of which we develop a concept of political affordances, here understood as openings or closures for social action, often implicit. Political affordances are equally about environments and capacities to act in them. Capacities and hence the severity of affordances vary with age, (...) health, social status and more. This suggests settings are selectively permeable, or what postphenomenologists call multistable. Multistable settings are such that a single physical location shows up differently – as welcoming or hostile – depending on how individuals can act on it. In egregious cases, authoritarian governments redesign politically imbued spaces to psychologically cordon both them and the ideologies they represent. Selective permeability is also orchestrated according to business interests, which is symptomatic of commercial imperatives increasingly dictating what counts as moral and political goods. (shrink)

In 1878, amid a rapidly proliferating social interest in public health and cleanliness, a group of sanitary scientists and reformers founded the Parkes Museum of Hygiene in central London. Dirt and contagion knew no social boundaries, and the Parkes's founders conceived of the museum as a dynamic space for all classes to better themselves and their environments. They promoted sanitary science through a variety of initiatives: exhibits of scientific, medical and architectural paraphernalia; product endorsements; and lectures and certificated (...) courses in practical sanitation, food inspection and tropical hygiene. While the Parkes's programmes reified the era's hierarchies of class and gender, it also pursued a public-health mission that cut across these divisions. Set apart from the great cultural and scientific popular museums that dominated Victorian London, it exhibited a collection with little intrinsic value, and offered an education in hygiene designed to be imported into visitors’ homes and into urban spaces in the metropole and beyond. This essay explores the unique contributions of the Parkes Museum to late nineteenth-century sanitary science and to museum development, even as the growth of public-health policy rendered the museum obsolete. (shrink)

In the 1990s, Building Information Modeling (BIM) software significantly altered architectural approaches to planning and building. Based on parametric methods, BIM technologies sought to simulate the construction process prior to a building’s realisation. These computer simulations challenged the existing practice of representing a building through plan, section and elevation, proposing that one computational model could create a more efficient way of building. The history of BIM explorations and applications, while hardly linear, can be traced back to developments in computing since (...) the post-war period. This article maps some of these histories by examining how the computational model became an organisational infrastructure, collecting data about design and building parameters, and facilitating knowledge transfer across industries. Special attention will be given to the foundational role of Charles Eastman’s work on a Building Description System (BDS) in the 1970s, as well as Robert Aish’s contribution to RUCAPS, one of the earliest applications of Building Modeling for the design of parametric structures. I will further address research on interface technologies and computational curve modelling as well as the popularisation of Building Information systems through the office of Gehry Partners. By highlighting the interrelated nature of technology and cultural shifts in the making of BIM, this contribution sheds light on the epistemic status of computer simulations in architecture, and the dynamics of the design and building processes in which they are used. (shrink)

Art museums are built to elicit a wide variety of feelings, emotions, and moods from their visitors. While these effects are primarily achieved through the artworks on display, museums commonly deploy numerous other affect-inducing resources as well, including architectural solutions, audio guides, lighting fixtures, and informational texts. Art museums can thus be regarded as spaces that are designed to influence affective experiencing through multiple structures and mechanisms. At face value, this may seem like a somewhat self-evident and trivial statement to (...) make. However, in this article, I argue that niche construction theory enables us to make several illuminating observations about the ways in which art museums are engineered to influence our feelings. To expound on this claim, I single out for discussion the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which for its entire lifespan (1939–52)—and prior to its evolution into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—was expressly organized to kindle in its visitors a special, spiritual form of aesthetic experience: a liberating feeling of cosmic rhythm and order, no less. -/- The argument will proceed as follows: In Part 1, I introduce the basics of niche construction theory and specify the sense in which I apply it to museums and aesthetic affective experiencing. In Part 2, I outline the origins and ethos of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, after which I pin down the type of affective experience it fostered by drawing from visitors’ self-reported reactions to the artworks on display. Then, in Part 3, I use niche construction theory to explain how the Museum consciously fashioned itself, by means of various mutually supportive resources and technologies, into a fertile setting for the specified feelings. Finally, in Part 4, I extend beyond the discussed case to assess the implications of niche construction theory for a broader understanding of how art museums make us feel. In other words, by tracing the early steps of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting towards the present-day Guggenheim, I call attention to the general variation in affective niches as regards their structure, technologies, and affective aims. Overall, the article elucidates the functioning of art museums as affective niches and furthers the conceptual development of niche construction theory in aesthetics. (shrink)

Sound and listening are intrinsically linked to how we experience and engage with places and communities. This guide invites landscape architects and urban designers to become soundscape architects and offers practical advice on sound and listening applicable to each stage of a design project: from reading the environment to intervening on it. This book foregrounds listening as an affective mediator between subjects and multispecies environments, and a vehicle to think and conceptualise environmental design beyond prevailing visual and human-centred modes. The (...) guide expands landscape architects' and urban designers' tools and skills to assess existing soundscapes, predict how those soundscapes will be altered through their designs, consider sound as a creative and active part of the design process, and envisage how users might perceive and be affected by those soundscapes as they evolve in time. The volume sits in the interface of research and practice, and incorporates theoretical, methodological and creative contributions from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics and sound art. Each of the design stages is illustrated through project examples that demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Practice. The book shows how incorporating listening and sounding as part of the design process promotes slow and subtle ways of practice, adds social and ecological value through the reduction of noise pollution and by monitoring the health of habitats, and enables the design of soundscapes that complement the character and design intent of a scheme and elicit joy and wonder. The book will be of interest to landscape architects, together with other design professionals such as urban designers, architects, geographers and engineers, who play a primary role in the composition of the soundscape. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate on how good traditional house design is able to give residential satisfaction levels and could contribute towards habitability in Shibam, Yemen. House design in this study is a subject dealing with efficient space-function design of the house layout which shows cultural aspects of the community. Houses in Shibam typify the traditional architecture which reflects to the structure of family, and social and cultural realms. The houses comprises mid and high-rise mud brick (...) house types, considered as one of the earliest high-rise house type built in the world. Today, the city of Shibam with mid and high-rises mud brick house types is recognized as one of the heritage sites under UNESCO’s World Heritage Lists. The literature study is conducted to understand the definitions of the title, which is important to identify the measurable factors for the research analysis. The study finds that diwan, dining area, bedrooms, bathrooms, corridor and storage, courtyard and balcony, and the composition of the rooms’ layout are important measurable checklist’s factors under category of space planning and function. There are two types of the research analyses which are qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis is a study by the researcher based on the researcher’s observation on the house design during the site visit while the quantitative analysis is from the respondents’ answers (300 respondents) on their satisfaction level from the research questionnaires. With high average scores of 94% in qualitative and 90% in quantitative analysis on satisfactory level, it shows that both results of qualitative and quantitative analysis support the research assumption. In that light, within the ambit of this study, the house design in Shibam can and does serve as a reference. (shrink)

In this case-report we describe an experience where alternative places – rather than the classroom – are exploited to implement learning processes. We maintain that this experience is a good example of materiality because it focuses on a project where students had the opportunity to re-design a public space. To this aim, various objects and tools are used to support discussions and exchanges with new stakeholders. Our theoretical vision combines Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s tradition with an innovative framework called the Trialogical (...) Learning Approach (TLA). From such theoretical background an idea of materiality emerges, that refers to material in combination with the social relationships developed around the material. Our case-report concerns a participatory project run by Rete Dialogues, a national school network focusing on global citizenship education. Our research question is: how can this project highlight the connection between the TLA and socio-materiality? Since 2017, around 200 students (age 7-16) and 20 teachers from different schools have been engaged in tackling the degradation of an important square in Rome. The project – “Dialogues in the Square” (DiS) was developed with several stakeholders that contributed to the understanding of critical issues influencing the maintenance of the square, in the perspective of planning, and possibly implementing improvements proposed by students. Crucial is the cooperation with two important urban art projects: i) the pilot-project MACRO-ASILO, run by the MACRO museum in Rome and aimed at connecting the world of art with the city life; ii) the “building sites” of the Rome Rebirth Forum, inspired by the world-known artist Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “third paradise” methodology, that encourages responsibility and action taking on sustainability through art. Drawing on data collected through direct observations and video recordings, we aim to show and make sense of the connection between the TLA and socio-materiality, highlighting three key elements: the flexible use of mediation tools, the overcoming of the dichotomy between individual and collective learning through reflection, and the re-shaping of social practices. (shrink)

The author suggests to view the architectural planning of the human environment as „directing” the phenomena and events that occur in human surroundings. In her reflections on human existence she juxtaposes the concepts “environment” and “space”, which both accentuate different aspects of the human environment. The author views “environment” as the objective existence of human surroundings, and “space” as the effect of environmental envisionment and experiencing the environment by means of rationality and valuation.The author also focuses on interactions between the (...) paradigm of thought and the paradigm of the order which humans bring into the space they design, and describes related examples. She notes that the links between architecture and the “how” and “what” of our thinking are visible not only in accounts of bygone eras, but also in the influence on architecture of two contemporary thought trends—post-modernism and ecologism. She goes on to suggest that ecological architecture should be understood as spatial design patterned on the structure of eco-systems. Thus understood, ecological architecture is neither structuralistic, nor “atomic”, nor collectivistic. The author also sees the difference between post-modern and ecological architecture in the ability of making use of the opportunities provided by difference. (shrink)

The “active image” refers to the operative nature of images, thus capturing the vast array of “actions” that images perform. This volume features essays that present a new approach to image theory. It explores the many ways images become active in architecture and engineering design processes and how, in the age of computer-based modeling, images play an indispensable role. The contributors examine different types of images, be they pictures, sketches, renderings, maps, plans, and photographs; be they analog or digital, (...) planar or three-dimensional, ephemeral, realistic or imaginary. Their essays investigate how images serve as means of representing, as tools for thinking and reasoning, as ways of imagining the inexistent, as means of communicating and conveying information and how images may also perform functions and have an agency in their own. The essays discuss the role of images from the perspective of philosophy, theory and history of architecture, history of science, media theory, cognitive sciences, design studies, and visual studies, offering a multidisciplinary approach to imagery and showing the various methodologies and interpretations in current research. In addition, they offer valuable insight to better understand how images operate and function in the arts and sciences in general. (shrink)

Womanist religious thought centers the experiences of black women but addresses the holistic liberation of communities from multiple and hybridized religious, spiritual, and cultural identities, offering valuable insight for examining the moral aims of the common good and identifying challenges to the good of particular communities. This paper offers a womanist analysis of prevailing conceptions of the common good and accounts of architecture and urban planning’s relation to the common good and civic virtue within the work of Christian theologians. (...) It explores the architectural implications of the common good from a womanist lens and articulates a liberatory vision of the common good and its relation to architectural design and construction. Womanist critiques and insights suggest that the spirituality and participation of common people are vital for shaping architecture for the common good, especially as it addresses whose interests are to be served and how common ground is pursued. (shrink)

How were the concepts of the observer and user in architecture and urban planning transformed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries? Marianna Charitonidou explores how the mutations of the means of representation in architecture and urban planning relate to the significance of city's inhabitants. She investigates Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's fascination with perspective, Team Ten's interest in the humanisation of architecture and urbanism, Constantinos Doxiadis and Adriano Olivetti's role in reshaping the relationship between (...) politics and urban planning during the postwar years, Giancarlo De Carlo's architecture of participation, Aldo Rossi's design methods, Denise Scott Brown's active socioplactics and Bernard Tschumi's conception praxis. (shrink)

Bali island has become a world tourist destination since the colonial period. Bali even almost made to be a "living museum" through Baliseering program by the Dutch Colonial Government in the 1930s, with the pretext of protecting Balinese culture. The proscenium stage was introduced for the Balinese architectural performance venue. At the Colonial Tourism Exhibition in Paris in 1931, the Dutch Colonial Government introduced a unique Balinese architecture. The Balinese ethnographic museum was also built by combining the (...) architectural concepts of Pura and Puri in Bali. After Indonesia's independence in 1945, tourism activities are continued by the Balinese Regional Government. To protect the values of traditional architecture in the midst of the tourism development in the global era, the Balinese Regional Government made special regulations related to ethics and the preservation of traditional Balinese architecture. This article discusses the ethics and responsibilities of architects or interior designers in preserving local geniuses of traditional Balinese architecture in the global era. Primarily, the study focuses on the aesthetic qualities of local genius and creativity, combined with construction technology, to capture local characters and avoid cultural homogenization. (shrink)

Historians of modern design and sociology have shown little interest in the leaders of the ever resourceful and influential British Positivist Society. One of the aims of this essay is to show that the Positivist polymath Frederic Harrison (1831–1923) cultivated ideas and practices that are compatible with modernists’ aspirations to improve the lives of the masses. It is accordingly shown that Harrison was an ardent supporter of working-class causes and that on this basis he developed sociological survey methods and produced (...) social programmes to initiate the comprehensive reorganisation of cities. Harrison intended to realise a modern utopia called the “Occidental Republic”, created by Auguste Comte, the Positivist Philosopher who – during the 1830 and 1840s – introduced both sociology and the Religion of Humanity. While many studies pore over the Positivists’ “church” rituals, this essay is the first to argue that the Religion of Humanity and sociology were of equal consequence – and that together they formed the basis of their controversial spatial theory and practice, which was considered the means to realise Comte’s utopia. This vision, it is argued, is central to appreciating how Positivism percolated into the “modern movements” of architecture and planning. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga argues by counterexample that no naturalistic account of functions is possible--God is then the only source for natural functions. This paper replies to Plantinga's examples and arguments. Plantinga misunderstands naturalistic accounts. Plantinga's mistakes flow from his assimilation of functional notions in general to functions from intentional design in particular.

Habermas's conception of deliberative democracy could be fruitfully supplemented with a discussion of the "institutional design" of civil society; for example the architecture of public spaces should be considered. This paper argues that Hegel's discussion of architecture in his 'Aesthetics' can speak to this issue. For Hegel, architecture culminates in the gothic cathedral, because of how it fosters reflection on the part of the worshiper. This discussion suggests the possibility that architecture could foster a similar kind (...) of intersubjective reflection. To make his thoughts more pertinent for current debates, Hegel's views are adapted to fit three contemporary secular institutions. (shrink)

Munich-based "03 Architects" have in recent years developed a distinctive way of working for urban spaces. No matter if the task is a warehouse for building materials, a kindergarden, or planning an entire new neighbourhood, "03 Architects " designs always look closely at the narrative qualities of the city. For this book the architects have invited the photographer Walter Mair for a dialogue on their work, concepts and methods. Mair documents "03 Architects " work with great sensitivity for their (...) ideas, but also for the context which the buildings reflect and enable, and thereby reaches beyond the classic architectural documentation. The architects respond to Mair s images in brief, associative texts. An introductory essay on the fundamental questions and problems of architectural photography by the renowned architectural critic and curator Hubertus Adam rounds out this book with its particular haptic and manufacturing quality. ". (shrink)

A discussion of the many-faceted relationship between aesthetic theory and architecture. It analyzes the relationship between buildings and designs, explores the notion of architectural experience, and covers modern architecture's aim to deepen the connection between usefulness and design.

In his Languages of Art, Nelson Goodman proposes a theory of artistic notation that includes foundational requirements for any system of symbols we might use to specify and communicate the features of an artwork, in architecture or any other art form. Goodmans' theory usefully explains how notation can reveal linguistic-like phenomena of various art forms. But not all art forms can enjoy benefits of a full-blown notational system, in Goodman's view, and he suggests that architecture's symbol systems fall (...) short in this regard. It is a shortcoming of architecture, he believes, that its notation cannot communicate the sum of a given work's essential features. Against this view it may be argued that artworks are generally and inimically historical in character, such that an inability to capture this dimension may result in a failure to pick out the identity of a work. As a consequence, the suggestion of that inability looks like a shortcoming of the general notational theory rather than of the art form or its notation per se. I defend Goodman's background formalism against the criticism that an ahistoricist notation cannot possibly be adequate. But I reject his view that no actual architectural notation can satisfy the formal criteria of his theory. In particular, I propose that the foundational theory for Computer Aided Design (CAD) described by the architect William Mitchell satisfies Goodman's criteria and so yields a notation that enables communication of an architectural work's essential features. If, as I suggest, such a notation is feasible, then we have an additional result that Goodman foresees: a means of abstracting future architectural works from their historical contexts. This in turn yields a consequence at which Goodman only hints-that such architectural works can be intellectually grasped and physically constructed along purely formalist lines. One practical result here is that we introduce economical solutions to architectural design. On a theoretical level, we also expose the inessential character of historical properties to creating or understanding architecture, at least with respect to future possible works. (shrink)

In eleven pointed and sometimes provocative conversations, architect and professor of architecture, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani uses a critique of contemporary urban planning to develop principles for reestablishing the discipline. In seven projects designed with these principles in mind, he shows how his vigorous reinterpretation of the field can be implemented and what a fresh start can look like. Magnago Lampugnani envisages a calm modern city that can measure itself against the historic city, while emphasizing sustainability and providing a home (...) for a multifaceted and continually changing society. (shrink)

Objectives: To foster the development of a privacy-protective, sustainable cross-border information system in the framework of a European public health project. Materials and methods: A targeted privacy impact assessment was implemented to identify the best architecture for a European information system for diabetes directly tapping into clinical registries. Four steps were used to provide input to software designers and developers: a structured literature search, analysis of data flow scenarios or options, creation of an ad hoc questionnaire and conduction of (...) a Delphi procedure. Results: The literature search identified a core set of relevant papers on privacy. Technicians envisaged three candidate system architectures, with associated data flows, to source an information flow questionnaire that was submitted to the Delphi panel for the selection of the best architecture. A detailed scheme envisaging an “aggregation by group of patients” was finally chosen, based upon the exchange of finely tuned summary tables. Conclusions: Public health information systems should be carefully engineered only after a clear strategy for privacy protection has been planned, to avoid breaching current regulations and future concerns and to optimise the development of statistical routines. The BIRO project delivers a specific method of privacy impact assessment that can be conveniently used in similar situations across Europe. (shrink)

In the last decades, the rapid growth of functional brain imaging methodologies allowed cognitive neuroscience to address open questions in philosophy and the social sciences. At the same time, novel insights from cognitive neuroscience research have begun to influence various disciplines, leading to a turn to cognition and emotion in the fields of planning and architectural design. Since 2003, the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture has been supporting ‘neuro-architecture’ as a way to connect neuroscience and the study of (...) behavioral responses to the built environment. Among the many topics related to multisensory perceptual integration and embodiment, the concept of hapticity was recently introduced, suggesting a pivotal role of touch and haptic imagery in architectural appraisal. Arguments have thus risen in favor of the existence of shared cognitive foundations between hapticity and the supramodal functional architecture of the human brain. Precisely, supramodality refers to the functional feature of defined brain regions to process and represent specific information content in a more abstract way, independently of the sensory modality conveying such information to the brain. Here we highlight some commonalities and differences between the concepts of hapticity and supramodality according to the distinctive perspectives of architecture and cognitive neuroscience. This comparison and connection between these two different approaches may lead to novel observations in regard to people-environment relationships, and even provide empirical foundations for a renewed evidence-based design theory. (shrink)

Deals with topics and insight into the design and architecture of next-generation computing systems that deal with human and social problems. Processor and Internet technologies form the subject matter and focal point, while information and knowledge on the Internet delivered by next-generation mobile networks form the technical core presented.

Is architecture relevant for political theory? That is the key question that structures this excellent collection Political Theory and Architecture, although a number of essays fit a broader formulated theme better, namely, concerning the political relevance of the organization and design of our built environment more generally, including architecture but also spatial planning and urban design. The collection demonstrates that our build environment is not merely a passive backdrop to a political community, but actively shapes aspects of (...) our common political life. This constitutive nature of our built environment figures in many different guises throughout this volume. In this review article, I discuss some of these and conclude that concerns about the ‘common good’ and hence about the discipline of political theory should take reflections on urban design, planning, and architecture into account. (shrink)

Is architecture relevant for political theory? That is the key question that structures this excellent collection Political Theory and Architecture, although a number of essays fit a broader formulated theme better, namely, concerning the political relevance of the organization and design of our built environment more generally, including architecture but also spatial planning and urban design. The collection demonstrates that our build environment is not merely a passive backdrop to a political community, but actively shapes aspects of (...) our common political life. This constitutive nature of our built environment figures in many different guises throughout this volume. In this review article, I discuss some of these and conclude that concerns about the ‘common good’ and hence about the discipline of political theory should take reflections on urban design, planning, and architecture into account. (shrink)

This PhD responds to a two fold problem with the philosophy of design and the practice of design. The philosophical problem is stated as the discrepancy between a dominant philosophical framework that orders the world according to eternal essences and the actual conditions of the world in which we exist: the conditions of becoming and of flux. Commencing with a critique of the western metaphysical tradition of statics this research project proposes that we need to find a way of describing (...) an evolutionary model of practice, and by so doing to provide a revitalised narration of process. Consequently, the PhD explores the meanings of process through a critical examination of an ensemble of projects created by the author. Within this framework, a number of questions are posed in order to explore the proposition of a process practice. These questions are: What is process? How does one think process? Indeed, how do we get to grasp change? What are the consequences of process thinking on the practices of design, their fields of operation, and their productions? And, how can the thematising of process contribute to the design of the constructed environment, as well as reconfigure the practices of design? This thematising of process is argued to involve a necessary address to the constitutive and interrelated characteristics of process: space/time, movement, change, form and matter. Such an address is also seen to problematise the status of the object, the paradigms of representation, the modes of creation, the economies of exchange, and the structures of community, and to offer a modality of practice which would re-imagine the forms of social exchange to offer an ethical alternative to the tyranny of supply and demand, and thereby reconfigure the potential for dwelling. Making an overview of the discourses and practices engaging with theories of becoming, this thesis argues that almost all of these re-inscribe statics and that consequently the practice of design seems to drag behind our understanding of the world. Through a meditation on dis/appearance, in which the dynamics of being and becoming and the restless ambiguity of the gap are examined, the work establishes a process vocabulary, and makes clear through a material practice, the domains of process thinking, its inclinations, and the kinds of operations and procedures that flourish there. Foregrounding the fertile character of process practice, the PhD then proceeds to introduce notions of the movement-form, the duration-form, the transformational-form, the geometry of encounter, and to argue for physical form as an in-movement poise. Advocating new modes of approach and of attentiveness, and demonstrating new generative methods, this PhD argues that process thinking is not simply an operational stance, but an ethical position that identifies a field of care, and that consequently the design practices be expanded by taking seriously the relationship between process thinking and place making. Thus, this thesis concludes by advocating a mode of place making which, rather than reproduce planned environments as systems of control, configures place as the discursive contested place of encounter and exchange. (shrink)

The complex interaction between colonizer and colonized has attracted increasing attention among historians in the post-colonial period of the last fifty years. This perspective is also adopted by Maria Georgopoulou (hereafter: M. G.) in her treatment of the encounter between Venice and the Byzantine heritage of the territories the latter occupied shortly after the Fourth Crusade. M. G's. main thesis may be summarized as follows. Venice manipulated Crete's Byzantine heritage and assimilated it into her own rhetoric in order to undermine (...) the Byzantine presence in the island and to support and legitimize her own colonial rule. This was achieved mainly by the appropriation of Byzantine traditions in civic and religious ceremonies and the symbolic colonization of urban space, expressed in architectural designs, the use of buildings and spatial patterns. All these served as bold statements of control over the local Greek population and the Jewish communities. The same strategy of urban planning was implemented in the other main cities of the colonial empire (26). In addition, M. G. argues that there was yet another channel of appropriation of Byzantine culture, art and imperial heritage by Venice, resulting from the Byzantine impact of the Venetian colonial territories on the political and cultural identity of the Adriatic city. Until now this issue has been examined in numerous studies primarily focused on the relationship between Constantinople and Venice. (shrink)

Krieger revisits the ideas of his now infamous article of some thirty years ago in Science magazine. His aim is to give an account of design, one that experienced designers will say,'Yes, That's just what it is like!' At the same time, Krieger offers an analysis of the tensions that design operates within; between perfection and contingency, between wholes and parts, between the talk we make about the world and the world itself. Krieger takes design—in architecture, landscape, interiors, engineering, (...) and in systems and computer science—to be modeled by traditional theological and artistic problems. And here, he claims, design has traditionally been a redesign of nature. For nature is, as Durkheim would describe it, a totem. Our collective ritual devotion to it allows us to enliven or animate it, and so it may animate us as well. Curiously, much of design and discourse about it now takes place in the computer software engineering world, especially among those concerned with patterns and object- oriented programming. In developing a notion of plastic trees, Krieger probes just what could be wrong with such artifices. As he illustrates, what we call nature is almost always a product of deliberate design. It is as if people make discoveries in exploration, discoveries of places already occupied aboriginally. In essence, he asserts what we actually have is a virtual authenticity, more real than any original could possibly be—since the original was never meant to be sacralized or featured in our lives. A provocative analysis that scholars and students of architecture and planning, environmental studies, engineering and computer science will find stimulating. (shrink)

Cognitive architectures are unified theories of cognition that take the form of computational formalisms. They support computational models that collectively account for large numbers of empirical regularities using small numbers of computational mechanisms. Empirical coverage and parsimony are the most prominent criteria by which architectures are designed and evaluated, but they are not the only ones. This paper considers three additional criteria that have been comparatively undertheorized. (a) Successful architectures possess subjective and intersubjective meaning, making cognition comprehensible to individual cognitive (...) scientists and organizing groups of like-minded cognitive scientists into genuine communities. (b) Successful architectures provide idioms that structure the design and interpretation of computational models. (c) Successful architectures are strange: They make provocative, often disturbing, and ultimately compelling claims about human information processing that demand evaluation. (shrink)

This paper describes the general concepts of Arnold Berleant's urban metaphors in order to use them as a background for presenting a different perspective on the aesthetics of engagement through the prism of contemporary dance strategies and design practices in architecture and urban planning.

To meet the stability requirements for moving quadruped robots, it is important to design a rational structure for a single leg and plan the trajectory of the foot. First, a novel electrically driven leg mechanism for a quadruped robot is designed in this paper to reduce the inertia of the leg swing. Second, a modified foot trajectory based on a compound cycloid is proposed, which has swing-back and retraction motion and continuous velocity in the x-axis direction. Third, a Simulink platform (...) is built to verify the correctness of the proposed foot trajectory. The simulation result shows that when the flight phase and the stand phase switch, the impact of torque is smaller than the foot trajectory before modification. Finally, an experimental platform is constructed, and a control algorithm is written into the controller to realize the foot proposed trajectory. The results of the experiment prove the feasibility of the leg mechanism and the rationality of the proposed foot trajectory. (shrink)

What is a singular object? An idea, a building, a color, a sentiment, a human being. Each in turn comes under scrutiny in this exhilarating dialogue between two of the most interesting thinkers working in philosophy and architecture today. From such singular objects, Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel move on to fundamental problems of politics, identity, and aesthetics as their exchange becomes an imaginative exploration of the possibilities of modern architecture and the future of modern life. Among the (...) topics the two speakers take up are the city of tomorrow and the ideal of transparency, the gentrification of New York City and Frank Gehry’s surprising Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As Nouvel prompts Baudrillard to reflect on some of his signature concepts, the confrontation between such philosophical concerns and the specificity of architecture gives rise to novel and striking formulations—and a new way of establishing and understanding the connections between the practitioner and the philosopher, the object and the idea. This wide-ranging conversation builds a bridge between the fields of architecture and philosophy. At the same time it offers readers an intimate view of the meeting of objects and ideas in which the imagined, constructed, and inhabited environment is endlessly changing, forever evolving. Jean Baudrillard is one of the most influential thinkers of his generation and author of _The Vital Illusion_. Jean Nouvel has designed buildings throughout the world, including the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and is a recipient of France’s Grand Prix d’Architecture. Robert Bononno, a translator and teacher, lives in New York City. (shrink)

Architectural ethics has only begun to consider in earnest what it means, in a moral sense, to be an architect.1 The academy, however, has yet to adequately to explore the ethical problems raised,2 to evaluate the types of moral issues that arise, and to develop moral principles or moral reasons that should guide decisions when encountering these moral issues inherent in certain project types. This is the case despite the practice of architecture entailing “behaviours, our choices of which may (...) be illuminated by ethical analysis.”3 Although distinguishing practice from product allows ethical critique of the practice involved in designing buildings, and recognises the significance of the architect’s moral agency, there remains very little empirically-based understanding of how the architect, once identified as a moral agent, operates as such, and still less about the circumstances in which ‘professional’ conduct may be at odds with ‘ethical’ behaviour. (shrink)

This article tackles an old, classical problem, which is acquiring a new epochal relevance with the techno-aesthetic processing of form and substance, expression and content. The field of digital architecture is embarked in the ancient controversy between the line and the curve, binary communication and fuzzy logic. Since the 1990s, the speculative qualities of digital architecture have exposed spatial design to the qualities of growing or breeding, rather than planning. However, such qualities still deploy the tension between discrete (...) spaces and continual curving. In this context, the article suggests the computational coexistence of discrete coding with continual morphing, defying any easy resolution for an aesthetic of continuity or discontinuity, the superiority of the analog or the meta-logic of the digital. The metaphysical dimension of such coexistence needs to include the abstract capacities of experiencing the transition from one state to another as the registering of algorithmic processing. Computation is intrinsic to microperceptions, incomputable quantities deploying the infectious property of the digital code. The article draws on the digital architecture of Greg Lynn to explore whether the computational nature of the digital calculus has the potential to challenge the bifurcation between the biological and the mathematical, the physical and the mental. (shrink)