The Line,the Void and the Current: Iron Age Art from a Design Theory Perspective

Objects from the European Iron Age decorated with swirls and scrolls, faces and figures, and generally referred to as Early Celtic Art, can offer deep insight into later prehistoric notions of creativity. By drawing on archaeology and social anthropology, art and architectural design, this theoretical discourse investigates the design processes involved in the creation of Early Celtic Art. Rather than attempting to decipher a meaning behind decoration, this enquiry uses architectural ‘Design Theory’ to explore the implications of certain design choices. It starts with the premise that these designs are integral to the objects in order to identify different layers of complexity, innovation and emulation, and ends with wider reflections on who was creative and how. This approach, borrowed from architectural analysis, aims to open a new line of enquiry into the fascinating world of Iron Age creativity.     

Daylight as a Design Strategy in the Ottoman Mosques of Tunisia and Algeria

This study investigates daylighting design in Tunisian and Algerian mosques from the Ottoman era. It aims to constitute a daylight-based architectural design knowledge which might serve the built heritage preservation as well as supports contemporary environmentally friendly mosques’ and building design. An intensive literature review and a field work research have been undertaken in Tunisia and Algeria in order to survey daylighting devices in the Ottoman mosques era. Nine Tunisian and 14 Algerian mosques, from the Ottoman era, constitute the study corpus. First, an inventory of architectural components and their associated daylighting strategies was carried out. This collected data is then examined by means of a building conformation lecture based on typological, topological, and morphological analysis. This research reveals the existence of an interrelated set of daylighting devices and structural models governing rules in the Ottoman mosque model, site conditions, and previous local architectural styles.     

Informality Materialised: Long‐term Temporariness as a Mode of Informal Urbanism

This paper establishes an important link between the architectural strategies and long‐term sustenance of “ordinary” informal spaces in the planned modernist city of Islamabad. By focusing on the modalities of street hawking in Islamabad, this paper demonstrates that the architecture of ordinary informality follows an aesthetic and materiality of temporariness, and invokes design criteria based on the rituals of daily assembly and disassembly, and shared customs involving “temporary” claims to immediate public space. The paper uses the concept of “long‐term temporariness” to argue that the sustained existence of street hawking depends upon the routine maintenance of the relationship between its temporality and materiality, evident in both the everyday spatial practices and official procedures concerning informal street commerce. The paper thus situates street hawking within the realms of both formal and informal processes, and highlights the role of provisionality in urban transformations in the global South.     

Architectural Energetics, Ancient Monuments, and Operations Management

Architectural energetics, subsumed within replicative archaeology, provides a means through which buildings are translated into labor-time estimates. To date, the majority of architectural energetics analyses have generated comparative measures of architectural costs, equating these with a vertical structure of political power and authority within and among societies. The present analysis expands the application of architectural energetics by subjecting construction labor costs to an analysis based on concepts central to the Theory of Constraints, which is widely applied in modern operations management. This modeling generates a hypothetical set of behavioral patterns performed by general laborers within a construction project and explicates a method which allows further exploration into the question of labor organization (i.e., allocation and articulation of workers), as well as perhaps other economic organization, in an archaeological context. The case example is Structure 10L-22, a large Mayan palace at the site of Copan, Honduras.     

Equivalent Damping in Support of Direct Displacement-Based Design

The concept of equivalent linearization of nonlinear system response as applied to direct displacement-based design is evaluated. Until now, Jacobsen's equivalent damping approach combined with the secant stiffness method has been adopted for the linearization process in direct displacement-based design. Four types of hysteretic models and a catalog of 100 ground motion records were considered. The evaluation process revealed significant errors in approximating maximum inelastic displacements due to overestimation of the equivalent damping values in the intermediate to long period range. Conversely, underestimation of the equivalent damping led to overestimation of displacements in the short period range, in particular for effective periods less than 0.4 seconds. The scatter in the results ranged between 20% and 40% as a function of ductility. New equivalent damping relations for four structural systems, based upon nonlinear system ductility and maximum displacement, are proposed. The accuracy of the new equivalent damping relations is assessed, yielding a significant reduction of the error in predicting inelastic displacements. Minimal improvement in the scatter of the results was achieved, however. While many significant studies have been conducted on equivalent damping over the last 40 years, this study has the following specific aims: (1) identify the scatter associated with Jacobsen's equivalent damping combined with the secant stiffness as utilized in Direct Displacement-Based Design; and (2) improve the accuracy of the Direct Displacement-Based Design approach by providing alternative equivalent damping expressions.     

清帝处理政务的殿字及其内檐装修格局

在明代宫廷建筑制度的基础上,清代宫廷建筑及其内檐装修的规制在清中期逐步确立并成为当时建筑设计的基本出发点。这个规制不仅体现在朝仪、寝居殿宇的形制上,也反映在以勤政段为代表的一些具有综合功能、使用情况复杂的建筑的格局、装修之中。在归纳清代宫殿、园囿中有勤政功能和以勤政殿命名的殿宇的基础上,本文从建筑规格、内檐装修形制两个方面整理并阐述了此类宫廷建筑空间的特征,作者试图藉此探究皇家建筑设计创作的制度和功能内涵。     

ARCHITECTURAL MOVEMENTS,UTOPIAN MOMENTS: (IN)COHERENT RENDERINGS OF THE HUNDERTWASSER‐HAUS,VIENNA

This article explores some of the manifold entanglements of architecture and utopia. It takes as a case study a social housing block in Vienna: the Hundertwasser‐Haus. The house was designed by the artist‐architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser and has attracted enormous attention from the architectural press and tourists. I articulate a series of architectural “movements”, manifest in Hundertwasser's design philosophy, press reportage about the house, residents' experiences of living at the house, and visitors' activities outside it. I argue that from these movements, a series of essentially unconnected utopian “moments” emerged. The article makes two contributions. First, it builds upon gathering interest in the geographies of utopia – specifically by moving beyond an emphasis upon utopian hope. It locates utopian impulses that are imbued with euphoria and joy, and which are not beset by a sense of lack. It also provides empirical examples of “unsettling” utopias of different registers (such as textual and experiential). Second, the article contributes to recent geographical approaches to studying architecture. It uses the analytical motif of movements to gain a sense of how a material building – and the idea of that building – is constituted as much by tenuous relations and disjunctures (even non‐relations) as by relations. Whereas contemporary geographies of architecture do not leave room for tenuous relations and disjunctures in their narratives, this article tries to do so. It highlights how utopian moments at the Hundertwasser‐Haus are proximate to each other: they are located metaphorically and/or literally at the house. Yet those moments neither conform to a coherent, singular narrative, and in some cases, nor do they relate to each other. The article opens debate about the significance of non‐relational sociotechnical constituents to the geographies of architecture.     

The Underdeveloped Historical Dimension of the Study of Community Power Structure

Abstract

This article presents a technique of standardising and coding textual birthplace and occupation strings in the censuses of England and Wales and Scotland, 1851–1911. While the approaches for the two text strings are different, they are both based upon the integration of computer technologies, mathematical methods, and expert knowledge. Both processes are described formally using Structured Analysis and Design Technique methodology. The classification of occupations is defined by two algorithms based on statistical decision theory in order to allocate codes from the original occupation strings. The method of standardising parishes is based on the comparison of original birthplace strings and reference data.     

‘Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?’ Architects versus Housewives in 1950s France

This article draws upon archival sources, architectural trade publications and contemporary social science to trace the design and reception of the ‘cell’, a functionalist, rational apartment that was the building block of apartment complexes that sprung up all over France during the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that French Modernist architects, shaped by both professional and socio‐political concerns, believed their streamlined interiors to be key to building a classless society and restoring French greatness and thus rejected the dwelling preference and expertise of French homemakers when designing their homes. Nevertheless, Frenchwomen tried to ignore architectural dictates when it came to homemaking, and ultimately, in a changed political climate, their preferences convinced the national housing ministry to redefine its norms and standards for apartments.     

Italianità and internationalism: Production,design and mediation at Alessi, 1976-96

This article considers the Italian household product design company Alessi as quintessentially Italian and international. The interplay of mass-production and craft techniques at Alessi, an extended design process and the presentation of the family in company publicity exemplify the ambiguities identified within Italian design. The extent to which Alessi typifies Italian post-war design is questioned with reference to the company's international design team and the marketing of its products to foreign consumers as manifestations of italianità. The findings are based on primary research in Milan and the Alessi factory, including a series of interviews with designers, retailers, curators and media workers, combined with secondary material centred upon design history.     

The making of a city campus

Campus spatial development has attracted relatively little scholarly research, yet through time major moves reflect and interact with broader policy, design, and societal trends. The city campus as a high‐density, mixed‐use knowledge precinct has emerged as a distinctive type. Its growing prominence points to the convergence of interdependent trends in urban life, higher education, and economic growth. This article describes, contextualises, and reflects upon the physical evolution of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in central Sydney. The narrative identifies several distinct development phases: from the urban renewal of a rundown inner‐city precinct through comprehensive replanning following the tenets of high modernism, then adaptive reuse and heritage conservation, to architectural design excellence. In the process, it has become an Australian exemplar of a “tech transformed” contemporary city campus.     

A Three-Dimensional Model of a Thule Inuit Whale Bone House

Abstract

The semi-subterranean whale bone house is one of the most distinctive features of Thule Inuit culture in the Canadian Arctic (A.D. 1000–1600). An understanding of how these remarkable dwellings were designed and built has been hindered by measurement and recording techniques restricted to two dimensions. Determining how the unusual shapes and sizes of whale bone elements would have influenced the strength of the roof frame and the volume of the house's interior requires a three-dimensional point of view. We constructed a three-dimensional computer model of such a house by first employing laser scanning technology to create a digital model of a North Atlantic Right Whale skeleton on display at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts. Individual elements from the digital model were used in combination with archaeological data to construct an accurate representation of a Thule whale bone dwelling. Constructing a model in a virtual world is analogous to building one in the real world. Consequently, we gained a deeper understanding of the design principles used by Thule builders, and conclude that the development of an architectural tradition based upon whale bone may be among the greatest technological achievements in Arctic prehistory.     

中国传统文化在建筑设计中的传承与发展

中国传统文化对建筑设计有着极其深刻的影响,主要体现在中国传统的布局方式和人文思想等方面。建筑设计必须在继承中创新,有选择性地保留传统文化中有价值的内容,创造性地将建筑设计与传统文化相结合,追求自然和谐的效果,以推进古建筑以及文物保护工作。     

文物建筑保护工程中的勘察设计——以北大红楼等三个文物建筑为例

文物建筑勘察的目的是掌握现状文物的真实状态和危险程度,进而为制定科学合理的保护方案提供重要依据和支撑。为此,探讨了文物建筑保护工程勘察设计的特点和内涵,结合实际案例,归纳总结了文物建筑勘察设计四个基本特点:在强调文物真实性的同时,要求勘察内容的完备性和详实性;强调病害机理分析与病害成因的数值仿真验证;关注文物本体的抗震性能研究;强调以最小的干预获取最真实的情况。阐述论证了建立文物防灾减灾体系的必要性和重要性,点明了文物建筑勘察设计未来的发展方向必然和防患于未然的防灾减灾体系相联系,作为该体系下的技术支撑而长期发展。     

Displacement-Based Design of an Energy Dissipating System for Seismic Upgrading of Existing Masonry Structures

A displacement-based method for the design of an energy dissipating system is proposed in this article. The device, which is composed of added concrete walls equipped with hysteretic Added Damping and Stiffness (ADAS) dampers, is aimed at upgrading the seismic behavior of existing masonry structures. The design method is based upon a simplified model of the overall structure-dissipating system. The proposed displacement-based design procedure was tested by means of inelastic response-time history analyses considering different masonry structures. The results of the analyses were compared with the seismic behavior expected from the design.     

Land,Stone, Trees,Identity, Ambition: the Building Blocks of Brochs

Brochs are impressive stone roundhouses unique to Iron Age Scotland. This paper introduces a new perspective developed from architectural analysis and drawing on new survey, fieldwork and analogies from anthropology and social history. The study of architectural design and constructional detail exposes fewer competitive elements than previously anticipated. Instead, attempts to emulate, share and communicate identities can be detected. The architectural language of the broch allows complex layers of individual preferences, local and regional traditions, and supra-regional communications to be expressed in a single house design. The proposed ‘productive households’ model moves beyond ideas of competing elites at times of stress, and invites a new debate by expanding a more complex broch concept beyond the Atlantic core.     

DESIGN SPACES: AGGLOMERATION AND CREATIVITY IN BRITISH DESIGN AGENCIES

Although there is a growing body of research into the cultural and creative industries, little work has focused specifically upon on the geography of design and its role in regional economies. The relative neglect of the geography of the UK design industry is surprising given recent assertions about the sector's role in national economic competitiveness; its contribution to product innovation; and its importance as an urban regeneration resource. This paper explicitly considers the extent to which existing conceptualizations of agglomeration and creativity provide insights into the realm of design. Our discussion reflects upon recent surveys of the design sector and analyses current design organization membership data, both of which reveal an overwhelming concentration of design activities in London and the South East. Our analysis of the strategies, organization and practices of agencies in London reveals that a number of the key features associated with cultural industries in general are significantly less discernible within design.     

ARCHITECTURAL GEOGRAPHIES OF THE AIRPORT BALCONY: MOBILITY, SENSATION AND THE THEATRE OF FLIGHT

Contemporary studies within the apparent ‘mobility turn’ focus upon airports as sites indicative of our mobile world, yet they tend to forgo investigations of the contextual architectural geographies that shape and inflect these mobilities. This paper examines the relationship between the architecture of the airport balcony and practices of seeing. While recent scholarship has taken airports to be incredible symbolizers of power and places of heightened visual scrutiny, the paper explores how through the architectural mediation of seeing, early airports were designed to instil specific inspirations, beliefs and messages within the airport user – constructing a new and modern experience. Far from a blank space evacuated of social presence and meaning, the paper investigates how airport design interacts with and shapes social experience. By examining the mobile practices and experiences of inhabiting the airport balcony, the paper advances conceptualizations of moving and seeing by complicating their practice as ‘collective individuations’ of social, architectural and sensual engagements, registers, and percepts.