An Exploratory and Reflective Process of Urban Spatial Morphology within Social Sustainability: Lessons from Middle Eastern Islamic Tradition

This article outlines the significant role of ideologies and values that lie beneath the physicality of the city, in reforming urban spatial morphology within a framework of social sustainability. We focus on the urban morphology of Middle Eastern cities, which have evolved within the framework of Islamic tradition, to illuminate the relationship between the ideological and physical dimensions of spatial morphology in all urban contexts. We examine the process by which a collective of religious, political, and cultural values underlying the physicality of the city have evolved into aesthetic conventions. This process played a crucial role in the maintenance of social and urban sustainability. We propose a form of “pattern language,” here termed the anatomical approach, that brings together the ideological dimension of a city's inhabitants and the physical characteristics of urban morphology. Such a model may help urban designers and architects to understand and create more responsive and friendly cities. It furthermore contributes to the planning education process by providing the essential knowledge and analytical foundation for site analysis and conservation of valuable contexts.     

The 9th‐Century‐AD Belitung Wreck,Indonesia: analysis of a resin lump

The 9th‐century‐AD Belitung wreck was discovered in 1998 in the Java Sea. Construction techniques rapidly confirmed that it was unlike any known Chinese or Southeast Asian vessel. The uncertainty about its origins was resolved in 2008 by timber identifications: it was constructed in the Middle East (probably Oman or Yemen). This paper, on the characterization of a dammar resin lump collected in the vicinity of the wreck, supplies additional evidence confirming the probable re‐stitching of the vessel somewhere in Asia. © 2010 The Authors     

Analysing musical culture in nineteenth-century Europe: towards a musical turn?

The aim of this article is to establish the extent to which the history of music can offer new perspectives on the modern period. We need a change of perspective, moving away from the aesthetic debates on music to an investigation of actual experiences and practices of participants. Audience behaviour provides a link between musical production and society. In order to make opera houses and concert halls visible as social spheres, this article draws on examples from the musical life of Berlin and London in the 1800s. Music should no longer be regarded as a peripheral phenomenon, but instead as a potential historical question. The analysis of musical performances prompts at least one: music matters.