Outdoor lighting design as a tool for tourist development: the case of Valladolid

Practices of outdoor illumination have dramatically changed in the last decades as functional lighting has progressively given way to a more qualitative vision of light. Its traditional role for security purposes has been progressively matched by the use of illumination for city beautification. This is now a major consideration for new lighting strategies. As a result, a growing number of European cities explicitly include the development of nocturnal tourism among the objectives of their lighting policies. However, little attention has been paid by academic research to this growing trend. Focusing on the internationally renowned lighting project ‘Ruta de los Rios de Luz’, this research paper explores the use of lighting design for tourism purposes. Through interviews with individuals who played an important role in the project, the discussion below scrutinizes the lighting design decisions and the economic, environmental and political objectives that inspire the growing utilization of spectacular forms of illumination for tourism purposes.     

The Influence of Dowel-Bearing Strength in Designing Timber Pegged Timber Joints

ABSTRACT

The employment of timber pegs in timber structure joints is a widespread technology in the field of timber frame building in the United States, where the Timber Frame Engineering Council has published a special Standard to supplement the National Design Specification for Wood Construction. The authors have been studying the possibility of supplementing the Eurocode 5 design formulas, thought for timber joints with metal connectors, with specifications needed for a reliable design when employing timber pegs. The field of application envisaged is that of restoring timber structures and results obtained until now are quite encouraging. In this step of the research, more attention has been paid to deformation process: fir and chestnut samples have been tested to determine their dowel-bearing behavior with steel and ash timber peg while double-shear plane joints made of the same wood species, and fastened with steel as well as timber pegs, have been analyzed.     

Knowledge Production,Urban Locations and the Importance of Local Networks

This paper analyses the relationship between knowledge production and urban locations in industrial design, a knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS). KIBS concentrate in urban locations. This is often explained by the co-location of client firms and market access in large cities. Recent research on knowledge production, however, reveals that knowledge productive networks are significant for both the competitiveness and location of KIBS. Thus, to understand the urban location of industrial design, it is important to analyse how knowledge production is organized within the industry. Industrial design is concentrated in urban locations, but most of its clients are located elsewhere. Hence, it seems that industrial design firms concentrate in urban locations mainly because their knowledge networks include specific types of formal and informal local social networks.     

How clothing design and cultural industries refashioned frontier masculinities: a historical geography of Western wear

Gendered subjectivities emerge historically and geographically, not only in situ, within an ‘authentic’ origin period or site, but through later retrospective commodifications and fantastical popular culture depictions. This article traces the masculine identity of the cowboy as commodified and performed through clothing. The cowboy emerged from colonial origins as a model and myth of frontier masculinity: the ‘rugged outdoor type’. But it was then formularized and stylized when subject to popular culture diffusion, and as accompanying clothing design evolved. Through clothing – advertised by metropolitan manufacturers and consumed across America and beyond – an archetypal, sexualized cowboy ‘look’ thus emerged. The author traces a historical geography of cowboy masculinities in clothing design, from early ‘frontier garments for the outdoor man’ to later Western-wear ‘for that long, lean look’. Related constructions of femininity are also considered, after women's Western-wear clothing lines were produced in the 1950s. To illustrate, I draw on archival brochures, catalogs, and advertising materials from the 1920s to 1970s, as well as discuss the material design of the clothes themselves. I focus especially on the Western snap shirt – an apparel item never actually worn on the nineteenth-century colonial frontier, but that became an ‘essential’ element of the cowboy look, and a vehicle for masculine appearance. Western-wear epitomizes how gendered subject positions are visually constituted in relational fashion via bodies, materials, media, and imagined geographies.     

‘Always like never before’: learning from the lumitopia of Tivoli Gardens

Drawing on a detailed analysis of the historical and current development of lighting in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, this article addresses how this site of extraordinarily diverse illumination exemplifies a carefully orchestrated balance between (1) muted and more vivid forms of lighting, (2) curation of historical styles and promotion of contemporary innovations in illumination and (3) artistic luminaires and those more aligned with popular tastes. Through these themes, we argue that the current strategies towards urban lighting that predominantly promote energy conservation, security, commercial imperatives and place-branding may be supplemented by place-specific design strategies that implement multiplicity, connect past and present, and accommodate diverse desires, dreams and realities. These attributes contribute to the ongoing emergence of what we call a ‘lumitopia’, a space in which an intensified attention to illumination is integral to the particularity of a place or landscape. In the case of Tivoli, this offers a lens to manage nocturnal space so that it becomes more aesthetically complex, inclusive and convivial.     

Expectation,motivation, engagement and ownership: using student reflections in the conative and affective domains to enhance residential field courses

Residential field courses are important and should be designed and delivered to maximize their value to students, staff and institutions. In this context, we use a novel approach involving analysis of the daily affective and conative reflections of students immersed in the field course experience to better understand student engagement with fieldwork. We show that students base their field course choice on a range of factors (costs and benefits) and that these choices subsequently influence student expectations and motivation to engage with fieldwork. We also show that the motivation of students to engage with fieldwork-based learning varies from person to person and from day to day. Our findings suggest that having a more nuanced understanding of the decisions students make when deciding which field course to enrol upon would enhance our ability to design attractive, accessible and useful field courses; that having an awareness of the expectations of students around field courses would enable us to better prepare them to undertake them; and that students are more motivated when they are afforded an opportunity to work independently and perceive themselves to have ownership of their learning.     

Urban memory and planning: investigating the use of oral history

Investigation of the reciprocal relation between individuals and space within its cultural and historical evolution allow us to conceive the intrinsic qualities and dynamics of any space in its context and to develop new conceptions to explain what kind of a place it is. Oral history provides opportunities to listen to the voice of space as well as a new way to discover its unique and different characteristics that give the users the feeling of belonging and place attachment. In this study, the place of oral history method in historiography, its use in diverse disciplines related to the shaping of urban space, such as urban planning and architecture, and the possible contribution of oral history to planning and designing urban space are discussed. It is revealed that the use of oral history in research and practice can give effect to develop a sense of belonging for all users and to achieve sustainability of urban memory. For this reason, place-based studies and utilization of oral history method within them are of significant importance, for either acquiring the knowledge embedded in memories or understanding the expectations of users or to provide solutions to place-based problems.     

清代帝陵的哑巴院和月牙城

本文论述清代帝陵中的哑巴院和月牙城的建置与功用,进而探讨其规制的起源问题。指出关外的福陵与昭陵系参照北京明代后期的帝陵及清孝陵兴建,而南京明孝陵的规制已见哑巴院的雏形,其发展演变脉络清晰,故而哑巴院和月牙城并非明清两代帝陵规制最显著的差别。     

清末民初农会组织述论

清末民初的农会组织大体经历了酝酿、兴起、发展、隐退四个阶段.其基本结构表现为组成了一个层层连接的直属组织系统;建立了较为完备的领导体制;实行了严格的民主选举制度、议事办事原则以及定期的会议制度等.呈现出组织制度的近代民主性、一定程度的自治性、成员构成的复杂性、机构权限的官督性等基本特点.所从事的活动内容相当广泛,主要表现为编辑农报,翻译农书;创办农业学堂;开办农业试验场;举行农产品评会,设立陈列所;开展调查研究;向主管官署建议农业改良进行事宜,等等.这对推动近代中国农业发展具有重要的影响与作用.