This research explores the potential of an immersive and interactive online archive to enhance our understanding of historic architecture through the study of models. It reports on implementing an augmented reality mobile application that exhibits a model for the unbuilt Endless House, 1959, by Frederick Kiesler. A reflective critique, from the researcher’s point of view, and initial feedback from a small sample of architecture students, provides an insight into users’ experience of the exhibition, its value as a research tool, and as an educational resource. Building on existing technologies and established research methods, we present an alternative way of exhibiting a large-scaled model for public engagement and research collaboration between academics, archivists, and conservators. Results discuss the development of the mobile application with interactive features specifically designed for an architectural audience. It touches on issues associated with documenting, interpreting, and exhibiting architectural models, emphasizing accessibility, accuracy, engagement, combining 3D and 2D digital assets, and user experience. It was found that the interactive and immersive features of the exhibition enhanced the researchers’ scope to spatially inspect the model, visually experience it, collaborate with others, and strengthen connections between the model and other examples of Kiesler’s textual and visual archival materials.
This paper aims to inquiry on the dialectical relationships between Chinese architecture’s form and function in the horizon of long-term historical evolution, by clarifying how the histories of imperial main halls and state ceremonies relate to and interact with each other during the Tang and Song dynasties.
The imperialmain halls are themost archetypical and accomplished ones among traditional Chinese buildings, and their function is primarily ritual rather than practical. Although these magnificent buildings are indisputably considered the crowning achievement of Chinese architectural history, how the built space cooperates with ritual practices did not receive deserved attention.
With the thorough reading of voluminous official ritual documents and comprehensive utilization of archaeological discoveries together with visual materials, the research presents a broad understanding of the asynchronous developments of the ground-level architectural arrangement and the ritual configuration across these centuries. Also specifically depicted are details of how architecture engaged in the ritual narration and was used as an apparatus to articulate emperor-courtier relationships.
Historic preservation and heritage conservation are two mainstream concepts related to the sustainability and renewal of historic houses. With the aim of enhancing the sustainability of historic houses, this article criticizes the view of historic preservation that insists on preserving historic houses with their old appearances, which does not fully develop their sustainability. In contrast, the article provides support for the view of heritage conservation that aims to promote the sustainability of historic houses and related legislation. In the second and third parts, this article examines the theoretical origin of historic preservation, which emphasizes and summarizes the one-way protection of cultural memory via historic houses. In the fourth part, the article turns to heritage conservation, highlights the sustainable cycle between historic houses and cultural memory, and underlines the advantages of this sustainable cycle. In the fifth part, this article presents a sustainable approach to heritage conservation and related legal safeguards by taking the renewal of historic houses in China’s Bagua Village (or „Eight Diagrams Village”) as an example. In the last part, this paper summarizes the theoretical value, practical value and limitations of this article. The findings can facilitate the UN’s sustainable development of social inclusion, economic growth, and environmental protection to promote the heritage legislation and policy of present and future generations.
What is the relation of humanity to the ‘rest of nature’? Situated in the epoch of the Anthropocene and as concerns about climate emergency dramatically rise, the paper looks beyond the human/nature ontological separation and narratives of domination, in order to investigate the possibility of alternative worldviews and practices, instrumental for socio-ecological repair. Kentos, deriving from the greek verb kentaw (embroider or sting), describes the harvest practice of mastiha tree, which grows solely on Chios island. In the precision of the manual labour and the rituality of Kentos, one can read beyond pure production, a relationship of mutuality and a socio-ecological bond unfolding between human bodies, trees and their environment. The paper revisits the mastiha landscapes of Chios island, at North Aegean in Greece and narrates the story of relations that have occurred between humans and a tree native to the island, the Pistacia lentiscus var. Chia. It unpacks this socio-ecological bond and its various social, political and economic extensions, investigating how this interspecies relation has operated in history as a productive force and how it has survived in the present time, entangled in capitalist flows, climatic and urban pressures. The aim is to explore knowledge latent in interspecies relations that occurre in territories entangled in capitalist processes of extended urbanisation. Gathering this knowledge aims at informing alternative concepts and strategies for dealing with the contemporary socio-ecological challenges. The paper employs a methodology of relational thinking: it problematises and retracts strict ontological boundaries between human and ‘the rest of Nature’. By doing so it reveals a whole new space of relations between species and sets for an exploration of the relations that we encounter there. This space is examined and conceptualised through qualitative ethnographic work, analysis of documentary sources, oral history and secondary sources that have captured intentionally or unintentionally facets of the socio-ecological bond. Concluding, the paper identifies a socio-ecology of care nested in interspecies relations. It reveales care as a latent interspecies practice, as situated knowledge, as a more-than-human collective, and as an intrinsic value of reciprocity between forms of life, within and beyond capitalism, generating alternative socio-political formations and alternative vision. The paper ends with a proposition: care is a choice, a valid alternative option for design space, strategy and practice to re-engage productively with the ‘rest of nature’, material and living world.
The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is a crucial case in ancient Vietnam’s planning and design history. Although historical materials indicate that the orientation of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long has a dialectical unity relationship with the surroundingmountains, current research is only speculative generalization and lacks empirical analysis. Based on existing findings, this paper identifies the collineation measurement as a generalmethod in the Sinosphere countries for determining spatial orientation. Using a mixed-method of historical archives, fieldwork and simulation model, this paper summarizeshistorical cluesandthreedesignperspectives related to spatial orientation by statistical analysis. Further, it analyzes the logic and application of collineation measurement in constructing the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long. The results show that Vietnamese designers used Tàn Viên Mountain as a component of Thang Long city by collineating the twomountain peaks to the west. Tàn Viên Mountain and the highlands extending eastward fromit are used as the key to establishing the position of the Imperial Citadel, setting the spatial structure of human settlements, and the development of city space. The location, layout, and formof important buildings in the Imperial Citadel are also closely related to the surrounding landscape within 50 km.
One of the main reasons for the decline of urban historic areas in China is the coexistence of multiple property rights. It also deeply affects conservation and regeneration practice. This paper aims to propose a graphical method that illustrates the association between property rights, space, and resident behavior. Based on typological maps and justified graphs, a three-step method was proposed to visualize the relationships between these three elements. The final graph and quantitative data were used to observe the evolution of the courtyard building from a diachronic perspective, as well as to compare the residential behavior in different types from a synchronic perspective. The results show that following the subdivision of property rights, the building layout become more diverse due to various illegal additions, while the residential behavior within different building types tends to be consistent. Moreover, the study observed the traditional Chinese courtyard buildings’ adaptability. The findings contribute to understand the evolution of Chinese urban historic areas and internal motivation, and provide guidance for the conservation and regeneration practice.
The famous modernist architect Richard Neutra argued that movement through, and understanding of a building could be choreographed by controlling the visual stimuli that is available to a person. These claims are tested by quantifying the lines of sight and intelligibility of five of Neutra’s residential designs. A computational method, weighted axial line analysis, is used to investigate lines of sight and movement in five of Neutra’s house designs. The cumulative lengths of axial lines required to reach public and private spaces are compared, and centrality measures are calculated for each design that are weighted with line length data. Intelligibility metrics are calculated from these centrality measures. The first hypothesis, that visual stimuli in Neutra’s architecture is greater when accessing public rather than private spaces is supported by the results. The second hypothesis, that Neutra’s architecture is highly intelligible, is not supported by the results. This research tests two theories used to explain the works of a famous architect and it develops a new variation of well-known Space Syntax technique, to account for axial line lengths.
Shakespeare’s first Globe Theatre (early 17th century) is considered one of the most iconic theatres in English history, despite lasting less than twenty years and having little information directly attributable to its shape and size. This building, part of a wide variety of Elizabethan theatres found in London during a fertile period in the history of entertainment, has fascinated historians and scholars for years. Interest in Globe Theatre has led to several attempts at reconstruction around the world in recent decades, very few of which are historically reliable due to a lack of accurate sources and the need to adapt a historic building, burnt down in a fire in 1613, to modern safety standards. However, with the increasing evolution of modelling systems in a virtual environment, it is now possible to analyse the theatre in a spatially and historically more consistent way with surviving data. The aim of this paper is to provide a historically and constructively valid virtual model that can reopen the debate on the shapes and dimensions of Shakespeare’s first Globe Theatre. The model has been created by collecting the main hypotheses proposed by scholars. These were used to create the basic scheme, the plans, and then the whole theatre. Finally, the model was made available to encourage its use in future research and development.
The UNESCO label of World Heritage can attract a high number of tourists to heritage properties for their Outstanding Universal Values (OUV). Although international studies have demonstrated the World Heritage system can contribute to stimulating cultural tourism and boosting the local economy, how this heritage-led development process promotes urban conservation and morphological changes in cities is yet to be explored adequately. This paper aims to explore the urban morphology of a historic Chinese city after its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, taking the Old Town of Lijiang as case. The methods of spatial plan analysis and discourse analysis are used to analyse the data. The research findings have demonstrated that, theoretically, the Conzenian approach of urban morphology can be an effective framework for World Heritage OUV-monitoring. Methodologically, the analysis of spatial plans and multi-stakeholder interviews can reveal local urban morphology from macro to micro levels. Case-specifically in Lijiang, urban physical characteristics and building structures have been well maintained while traditional social fabric and neighbourhood networks have almost vanished. This research has incorporated the urban morphology approach into (world) heritage management in China, as well as worldwide, in order to maintain the balance between urban conservation and economic growth.
In view of the fire problems left in dense historical settlements in China, such as fire hazards that are prone to fires, difficulties in fighting fires, and the incomplete applicability of current fire codes due to the high historical value of buildings, this paper proposes a scientific and systematic performance-based fire protection method that gives priority to value preservation. This method is applied to dense historical settlements, and the effectiveness of this method is verified by evaluating the results of fire protection planning and renovation through multiple rounds of computer numerical simulation. The results show that in a connected cluster of buildings, one of the fire retrofitting requirements in the horizontal or vertical direction needs to be met between two adjacent buildings to ensure that the fire does not spread, and the retrofitting direction has to be selected based on the value and risk assessment results. When dense historical clusters are renovated for fire prevention planning, the optimal renovation path to meet fire safety can be effectively selected based on the method proposed in this paper.
The demand to satisfy environmental and economic performance requirements of buildings highlights the application of the responsive skin facades in offering superior performance, as compared to conventional façades. With this respect, responsive skins have become a growing field of research during the recent decade while a thorough review of studies investigating their design and technology aspects is still missing. To fill the identified gap, this study aims to present a systematic literature review and state of the art in an untouched research area of the responsive skins, integrated with their geometric and mechanism design approaches. To this end, a total of 89 studies, collected from two major bibliographic databases of Scopus and Google Scholar from the first of 2010 to the mid of 2021, were reviewed and several classifications and analyses on the associated design thinking, skin systems and responsive mechanisms were presented. The gap analysis of the findings indicates that the lack of controllable substitution design for mechanical skins is one of the reasons preventing the application of responsive skins in construction industry. Furthermore, the gap between simulation and constructability and the relationship between the designed skin geometry with climatic analysis and performance provide basis for future studies.
Brazilian city beaches are public spaces favoring citizens well-being. Urban studies relate built form and infrastructure with urban vitality and coastal studies underline uses as important for beach management, yet few researches relate form and infrastructure with beach uses. Understanding daily life as essential for public spaces and that spatial form relates with uses, this paper assesses time-based relationships between built and natural physical attributes and social life on the beaches of João Pessoa, a coastal city in North-east Brazil. Physical attributes are investigated at city scale - beach type, street network centrality and topography - and seafront scale - land uses, public/private interfaces, public infrastructure, beach sections and water quality. Beach social life was surveyed online, enquiring peoples’ beach choice, visiting time and place, activities and evaluation. Infrastructure and street network follow topography and help configure shore and promenade for different landscapes. More central beaches have diverse land uses, well-equipped promenades and lighting and were popular night and day, while less central beaches had less infrastructure and were visited only by day. Findings highlight how physical attributes facilitate uses and, together with peoples’ evaluation, can inform urban beach design and planning.
The complexity and fragmentation of people’s activity space are challenging to planners. However, the relevant studies are mostly concerned on the relationship between the social attributes and the activity space of residents in a single or several communities, or the spatiotemporal laws of activity space on a macro scale. The research on the spatial characteristics of residents’ activity space still needs to be strengthened. The present study analyses the spatial patterns of residents’ activity space based on mobile phone signaling data to fill the gap of previous studies that assessed residents’ activity space across small geographic areas. First, according to the spatial scope and direction of an activity space and residents’ activity coverage rate, spatial patterns can be divided into three types: compact, extended, and directional extension patterns. The CatBoost method is then used to statistically analyze the influencing variables of spatial patterns, and the order of importance of the following influencing factors is determined: the built environment is more influential than social and economic situations. This study aims to strengthen the understanding of residents’ activity space at the spatial level and provide a basis for the optimization of communities with different spatial patterns.
The environmental crisis has created a demand for practices that build awareness about the interconnections of diverse forms of life, allowing humans to understand complex earthly relationships and reconnect with the land they inhabit. This paper contributes to this debate by investigating bird watching activities and their relevance for architects and landscape architects. Drawing upon multispecies studies and the notion of landscape thinking, it examines the potential of birding as a caring landscaping practice. It analyzes the relationship between birders and sand martins in two case studies and probes how birders develop attentiveness for the birds and their shared environment. The investigation suggests that birding fosters care beyond the observed species. It can trigger a landscaping practice comparable to landscape thinking that helps humans reconnect with the land, fostering response-able spatial design practices.
Vernacular buildings are known for their localized passive settings to provide comfortable indoor environment without air conditioning systems. One alternative is the consistent ground temperature over the year that earth-sheltered envelopes take the benefit; however, ensuring annual indoor comfort might be challenging. Thus, this research monitors the indoor thermal indicators of 22 earth-sheltered buildings in Meymand, Iran with a warmdry climate. Furthermore, the observations are used to validate the simulation results through two outdoor and indoor environmental parameters, air temperature and relative humidity during the hottest period of the year. Findings indicated that the main thermal comfort differences among case studies were mainly due to their architectural layouts where the associated variables including length, width, height, orientation, window-to-wall ratio, and shading depth were optimized through a linkage between Ladybug-tools and Genetic Algorithm (GA) concerning adaptive thermal comfort model definition and could enhance the annual thermal comfort by 31%.