Salt Chapel

Abstract

The Salt Chapel invokes the sacral potentiality latent in the natural landscape of Utah's Great Salt Lake Basin. This theoretical project parses that landscape's phenomena, advocating for the singularity of the essences that inhere within a severe terrain composed of salt flats and shallows. A contemplative spatial enclosure, the Salt Chapel is dedicated to salt—nature's most ubiquitous, fragile, and “humble” of mineralogical crystals. As a mobile structure, the chapel celebrates the distinct character of the lake's endlessly shifting shoreline of super-saline water.     

Constructing Tales

While acknowledging that Metabolism's idea of assembly and disassembly and Arata Isozaki's criticism of it with the imagery of ruins are modern phenomena, my paper situates them within the Japanese intellectual legacy of mujo. Mujo, a medieval concept of Buddhism, literally meaning ‘no (mu) permanence (jo),” was expressed at the level of architecture through hermits' huts, in particular through their two conditions: one, assembly and disassembly based on hook-and- eye constructional system; and the other, ruinous stale that is leaky and shaky. Metabolism's system of construction between the permanent shafts and the secondarily attached parts corresponds to the former of these two conditions of the medieval huts. It is. however, with Isozaki's vision of the complete ashes and ruins of mega-structures and of architecture itself that the radical ephemerality of mujo is realized.     

城市韧性研究的巴斯德范式剖析

进入21世纪以来,城市韧性研究日益兴起,理论累积也达到了一定程度,现如何开展基于生态实践智慧的城市韧性研究,使其从理论探索走向实践研究显得尤为重要。从生态实践智慧的首选研究范式——巴斯德范式的视角出发,通过Web of Science和中国知网两大平台检索城市韧性相关中英文文献,对文献进行研究范式分类统计分析,探讨了城市韧性研究中玻尔范式盛行的现象和原因,并提出了城市韧性巴斯德范式研究的建议。     

Urban Villages

Is the Village in the City (ViC) potentially an urban scar or a vibrant community? Meng Yan , principal of urban design think tank and architectural firm URBANUS, advocates a design approach to the urban village phenomena that recognises the vitality of the social conditions they provide and how they might, with some intervention from designers, prove a ready-made solution to China's housing problem. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

在第二次全国“古建园林学术讨论会”上的总结报告

在第二次全国“古建园林学术讨论会”上,大家共同认识到古建园林是我国古老文化的一部分,它反映了各个历史时期的文化现象。我们应从环境意识来认识古建园林的修复和民族风格新建筑的设计,并且需认识到建筑文化是多元、多方位的。对待传统古建园林的维护、修复和使用问题,我们要根据不同情况进行不同处理,并在本次讨论会上制定了今后的工作计划。     

Critical architecture: Introduction

Siza's architecture is remarkable for its precise accommodation to sites. Since the 1970s it has shown a more explicit reliance upon typological forms. Both aspects of his work suggest an architecture anchored to history. Yet, for all the importance that site and type seem to play in Siza's work, they emerge as strange protagonists. Although tightly calibrated to site, Siza's architecture reveals the remoteness of the past, establishing an intricate contrast between itself and the underlying site. Types are deployed, but the hierarchies of our movement through them, of implied architectural promenades, seem to occur against their grain - as if the historical orders manifest in types were inherited instruments of a remote and somewhat alien past. This article delineates these phenomena in Siza's work, and reveals their genealogy in the historical milieu out of which Siza emerged.     

Fire development theory—An overview

Man's qualitative understanding of fire phenomena has enabled him to develop the fire prevention, control, and extinguishment methods in use today Quantitative understanding derived from the application of engineering science has resulted in significant improvements in many areas of technology. Would not the same approach, the author asks, benefit fire protection engineering?     

The historiography of mud: Vincent Scully,Ralph Knowles and the image of ecology

In this article, I argue that the representational practices of ecology played a critical role in the field of architectural history in the late 1960s and 1970s as scholars sought to re-evaluate prevailing historical narratives in the context of environmental crisis. Taking Vincent Scully's and Ralph Knowles' writings about Pueblo architecture in New Mexico as a point of focus, the paper explores ways in which architects and historians developed image-making techniques—from panoramic photography to energy performance diagrams—in shifting the focus of architectural history from static monuments to the feedback between architecture and environmental phenomena.     

The Creative Gaze: Doxiadis' discovery

This research uses vision as a methodological tool in order to highlight the relationship between vision and architecture as represented through Constantinos Doxiadis' dissertation which analyses architectural space in ancient Greece using a system of visual angles. This relationship designates Doxiadis' association with a broader philosophical environment of the European between-wars era where theories concerning the aesthetic dimension of vision are at the forefront. Doxiadis' dissertation as a characteristic paradigm of early modernism brings forth a certain conceptualisation of vision as an analytical and aesthetic tool used in architectural design. Nineteenth-century architectural theory advanced vision as the most important amongst other senses. Since Choisy's concept of the picturesque at the Acropolis there is a theoretical tradition about the way the observer understands architectural space through a series of successive perspective images. Architecture always deals with phenomena. Visual representation transfers the experience of the object when the actual object is absent.     

Simulation of the kin behavior in building occupant evacuation based on Cellular Automaton

Individual behavior of occupants, which is quite complex, greatly affects the route choice, the evacuation time and the efficiency. The phenomenon of the kin behavior often occurs during evacuation. In this paper, a two-dimensional Cellular Automata model is applied to simulate the process of evacuation with respect to the kin behavior. Many interesting phenomena during real evacuation, such as incoherence, jamming, gathering, backtracking and waiting, are simulated by the variation of the building structure, the occupants' arrangement, the kin attraction and the route selection. We conclude that the psychology of going with the crowd is not always harmful; the conclusions about the kin behavior in one-exit case are the same as those in two-exits case; the number of the sub-groups and the members in each sub-group influence the evacuation efficiency a lot; the typical phenomena of waiting and backtracking in real evacuation do reduce the evacuation efficiency. We have preliminarily found that the proper kin behavior is beneficial to improve the evacuation efficiency.     

Green Cities and “IT839”: A New Paradigm for Economic Growth in South Korea

The Korean government, like many in Asia, is actively building green cities from scratch—the most famous being Sejong, Songdo, and Cheongna. All these are considered models of green cities and are characterized by similar networked smart technological systems. This research builds on recent scholarly discourse by Anthony Townsend on smart technologies and urban planning, and Sofia T. Shwayri and Simon Joss on the “ubiquitous-eco-city” phenomena in Korea. In particular, it aims to extend Shwayri's hypothesis that the model is developed for export by uncovering the goals of the green city model actors. By tracing the national government's economic growth ICT strategy—“IT839”—and its key industry stakeholders, KT Telecommunications, this paper illuminates how Korea's green city model is being driven by an agenda of horizontal technology transfer in which the government has aimed to extend its traditional markets, and create a new paradigm for economic growth.     

The Nomenclature of Style: Brutalism,Minimalism, Art History and Visual Style in Architecture Journals

Naming styles or movements is a basic mechanism of architectural journals. The announcement of phenomena such as ‘critical regionalism’ or ‘deconstructivism’ involves referring architectural developments to a context in socio-politics or philosophy, and thus provides at least an initial resistance to their understanding as formal styles, which they quickly become. A different strategy is the naming of an architectural moment in the traditional form of an art historical style. Peter Reyner Banham and the Architecture Review's promotion of ‘Brutalism’ as an anti-aesthetic, look its conceptual form from explicit movements, with members and agenda, such as Futurism. Architectural Design's promotion of ‘Minimalism’ in the l990s exemplifies a different kind of style. In both cases, apparently divergent uses of ‘style’ are complicated by the process of naming, and by the tendency of the journal's graphic design to become the style—to become self-identifying.     

Transient conduction and convection heat transfer across a multi-layer floor subjected to multiple heat sources

This paper analyses the transient heat transfer across multi-layer floors subjected to multiple heat sources. The formulation that is proposed to solve this problem uses analytical expressions handling both conduction and convection phenomena. The Green's functions (analytical expressions) for the layered formation are established by imposing the continuity of temperatures and heat fluxes at the medium interfaces between the various layers. The heat field inside a layer is obtained by adding the contribution of the direct heat incident field, generated as in an unbounded medium, to the heat produced by a set of virtual surface heat sources, that take into account the presence of the interfaces.     

From waste land to Canada's tobacco production heartland: Landscape change in Norfolk County,Ontario

The cultural landscape of Norfolk County displays the remnants of numerous cycles of transformation. In the mid-19th century, the region was the hub of the Lake Erie timber trade and a major supplier to America's growing urban markets. By the start of the 20th century, much of the forest was gone, many farms were abandoned and the region was plagued by severe soil erosion. Within a few decades the problems of a degraded environment and depressed local economy were long forgotten: the Ontario government targeted the sandy ‘waste lands' with a reforestation programme, and the introduction of flue-cured tobacco in 1922 marked the beginning of an era of unprecedented prosperity. Conceptualizing landscape change as a continuum rather than discrete episodes allows us to expose the multitude and complexity of human responses to perceived environmental problems and earlier interventions in the land. Taking a longer historical perspective also highlights how natural phenomena (i.e. storm events), economic choices, government decisions, and the unexpected outcomes of human intervention all played a role in the creation of waste land in the Norfolk Sand Plain and its subsequent transformation into Canada's tobacco production heartland.     

The Project of Modernity: Can Architecture Make It?

The title of this essay suggests that architecture's relation to modernity is a complex one. What needs to be discussed is the specificity of architecture's conflict with modernity. While historical analysis theorizes socio-cultural and political phenomena, the thematic of architecture's entanglement with capitalism necessitates an argument, addressing the dialogical relationship between theory and practice. Historical analysis is one thing; mobilization of history to change the present situation is another. This much is clear from the discourse of thinkers who are associated with ‘critical theory,’ and the work of architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri, among others.

This essay attempts to read Tafuri's Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, translated into English in 1976,¹ in the context of current critical theories and to demonstrate the relevance of his argument today. To be more specific, the intention is to approach Tafuri's text from the argument presented in the first chapter of Susan Buck-Morss's Dreamworld and Catastrophe.² The author re-writes the interaction between the early modern states and avant-garde artists in reference to space and time. Her paradigm suspends the idea of Zeitgeist and shows how space (territory) was the subject matter of an idea of progress that was imagined by both capitalist and socialist states of the 1930s. Secondly, Buck-Morss discusses the ways architecture occasionally went out-of-time in the historical cosmology, formulated by the forces of modernization that were unravelling during the early decades of the last century. Her discourse provides a system of periodization that surpasses historicism. Tafuri's vision of history also questions historicism,³ but if read in the light of Buck-Morss's discourse, one can see ideas in Tafuri which are perhaps more relevant to architecture's situation today than when they were written.     

The aeolian project: a MAB‐UNESCO investigation to promote sustainable tourism in the mediterranean area

The Aeolian archipelago is undergoing social and economical changes that threaten its natural and cultural patrimony, which is also the essence of a tourist appeal, as an image of uncontaminated sites, where nature's ancestral phenomena and seasonal rhythms are experienced. Salina island may serve as a prototype for exploring the possibility of implementing conservation strategies compatible with human needs, landscape preservation and sustainable economic development. By means of the CORINE methodology, “ecological sensitivity” (from a functional viewpoint) and “ecological vulnerability” (either physical or ecological) maps have been drawn to objectively quantify the environmental risk. Some final remarks are devoted to clarify the concepts of “environmental perception” and “citizens’ consent”.     

Myths and Reality: Anti-social Behaviour in Scotland

There has been widespread debate in Britain about the problems caused by 'anti-social' neighbours. This paper considers the definitions of anti-social behaviour and possible causal factors before going on to investigate the basis for some of the most commonly held views about the issue. It concludes that it is more useful to consider the problem as comprising three distinct but related phenomena of neighbour disputes, neighbourhood problems and crime. Although the causal factors link to the wider debate about residualisation, solutions have focused on tightening legal sanctions rather than on wider societal problems. The limited research evidence does not support views that problems only occur in public sector estates, or that drugs, community care policies, lifestyle differences and lack of tolerance are major factors. In addition, landlords were not developing preventive measures or using existing legal sanctions effectively.     

Simulation and analysis on control effectiveness of TRVs in district heating systems

Based upon an existing building and heating system with thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs), an integrated model is developed for simulating the thermal and hydraulic behavior of the heating system under various operation cases. According to the simulation results, the effectiveness of TRVs in reducing overheating has been studied. The results indicate that when the set value of the TRV is kept at 2-3, its effectiveness in reducing the overheating phenomena caused by an excessive water flow rate is less than 60%. If the overheating phenomena is caused by an excessive supply water temperature and radiator area, the effectiveness of the TRV can reach about 80%; the TRV's effect becomes more obvious with increasing overheating degree; however, about 20%-40% of overheating loss still needs to be resolved by improving improper operation adjustment and design. Considering these results, a control strategy is proposed, in which the supply water temperature is adjusted daily according to the flow performance of the system, and the pump is operated with frequency conversion and constant pressure difference. Further simulation indicates that, under the new control strategy, the variation of the heat supply quantity of the system can match the heat load change, and the flow rate of the system can be controlled at an appropriate range.     

Rudolf Schwarz and the speech of the land – grammar as a political device in postwar Germany

The paper examines the connection of language and urban form in the work of the German architect and urban planner Rudolf Schwarz. Schwarz, who is credited with having exerted major influence on the protagonists of modern architecture such as Mies van der Rohe, was one of the most famous architects in postwar Germany and the author of the 1950 plan for the rebuilding of Cologne's destroyed inner city. From the 1950s onwards, Cologne's once dense mediaeval nucleus was restructured by a network of six-lane thoroughfares and various sequences of scattered concrete blocks. This redesign, as radically modern as it may seem, was closely tied to Schwarz's traditionalist conception of language. His linguistic arguments were influenced by a century-long tradition among conservative German intellectuals, who strove for a deeper and unmediated understanding of the world through verbal communication. Claiming an intrinsic relationship between the structure of German grammar and of the phenomena it captures, they believed in the ‘rootedness’ of their nation in its geographic environment through language. In that respect, Schwarz's conception and use of language – which was in many ways exemplary for German city planners in the postwar era – laid the groundwork for the modernist transformation of the city and thus for a dilemma that haunted German urban planning in the decades that followed.