Architecture Commons^™

Buildings With Brain Power: Library Architecture In Neural Terms., Hannah Bennett

Hannah Bennett

The connection between neuroscience and the built environment is a fairly new interdisciplinary field and one in which both fields, in their respective pursuits, have worked to understand the relationship between design choices, human behavior, and biological processes. Taken together and applied in tandem, these two activities have potential to vastly improve the effectiveness of buildings designed with the healthcare facilities, laboratories, or elementary schools, all of which share objectives of healing and intellectual cultivation. This paper will extend the dialogue to library design, perhaps the most representationally loaded expression of “mental space.” The library has seen profound changes in …

Il Calcolo Del Sviluppo Umano, Nicolás Persico

Nicolás Persico

Dinamica sociale e contratto socio economico: quando un sociologo, fisico, ingegnere e finanziario si incontrano.

Imagining Possibilities For Healthy Appalachian Communities In An Emerging Postindustrial Landscape, Brian Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This paper explores how community might be re-imagined to promote incipient social and economic agendas born increasingly of broad-minded citizen initiatives within the Appalachian region aimed at what is generally understood as “development,” but of a form distinct from the prevailing models of a more industrial age. I would like to ask whether a city like Huntington, West Virginia can emerge as a progressive example of what we might term postindustrial, urban regeneration and perhaps what we might call community healing—specifically through grassroots movement now finding local governmental support in collective attempts to transform this place from one defined primarily …

"Toxic" Workplaces: The Negative Interface Between The Physical And Social Environments, Linda Too, Michael Harvey

Linda Too

Toxic real estate has been used as a negative phrase to describe non-performing assets on a firm's balance sheet. Today there is another form of "TOXIC" real estate that needs management's attention, i.e. physical workplaces that are harmful to employees on a day-in and day-out basis. Particularly when productivity of workforce is now central to business competitiveness, it is timely to explore the interface between physical and social environments as many of the social/psychological impacts on employees have not been recognized or calibrated. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the links between physical workplace and social behaviour.

Nonconformity And Street Design In West Hollywood, California, Renia Ehrenfeucht

Renia Ehrenfeucht

No abstract provided.

Jos Museum Arabic Manuscripts Conservation (Jmamc) Project 27-31 August 2012, Michaelle L. Biddle

Michaelle Biddle

The Jos Museum Arabic Manuscripts Collection is one of the oldest and largest manuscript collections in Nigeria. Because of the collection’s importance, its extremely poor housing and condition, the Jos Museum Arabic Manuscripts Conservation (JMAMC) Project was created. The goal of the week-long project was to gather fine-grained, detailed information as to the state of the collection so that a more comprehensive conservation, cataloging and digitization project could be formulated. Biddle details why the collection should be transferred on long-term loan to Arewa House Kaduna.

Precursors To Planning The Streets Of Los Angeles, California, C 1880-1920, Renia Ehrenfeucht

Renia Ehrenfeucht

No abstract provided.

Recovery In A Shrinking City: Challenges To ‘Rightsizing’ Post-Katrina New Orleans, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Marla Nelson

Renia Ehrenfeucht

No abstract provided.

Young Professionals As Ambivalent Change Agents In New Orleans After The 2005 Hurricanes, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Marla Nelson

Renia Ehrenfeucht

After the 2005 hurricanes, newcomers arrived in New Orleans to help rebuild the city. The influx of one identifiable group, young professionals and postgraduates, raised hopes and concerns that New Orleans would gentrify. Based on semistructured interviews with 78 young and mid-career professionals, this paper examines how the young professionals approached an ambivalent situation where they were working to rebuild a better city while retaining its distinct cultural qualities, given that their presence itself contributed to the cultural change. They reconciled these tensions with an appreciation for localism that, for newcomers in particular, was expressed through knowing and responding to …

Two Cheers For Instant Runoff Voting, Michael E. Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

In multicandidate elections, an unpopular candidate can often win with a minority of the vote if his or her opponents split their votes among several candidates. To solve this problem, some commentators have endorsed instant runoff voting (IRV). Under IRV, voters rank their choices, and the choices of the weaker candidates would be distributed among the leaders. As a result, a candidate who has a plurality of votes but is opposed by the majority of the electorate would be less likely to prevail. Most law-related scholarship on IRV has either strongly endorsed or strongly opposed IRV. This article, by contrast, …

How Far Do Low-Income Parents Travel To Shop For Food?, Amy Hillier, Carolyn Cannuscio, Allison Karpyn, Jacqueline Mclaughlin, Mariana Chilton, Karen Glanz

Amy Hillier

Research on the impact of the built environment on obesity and access to healthful foods often fails to incorporate information about how individuals interact with their environment. A sample of 198 low-income WIC recipients from two urban neighborhoods were interviewed about where they do their food shopping and surveys were conducted of food stores in their neighborhoods to assess the availability of healthful foods. Results indicate that participants rarely shop at the closest supermarket, traveling on average 1.58 miles for non-WIC food shopping and 1.07 miles for WIC shopping. Findings suggest that access to healthful foods is not synonymous with …

Sprawl In Canada And The United States (Powerpoint), Michael E. Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

PowerPoints for a speech explaining that sprawl in Canada is (1) less extensive than in the USA and (2) caused partially by government regulation.

Planning, Population Loss And Equity In New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Marla Nelson

Renia Ehrenfeucht

Shrinking, slow-growth and fast-growth cities have different opportunities and constraints. This paper uses New Orleans following the severe flood damage from the 2005 hurricanes as a case study to investigate the challenges to developing equitable and effective plans in a city with significant population loss. By addressing four elements that are necessary for effective planning in depopulated areas—strategies for targeted investment and consolidation; alternatives for underused areas; mechanisms to reintegrate abandoned parcels; and plans for infrastructure and service provision—we argue that the lack of effective tools was a pivotal impediment to effective planning.

Research Statement, Pingkang Yu

Pingkang Yu

No abstract provided.

Planning Urban Sidewalks: Infrastructure, Daily Life, And Destinations, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Renia Ehrenfeucht

Sidewalks have become important to diverse planning concerns that range from walking for health and transportation to economic development, recreation and environment improvement. Given their multiple roles in rapidly changing cities, this paper asks ’how should we plan sidewalks?’ We contend that planners can create better cities for more people by reconsidering three facets of sidewalk planning: sidewalks as infrastructure, sidewalks as spaces of everyday life, and sidewalks as leisure destinations. The objective is to build quality infrastructure and more adaptable spaces throughout the city

Sprawl In Canada And The United States, Michael E. Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain (1) whether suburban sprawl is as widespread in Canadian metropolitan areas as in their American counterparts, and (2) whether Canadian government policies, and in particular Canadian municipal land use and transportation policies, encourage sprawl. The thesis concludes that sprawl is less widespread in two respects. First, Canadian central cities have not declined to the same extent as American central cities. Second, urban and suburban Canadians are less dependent on automobiles than are Americans. The thesis goes on to point out that in Canada, as in the United States, government land use and …

Critical Foundations: Providing Australia’S 21st Century Infrastructure, Michael Regan

Michael Regan

Extract:

Infrastructure is undoubtedly the least understood of the major asset classes in Australia. A tradition of public ownership and operation, its status as a public good and a lack of information about its investment characteristics in both public and private hands has contributed to limited recognition of its role in national and regional economies. However, this situation is changing. A coincidence of political, economic and financial events in the lead up to the worldwide economic recession of the late 1980s and Australia's microeconomic reforms of the 1990s b[r]ought into sharper focus the central role that infrastructure plays in both …

Civil Liberties And The Regulation Of Public Space: The Case Of Sidewalks In Las Vegas, Evelyn Blumenburg, Renia Ehrenfeucht

Renia Ehrenfeucht

Conflicts over the nature of and rights associated with public space have a long history and have prompted numerous regulatory responses. Perhaps nowhere in the USA has the regulation of public space been as far-reaching as in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the financial stakes associated with sidewalks are enormous. This study examines how local officials mediate among varied and competing uses of the sidewalk. In defining the function of the sidewalks narrowly, and passively deferring questions of civil liberties, local officials have effectively controlled almost all aspects of public behavior. In recent years, cities have invested in major commercial revitalization …

Pedestrian Safety Is Not A Tort, Michael E. Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

In recent decades, American state and local highway officials have built wide streets and roads designed primarily to accommodate high-speed automobile traffic. However, such high-speed streets are more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists than streets with slower traffic, and thus fail to adequately accommodate nondrivers. Government officials design streets for high-speed traffic partially because of their fear of tort liability. An influential street engineering manual, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ “Green Book”, has generally favored the construction of such high-speed streets, and transportation planners fear that if they fail to follow the Green Book’s recommendations, they …

Centum Homines: The Prototype Of The Alexander Mosaic And The Military Museum In The Hellenistic World, Peter Nulton

Peter E. Nulton Ph.D.

Although it is generally accepted that the Alexander Mosaic copies a painting of the 4th Century BCE, the attribution of this prototype has never been settled. Numerous attempts have been made to associate it with painters recorded in Pliny's Natural History, notably Philoxenos of Eretria, and Alexander's court painter, Apelles.

If the painting were the work of any artist whose name survives, as strong a case can be made for Aristeides of Thebes as for Apelles or Philoxenos. Since Pliny's comment that Aristeides painted a battle against the Persians follows his treatment of the works of Apelles, he is likely …

Constructing The Sidewalk: Municipal Government And The Production Of Public Space In Los Angeles, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Renia Ehrenfeucht

The process of creating public spaces has been one of defining what constitutes public activities and how they can occur. This was as true for the sidewalks as for spaces such as the roadbed, parks and markets. The sidewalks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were used for commercial, political and social activities. During this period, the Los Angeles municipal government and urban residents constructed hundreds of miles of sidewalks along with other street improvements. In response to differing claims to the sidewalks and varying interests in the purpose of the streets, the city began to emphasize pedestrian …

The Sanctuary Of Apollo Hypoakraios And Imperial Athens, Peter Nulton

Peter E. Nulton Ph.D.

The Cave Sanctuary of Apollo on the North Slope of the Acropolis at Athens was investigated in 1896-97 and produced a rich collection of inscriptions relating to the cult. These inscriptions are published in full for the first time in this work. The author discusses the history of the cult. Far from being of great antiquity as readers of Euripides' "Ion" have long assumed, the cult was instituted in the time of Augustus when "The Athenians thought it fitting that their archons swear an oath that upheld tradition in connection to Apollo Patroos, but simultaneously honored their 'new Apollo'", the …

Form And Meaning: The Conventionalization Of The Leaf Ornament, Kresten Jespersen

Kresten Jespersen

As did Owen Jones, Bloomer argues for a modern style of ornament to decorate a modern architecture. Based on formal laws rather than theories of classical or naturalistic imitation, conventionalization can be seen as being explicitly modern. Moreover, deriving from the work of ornament, these laws are dependent on intrinsic rather than extrinsic principles.

An Agentive Model Of Person-Environment Relations, Nicholas Patricios

Nicholas Patricios

Three fundamentally different positions regarding the conceptualization of person‐environment relations are briefly discussed. An argument is made for the transactional‐constructivist position which regards the nature of what we take to be the environment as that which is only apprehended through the minds and actions of persons. The transformational process of this view of person‐environment relations, that of environmental knowing‐action, is elaborated upon in some detail. The transactional‐constructivist position, however, is transformed into an agentive one by adopting from the three basic images of persons that have been identified that of a person as agent. Consequently in the agentive process of …

The Conceptual Determinants Of Two Archetypal City Forms, Nicholas Patricios

Nicholas Patricios

The two urban spatial forms analyzed from a cosmological point of view are the circular and the orthogonal. The circular symbolism of the Near Eastern cities is considered first followed by the Plato's theoretical city of Atlantis and then the ideal cities of the Renaissance architects. Circular cities of the 19th century, those of the Utopian Socialists, had in contrast an ideological basis. In addition to the practical basis for the orthogonal layout conceptual influences are evident in the grid cities of the ancient Greeks, in the Spanish Laws of the Indies, and those cities designed later to express the …