Structural Intuition and Creative Play: An Architectural Perspective to Shell Pedagogies

The notions of structural intuition and creative play had been raised by particular structural artists (Billington, 1983 [1]). Professor Pier Luigi Nervi expressed the importance of Structural Intuition in his 1965 Elliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University (Nervi, 1965 [3]) whilst Professor Heinz Isler described and drew attention to the idea of creative play in his shell practice through a child-like and non-preconceived observations of nature. Illustrated by past experience of working with architecture students in hands-on design/ construction workshops, as well as from explorations in a design studio environment, this paper presents and shares learning and teaching practices by the author, with a specificity to architectural education, in hope of opening up discussions on the pedagogies of shell teaching with creative experimental research

Sharing data through confidential clouds: an architectural perspective

© 2015 IEEE.Cloud and mobile are two major computing paradigms that are rapidly converging. However, these models still lack a way to manage the dissemination and control of personal and business-related data. To this end, we propose a framework to control the sharing, dissemination and usage of data based on mutually agreed Data Sharing Agreements (DSAs). These agreements are enforced uniformly, and end-to-end, both on Cloud and mobile platforms, and may reflect legal, contractual or user-defined preferences. We introduce an abstraction layer that makes available the enforcement functionality across different types of nodes whilst hiding the distribution of components and platform specifics. We also discuss a set of different types of nodes that may run such a layer

ARCHITECTURAL PERSPECTIVE OF GENDER ROLE IN DIGITAL ERA

Many influential architects—many of them female—have been able to change how the world sees architectural design and the built environment. Their works are masterpieces that have not only been able to transform how the world understands architecture, but have also forefronted gender equality. This study thus seeks to forefront the building design of female architects who have influenced world civilization. Using a case study method, this research explains the architectural flow adopted by women architects, as well as the function, design, and characteristics of their works. It shows that women such as Julia Morgan, Zaha Hadid, and Norma Merrick Sklarek have been able to balance and inform urban development around the world, providing role models for young female architects in the digital era . Publication Rationale: We desire to show that gender equality exists in the world of architecture, and that the works of female architects have been able to influence world civilization

Early Childhood Educational Toys through an Architectural Perspective

This capstone explores the overlaps between architectural training and early childhood education, and how architectural design can inform the design process of creating educational toys for young children. Through an analysis of pedagogies used throughout history in early childhood education and my own personal experiences of architecture school, an understanding of how an architectural perspective can influence activities for three- to five-year-olds is developed. Precedent studies of open-ended educational toys designed by educators and designers introduced the design thinking mindset necessary to create an effectively enriching toy. The next phase of this project involves designing an educational toy for the given age group based off the principles derived from the background and research of early childhood education techniques. A project statement is then formed to determine intended effects of the educational toy and then a design process is initiated to achieve these results. The iterative process tests various textures, shapes, sizes, and connections. The designed toy was tested with a group of children in the targeted age range attending the Jean Tyson Child Development Study Center. Edits to the designed toy are made based off the children’s verbal and indicated feedback and the trial is repeated to gauge success of functionality and the children’s preferences. Although further and longer-term testing is required to determine the lasting educational effects of the toy, the design is evaluated using the initial project statement

Early Childhood Educational Toys through an Architectural Perspective

This capstone explores the overlaps between architectural training and early childhood education, and how architectural design can inform the design process of creating educational toys for young children. Through an analysis of pedagogies used throughout history in early childhood education and my own personal experiences of architecture school, an understanding of how an architectural perspective can influence activities for three- to five-year-olds is developed. Precedent studies of open-ended educational toys designed by educators and designers introduced the design thinking mindset necessary to create an effectively enriching toy. The next phase of this project involves designing an educational toy for the given age group based off the principles derived from the background and research of early childhood education techniques. A project statement is then formed to determine intended effects of the educational toy and then a design process is initiated to achieve these results. The iterative process tests various textures, shapes, sizes, and connections. The designed toy was tested with a group of children in the targeted age range attending the Jean Tyson Child Development Study Center. Edits to the designed toy are made based off the children’s verbal and indicated feedback and the trial is repeated to gauge success of functionality and the children’s preferences. Although further and longer-term testing is required to determine the lasting educational effects of the toy, the design is evaluated using the initial project statement

dReDBox: A Disaggregated Architectural Perspective for Data Centers

Data centers are currently constructed with fixed blocks (blades); the hard boundaries of this approach lead to suboptimal utilization of resources and increased energy requirements. The dReDBox (disaggregated Recursive Datacenter in a Box) project addresses the problem of fixed resource proportionality in next-generation, low-power data centers by proposing a paradigm shift toward finer resource allocation granularity, where the unit is the function block rather than the mainboard tray. This introduces various challenges at the system design level, requiring elastic hardware architectures, efficient software support and management, and programmable interconnect. Memory and hardware accelerators can be dynamically assigned to processing units to boost application performance, while high-speed, low-latency electrical and optical interconnect is a prerequisite for realizing the concept of data center disaggregation. This chapter presents the dReDBox hardware architecture and discusses design aspects of the software infrastructure for resource allocation and management. Furthermore, initial simulation and evaluation results for accessing remote, disaggregated memory are presented, employing benchmarks from the Splash-3 and the CloudSuite benchmark suites.This work was supported in part by EU H2020 ICT project dRedBox, contract #687632.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

An Architectural Approach to Managing Knowledge Stocks and Flows: Implications for Reinventing the HR Function

Sustainable competitive advantage is increasingly dependent upon a firm’s ability to manage both its knowledge stocks and flows. We examine how different employees’ knowledge stocks are managed within a firm and how—through their recombination and renewal—those stocks can create sustainable competitive advantage. To do this, we first establish an architectural framework for managing human resources and review how the framework provides a foundation for studying alternative employment arrangements used by firms in allocating knowledge stocks. Next, we extend the architecture by examining how knowledge stocks (human capital) can be both recombined and renewed through cooperative and entrepreneurial archetypes. We then position two HR configurations to focus on facilitating these two archetypes. By identifying and managing different forms of social capital across employee groups within the architecture, HR practices can facilitate the flow of knowledge within the firm, which ultimately leads to sustainable competitive advantage

Designing tailored spaces for Alzheimer’s patients, an architectural perspective

Cuando el alzhéimer entra en un hogar, una serie de cambios se desencadenan en la vida diaria de sus moradores, su forma de habitar cambia inevitablemente. Ante algunos comportamientos de usuarios con problemas de memoria cabe preguntarse si están condicionados por su estado o por su entorno; si es esto último, ¿cómo proyectar para la ausencia de memoria? La forma de abordar este problema desde la arquitectura requiere una nueva perspectiva. Supone ver a la persona no como un enfermo con un conjunto de síntomas sino como un habitante que vive en un entorno físico que puede ser proyectado o modificado para adecuarlo a sus peculiares y cambiantes necesidades. El propósito del artículo es exponer cómo la arquitectura, como arte y como técnica, aborda este problema, aportando una metodología de investigación que busca conocer las demandas concretas de estos habitantes en su experiencia diaria del espacio doméstico, desde la seguridad, la accesibilidad y la personalización como estimulación sensorial y estabilizadora emocional; generando además un conocimiento que permita desarrollar mecanismos y elementos de composición necesarios para proyectar, construir y humanizar un entorno que complete carencias del enfermo, se adapte a la evolución de la dolencia y mejore su calidad de vida.When Alzheimers afflicts a person it also has a major impact on the home. This inevitably means that significant changes must be made. As architects, we have pondered how we can better design living spaces for those affected by various degrees of memory impairment. How to design for the absence of memory? The approach to this challenge, from an architectural standpoint, needs a new perspective that requires focusing on the specific necessities of an inhabitant, as opposed to the effects of the disease itself. We are looking more at the specific implications on the living environments and how they could be designed or modified to adapt to the subjects constantly changing conditions. The purpose of this article is to show how architecture, from its duality as an art/technical discipline, is tackling this problem developing research methodology which involves looking at the concrete needs of the users in their daily domestic space, analyzing its security, accessibility and the customization of space as a sensory stimulus and emotional stabilizer. Additionally, we seek to generate a body of knowledge in order to develop composition elements and mechanisms to design, build and humanize the environment to fulfill their necessities, adapting it to the evolution of the disease and improving quality of life