Thin buildings

Let X be a building of uniform thickness q+1. L^2-Betti numbers of X are reinterpreted as von-Neumann dimensions of weighted L^2-cohomology of the underlying Coxeter group. The dimension is measured with the help of the Hecke algebra. The weight depends on the thickness q. The weighted cohomology makes sense for all real positive values of q, and is computed for small q. If the Davis complex of the Coxeter group is a manifold, a version of Poincare duality allows to deduce that the L^2-cohomology of a building with large thickness is concentrated in the top dimension.Comment: This is the version published by Geometry & Topology on 24 May 200

Buildings and Health

Facts about radon, lead, air quality, mold, VOCs, and costs related to buildings and health

Buildings or Festivals?

Marco Vitale ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in Alter Geschichte (Epigraphie, Numismatik) in Basel und Zürich. Er wurde 2010 promoviert mit einer Untersuchung zur Verwaltung der hellenistischen und römischen Asia Minor (Eparchie und Koinon). Er veröffentlichte eine weitere Monografie zum antiken Syrien (Koinon Syrias). Seine jüngste Veröffentlichung, die Habilitationsschrift, erschien 2017 (Das Imperium in Wort und Bild)

unreinforced masonry buildings

A recent earthquake of M=4.9 occurred on 29 October 2007 in C, ameli, Denizli, which is located in a seismically active region at southwest Anatolia, Turkey. It has caused extensive damages at unreinforced masonry buildings like many other cases observed in Turkey during other previous earthquakes. Most of the damaged structures were non-engineered, seismically deficient, unreinforced masonry buildings. This paper presents a site survey of these damaged buildings. In addition to typical masonry damages, some infrequent, event-specific damages were also observed. Reasons for the relatively wide spread damages considering the magnitude of the event are discussed in the paper

Green noise or green value? Measuring the price effects of environmental certification in commercial buildings

This paper investigates the price effects of environmental certification on commercial real estate assets. It is argued that there are likely to be three main drivers of price differences between certified and non-certified buildings. First, certified buildings offer a bundle of benefits to occupiers relating to business productivity, image and occupancy costs. Second, due to these occupier benefits, certified buildings can result in higher rents and lower holding costs for investors. Third, certified buildings may require a lower risk premium. Drawing upon the CoStar database of US commercial real estate assets, hedonic regression analysis is used to measure the effect of certification on both rent and price. We first estimate the rental regression for a sample of 110 LEED and 433 Energy Star as well as several thousand benchmark buildings to compare the sample to. The results suggest that, compared to buildings in the same metropolitan region, certified buildings have a rental premium and that the more highly rated that buildings are in terms of their environmental impact, the greater the rental premium. Furthermore, based on a sample of transaction prices for 292 Energy Star and 30 LEED-certified buildings, we find price premia of 10% and 31% respectively compared to non-certified buildings in the same metropolitan are

Plan effectiveness monitoring: Built heritage, Wellington City District Plan

The goal of this project has been to assess the effectiveness of the built heritage provisions in the Wellington City District Plan. To this end, sixty nine buildings were chosen from the Plan’s Heritage List: Buildings (a sample size of around 14%), which include: 55 buildings that have had at least one resource consent granted under the District Plan. A total of 80 consents were assessed for these buildings as part of this project; 14 buildings that have had no resource consents granted. Each building was visited and an evaluation was undertaken regarding the effects of consented activities on heritage values. The effects of permitted activities (i.e. repair and maintenance) were assessed for the buildings that have no consent history. The evaluation relates only to the effects that could be viewed from the street

Higher Education on Buildings: Case Study in the North Dakota Region

Because of the growing demand for local skilled professionals to improve the health, energy efficiency, and sustainability of residential and commercial buildings in North Dakota, this case study reports the current situation of higher education relating to buildings in the state’s vicinity, including Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. In this region, 116 programs relating to buildings were found in 41 postsecondary institutions, and both their majors and courses were then studied with frequency lists. The frequency information was analyzed over nine sets of curriculum areas at both graduate and undergraduate levels for the four states. After the current state of buildings in North Dakota was investigated, strategies were then proposed to rectify current issues regarding higher education on buildings, including but not limited to forming a comprehensive and interdisciplinary program on buildings (e.g., architectural engineering), providing more graduate programs, developing more courses in areas that lack adequate coursework, and increasing student enrollment. These strategies will greatly promote the health, energy efficiency, and sustainability for new and existing buildings in the four-state region of Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota

Triangular hyperbolic buildings

We construct triangular hyperbolic polyhedra whose links are generalized 4-gons. The universal cover of those polyhedra are hyperbolic buildings, which appartments are hyperbolic planes tesselated by regular triangles with angles $\pi/4$. Moreover, the fundamental groups of the polyhedra acts simply transitively on vertices of the buildings

Studies on the Seismic Design of Low-Rise Steel Buildings

The behavior of low-rise steel shear buildings, moment frame buildings, and X-braced buildings, subjected to earthquake base motion, is studied using inelastic time-history analysis. Two simpler methods of analysis, the modal method and the quasi-static building code approach, are evaluated for practical use in calculating. response quantities. The application of the results of these studies to the practical design of buildings is discussed.National Science Foundation Grant No. AEN 75-0845