Spatiality and transpatiality in workplace environments

It is widely considered that the physical layout of workplace environments has an influence on social interaction and therefore the social structure of an organisation. However, there is little accordance among scholars from different disciplines on exactly how the relationship between space and organisation is constituted. Empirical studies often come to different conclusions: for example, on the influence of an open-plan office on communication patterns among staff, as many studies report increases as report decreases or unchanged communication behaviours. This evidence-base is further confused since few studies make a link between a profound spatial and an organisational analysis. We suggest that the inconsistency of results is for two main reasons: first, methodologies for operationalising variables differ significantly with each study tending to analyse a distinct notion of a phenomenon. This makes further comparative conclusions and predictive modelling problematic. Second, even where the same methods are used, contradictory evidence emerges, where one organisation reacts differently to another to similar spatial conditions. This suggests that, at the core of the problem, lies an apparent lack of understanding of the nature of the space-organisation relationship. This paper explores these phenomena by drawing on the results of various case studies conducted over the last few years in diverse organisational settings (a university, a research institute, and in corporate media companies). Two main lines of argument will be developed: first we will show that some influences of space on organisational behaviour seem to be generic. Understanding of these generic influences may be used to design spaces enhancing interaction and knowledge flow for any type of organisation. Second, we outline how organisations depend on context, culture and character, and may react to similar spatial configurations in a unique way. We will suggest why this may be the case, referring to Hillier and Hanson's notion of spatial and transpatial modes of social cohesion. The two underlying theoretical concepts, i.e. space as 'generic function' and spatial versus transpatial operations will be discussed concerning their application to, and meaningfulness for, workplace environments. Finally, inferences are drawn for the practice of evidence-based design

Conceptualising transition from education to work as vocational practice: lessons from the UK's creative and cultural sector

The paper argues that: (i) the demise of ‘occupational’ and ‘internal’ and the spread of ‘external’ labour markets in growth areas of UK economy such as the creative and cultural (C&C) sector, coupled with the massification of higher education which has created a new type of post-degree ‘vocational need’, means that the transition from education to work should be re-thought as the development of vocational practice rather than the acquisition of qualifications; and, (ii) in order to re-think transition as the development of vocational practice it is necessary to eviscerate the legacy of the ‘traditional’ conception of practice in UK educational policy. The paper reviews a number of alternative social scientific conceptions of practice, formulates more multi-faceted conceptions of vocational practice, and discusses their implications for UK and EU educational policy

“Tabula Rasa” planning: creative destruction and building a new urban identity in Tehran

The concept of Tabula Rasa, as a desire for sweeping renewal and creating a potential site for the construction of utopian dreams, is presupposition of Modern Architecture. Starting from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, Iranian urban and architectural history has been integrated with modernization, and western-influenced modernity. The case of Tehran as the Middle Eastern political capital is the main scene for the manifestation of modernity within it’s urban projects that was associated with several changes to the social, political and spatial structure of the city. In this regard, the strategy of Tabula Rasa as a utopian blank slate upon which a new Iran could be conceived “over again” – was the dominant strategy of modernization during First Pahlavi era (1925–1941). This article explores the very concept of constructing a new image of Tehran through the processes of autocratic modernism and orientalist historicism that also influenced the discourse of national identity during First Pahlavi era

Social Software, Groups, and Governance

Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. Such a framework may be organized along three dimensions by which groups arise and sustain themselves: regulating places, things, and stories

Examples of Artificial Perceptions in Optical Character Recognition and Iris Recognition

This paper assumes the hypothesis that human learning is perception based, and consequently, the learning process and perceptions should not be represented and investigated independently or modeled in different simulation spaces. In order to keep the analogy between the artificial and human learning, the former is assumed here as being based on the artificial perception. Hence, instead of choosing to apply or develop a Computational Theory of (human) Perceptions, we choose to mirror the human perceptions in a numeric (computational) space as artificial perceptions and to analyze the interdependence between artificial learning and artificial perception in the same numeric space, using one of the simplest tools of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, namely the perceptrons. As practical applications, we choose to work around two examples: Optical Character Recognition and Iris Recognition. In both cases a simple Turing test shows that artificial perceptions of the difference between two characters and between two irides are fuzzy, whereas the corresponding human perceptions are, in fact, crisp.Comment: 5th Int. Conf. on Soft Computing and Applications (Szeged, HU), 22-24 Aug 201

City Designed for Subtropical Living - Carrying forward the momentum from Subtropical Cities 2006

At a time when cities around the world are increasingly looking and feeling the same, and similarly adding to mounting environmental crises, the Subtropical Cities conference hosted by the Centre for Subtropical Design in Brisbane a few months ago generated keen enthusiasm for ways subtropical environments can produce new models for urbanism and address the problems of the contemporary city. Subtropical Cities was characterised by a genuine sense of excitement about how, in the subtropics, we can plan and design urbanism that is enriched by commitment to local distinctiveness through attention to climate, cultural values and landscape. The conference confirmed that if we are to face the challenges of today and the future, we need a framework that accommodates complexity and diversity. Invaluable micro-tactics and subtle incremental changes which dwell on amenity and liveability are necessary; not the tallest, not the biggest, not the most spectacular! Such excesses are easily achieved

Comparison the concepts of sense of place and attachment to place in architectural studies

Today, concepts such as place attachment, sense of place, meaning of place, place identity, and ... has devoted many studies In literature of architecture and urban design particularly in the field of environmental psychology. It is obvious that in all these concepts, various aspects of interaction between human and place and the impact that places have on people has been presented. This paper defines the concepts of sense of place and place attachment and explains the factors that affect them. Sense of place is a comprehensive concept which in it men feels places, percept them and attached meaning to them. Understanding the fundamental aspects of sense of place, can be effective in assess the level of public attachment to places and tendency of people to places. Place attachment refer to emotional and functional bonds between place and people which Interpreted in different scale from a district to a country in Environmental psychology. In this regard different studies point to varied of spatial and human factors. Review the literature, this paper achieves a comprehensive definition of these concepts and then it try to compare them to find their relationship. What will come eventually is that place attachment is one of the sense of place subsets. Thus in encounter of people and place if assume people sense of place a general feeling to that place, place attachment is a positive emotion which people have about the place

Plot-based urbanism and urban morphometrics : measuring the evolution of blocks, street fronts and plots in cities

Generative urban design has been always conceived as a creation-centered process, i.e. a process mainly concerned with the creation phase of a spatial transformation. We argue that, though the way we create a space is important, how that space evolves in time is ways more important when it comes to providing livable places gifted by identity and sense of attachment. We are presenting in this paper this idea and its major consequences for urban design under the title of “Plot-Based Urbanism”. We will argue that however, in order for a place to be adaptable in time, the right structure must be provided “by design” from the outset. We conceive urban design as the activity aimed at designing that structure. The force that shapes (has always shaped) the adaptability in time of livable urban places is the restless activity of ordinary people doing their own ordinary business, a kind of participation to the common good, which has hardly been acknowledged as such, that we term “informal participation”. Investigating what spatial components belong to the spatial structure and how they relate to each other is of crucial importance for urban design and that is the scope of our research. In this paper a methodology to represent and measure form-related properties of streets, blocks, plots and buildings in cities is presented. Several dozens of urban blocks of different historic formation in Milan (IT) and Glasgow (UK) are surveyed and analyzed. Effort is posed to identify those spatial properties that are shared by clusters of cases in history and therefore constitute the set of spatial relationships that determine the morphological identity of places. To do so, we investigate the analogy that links the evolution of urban form as a cultural construct to that of living organisms, outlining a conceptual framework of reference for the further investigation of “the DNA of places”. In this sense, we identify in the year 1950 the nominal watershed that marks the first “speciation” in urban history and we find that factors of location/centrality, scale and street permeability are the main drivers of that transition towards the entirely new urban forms of contemporary cities

Whewell\'s Wager: The Continuing Dialogue of Metaphysics and Physics in Science

In his library at Trinity College, Cambridge University, around the year I860, William Whewell (1794-1866) engages in conversation with a company of thinkers on the province of metaphysics and physics, to form a comprehensive scientific belief. In attendance with him are Lord Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Sir Robert Boyle (1627-1691 ), Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) , John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), Professor Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), and Pope John Paul II (b. 1920). Whewell proposes a wager: Is there a possible remedy to be found for the schism between the metaphysical and the physical elements of science