Why Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, the author of Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side, explains his motivation for exploring the dangerous side of the world wide web. This new book is the first comprehensive book on social responsibility on the Internet

Architecture, Innovative Human Education and Feeling: Inclusive Projects for People with Disabilities

It is feasible to combine teaching innovation and social inclusion, and transcend the academic sphere. At the CEU-San Pablo University, as part of the subject of «Architectural Composition», educational experiments were carried out based on collaboration between students of Architecture and volunteers with intellectual or visual disabilities. The objective was to devise criteria and spatial typologies to design places of human training. The methodology was interdisciplinary, through working sessions of mixed teams, with empathy characterizing the relationship between students and volunteers; the latter enriched the design sensitivity of the future architects by expressing their way of perceiving, interpreting and feeling educational spaces

Illustrations and associative logic. Short circuits between images of science, art and architecture / Illustrazioni e logiche associative. Cortocircuiti tra immagini della scienza, dell'arte e dell'architettura

Le illustrazioni di carattere scientifico non servono solo per veicolare informazioni tra addetti che operano nello stesso ambito all’interno del quale sono concepite e generate. Spesso modelli concettuali espressi attraverso illustrazioni possono migrare tra discipline diverse aprendo possibilità di inaspettati sviluppi. Le immagini, infatti, hanno il potere di comunicare suggestioni diverse, andando dunque oltre al loro compito di raffigurare i contenuti per i quali sono state elaborate. Forme, colori, artifici comunicativi, schemi, notazioni, ideogrammi, figure geometriche, forme diverse di rappresentazione possono “rivelare” e restituire il visibile ma anche “costruire” un’idea del possibile. Le immagini hanno dunque il potere di poter parlare a tutti a prescindere dalla condivisione dei codici figurativi che usano. Anche qualora non si parli lo stesso “linguaggio iconico” e si incorra in fraintendimenti, Hans Georg Gadamer ci ha insegnato che questi non sempre generano conseguenze negative, anzi, possono aprire nuove strade interpretative. Le immagini organizzano, d'altronde, la nostra memoria e il nostro pensiero e sono in grado di far scaturire una molteplicità di associazioni – come ha dimostrato Aby Warburg con la pratica ermeneutica esercitata sulle immagini nel suo Bilderatlas. La proprietà associativa è d’altra parte peculiare dell’immagine e ci consente di cogliere, di ricordare e di rivelare tanto elementi della realtà quanto interi sistemi di ordinamento della nostra memoria e dei nostri modi di interagire con la realtà stessa. Quando operiamo per alterare la realtà percepibile producendo nuove immagini, come avviene con l’arte o l’architettura, è inevitabile che la creatività si alimenti con altre immagini e suggestioni. Il gioco dei rimandi può essere più o meno esplicitato nell’opera compiuta, ma sarà comunque colto in virtù delle proprietà associative che sarà in grado di sollecitare dando vita a sua volta a nuove possibilità di sviluppi figurativi e/o concettuali.Although the main purpose of scientific illustrations is to facilitate the sharing of information between operators working in environments in which they are widely understood, drawings of conceptual models may also be used in other fields, often with the consequence of generating new, unexpected developments. The power of images to communicate ideas other than the contents for which they were originally designed means that shapes, colours, communicational expedients, diagrams, notes, ideographs, geometric figures and different forms of representation not only “show the visible” but also propose a way of “constructing the possible”. Indeed, images have the power to speak to everyone, regardless of their knowledge of the figurative codes employed. Even when those who ‘read’ the images are familiar with different “iconic languages” and there is a strong risk of misunderstanding, Hans Georg Gadamer teaches us that this does not always lead to negative results but, on the contrary, often paves the way for new interpretations. Images organize our memory and thoughts and enable us to generate multitudes of associations, as demonstrated by Aby Warburg’s exploitation of hermeneutics in the composition of Der Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne. However, the ability to stimulate the power of association is a feature peculiar to the image as images enable us to capture, remember and exploit not only elements of reality but also entire systems of ordering our memories and interacting with reality. Inevitably, when artists or architects endeavour to change perceived reality by producing new images, their creativity is fuelled by other images and ideas. Yet, regardless of the degree of explicitness of the references used in the finished work, the references are understood as a result of the power of association. This is the key to generating new figurative and/or conceptual developments

The discursive array: Towards a politics of painting as time–space production

Modernist articulations of time in painting – based on phenomenological approaches – are not viable today: human perception is no longer adequate to technological temporalities. Painting ought now to approach time in registers other than the perceptual. Rejecting the terms of MoMA’s ‘The Forever Now’ exhibition, the argument turns to Buren’s idea of the in situ as a valuable attempt to re-think painting as time–space production. But Buren ends up supplying architectural decoration for urban redevelopment that is a far cry from his youthful ambitions. The text then considers conflations of in situ with discursive production in Gillick and Bourriaud. Joselit’s ‘Painting beside itself’ essay and artworks by Carpenter, Koether and McKenzie are examined. McKenzie’s recent work devises fruitful tactics for interweaving affective opacities and discursive frames. McKenzie plays with rhetorics of in situ production without succumbing to reductive understandings of site and authenticity, and without conflating time–space production with discursive production. Such a discursive array can elaborate the dissonances between the discursive and the affective

To design versus to understand design: the role of graphic representations and verbal expressions

Cataloged from PDF version of article.While the primary objective of design education is essentially teaching how to design, the process of understanding a design product is another important and obvious goal of design education. Here, the aim is to find out how the capacity of the students to design relates to their capacity to understand and evaluate design. In a survey done in the freshman studio, students were asked to diagrammatic ally express the design ideas of the projects they were shown, to criticize the projects verbally and to grade them. Later, the diagrams produced by the students, their verbal evaluations of the projects, the grades they have assigned to these projects, and their own projects' jury grades are compared to find out the interaction among these variables

Information-Driven Housing

This paper suggests a new information-driven framework is needed to help consumers evaluate the sustainability of their housing options. The paper provides an outline of this new framework and how it would work

Urban and Architectural Identity of Mosul. An Analytical Background for City’s Reconstruction

The city of Mosul dramatically represents a paradigmatic case where a condition of pervasive destruction of the built environment has moved the scientific research towards the investigation of possible precautionary strategies in safeguarding those structural characteristics that define the identity of the city. The study here displayed evaluates the elements that compose the urban phenomenon as operational and proactive tools capable to suggest criteria for a critical reconstruction of the urban structure, to integrate a consolidate historical identity with a new architectural intervention. Specifically, the aim of this research consists of detecting how the city of Mosul, although being a city of Islamic foundation – and thus displaying specific morphological and typological characteristics – has developed peculiar aspects affected by other cultural, religious, and geographical factors. And that is recognizable, for instance, in the settlement relationship with the Tigris river, and, in particular, in the construction of a monumental riverfront that often deforms the typical structure of the enclosure, otherwise persistent in the Islamic settlements. Then, those processes identified at an urban level will be extended to a typological one, trying to identify possible relationships between buildings and urban form. As a result, we expect to rebuild a formal and settlement identity of the city of Mosul by combining its individual and peculiar ways of growth, both architectural and urban. And this would have the purpose of enriching the elements to be taken into consideration in the process of defining an operational methodology capable of leading the practice of design towards more aware and responsible ways in dealing with the reconstruction process

Community Archaeology at Tall Hisban

This article introduces community archaeology as an emerging perspective on the role and responsibility of archaeologists in relation to the communities where they do their fieldwork. It then offers examples of specific ways in which the leaders of the original Heshbon Expedition (1968–1996) paved the way for the pioneering work in community archaeology of the Tall Hisban Cultural Heritage Project (1996–present). It also includes highlights of community archaeology related activities during recent field seasons and concludes by describing current efforts to provide for ongoing maintenance and protection of the archaeological site in perpetuity

The Evaluation of Protective Coatings and Their Effect on Salt Formation on Brick Substrate

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