Nature as Material, Time as Tool

No building stands forever. Over time, the natural environment acts upon the outer surface of the building, leading to the failure of materials and the final dissolution of the structure itself, leading to ruin. In order to prevent this or retard its occurrence, we constantly maintain and renew the things we build. Nature seems to stand in opposition to architecture. The passage of time is constantly subtracting from the building. However, what differentiates nature from architecture? This thesis questions whether these two are not opposed, but on a continuous spectrum. Approaching the building as part of the overall environment that grew from” the site, rather than as an object that is placed alone on the site. It is time to accept that the power of nature and time give buildings a new skin, in the form of patina. This transformation can be treated as positive. We can accept architecture as ever-changing, as an expression of the passage of time. How can a single place be building, ruin and nature? This thesis uses Pollepel Island as a test site, proposing various responses by designing multiple back-to-nature retreats. These retreats are partly man-made and partly rely on nature to become complete over time. They exist between architecture and nature, showcasing the merging of natural and built spaces and creating a symbiotic relationship between the two, ultimately revealing our connection with the natural world

Animating the evolution of software

The use and development of open source software has increased significantly in the last decade. The high frequency of changes and releases across a distributed environment requires good project management tools in order to control the process adequately. However, even with these tools in place, the nature of the development and the fact that developers will often work on many other projects simultaneously, means that the developers are unlikely to have a clear picture of the current state of the project at any time. Furthermore, the poor documentation associated with many projects has a detrimental effect when encouraging new developers to contribute to the software. A typical version control repository contains a mine of information that is not always obvious and not easy to comprehend in its raw form. However, presenting this historical data in a suitable format by using software visualisation techniques allows the evolution of the software over a number of releases to be shown. This allows the changes that have been made to the software to be identified clearly, thus ensuring that the effect of those changes will also be emphasised. This then enables both managers and developers to gain a more detailed view of the current state of the project. The visualisation of evolving software introduces a number of new issues. This thesis investigates some of these issues in detail, and recommends a number of solutions in order to alleviate the problems that may otherwise arise. The solutions are then demonstrated in the definition of two new visualisations. These use historical data contained within version control repositories to show the evolution of the software at a number of levels of granularity. Additionally, animation is used as an integral part of both visualisations - not only to show the evolution by representing the progression of time, but also to highlight the changes that have occurred. Previously, the use of animation within software visualisation has been primarily restricted to small-scale, hand generated visualisations. However, this thesis shows the viability of using animation within software visualisation with automated visualisations on a large scale. In addition, evaluation of the visualisations has shown that they are suitable for showing the changes that have occurred in the software over a period of time, and subsequently how the software has evolved. These visualisations are therefore suitable for use by developers and managers involved with open source software. In addition, they also provide a basis for future research in evolutionary visualisations, software evolution and open source development

Establishment of the multicolored Asian lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis, as a model system for the evolution of phenotypic variation

The mechanisms behind the evolution and maintenance of striking visual phenotypes are as varied as the species that display these phenotypes. Multiple study systems have been well characterized and provide critical information about the evolution of these traits. However, new study systems in which the phenotype of interest can be easily manipulated and quantified are essential to answer many questions about the functionality of core evolutionary processes. One such model is elytral spot number of the multicolored Asian lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis (Chapter 1). I describe Harmonia axyridis as a potential novel model species for examining extreme phenotypic evolution. To this end, I established an in-laboratory rearing protocol for H. axyridis (Chapter 2), explored the transcriptome of both the adult and larval life stages (Chapter 3), and conducted an initial genome analysis (Chapter 4). The contents of this thesis provide a characterization of the transcriptome and a draft genome that lays a foundation for further analysis and identification of the genes responsible for the continual maintenance of spot variation in H. axyridis