Comparative Conclusions

In the first section of this last chapter (7.1.) I will “comparatively” answer the main question related to each case before coming to broader discussion (7.2.) all of which contributes the the main question: In what way do landscape design strategies change how we understand and create architecture? (Q 1.1.1.) At first I differentiate the motives and objectives for landscape strategies in the specific context of each of the three study cases in chapters 4, 5 & 6 to discuss the development of landscape design strategies in architecture: How do architects apply landscape design strategies in architecture? What are their motives and goals to do so and what do they accomplish? (Q. 1.1.3.) In terms of spatial contexts the projects are quite different. In particular, the dense urban situation with a long history dating back centuries in Paris; the implementation in a modern campus in Lausanne; and the placement outside Santiago with historical reference to the early medieval city are three completely different project contexts. In terms of surrounding landscapes, the riverside urban development of Paris; the large plateau above the lake Geneva; and Monte Gaiás across the valley from Santiago pose different landscape relations

An integrated approach to deliver OLAP for multidimensional Semantic Web Databases

Semantic Webs (SW) and web data have become increasingly important sources to support Business Intelligence (BI), but they are difficult to manage due to the exponential increase in their volumes, inconsistency in semantics and complexity in representations. On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is an important tool in analysing large and complex BI data, but it lacks the capability of processing disperse SW data due to the nature of its design. A new concept with a richer vocabulary than the existing ones for OLAP is needed to model distributed multidimensional semantic web databases. A new OLAP framework is developed, with multiple layers including additional vocabulary, extended OLAP operators, and usage of SPARQL to model heterogeneous semantic web data, unify multidimensional structures, and provide new enabling functions for interoperability. The framework is presented with examples to demonstrate its capability to unify existing vocabularies with additional vocabulary elements to handle both informational and topological data in Graph OLAP. The vocabularies used in this work are: the RDF Cube Vocabulary (QB) – proposed by the W3C to allow multi-dimensional, mostly statistical, data to be published in RDF; and the QB4OLAP – a QB extension introducing standard OLAP operators. The framework enables the composition of multiple databases (e.g. energy consumptions and property market values etc.) to generate observations through semantic pipe-like operators. This approach is demonstrated through Use Cases containing highly valuable data collected from a real-life environment. Its usability is proved through the development and usage of semantic pipe-like operators able to deliver OLAP specific functionalities. To the best of my knowledge there is no available data modelling approach handling both informational and topological Semantic Web data, which is designed either to provide OLAP capabilities over Semantic Web databases or to provide a means to connect such databases for further OLAP analysis. The thesis proposes that the presented work provides a wider understanding of: ways to access Semantic Web data; ways to build specialised Semantic Web databases, and, how to enrich them with powerful capabilities for further Business Intelligence

Packaging curiosities : towards a grammar of three-dimensional space

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people's emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space

Packaging curiosities : towards a grammar of three-dimensional space

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people's emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space

View mappings for query languages

The problems of current use of query languages are looked at. One chief drawback is the undesirable requirement for end user familiarity with and knowledge of the underlying database structures, in order to retrieve data effectively. The approach adopted towards resolving this is by means of high-level view support, using unit view structures called perceived records. A prime concern of this thesis then, is the study of perceived record mappings from the database. A set of criteria for categorising and analysing the features of database mappings for end-user views is first developed. In addition, a classification of data structure transformations and data item transformations is also presented. The framework is general and is independent of a specific data model or database management system. Its usefulness is demonstrated by its application to the analysis of view transformations from recursive database structures to high-level, unit view structures. In addition, it serves as a basis for evaluating and comparing the mapping facilities in existing systems. Possible ways of specifying a suitable data model for the perceived record view concept are described. Following on, two general mapping techniques are discussed. This leads to a proposal for a mapping mechanism that supports the flexible derivation of complex perceived record views that can differ considerably from the source structures. The mechanism uses an intermediary canonical transform model. Description of how the transform model mechansim can be used in practical systems to derive perceived record views, is also presented. The feasibility of the ideas proposed are tested out by implementing an interactive software system for defining perceived record views. For this, a mapping definition language for perceived record derivation is first designed. The control system sets up the structures of the mapping definition language and prompts the End-User-Administrator to define and specify the mappings for a perceived record. Appraisals of both the proposed mapping mechanism and implementation are discussed. Examples of use of the interface system are included. The limitations of the implementation are pinpointed with suggestions for further improvements. Practical applications of the work and evaluation of the approach in the light of other existing approaches, are also discussed

Rolex Learning Centre at EPFL, Lausanne

The Rolex Learning Centre has been overly announced, published and praised as ‘landscape’ as architecture. Completed in 2010, it is the largest scale international building of Japanese Architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA), and it quickly becomes clear the designer’s explicit aim was to solve a complex programmatic and spatial request with an artificial landscape. The commitment of the building to the creation of landscape explains the choice of the project for this study (5.1.). The context of the project in the EPFL campus of Lausanne and its insertion in the lake Geneva landscape deserve some explanation as well as the specific need for it and how that was answered by the design (5.2.). The impression from the field-trip will be described in the next section (5.3.). The challenging form led to a relatively long planning and building process in which quite unusual techniques and structural design were used for concrete reinforcements, formwork and even pouring at high local building standards (5.4.). My 4 layer analysis can be executed in a pure and complete manner (5.5.). The specific analytical method used for Rolex Learning Centre is a visual space analysis of this project with a 3D isovist software tool, a method I will introduce in the respective section (5.6). My exploration of the landscape architectural attitudes will also stress the important role of these spatial aspects among landscape architectural approaches (5.7.). My critique will engage the total picture to understand this creation of landscape as architecture and its extension of our conceptual understanding of landscape strategies (5.8.)

THE IMPASSE OF LIBERAL (IN)EQUALITY: MATERIALISING EGALITARIAN POLITICS THROUGH COLLECTIVE FIDELITY

This thesis is concerned with ways in which equality may be materialised through politics. It engages with various strands of literature that have had a profound impact on theoretical considerations of egalitarian politics. The thesis begins by mapping various branches of liberal egalitarianism that all set equality as a political objective. In attempting to substantiate equality through the liberal democratic nexus, these thinkers often construct their egalitarian models alongside liberal values such as individual liberty, autonomy, human rights, and market exchange. These approaches fall short of reconciling their egalitarian ambitions with the inegalitarian tendencies of market exchange, reducing equality to a question of inequalities in the process. Whereas contemporary neoliberal subjects embody the complete marketisation and individualisation of the liberal ideal of autonomy, hence foreclosing its egalitarian potential into purely heteronomous conducts, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou provide a way out of the impasse of liberal (in)equality. They do so by reconceptualising equality as a starting point rather than an objective of politics. Framed as such, egalitarian politics becomes a fully emancipatory project depending on the work of a subject for its realisation. Although Rancière’s egalitarianism is boundless, his account of subjectivation is politically limiting. Conversely, Badiou offers a methodical account of the process of ‘becoming subject’ rooted in his notions of ‘event’, ‘truth’, and ‘fidelity’. Focusing specifically on the latter, the last part of this thesis will theorise the notion of faith as a process for the materialisation of egalitarian politics. Against Badiou, political fidelity will be conceptualised as a subjective as well as an objective procedure. The object of political fidelity is the actual constitution of a collective. To the extent that theoretical subjects and truths play a crucial role in enacting egalitarian politics, existing bodies also actively participate in its material elaboration through a distinctive perspective provided by the horizontality of the existing ground, and their capacity to relate as equal through economic production, distribution, and exchange

‘There Is Nothing Wrong with Me’: The Materialisation of Disability in Sheltered Employment

This article explores the lived experiences of disabled men and women who work in sheltered employment. Specifically, it analyses how the entanglement of sociomaterial practices affect disabled workers’ co-constructions of work and disability. Theoretically grounded in posthumanist performativity theory, the article shows how embodied employment experiences within organisational spaces contribute to the materialisation of disability. Findings emerged from ethnographic participant observations and interviews with management and workers at a sheltered workshop. The data highlights how the entanglement of bodies, space, objects and discourses affect materialisations of disability in ways that appear more inclusive than in mainstream employment. However, these sociomaterial practices remain embedded in a productivity-oriented work logic

From intangibility to materiality and back again: preserving Portuguese performance artworks from the 1970s

Performance art has seen growing incorporation in museum collections in the last decade, and yet Conservation is still struggling to find methods to conserve these artworks, which resist acts of containement. In the context of the present research, three problems hampering progress in the conservation of performance art were identified: (1) Conservation’s scope is often seen in opposition to the nature of performance artworks, (2) there is a lack of an epistemological analysis of Conservation’s documentation methodologies, and (3) there are difficulties in managing the artwork’s networks in institutional contexts. The third problem is beyond the scope of this thesis, as this project was undertaken outside an institutional setting. This thesis therefore sheds light on the first two issues by drawing on agential realism (Karen Barad 2007), an epistemological lens which considers that every act of knowing implies material and discursive entanglements within every agent involved. To answer the first problem, a relational ontology of Conservation, which considers that Conservation practice, instead of being associated only with tangible objects, constitutes and is coconstituted by material-discursive practices, is proposed. Following this reasoning the act of conservation is then presented as a set of decisions, which vary in scale and produce materialisations of artistic manifestations. This thesis argues that cultural heritage works, including performance art, are thus always intangible until being materialised by heritage practices, which are characterised by specific ways of seeing, or measurements. In this sense it will be demonstrated that performance art, instead of existing only in the present, exists in various material ways, which are recursively disseminated over time through practices of memorialisation. To understand the second problem, two performance artworks created in the 1970s by Portuguese artists have been documented for the first time in this thesis. The case study analyses demonstrate how current methodologies are focused on perfomance-based art’s materials instead of its materiality and how that process increases the number of exclusions in the documentation process. Exclusions are then explained as acts of affirmation of the dominant cultural and political discourse and, in that sense, contribute to the invisibility of counter-narratives which not only co-constitute but are an intentional part of the fabric of performance artworks. Aside from implying a constant delimitation in the materialisation of these works, exclusions also immortalise social injustices in the form of, for example, community misrecognition. Participation, understood in the broad sense as an act of yielding authority, is proposed as a way to materialise performance artworks while reducing the exclusions that occur in every documentation process. This thesis argues that a dislocation of authority to peripheral stakeholders is not a loss of authorial power, but a way to multiply the instances of the work in multiple body-archives. An outcome of this dissertation, is a proposal and detailed outline for an innovative methodology for documenting performance art works