Thermal radiation view factor: Methods, accuracy and computer-aided procedures

The computer aided thermal analysis programs which predicts the result of predetermined acceptable temperature range prior to stationing of these orbiting equipment in various attitudes with respect to the Sun and the Earth was examined. Complexity of the surface geometries suggests the use of numerical schemes for the determination of these viewfactors. Basic definitions and standard methods which form the basis for various digital computer methods and various numerical methods are presented. The physical model and the mathematical methods on which a number of available programs are built are summarized. The strength and the weaknesses of the methods employed, the accuracy of the calculations and the time required for computations are evaluated. The situations where accuracies are important for energy calculations are identified and methods to save computational times are proposed. Guide to best use of the available programs at several centers and the future choices for efficient use of digital computers are included in the recommendations

Relationship between the design characteristics of activity-based flexible offices and users’ perceptions of privacy and social interactions

Activity-based flexible offices (AFOs) provide a variety of workspaces to meet the need for social interactions and privacy at work. This study investigates the relationship between the design characteristics of AFOs and users’ perceptions of visual and acoustic privacy and social interactions. This case study is based on post-occupancy evaluations in three AFO layouts at a public service organization in Sweden. A mixed-method approach is adopted that combines questionnaires and layout analysis. In general, the results showed that while aesthetics received the highest satisfaction scores, office functionality, task support, storage and visual and acoustic privacy received the lowest ratings. Key design characteristics for AFOs were operationalized, observed and exemplified: zone diversity, proportion, readability, spatial enclosure, sharing ratios and functionality of furniture and tools. These insights may contribute to better-informed decisions about the design characteristics that influence privacy and social interactions in AFOs

Bordered: Land Use Development in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

This paper looks at major policy changes from 1960 to 2008 in order to investigate to what extent they have impacted the cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. These two cities offer an interesting urban juxtaposition as they reside on either side of the U.S./Mexico border yet only 20 miles separate their respective city centers. By conducting a longitudinal land cover analysis over these four decades, this study attempts to understand how the macro level of organization (policies delegated at the federal government level) influence organization at the micro level (local policy). Understanding the relationship between certain categories of immigration policy and organizational space could comment on the role of planning in border conditions

Hydrological controls of in situ preservation of waterlogged archaeological deposits

Environmental change caused by urban development, land drainage, agriculture or climate change may result in accelerated decay of in situ archaeological remains. This paper reviews research into impacts of environmental change on hydrological processes of relevance to preservation of archaeological remains in situ. It compares work at rural sites with more complex urban environments. The research demonstrates that both the quantity and quality of data on preservation status, and hydrological and chemical parameters collected during routine archaeological surveys need to be improved. The work also demonstrates the necessity for any archaeological site to be placed within its topographic and geological context. In order to understand preservation potential fully, it is necessary to move away from studying the archaeological site as an isolated unit, since factors some distance away from the site of interest can be important for determining preservation. The paper reviews what is known about the hydrological factors of importance to archaeological preservation and recommends research that needs to be conducted so that archaeological risk can be more adequately predicted and mitigated. Any activity that changes either source pathways or the dominant water input may have an impact not just because of changes to the water balance or the water table, but because of changes to water chemistry. Therefore, efforts to manage threatened waterlogged environments must consider the chemical nature of the water input into the system. Clearer methods of assessing the degree to which buried archaeological sites can withstand changing hydrological conditions are needed, in addition to research which helps us understand what triggers decay and what controls thresholds of response for different sediments and types of artefact

Development of a design evaluation tool for primary school projects

Thesis (Master)--İzmir Institute of Technology, Architecture, İzmir, 2003Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 113-115)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxi, 116 leavesEducation should play an important role in transforming children into productive adults and members of society. School should be the environment of these transformations as an educational milieu in which children collect data through perception. School should also offer a motivating environment while concepts of three-dimensionality, size, proportion and symbolization develop in the child.s mind. Therefore, the spaces in which children are educated have very special importance in their lives.Contemporary schools should have environmental adaptation, be functionally sufficient, aesthetically attractive and structurally appropriate.Since August 18'th 1997, new educational measures have been taking such as renovation of Turkish National Education Program and primary school education which have been extended from five years to eight years. This required capacity increase, restoration of existing school buildings and design of new projects.Development of an evaluation tool for primary school projects has the aim of creating a basis for future primary school projects for both private and national ones

A Laboratory of Common Interest: contesting the economisation of space in Limerick city through the practice of aesthetic work

This arts practice-based research [APBR] addresses a political and ethical problem, namely how a creative practice can operate contrary to the destructive, predatory forces of extractive capitalism. The research took the systemic, socio-spatial violence of enclosure and economisation as a starting point, anchored in the concrete conditions of Limerick city, to test the critical, political possibilities of collaborative, cultural work. From an examination of the ways in which lived space is subsumed under the abstractive logic of ‘the Economy’, two processes of abstraction and enclosure are isolated and examined: i) a hollowing out of publicness, captured by the lexigraph public (strikethrough), and ii) a process described as the economisation of space, a hegemonic framing of urban space in purely economic terms, which draws local inhabitants into a performative idea of what the city means, and who it is for. Working through a socially engaged process, a critical and cognitive mapping methodology was conjoined with the emergent phenomena of aesthetic events, to generate ways of knowing, producing and acting in common, contrary to processes of enclosure and economisation. Through an extended analysis of selected aesthetic actions – Free*Space; Critical Cartographies; Contested Sites; and The Laboratory of Common Interest (2015 – 2019) – the thesis argues i) that the social order of extractive capitalism is underpinned by an aesthetic order, which acts upon the embodied dispositions of populations; and ii) that the aesthetic order is susceptible to modification through a practice identified as aesthetic work, which is unpacked and explicated in detail. The thesis includes a fully diagrammatic chapter that deliberately interrupts the research narrative, complicating the question of how knowledge is understood, produced and validated, and by whom