Pagodas, polities, period and place: a data led exploration of the regional and chronological context of Liao dynasty architecture

The Liao dynasty (907-1125) was a dominant force in the political landscape of East Asia for a period of over two centuries. Despite this, when placed within the framework of Chinese history, the Liao polity and its associated architecture are forced to the periphery. This study aims to re-centre the Liao by exploring the pagodas constructed under this polity within a wider regional and chronological framework. To achieve this end, extant pagodas from China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan were recorded together in a database for the first time. The HEAP (Historical East Asian Pagoda) Database logs the date, location and feature set of each pagoda it contains and provides a means to compare Liao examples to those from other polities, places and periods. Through analysis and visualisations of this data, the Liao are identified as a polity that produced unique pagoda designs and a distinct visual style. While Liao pagodas played a major role in the wider design trends of the period, it is the influence they had at a more local level that may be of most significance, potentially making us rethink the way we frame and construct histories of architecture in China and East Asia

Beside Yingzao: An Index of Chinese Building Traditions

Yingzao referred to the Chinese architectural practice prior to the nineteenth-century introduction of the term jianzhu, the translation of “architecture.” The earliest preserved illustrated government-issued building standard was titled Yingzao fashi. Published by the Southern Song government in 1103, Yingzao fashi defined and regulated technical terms used to describe imperial construction as well as specified the labor costs of certain building techniques. These terms inform our understanding of the traditional Chinese way of categorization and knowledge system of architecture and architectural elements. Titled “Beside Yingzao,” this study takes the technical terms from Yingzao fashi to guide the reader in investigating the various connections between architectural knowledge (technical and non-technical) and its context from the perspective of the users rather than that of the builders. That is, I explore how concepts of architecture worked and interacted with cosmology, political theory, historiography, social division and collaboration in the imperial society. Built upon previous studies, I incorporate the discussions about building methods, architectural representation, and other relevant literary sources, in order to disrupt assumptions of both ideas about and material manifestation of traditional Chinese architecture. This thesis is written in an “index” format: all chapters are independent of each other and have no pre-determined sequence. While each chapter focuses on a distinct aspect of premodern Chinese architecture, they all illustrate how non-technical architectural knowledge was constantly produced. The current study is organized into five chapters: gongshi, quzheng, yan, jing, and dinggong. Further, these terms are not exhaustive and cannot be read as a comprehensive analysis of premodern Chinese architecture. Complementing one another, these terms bring architectural knowledge in dialogue with the natural environment as well as the imperial Chinese sociopolitical environment

Leveraging Structural Health Monitoring Data Through Avatars to Extend the Service Life of Mass Timber Buildings

Mass timber construction systems, incorporating engineered wood products as structural elements, are gaining acceptance as a sustainable alternative to multi-story concrete or steel-frame structures. The relative novelty of these systems brings uncertainties on whether these buildings perform long-term as expected. Consequently, several structural health monitoring (SHM) projects have recently emerged to document their behavior. A wide and systematic use of this data by the mass timber industry is currently hindered by limitations of SHM programs. These limitations include scalability, difficulty of data integration, diverse strategies for data collection, scarcity of relevant data, complexity of data analysis, and limited usability of predictive tools. This perspective paper envisions the use of avatars as a Web-based layer on top of sensing devices to support SHM data and protocol interoperability, analysis, and reasoning capability and to improve life cycle management of mass timber buildings. The proposed approach supports robustness, high level and large-scale interoperability and data processing by leveraging the Web protocol stack, overcoming many limitations of conventional centralized SHM systems. The design of avatars is applied in an exemplary scenario of hygrothermal data reconstruction, and use of this data to compare different mold growth prediction models. The proposed approach demonstrates the ability of avatars to efficiently filter and enrich data from heterogeneous sensors, thus overcoming problems due to data gaps or insufficient spatial distribution of sensors. In addition, the designed avatars can provide prediction or reasoning capability about the building, thus acting as a digital twin solution to support building lifecycle management

Implementing a HBIM approach to manage the translocation of heritage buildings

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Emerald in Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-06-2020-0405 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Purpose The purpose of the paper is to present a study which exploited synergies between the fields of Heritage BIM, conservation and building translocation to develop a new approach to support a digitally enabled translocation process. The translocation (or relocation) of buildings or structures is a niche area of the construction sector and much of the significant work in this field has focused on the relocation of heritage buildings. However, hitherto there was a paucity of work integrating translocation with the process and technology of BIM. Design/Methodology/Approach The study employed a Constructive Research approach to analyse the phenomenon of heritage translocation. As part of this approach, semi structured interviews were undertaken with professionals engaged in heritage translocation projects within the UK and this was supported by a multi-faceted review of literature within the cross cutting themes of translocation and HBIM. Building on the results, a BIM enabled process was implemented to support the translocation of a 19th Century timber framed building in the UK. Findings Following analysis of results of semi structured interviews, and supported by findings from prevailing literature in the field of translocation and HBIM, a HBIM for Translocation Conceptual Framework (TransHBIM) was developed. Building on the key constructs of the framework, a HBIM based workflow was implemented to develop a digitally enabled translocation process which provided a new approach to managing and documenting heritage translocation where disassembly and reconstruction is utilised. The workflow provided a more effective way of documenting individual elements of the building within a digital environment opening up potential for new simulation of the entire process. Originality/Value Current approaches to translocation involve manual methods of recording the building and cataloguing the key heritage elements for all aspects of the process. This new approach implements BIM technologies and processes along with the use of barcode or RFID tags to create a digital bridge between the physical elements of the building and the BIM database. This provides more accurate recording of the heritage and also opens up opportunities to support the process with additional digital simulation techniques enhancing the efficiency of the entire process

Proceedings of the 2021 DigitalFUTURES

This open access book is a compilation of selected papers from 2021 DigitalFUTURES—The 3rd International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication (CDRF 2021). The work focuses on novel techniques for computational design and robotic fabrication. The contents make valuable contributions to academic researchers, designers, and engineers in the industry. As well, readers encounter new ideas about understanding material intelligence in architecture

In conversation with simulation: The application of numerical simulation to the design of structural nodal connections

The thesis explores methods for integration of structural analysis, design and production in a digital design environment. The somewhat ambiguous title implies the ambition to make such integration in relation to the explorative phase of the design process which is described by Donald Sch\uf6n as having a conversational character. A conversation between the designer and the representation by the means of the tool. The tool is in this context a simulation and instead of exploring the potential of automatic optimisation, the simulation is used for designer driven exploration. The aim of the thesis is to give an overview of how this type of integration is currently being approached and to contribute with new tools and methods in that pursuit. The motivation behind the work is to lower the threshold for the application of structural analysis in early-stage design, with an ambition of architectural qualities and resource efficiency in mind. An overview of the historical context is portrayed with broad brush strokes, followed by a more precise account of the mathematical and physical context, which is complemented by an attempt to describe how our tools and roles tend to interplay in the composition of the design process. Methods such as the finite element method, isogeometric analysis, smoothed particle hydrodynamics and peridynamics, including their related geometrical representations are introduced in relation to this context. A variety of production techniques are also discussed in relation to material mechanical properties for conventional building materials such as steel, concrete and wood.The method development is approached through the use of numerical and physical experiments which are applied for design of material-efficient structural components, with a particular design process perspective. The nodal connection is chosen as an application because it combines geometrical and structural complexity in an element that is of crucial importance for a holistic spatial setting, while often being produced in a material inefficient way, with poor attention to detail.The three articles that are included follow a trajectory from large to small, from the holistic to the particular. The first article is a description of the computational design work with the roof for the new international airport of Mexico City. The second article aims to address one of the challenges that were faced in that project with material inefficiency for nodal connections, with a critical perspective on optimisation. The final article presents an extension/modification for the peridynamics theory enabling variable particle sizes and an irregular particle distribution through the introduction of a concept called force flux density. The development is motivated by limitations found in the present theory through numerical experiments. The method enables simulation of phenomena such as brittle fracture, for which correlation with Griffith\u27s theory of fracture is shown. Further work includes an extension of the force flux method from 2D to 3D, including calibration of material a model for 3D printed steel. Other possibilities involve the exploration of how such a method can adapt to the various stages of the design process, where requirements of accuracy, speed and interactivity will vary

Association of Architecture Schools in Australasia

"Techniques and Technologies: Transfer and Transformation", proceedings of the 2007 AASA Conference held September 27-29, 2007, at the School of Architecture, UTS