The hospital building as project and matter of concern: the role of representations in negotiating patient room designs and bodies

Mock-ups, scale models and drawings are ubiquitous in building design processes, circulating between various stakeholders. They contribute to the gradual evolution of design, but what else can specific material forms of representations do for the building design and project? The full-scale model of a hospital single-bed room can be different in terms of detail and medium, but in what sense might it perform different and similar functions? The mobilization of multiple forms of representations and visualizations suggest that design materialization might have several important roles to play in negotiating the building design and project, including the exposition and resolution of controversy concerning size of spaces and bodies. The paper compares the use of two different forms of representation of the same imagined space—a single-bed room in a hospital, and produced for similar purposes—to ascertain what the optimum (or minimum) spatial requirements should be to allow effective care of patients. The first representations are physical mock-ups of a single-bed room for Danish hospitals where actual medical and logistical procedures are simulated using real equipment and real people. The second is a three-dimensional augmented reality model of a single-bed room for a new hospital in the UK, using a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment where the room is reproduced virtually at one-to-one scale, and which can be explored or navigated using head-tracker technology and a joystick controller. Drawing on Latour's concepts of matters of concern and matters of fact, we compare these two cases to provide insights into the way different media produce specific senses of the design or imagined space, with consequences for on-going design work, and for the settling of controversy over the sizes of spaces and bodies

Materialising architecture for social care: brick walls and compromises in design for later life.

This article reports on an ethnography of architectural projects for later life social care in the UK. Informed by recent debates in material studies and ‘materialities of care’ we offer an analysis of a care home project that is sensitive to architectural materials that are not normally associated with care and wellbeing. Although the care home design project we focus on in this article was never built, we found that design discussions relating to both a curved brick wall and bricks more generally were significant to its architectural ‘making’. The curved wall and the bricks were used by the architects to encode quality and values of care into their design. This was explicit in the design narrative that was core to a successful tender submitted by a consortium comprising architects, developers, contractors, and a care provider to a local authority who commissioned the care home. However, as the project developed, initial consensus for the design features fractured. Using a materialised analysis, we document the tussles generated by the curved wall and the bricks and argue that mundane building materials can be important to, and yet marginalised within, the relations inherent within an ‘architectural care assemblage.’ During the design process we saw how decisions about materials are contentious and they act as a catalyst of negotiations that compromise ‘materialities of care.

Strategic investment in tuberculosis control in the Republic of Bulgaria

As Bulgaria transitions away from Global Fund grant, robust estimates of the comparative impact of the various response strategies under consideration are needed to ensure sustained effectiveness of the tuberculosis (TB) programme. We tailored an established mathematical model for TB control to the epidemic in Bulgaria to project the likely outcomes of seven intervention scenarios. Under existing programmatic conditions projected forward, the country's targets for achieving TB elimination in the coming decades will not be achieved. No interventions under consideration were predicted to accelerate the baseline projected reduction in epidemiological indicators significantly. Discontinuation of the 'Open Doors' program and activities of non-governmental organisations would result in a marked exacerbation of the epidemic (increasing incidence in 2035 by 6-8% relative to baseline conditions projected forward). Changing to a short course regimen for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) would substantially decrease MDR-TB mortality (by 21.6% in 2035 relative to baseline conditions projected forward). Changing to ambulatory care for eligible patients would not affect TB burden but would be markedly cost-saving. In conclusion, Bulgaria faces important challenges in transitioning to a primarily domestically-financed TB programme. The country should consider maintaining currently effective programs and shifting towards ambulatory care to ensure program sustainability

Star Architecture as Socio-Material Assemblage

Taking inspiration from new materialism and assemblage, the chapter deals with star architects and iconic buildings as socio-material network effects that do not pre-exist action, but are enacted in practice, in the materiality of design crafting and city building. Star architects are here conceptualized as part of broader assemblages of actors and practices ‘making star architecture’ a reality, and the buildings they design are considered not just as unique and iconic objects, but dis-articulated as complex crafts mobilizing skills, technologies, materials, and forms of knowledge not necessarily ascribable to architecture. Overcoming narrow criticism focusing on the symbolic order of icons as unique creations and alienated repetitions of capitalist development, the chapter’s main aim is to widen the scope of critique by bridging culture and economy, symbolism and practicality, making star architecture available to a broad, fragmented arena of (potential) critics, unevenly equipped with critical tools and differentiated experiences

On the Usefulness of Modern Animism: Co-Creating Architecture with Soils as Ontopolitical Practice

In opposition to the general understanding of animism as an irrational religious set of beliefs, the—secular—modern animism embodied in this practice of built and grown architecture is operative. It conceives of places—ecosystems—as beings with agency that we garden with to nurture and express their resilience. It is a useful ontology for ecological practice; this architectural animism is ontopolitical; it co-creates a common world. At a recent symposium, a number of projects were presented as architectural soils and to give a voice to these earthly beings, the method was to write a letter from them to me. This first letter with the response in this article forms the beginning of an animistic correspondence. The medium places the reader in a pluriverse, in between the multiple voices of various “actants.” The text is isomorphic to the embodied dialogue of this earthy practice. It is useful both to nurture societal awareness—empathy and care—towards these fragmentary ecosystemic beings, and as research method to conceive them, and our relationship

POSIWID and determinism in design for behaviour change

Copyright @ 2012 Social Services Research GroupWhen designing to influence behaviour for social or environmental benefit, does designers' intent matter? Or are the effects on behaviour more important, regardless of the intent involved? This brief paper explores -- in the context of design for behaviour change -- some treatments of design, intentionality, purpose and responsibility from a variety of fields, including Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" and Maurice Broady's perspective on determinism. The paper attempts to extract useful implications for designers working on behaviour-related problems, in terms of analytical or reflective questions to ask during the design process

Lifetime measurements of the low-lying excited states of ²⁰⁸Po

In this study we present the preliminary results about the lifetimes of the 2₂⁺, 4₁⁺ states of ²⁰⁸Po and the upper limit of the lifetime of the 2₁⁺ state. For measuring the lifetimes of the 2₁⁺ and 4₁⁺ states the Recoil Distance Doppler Shift (RDDS) method and for the lifetime of the 2₂⁺ state the Doppler Shift Attenuation method (DSAM) were used. The resulting absolute transition strength B(M1 ; 2₂⁺ → 2₁⁺) ≥ 0.122(20) μN² reveals the predominant isovector nature of the 2₂⁺ state of ²⁰⁸Po

A Comparative Approach Linking Molecular Dynamics of Altered Peptide Ligands and MHC with In Vivo Immune Responses

The recognition of peptide in the context of MHC by T lymphocytes is a critical step in the initiation of an adaptive immune response. However, the molecular nature of the interaction between peptide and MHC and how it influences T cell responsiveness is not fully understood.We analyzed the immunological consequences of the interaction of MHC class II (I-Au) restricted 11-mer peptides of myelin basic protein with amino acid substitutions at position 4. These mutant peptides differ in MHC binding affinity, CD4+ T cell priming, and alter the severity of peptide-induced experimental allergic encephalomyelitis. Using molecular dynamics, a computational method of quantifying intrinsic movements of proteins at high resolution, we investigated conformational changes in MHC upon peptide binding. We found that irrespective of peptide binding affinity, MHC deformation appears to influence costimulation, which then leads to effective T cell priming and disease induction. Although this study compares in vivo and molecular dynamics results for three altered peptide ligands, further investigation with similar complexes is essential to determine whether spatial rearrangement of peptide-MHC and costimulatory complexes is an additional level of T cell regulation

Networks, interfaces and computer-generated images: Learning from digital visualisations of urban redevelopment projects

Over the past five years, computer-generated images (CGIs) have become commonplace as a means to market urban redevelopments. To date, however, they have been given relatively little attention as a new form of visualising the urban. In this paper we argue that these CGIs deserve more attention, and attention of a particular kind. We argue that, instead of approaching them as images situated in urban space, their digitality invites us to understand them as interfaces circulating through a software-supported network space. We use an actor-network theory understanding of ‘network’ and argue that the action done on and with CGIs as they are created takes place at a series of interfaces. These interfaces—between and among humans, software, and hardware—are where work is done both to create the CGI and to create the conditions for their circulation. These claims are explored in relation to the CGIs made for a large urban redevelopment project in Doha, Qatar. We conclude by suggesting that geographers need to reconsider their understanding of digital images and be as attentive to the interfaces embedded in the image as to the CGI’s visual content.The project was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council RES-062-23-3305