37,243 research outputs found
Morphology and design: reconciling intellect, intuition, and ethics in the reflective practice of architecture
This paper starts by exploring models of knowledge in order to place architectural knowledgein relation to the forms of knowledge that have been developed by other academic disciplineswithin the universities. In the light of suggestions that the low esteem in which architectureis held within the universities may be due to its basis in practice and its apparent lack of acoherent body of knowledge, the proposition is made that morphology has a special place inadvancing architectural knowledge because it is able to make the link between design and itssocial consequences. Understanding this relationship is vital if architecture is to defend itsposition as an art that is of general social relevance as opposed to being the domain of thesocially privileged. Kolb?s learning cycle is introduced as a device to track the forms of knowledgethat are essential to the reflective practice of a genuinely social architecture and to relatethese to the insights into morphology and design that have been provided by space syntaxover the past two decades. ?Sheltered? housing for older people is taken as an example of howa morphological approach can offer an enlightened critique of design guidance that articulatesthe authentic experiences of the inhabitants. The creative interplay of intellect and intuition isconsidered in relation to how morphology can help to clarify strategic design choices early onin the design process. The importance of briefing and evaluation are also stressed as essentialingredients that will enable space syntax to turn Kolb?s learning cycle into a dynamic learningprocess. The paper concludes by proposing an ethical framework for design. This paper starts by exploring models of knowledge in order to place architectural knowledgein relation to the forms of knowledge that have been developed by other academic disciplineswithin the universities. In the light of suggestions that the low esteem in which architectureis held within the universities may be due to its basis in practice and its apparent lack of acoherent body of knowledge, the proposition is made that morphology has a special place inadvancing architectural knowledge because it is able to make the link between design and itssocial consequences. Understanding this relationship is vital if architecture is to defend itsposition as an art that is of general social relevance as opposed to being the domain of thesocially privileged. Kolb?s learning cycle is introduced as a device to track the forms of knowledgethat are essential to the reflective practice of a genuinely social architecture and to relatethese to the insights into morphology and design that have been provided by space syntaxover the past two decades. ?Sheltered? housing for older people is taken as an example of howa morphological approach can offer an enlightened critique of design guidance that articulatesthe authentic experiences of the inhabitants. The creative interplay of intellect and intuition isconsidered in relation to how morphology can help to clarify strategic design choices early onin the design process. The importance of briefing and evaluation are also stressed as essentialingredients that will enable space syntax to turn Kolb?s learning cycle into a dynamic learningprocess. The paper concludes by proposing an ethical framework for design
Who Put the P in Policy? The reality of guidelines and legislation in the design of the accessible toilet.
2-4 April 200
'I don't want to live for the day any more': visually impaired people's access to support, housing and independence
The Quaternion-Based Spatial Coordinate and Orientation Frame Alignment Problems
We review the general problem of finding a global rotation that transforms a
given set of points and/or coordinate frames (the "test" data) into the best
possible alignment with a corresponding set (the "reference" data). For 3D
point data, this "orthogonal Procrustes problem" is often phrased in terms of
minimizing a root-mean-square deviation or RMSD corresponding to a Euclidean
distance measure relating the two sets of matched coordinates. We focus on
quaternion eigensystem methods that have been exploited to solve this problem
for at least five decades in several different bodies of scientific literature
where they were discovered independently. While numerical methods for the
eigenvalue solutions dominate much of this literature, it has long been
realized that the quaternion-based RMSD optimization problem can also be solved
using exact algebraic expressions based on the form of the quartic equation
solution published by Cardano in 1545; we focus on these exact solutions to
expose the structure of the entire eigensystem for the traditional 3D spatial
alignment problem. We then explore the structure of the less-studied
orientation data context, investigating how quaternion methods can be extended
to solve the corresponding 3D quaternion orientation frame alignment (QFA)
problem, noting the interesting equivalence of this problem to the
rotation-averaging problem, which also has been the subject of independent
literature threads. We conclude with a brief discussion of the combined 3D
translation-orientation data alignment problem. Appendices are devoted to a
tutorial on quaternion frames, a related quaternion technique for extracting
quaternions from rotation matrices, and a review of quaternion
rotation-averaging methods relevant to the orientation-frame alignment problem.
Supplementary Material covers extensions of quaternion methods to the 4D
problem.Comment: This replaces an early draft that lacked a number of important
references to previous work. There are also additional graphics elements. The
extensions to 4D data and additional details are worked out in the
Supplementary Material appended to the main tex
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