AVOCAAD - A First Step Towards Distance Learning

In the industrial world knowledge is developed very fast. As most countries are depending on employees with a high level of knowledge and skills the term "Life Long Learning" has been formulated and the concept is more and more accepted. Institutions of higher education are more and more involved in creating supplementary education more independent of time and place. Distance learning was originally carried out by ordinary mail, which was slow but might then have been the only solution for people in remote places. With the Internet and e-mail the distance-learning concept has got a far better tool, for instance better interaction facilities. Architects and engineers in practise are deeply involved in solving the problems of the present projects. Education which is independent of time and place must be of great interest to both parties. The AVOCAAD project has created an education model for students to meet the possibilities of CAAD. The education model can be used in a curriculum at a school as well as for distance learning. Among the possible experiences from it, the one concerning distance learning might be the most important future application of the system in architectural education. This paper sketches the pedagogical background and gives examples from other areas of knowledge, where distance learning is already in use. We will put the question how the AVOCAAD concept meets the experiences from distance learning

Effektiv kontroll och nya krig - en tvärvetenskaplig analys av den internationella sedvanerätten på statsansvarsområdet

Statsansvar är på folkrättens område en viktig pusselbit för att kunna hålla stater ansvariga för folkrättskränkningar. De senaste decennierna har en diskussion skapats om folkrättsligt ansvar för en stat när icke-statliga aktörer agerar på staters uppmaning eller under statens kontroll. Denna uppsats behandlar två olika lösningar på statsansvarsområdet om staters ansvar för icke-statliga aktörer som lagts fram av International Court of Justice (ICJ) och International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). I Nicaraguafallet utvidgade ICJ statsansvarets tidigare funktion och staters ansvar över icke-statliga aktörers ageranden genom införandet av två kontrolltest. Det första strict control-testet likställer juridiskt den icke-statliga aktören med ett statligt organ och det subsidiära effective control-testet gör staten ansvarig för aktörens specifika folkrättsstridiga handlingar. Det handlar alltså om kontroll över aktören eller dess handlingar. Genom sitt avgörande i Tadićfallet skapade ICTY en spricka i den juridiska diskursen då överklagandekammaren kritiserade ICJ:s test och sänkte tröskeln för kontroll genom skapandet av overall control-testet. Uppsatsen har förutom ett rättsutredande syfte ett tvärvetenskapligt syfte och en teori från freds- och konfliktvetenskapens område kommer att belysas. Teorin bygger på idén om att krigens form och hur de utspelar sig har förändrats från de storskaliga mellanstatliga konflikterna som folkrätten modellerats för att reglera. De nya krigen är asymmetriska och lågintensiva och utkämpas i större utsträckning med inblandning av icke-statliga aktörer. Debatten om vilken kontrollnivå som ska krävas har skapat en diskurs med tydligt motstående argument. Med en avsaknad av bindande folkrättsliga källor att se till är rättsläget komplicerat och oklart. Ses rättsläget ur ett de lege ferenda-perspektiv där nya teorier om krig och dess aktörer belyses finns det enligt mig dock en anledning att ifrågasätta den konservativa bilden av rättsutvecklingen som presenteras av ICJ-testens anhängare.The rules of state responsibility are important for making states liable for their breaches of international law. Over the last decades a judicial debate has emerged regarding the responsibility of states for non-state actors acting on the direction or control of states. This thesis examines two different solutions for the attribution to states of conduct by non-state actors proposed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Through creating two different tests of attribution the ICJ broadened the scope of state responsibility over non-state actors in its 1986 judgment in the Nicaragua case. The first, strict control test, equates non-state actors with state organs under internal law while the subsidiary, effective control test, creates a state responsibility for specific actions by non-state actors. Control over the actor as a whole or over the specific breaches. The ICTY Appeals Chamber created a conflict in international law that split the scholarly community when, in its Tadić judgment, in critique of the Nicaragua-tests created the overall control test which lowered the threshold of necessary control needed for attribution. This thesis also has a inter-disciplinary purpose presenting a theory deriving from the field of peace and conflict studies. This theory states that the concept of war is changing. War no longer occur in big clashes between armies of sovereign nations. The new wars are asymmetrical, with lower intensity and contains a larger involvement of non-state actors. The required level of control created a discourse with profoundly different views. The lack of binding treaties on the law of state responsibility and a divided discourse makes the established law hard to define. With a de lege ferenda scope and taking the inter-disciplinary theories of war and non-state actors into account it is relevant to question the conservative notion taken by the defenders of the ICJ tests

Dynamic Description with Computer Supported Pictures

A methodology was developed and tested in six case studies at four medium-sized manufacturing companies within the machine engineering industry. Existing and planned work environments and production processes were described with the aid of computer-generated pictures. The pictures were used within the framework of an action research methodology in which managers and those employees affected, together with trade unions and company health care representatives, cooperated to establish the preconditions for improved planning from the point of view of both productivity and work environment. The picture methodology using animated pictures, developed to create and present two- and three-dimensional views of a computer model with manipulable objects, was tested both in a workshop with 20 participants from manufacturing companies and corporate health care and in an experimental study with 30 psychology students as experimental subjects. At a Community College with an artistic bet, the way in which different groups within the college described its organization with the aid of pictures and symbols was studied

Modelling for Virtual Reality in Architecture

CAAD systems are using object modelling methods for building databases to make information available. Object data must then be made useful for many different purposes in the design process. Even if the capacity of the computer will allow an almost unlimited amount of information to be transformed, the eye does not make the transformations in the same “simple” mathematical way. Trained architects have to involve in an inventive process of finding ways to “harmonize” this new medium with the human eye and the architectis professional experience. This paper will be an interimistic report from a surveying course. During the spring semester 2000 the CAAD division of TU-Lund is giving a course “Modelling for VR in Architecture”. The students are practising architects with experience from using object modelling CAAD. The aims are to survey different ways to use available hard- and software to create VR-models of pieces of architecture and evaluate them in desktop and CAVE environments. The architect is to do as much preparation work as possible with his CAAD program and only the final adjustments with the special VR tool.

A National Strategy for CAAD and IT-Implementation in the Construction Industry the Construction Industry

The objective of this paper is to present a strategy for implementation of CAD and IT in the construction and building management#1 industry in Sweden. The interest is in how to make the best use of the limited resources in a small country or region, cooperating internationally and at the same time avoiding to be totally dominated by the great international actors in the market of information technology. In Sweden representatives from the construction and building management industry have put forward a research and development program called: “IT-Bygg#2 2002 - Implementation”. It aims at making IT the vehicle for decreasing the building costs and at the same time getting better quality and efficiency out of the industry.  The presented strategy is based on a seminar with some of the most experienced researchers, developers and practitioners of CAD in Sweden. The activities were recorded and annotated, analyzed and put together afterwards. The proposal in brief is that object oriented distributed CAD is to be used in the long perspective. It will need to be based on international standards such as STEP and it will take at least another 5 years to get established. Meanwhile something temporary has to be used. Pragmatically a “de facto standard” on formats has to be accepted and implemented. To support new users of IT all software in use in the country will be analyzed, described and published for a national platform for IT-communication within the construction industry.  Finally the question is discussed “How can architect schools then contribute to IT being implemented within the housing sector at a regional or national level?” Some ideas are presented: Creating the good example, better support for the customer, sharing the holistic concept of the project with all actors, taking part in an integrated education process and international collaboration like AVOCAAD and ECAADE.  

Architects Early Sketching on Computer Using Multimedia

This paper presents a development work which aims at practical applications of ideas built on experiences in practise and education and the theoretical development in the BAS.CAAD project. The important difference between BAS.CAAD and CAD programs of today is the possibility to handle user organisation, building design and site in the same program. This means that design today has to be done in at least 3 separate programs with different ways of defining objects. It is then a computer technical problem to mix and study the relations between objects of separate origin. In a recent project our method to overcome this difficulty in CAAD computing was using a Multimedia program making visual simulations to analyse consequences of form etc. As the process went on and forms where more concrete it was possible to make simulations worth showing and discussing to involve colleagues, clients and users