Architecture’s Poetic Instrumentality. Developing the Critical, Political, and Ethical Capacities of Architectural Artifacts

The PhD thesis Architecture’s Poetic Instrumentality is rooted in and driven by an enthusiasm of architectural practice—an enthusiasm for conceiving, constructing and deploying architectural artifacts that, as poetic instruments, intend to have an agency within urban environments. The title puts in tension the two notions of instrument and poesis (from the Greek poiesis, referring to a making activity but moreover to an activity of making up, situated here in those encountering architecture). Preparing the architectural artifact as a poetic instrument then puts the partly contingent adventures it helps affording at the center of the inquiry. Poesis, as an activity of making up, of sense-making, and agency, as a dynamic able to invoke such acts of poesis, are considered in this thesis as endowed with a transformative potential. They explicitly bring into scope the realm of architectural reception: the many uses, appropriations, occupations, and negotiations of architecture. In order to explore such poesis and agency, a variety of architectural artifacts have been developed within the time span of the research, spread across different collaborations. These artifacts propel the research, giving particular substance to the main methodological approach, that of research-through-practice. The exploration of a poetic instrumentality has been pursued through an exploration of architecture’s capacity to act critically, politically, and ethically, within situations. Such capacity is often, according to a variety of contemporary authors, atrophied or at least left partly unaddressed. Answering calls to re-activate architecture in that sense, this research aims to substantiate contributions that can help counter this deficit. It does so through edifying a heterogeneous set of architectural artifacts, developed as well as deployed within real urban surroundings and situations, working as acupuncture-like interventions. The research also develops a set of approaches, strategies, and attitudes. The audience is multiple as both those professionally practicing and conceiving of architecture and those practicing architecture through encountering it within daily situations are targeted. Architecture’s Poetic Instrumentality is edified on two main experimenting grounds. One is the educational design studio COmplicating MAchines / COmplicating INteriors, the other the architecture firm STUDIOLOarchitectuur. Each advances a differently constrained terrain for experimentation, raising different challenges, assembling different contributions. What links the experimenting on both grounds together and characterizes all artifacts of the research is that they all seek to include dynamics often neglected in architecture: critical, political, and ethical dynamics; dynamics of projectivity, negotiation, conflict, dissensus, agonism; para-functional dynamics. Substantiating this inclusion has led to an other kind of architectural artifacts and to other ways of doing architecture, conceived not as an alternative to architecture, but as a promise and capacity that fundamentally reside within architecture and its artifacts

МИРГОРОДСЬКИЙ ПОЛК ЗА ПЕРЕПИСОМ 1738 РОКУ

Важливими економіко-статистичними джерелами для дослідження історії Гетьманщини XVIII ст. є компути та ревізії, які проводилися регулярно, починаючи з 90-х років XVII ст. Нещодавно нами було опубліковано «Компут і ревізію Миргородського полку 1723 р.» (Дніпропетровськ: НГУ, 2004). В Центральному державному історичному архіві України в м.Києві серед книг інших ревізій знаходиться книга перепису козацьких дворів Миргородського полку 1738 р. Вона добре збереглася, має обсяг 538 аркушів двостороннього тексту. Нам здалося цікавим порівняти дві названі книги, аби виявити зміни, що відбулися в складі козацького населення полку протягом 15 років. Тому розпочинаємо цю громіздку роботу з публікації ревізії козачих дворів Миргородської сотні. Всього у Миргородському полку досліджуваного періоду нараховувалося 13 сотень: Миргородська полкова, Хорольська, Власівська, Кременчуцька, Потоцька, Омельницька, Голтв’янська, Остапівська, Білоцерківська, Багацька, Уцтивицька, Шишацька, Сорочинська. Найбільшою з них була полкова сотня. Книга, що має заголовок: „Ревизия 1738 году козачих дворов Миргородського полку”, відкривається зведеною таблицею: „Перечневая табель полку Миргородського сколко в городах, местечках, селах и деревнях по статтям грунтовых, малогрунтовых, нищетных и весма убогих козачих дворов, в тих дворах хат, а в хатах семей и их подсуседков імеется по ревизии сего 1738 году определенными от полковой Миргородской канцелярии обще з старшинами сотенными учиненной значится». Таблиця підписана миргородським полковим писарем Тихоном Тихоновичем. Згідно з переписом 1723 р. в Миргородському полку було: козаків „можних і середніх з вдовами” – 3250 дворів, „піших з вдовами убогих і весма знищалих” – 1527 дворів. На 1738 рік у полку нараховувалося виборних козаків: дворів – 1488, хат – 2940, сімей – 3666; козаків-підпомічників та їх підсусідків: дворів – 2861, хат – 3463, сімей –3664. В обох випадках мова йде лише про козацьке населення полку. Отже, в 1723 р. його було в Миргородському полку 4777 дворів, а у 1738 – 4349 дворів. Порівнювати дані обох переписів за формальними ознаками важко, бо в них різний поділ на категорії населення. У 1735 р. відбулася реформа, згідно з якою все козацтво було поділене на виборних і підпомічників. Тому замість двох десятків категорій у компуті 1723 р. маємо 3 категорії виборних козаків (грунтові, малогрунтові, нищенні) і 4 категорії підпомічників (грунтові, малогрунтові, нищенні, під сусідки)

Simulated evolution of mass conserving reaction networks

With the rise of systems biology, the systematic analysis and construction of behavioral mechanisms in both natural and artificial biochemical networks has become a vital part of understanding and predicting the inner workings of intracellular signaling networks. As a modeling platform, artificial chemistries are commonly adopted to study and construct artificial reaction network motifs that exhibit complex computational behaviors. Here, we present a genetic algorithm to evolve networks that can compute elementary mathematical functions by transforming initial input molecules into the steady state concentrations of output molecules. Morespecifically, the proposed algorithm implicitly guarantees mass conservation through an atom based description of the molecules and reaction networks. We discuss the adopted approach for the artificial evolution of these chemical networks, evolve networks to compute the square root function. Finally,we provide an extensive deterministic and stochastic analysis of a core square root network motif present in these resulting networks, confirming that the motif is indeed capable of computing the square root function

The value landscape in ecosystem services : value, value wherefore art thou value?

Ecosystem services has risen to become one of the preeminent global policy discourses framing the way we conceive and articulate environment–society relations, integral to the form and function of a number of far-reaching international policies such as the Aichi 2020 Biodiversity Targets and the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals. Value; its pursuit, definition, quantification, monetization, multiplicity and uncertainty, both in terms of meaning and attribution, is fundamental to the economic foundations of ecosystem services and a core feature driving its inclusion across multiple policy domains such as environmental management and conservation. Distilling current knowledge and developments in this arena are thus highly prescient. In this article, we cast a critical eye over the evidence base and aim to provide a comprehensive synthesis of what values are, why they are important and the methodological approaches employed to elicit them (including their pros and cons and the arguments for and against). We also illustrate the current ecosystem service value landscape, highlight some of the fundamental challenges in discerning and applying values, and outline future research activities. In so doing, we further advance ecosystem valuation discourse, contribute to wider debates linking ecosystem services and sustainability and strengthen connections between ecosystem services and environmental policy

Multiple functionalities of biochemical reaction networks

We consider a biological cell as a highly nterconnected network of chemical reactions, which is constituted of a large number of semi-autonomous functional modules. Depending on the global state of the network, the separate functional modules may display qualitatively different behavior. As an example, we study a conceptual network of phosphorylation cycles, for which the steady-state concentration of an output compound depends on the concentrations of two input enzymes. We show that the input-output relation depends on the expression of the proteins in the network. Hence changes in protein expression, due to changes in the global regulatory network of the cell, can change the functionality of the module. In this specific example, changed expression of two proteins is sufficient to switch between the functionalities of various logical gates

Development of a wearable global positioning system for place and health research

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>An increasing number of studies suggest that characteristics of context, or the attributes of the places within which we live, work and socialize, are associated with variations in health-related behaviours and outcomes. The challenge for health research is to ensure that these places are accurately represented spatially, and to identify those aspects of context that are related to variations in health and amenable to modification. This study focuses on the design of a wearable global positioning system (GPS) data logger for the purpose of objectively measuring the temporal and spatial features of human activities. Person-specific GPS data provides a useful source of information to operationalize the concept of place.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We designed and tested a lightweight, wearable GPS receiver, capable of logging location information for up to 70 hours continuously before recharging. The device is accurate to within 7 m in typical urban environments and performs well across a range of static and dynamic conditions.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Rather than rely on static areal units as proxies for places, wearable GPS devices can be used to derive a more complete picture of the different places that influence an individual's wellbeing. The measures are objective and are less subject to biases associated with recall of location or misclassification of contextual attributes. This is important for two reasons. First, it brings a dynamic perspective to place and health research. The influence of place on health is dynamic in that certain places are more or less relevant to wellbeing as determined by the length of time in any location and by the frequency of activity in the location. Second, GPS data can be used to assess whether the characteristics of places at specific times are useful to explaining variations in health and wellbeing.</p

The prisoners dilemma on a stochastic non-growth network evolution model

We investigate the evolution of cooperation on a non - growth network model with death/birth dynamics. Nodes reproduce under selection for higher payoffs in a prisoners dilemma game played between network neighbours. The mean field characteristics of the model are explored and an attempt is made to understand the size dependent behaviour of the model in terms of fluctuations in the strategy densities. We also briefly comment on the role of strategy mutation in regulating the strategy densties.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure