Practical importance of the shape of a tall building in the city space

The development of construction technology creates ever greater opportunities for designing tall buildings with unusual shapes. So the question remains: what role might the shape of a tall building play in developing a legible and imageable environment? The paper aims to show the importance of the shape of a tall building for imageability and legibility of the urban environment, on the basis of previously published analyses by various authors, which are part of wider studies on: placemaking with tall buildings, imageability of tall buildings and orientation in the urban space. The importance of the shape of a tall building is presented in three aspects: its functioning as a landmark, imageability of such buildings and recognisability of a district of the city as well as the city itself. The unique shape of a tall building has enormous potential for use in creating legible and imageable urban environment. The shape can be used to create distinctive landmarks of different scale and importance to the city. The location of a tall building with a distinctive shape is important. Constructing such a building in a clearly visible place makes it easy to remember. When such a building is located e.g. at the terminus of a street's view corridor, it significantly contributes to the strengthening of its imageability. Examples presented in this paper show that single tall buildings with unique shapes are important for the recognisability of a district of the city, and even the city as a whole

Institutionalisation of Scandinavian Consensual Democracy

The paper takes as a point of departure the notion of consensual democracy as a characteristic element of the so called Scandinavian Model. Both terms, i.e. the consensual democracy and the Scandinavian Model got really famous only after World War Two as potential Scandinavian ‘export goods’. The author argues that singularity of Scandinavian solutions within the labour market and politics started already before World War Two. The key to understanding the origin of the Scandinavian Model lies in understanding of the nature of collective bargaining in the Nordic countries. The September Agreement of 1899 in Denmark and the Saltsjobaden Agreement of 1938 in Sweden are examples of institutionalisation of labour relations, while the Danish Kanslergade Agreement and the Swedish Kohandel of 1933 are instances taken from parliamentary politics. These examples show how the pattern for conflict resolution in the Scandinavian countries was institutionalised

Feminism and the Cooling of Intimacy. Unintended Consequences of Women’s Movements

Numerous diagnoses of contemporary transformations of love and eroticism emphasise the fact that the intimate life has become democratised and liberated. Anthony Giddens argues that personal relationships increasingly become compatible with the model of pure relationship, which means that they are more egalitarian and that both partners are free to choose and to negotiate the shape of their relations. Jeffrey Weeks claims that in “the world that we have won”, women, homosexuals and queers are increasingly considered as equal to heterosexual men. Most scholars agree that feminism(together with gays’ and lesbians’ movements) is one of most important factors that enabled the democratisation of intimacy. Yet, it is possible to distinguish some interesting approaches that examine the unintended consequences of women’s emancipation. Sociologists like Arlie Russell Hochschild and Eva Illouz recognise the importance of feminism in democratising intimacy, thus they also claim that liberation of women has entailed rationalisation and commercialisation of intimacy. One of Hochschild’s main thesis is that feminism commercialises intimacy by legitimising “the commercial spirit of intimate life”. What is more, she argues that instead of humanizing men feminism is capitalising women. On the other hand, Illouz persuades that feminism – together with therapeutic discourse – rationalises intimacy by emphasising the necessity of analysing and quantifying all aspects of intimate life. Hochschild and Illouz claim that feminism unintentionally makes intimacy “cold” – that is that it suggests focusing on personal autonomy and perceiving warm and close bonds as an endangerment for that autonomy. The cooling entails loosening of family and intimate relationships and making individuals more attached to the market. In the end, both sociologists agree that “cool” branches of feminism make women similar to men and intimacy similar to the marke

Rola pamięci w relacjach starożytnych Rzymian z bogami

In the article I discuss the role of rituals in the construction of religious memory. The concept of cultural memory of Jan Assman is the starting point of my research. In Rome, the social frame of social memory created the customs of ancestors, and historical examples, the places in the topography of Rome and figures from the past were ‘the figures’ of memory. The meticulous observance of the ritual characteristic of the Roman religion can be counted as an example of memory practices. Through the ritual people were confirming their memory of the gods and were reminding the gods of their expectations for them. The ritual was a kind of procedural memory that was connecting the Romans with their ancestors and the ancestral deities. Remembering and forgetting played an important role in many rituals related to, for example, the admission of foreign deities to the Roman pantheon. The memory was a form of godliness, which is why in various forms it was present in the images of Gods and ritual practice.W artykule omawiam rolę rytuałów w konstruowaniu pamięci religijnej. Punktem wyjścia moich badań jest koncepcja pamięci kulturowej Jana Assmana. W Rzymie społeczne ramy pamięci społecznej tworzył obyczaj przodków, a historyczne przykłady, miejsca w topografii Rzymu i postacie z przeszłości były ‘figurami’ pamięci. Skrupulatne przestrzeganie rytuału charakterystyczne dla religii rzymskiej można zaliczyć do praktyk pamięci. Za pomocą rytuału ludzie potwierdzali pamięć o bogach i przypominali bogom o swoich oczekiwaniach wobec nich. Rytuał był rodzajem pamięci proceduralnej łączącej Rzymian z przodkami i bóstwami przodków. Pamięć i zapominanie odgrywa ważną rolę w wielu rytuałach związanych na przykład z przyjmowaniem do rzymskiego panteonu obcych bóstw. Pamięć była formą pobożności, dlatego w różnych formach był obecna w wyobrażeniach o bogach i w praktyce rytualnej

The Princeps as the "Pontifex Maximus" : the case of Tiberius

The Roman emperor accumulated political and religious power, which in republican tradition was divided between magistrates and priests. This does not mean, however, that the boundary between these authorities has been erased, which also confirms the manner in which the individual ruler held the pontifex maximus function. This article concerns two cases of Tiberius’ interventions as the pontifex maximus recorded by Tacitus. The first event is connected with the choosing of a new Vestal, and the next is related to the flamen Dialis’ (S. Cornelius Maluginensis) requests for governorship of the province. In both situations, the emperor appeared before the Senate in a dual role; he presented the pontiffs’ opinion as pontifex maximus, and as the princeps he made a decisions on its basis

"An American Tragedy" : Strategies of Representing Victimhood in American Narratives of the War in Vietnam

Celem rozprawy jest zbadanie kanonicznych narracji amerykańskich dotyczących wojny w Wietnamie pod kątem problemu wiktymizacji. Wychodzę od założenia, iż teksty te powinny być odczytywane głównie w kontekście późnych lat 70. i 80., czyli okresu, kiedy zostały one wydane oraz kiedy rozwijała się amerykańska narracja kulturowa dotycząca konfliktu. Status ofiary „Wietnamu” okazuje się być kluczowym aspektem tej kulturowej narracji, przyznanym przede wszystkim amerykańskim weteranom. Przedyskutowawszy kwestię ówczesnych dyskursów odnoszących się do wojny w Wietnamie oraz postaci weterana, a także ich ideologicznych pobudek, formułuję propozycję wedle której mitologizacja wojny wietnamskiej była niezbędna by przesłonić jej historyczność i uczynić z niej wyłącznie amerykańską sprawę. W ten sposób państwo Wietnam staje się symbolicznym krajobrazem amerykańskiego mitu, w którym rozgrywa się amerykańska tragedia. Moim celem jest dekonstrukcja różnych strategii przedstawiania Wietnamu oraz jego mieszkańców w kanonicznych narracjach, które dopuszczają się owej mitologizacji. W ostatnim rozdziale rozprawy zajmuję się przedstawieniami żołnierzy USA oraz wietnamskich cywilów, aby prześledzić strategie użyte to ustanawiania oraz wyjaśniania różnych „typów” ofiar wojny. W konkluzji zauważam, iż amerykański kanon wojny wietnamskiej w dużej mierze polega na „radzeniu sobie” z problemem zbrodni wojennej. Rozprawa odnosi się do kwestii statusu ofiary w kontekście mitu i ideologii