Resistance & Permanence of Green Urban Systems in the Globalization Age

[EN] The rapid transformation and the trivialization of landscapes in Wallonia (BE), require reformulating tools and objectives of morphological studies. Built fabrics and landscapes show the effects of abandoning or losing interest in the interrelations between natural and human actions. This contribution focuses on studies of cities and territories that have ceased to be the object of spatial policies attentive to the relationship between the need to live, maintain or care for green or natural spaces. After the systematic reduction of urban environments to simple green covers, morphological reading allows the recognition of traces of park systems or green infrastructures, whose communities often do not remember. The research's focus has shifted from the building to the green space structure. This displacement of interest makes it possible to find commons cultures that have acted on the territory of Liège (industrial city) on the one hand, through the building’s extension and on the other hand, through the project of forests, walks, squares, parks and public gardens. Now, these fragmented places become the main resource for reorganizing natural and human systems in order to offer new - social and spatial - coherence for tomorrow. Thus the historical green systems become a strong structuring link which serves to seek new dialectics of balance between existing fabrics and green systems. This system’s regeneration stands, on the one hand, to the hybridization of materials - water, green and buildings - and, on the other hand, to the physical and mental memory of the inhabited environments that populations keep. Green systems impose themselves as powerful vectors for the construction of new socio-spatial balances of cities and territories of globalization, as in the study case for the landscape systems in Liège and for the water and landscapes infrastructure in Chaudfontaine.Occhiuto, R. (2018). Resistance & Permanence of Green Urban Systems in the Globalization Age. En 24th ISUF International Conference. Book of Papers. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1711-1718. https://doi.org/10.4995/ISUF2017.2017.6328OCS1711171

INJURED LANDSCAPES: REUSE & RECYCLE

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Covid-19 in Saudi Arabia: Beyond the health crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic is already exerting a heavy economic toll on all areas of the world. The energy producing countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) make no exception. In Saudi Arabia, the economic impact of the pandemic has been, so far, significant. Meanwhile, 2020 is a particularly important year for Saudi Arabia's internal socio-political cohesion and its international stance. Internationally, the Kingdom will be subject to increasing scrutiny ahead of the Riyadh-hosted November G20 summit while, domestically, authorities are expected to accelerate the pace of economic and social reforms related to Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 programme. Economic turbulences are affecting the calculation of decision makers when it comes to both domestic and foreign policy

Paesaggi che cambiano: rigenerare, riutilizzare, reinventare i nostri contesti di vita

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What the ground says…

peer reviewedGround, as a body incised by natural and human actions (European Landscape Conven-tion), carries “stories”, going beyond quantitative values. As in a text, it holds the keys to under-stand what it covers or hides. In its thickness, it shelters “implicit projects”. Understanding its complexity requires a physical and perceptual commitment, challenging the body in space: dimensions gradually forgotten by Environmental Sciences. As a “threshold” between visible and invisible, Underground‐Built‐Heritage represents the reverse of the emerged world: hollow space, both generator and mirror of open space (cities, landscapes). The focus is on physical and mental relationships between these two worlds. Past and present relationships emerge, allowing hypothe-ses to reconstitute collective memories, practices, knowledge, and values, which serve territorial development. The “Three Countries Park” is a place for cross‐border experimentation to test how UBH can rebuild common links for fragmented environments. The cavities of a geo‐park (planned) and the tangles of underground mining architecture are the fragments of a vocabulary whose meaning communities have to relearn. Built undergrounds will, thus, emerge from common stories that revive the imagination of populations who have lost all notion of belonging to a place. UBH will become a vector of new territorial coherence linking the physical and mental perceptions of people

Volatile Composition and Biological Activity of Key Lime Citrus aurantifolia Essential Oil

The essential oil of Citrus aurantifolia (Christm) Swingle fruits (limes) was studied for its potential spasmolytic effects in relation to its chemical composition. The essential oil, extracted by hydrodistillation (HD), was analyzed by GC-FID and GC-MS. The antispasmodic activity was evaluated on isolated rabbit jejunum, aorta and uterus. The results indicated that the essential oil of C aurantifolia possesses important spasmolytic properties, which are likely to be due to its major constituents, limonene (58.4%), β-pinene (15.4%), γ-terpinene (8.5%), and citral (4.4%)

Materia degenere: fisica e applicazioni astrofisiche

La degenerazione rappresenta uno stato della materia, in condizioni estreme di temperatura e densità, nel quale per descrivere il comportamento delle particelle bisogna tenere conto di effetti quantistici. Col seguente elaborato si vuole fornire una panoramica generale sullo stato degenere della materia e le sue principali applicazioni in astrofisica. L’obiettivo di questa tesi di laurea è quello di fornire un’analisi del diverso comportameto di partcelle bosoniche e fermioniche in stato di degenereazione, portando poi l’attenzione su come tali aspetti si riflettano in strutture stellari come le nane bianche e le stelle di neutroni. La tesi è articolata su due capitoli: nel primo viene fornita un introduzione sulla fisica della materia degenere, enunciando il principio di esclusione di Pauli e descrivendo le distribuzioni di Fermi-Dirac e Bose-Einstein. Nel secondo capitolo viene mostrato come cambi la descrizione della pressione in ambiente degenere. Infine, sulla base di questi risultati, vengono trattati alcuni esempi astrofisici, in particolare si pone particolare attenzione a come la degenerazione caratterizzi il raggio e la massa di stelle come le nane bianche e le stelle di neutroni

Le long des lignes des eaux de la Meuse

editorial reviewedMeuse creuse - Liège flotte. C'est l'image de l'interrelation entre le flux incessant de la rivière et la possibilité pour une ville de se fixer et d'émerger. Les dessins du mouvement indocile des eaux entourant l'affleurement de terrains instables à urbaniser se superposent à la volonté de plier les fluctuations du fleuve à un projet volontariste et visionnaire d'une société en mutation. La rectification et la canalisation portent la mémoire d'un assujettissement à des logiques fonctionnelles, un héritage culturel difficile à surmonter. La ré-émergence des politiques environnementales, les plans verts et bleus sont aujourd'hui une nouvelle piste pour comprendre si la Meuse et Liège parviendront à restaurer ce lien intime de collaboration entre un agent naturel qui creuse, adapte et change les conditions du terrain et une ville qui sait adapter la fluctuation de son architecture, de ses rues, de ses places et de ses lieux d'être, se nourrissant et se renouvelant en dialogue avec le flux de l'eau

Imaginaire et différ(a)nce : générateurs de paysages

La réflexion porte sur la nécessité de restituer aux métiers d’observation et de projet du paysage d’une part la confiance dans la préfiguration et la réinvention des milieux, entre autres, par l’imaginaire, et d’autre part la reconnaissance de la maîtrise des outils de représentation du réel au service du projet. L’Imaginaire, lié à l’aptitude à observer finement, s’appuie sur les capacités à lire, comprendre et interpréter les formes géographiques et leurs transformations continues, sous l’action naturelle et humaine (Convention européenne du paysage). Exprimée en tant que lignes, tracés ou incisions, cette action marque les lieux, comme des écritures qu’il faut s’approprier par un engagement in situ physique et mental. Émergent alors récits et vécus producteurs d’images/dessins, porteurs de caractères, langages et tensions, constituant la force créatrice et novatrice de projets de paysage considérant l’existant comme un champ de forces en action – donc un territoire en mouvement – dont il faut comprendre les mouvances afin de les adopter comme lois ou invariantes des projets nouveaux. Notre postulat est que le projet produit la différ(a)nce, une écriture à double structure : « trace-écart » « résiduelle et dynamique », « rétentrice et propensionnelle » (Jacques Derrida), à la fois rattachée au passé (trace) et se projetant vers le futur par la distance ou le recul pris (écart).This article reflects on the need to restore confidence in the ability of the professions engaged in observing and designing the landscape to prefigure and reinvent landscapes by using imagination among other things, and on the need to recognise the ability to master the tools for representing reality in landscape design. Imagination, combined with the aptitude for detailed observation, is based on the capacity to read, understand and interpret the geographic forms and their continuous transformations due to the actions of nature and man (European Landscape Convention). Expressed in the forms of lines, outlines and incisions, this action marks sites, like a form of writing requiring a physical and mental engagement in situ. Thus emerge narratives and experiences producing images/drawings which convey characters, languages and tensions and constitute the creative and innovative force of landscape projects which consider what exists as a field of forces in action – therefore a territory in movement. Our assumption is that the project produces a different or deferred meaning, a différ(a)nce, a textual composition with a double structure : "trace-gap", "residual and dynamic", "retentive and subject to propensity", (Jacques Derrida), linked to the past (trace) and projecting into the future through a distance or distancing (gap)