How to rediscover the public square in the contemporary city : the experience of Lisbon

During the 20th century and in particular, throughout the post-second world war, Lisbon's public square's design and function have changed as a consequence of the urban expansion and the cars' massification. After the Lisbon Strategic Charter 2010-2024 development, in 2014 the City Council of Lisbon presented the program of interventions in the public space "Uma praça em cada bairro" [A square in each neighborhood]. In this context, it has been proposed the qualification of more than one hundred and fifty public spaces in Lisbon. Through this paper, we aim to understand how this program contributed to rediscover the public square as an urban form and its traditional socioeconomic functions. The impact of the program and its concluded interventions were analyzed through a visual qualitative methodology. The qualitative evaluation of the previous and post-intervention spaces was enabled through the comparison of the Google Street View archives from 2009-2016 and the pictures taken during this research in 2020. By using this methodology this paper assesses the introduction of new urban elements, such as pavements, vegetation, urban furniture, lighting, and signs. This analysis shows the qualitative impact of the program "Uma praça em cada bairro" [A square in every neighborhood] on the qualification and revaluation of the public square as an urban forum in Lisbon. After the interventions the car traffic and parking was reduced about 21% of the total case studies area. Green spaces also increased, as did the areas dedicated to people

Peer assessment in architecture education

The role of peer assessment in education has become of particular interest in recent years, mainly because of its potential benefits in improving student’s learning and benefits in time management by allowing teachers and tutors to use their time more efficiently to get the results of student’s assessments quicker. Peer assessment has also relevant in the context of distance learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs)

Telework during the COVID-19 epidemic in Portugal and determinants of job satisfaction: a cross-sectional study

Background:Telework satisfaction is a Public Health concern, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its determinant factors may be related with the negative health effects of teleworking. However, there is still little research exploring this issue. This study aimed to characterize telework during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Portugal and to identify the major predictors of telework satisfaction. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study aimed at all teleworkers working in Portugal, during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic. Data were collected through a Google Forms platform online questionnaire distributed by a snowball method on social networks. Descriptive statistics included crude and relative frequency data. The associations between sociodemographic characteristics, self-perceived health, organization of working time, concentration at work, work-life balance, work disconnection, working conditions, and organizational demands (flexibility and organizational trust based on E-work Life Scale) with telework satisfaction were estimated through logistic regression. Results: This study included 1004 participants. Teleworkers satisfaction levels were high (69%). Better concentration at work (OR = 1.54; 95%CI 1.01–2.34); the satisfaction with the balance between work life and extra work when teleworking (OR = 1.79; 95%CI 1.17–2.74); and higher work flexibility (OR = 2.26; 95%CI 1.46–3.49) were good predictors of greater levels of satisfaction with telework. However, its major predictors were the company’s trust in teleworkers (OR = 4.50; 95%CI 2.89–7.02) and feeling good in the workspace at home (OR = 3.72; 95%CI 1.46–9.49). Conclusions: Our findings point that work environment and organizational culture play a crucial role in affecting telework satisfaction. More studies are needed to monitor telework satisfaction and its effects on physical and mental health, so that Public and Occupational Health (and Safety) can be able to identify and implement the best interventions that allow promoting individual health and foster a healthy work environment for teleworkers.Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia, IP national support through CHRC (UIDP/04923/2020)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Online survey for collective clustering of computer generated architectural floor plans

The aim of this study is to understand what are the collective actions of architecture practitioners when grouping floor plan designs. The understanding of how professionals and students solve this complex problem may help to develop specific programmes for the teaching of architecture. In addition, the findings of this study can help in the development of query mechanisms for database retrieval of floor plans and the implementation of clustering mechanisms to aggregate floor plans resulting from generative design methods. The study aims to capture how practitioners define similarity between floor plans from a pool of available designs. A hybrid evolutionary strategy is used, which takes into account the building's functional program to generate alternative floor plan designs. The first step of this methodology consisted in an online survey to gather information on how the respondents would perform a clustering task. Online surveys have been used in several applications and are a method of data collection that conveys several advantages. When properly developed and implemented, a survey portrays the characteristics of large groups of respondents on a specific topic and allows assessing its representation. Several types of surveys are available; e.g. questionnaire and interview formats, phone survey, and online surveys, which can be coupled with inference engines that act and direct the survey according to respondents' answers. In the present study, the survey was posed as an online exercise in which respondents had to perform a pre-defined task, which makes it similar to running an experiment in an online environment. The experiment aimed to understand the perception and criteria of the target population to perform the clustering task by comparing the results with the respondents' answers to a questionnaire presented at the end of the exercise

Clustering of architectural floor plans: A comparison of shape representations

Generative design methods are able to produce a large number of potential solutions of architectural floor plans, which may be overwhelming for the decision-maker to cope with. Therefore, it is important to develop tools which organise the generated data in a meaningful manner. In this study, a comparative analysis of four architectural shape representations for the task of unsupervised clustering is presented. Three of the four shape representations are the Point Distance, Turning Function, and Grid-Based model approaches, which are based on known descriptors. The fourth proposed representation, Tangent Distance, calculates the distances of the contour's tangents to the shape's geometric centre. A hierarchical agglomerative clustering algorithm is used to cluster a synthetic dataset of 72 floor plans. When compared to a reference clustering, despite good perceptual results with the use of the Point Distance and Turning Function representations, the Tangent Distance descriptor (Rand index of 0.873) provides the best results. The Grid-Based descriptor presents the worst results

Measuring Lisbon patterns: Baixa from 1650 to 2010

The present study, based on a comparative analysis of several plans for Lisbon’s Baixa district, with an emphasis on that area’s public space, contributes to an understanding of the urban design process and presents a fresh perspective on dealing with historical data by conducting a posteriori analysis using mathematical tools to uncover relations in the historical data. The nine plans used were quantified and evaluated in a comparative manner. While CAD was used to quantify the urban morphology of the different plans, comparative tables make it possible to register the data, which was further evaluated through two interrelated processes: mathematical analysis and the urban analysis. The results show the existence of power law relations for the areas of each of the city’s different elements (e.g., blocks, churches, largos and adros). We discuss how this contributes to the understanding of the plans’ elements