Publicness as an architectural value

That architecture should in some way serve the public good is an idea that mostly goes unquestioned. The corresponding idea that we know who the public is and what its good consists of largely falls apart in the face of even a little probing. This paper investigates the concept of the public inherited from the Enlightenment, its fate in recent times, and possibilities for its reinvention. The argument then goes on to suggest ways in which architecture can have relatively more or less of the quality of publicness

The Impact of Material Lifespan on Carbon Analysis

Carbon impact estimation software programs have simplified the processes for evaluating the carbon contribution of proposed buildings and can be relatively accurate down to building assembly. However, the simplifying assumption that a building’s embodied carbon is entirely a function of the production and installation, while a building’s carbon-in-use is the province of a building’s operational life can lead to misleading results, and hence, faulty decisions, when the lifespans of a building’s individual materials differ greatly from the building’s lifespan. The primary study became a way to point out those disparities between material life expectancy and carbon impact by studying the impact of three alternative roof assemblies

Quantitative Assessment of Sun Louver Design Performance

Conventional wisdom holds that carefully designed exterior louver systems tuned to a building’s earth latitude and its glass wall’s compass orientations do a better job of regulating sunlight than interior louver systems due to the intuition-friendly observation that exterior systems reflect or shade the sunlight before it ever enters the building. A multi-criteria, multi-variable analysis performed on a 3600 SF multipurpose space came to different conclusions. The results showed that when accounting for such design criteria as carbon footprint, glare, optimal daylighting and solar heat gain of the interior, tuned exterior louvers perform well against some measures but fared poorly in others, making the decision between types of louver systems a matter of setting performance priorities and aesthetic preference in any given building. This paper summarizes a student’s independent research study in which she tested her studio project’s arrangement of sun louvers in a large multipurpose space, measuring a number of factors with a goal of determining the best design. Four interdisciplinary faculty collaboratively reviewed her research from architectural, structural, and environmental perspectives. For the analysis, Cove Tool, eQUEST, Tally, and EC3 software were used to test the performance of various louver layouts. A series of separate studies investigated whether the presence of louvers, their solar orientation, the location of the louvers relative to the glass wall, and louver spacing impacted daylighting and energy performance and carbon footprint reduction. All louver studies were compared to a reference design of exposed non-louvered glass, specified to meet minimum code standards. While some results followed widely accepted logic regarding the design of sun louvers, many differences in performance were either not as dramatic as expected, or positive performance results in one category were offset by negative performance results in another. In the end it is evident in this study that the detailed refinements of louver design do not dramatically affect daylight, energy, or carbon footprint performance in a way that would provide designers with clear performance directives, in the absence of preset priorities, so such factors as aesthetic intent may ultimately take on a decisive role

Serine Phosphorylation of SR Proteins Is Required for Their Recruitment to Sites of Transcription In Vivo

Expression of most RNA polymerase II transcripts requires the coordinated execution of transcription, splicing, and 3′ processing. We have previously shown that upon transcriptional activation of a gene in vivo, pre-mRNA splicing factors are recruited from nuclear speckles, in which they are concentrated, to sites of transcription (Misteli, T., J.F. Cáceres, and D.L. Spector. 1997. Nature. 387:523–527). This recruitment process appears to spatially coordinate transcription and pre-mRNA splicing within the cell nucleus. Here we have investigated the molecular basis for recruitment by analyzing the recruitment properties of mutant splicing factors. We show that multiple protein domains are required for efficient recruitment of SR proteins from nuclear speckles to nascent RNA. The two types of modular domains found in the splicing factor SF2/ ASF exert distinct functions in this process. In living cells, the RS domain functions in the dissociation of the protein from speckles, and phosphorylation of serine residues in the RS domain is a prerequisite for this event. The RNA binding domains play a role in the association of splicing factors with the target RNA. These observations identify a novel in vivo role for the RS domain of SR proteins and suggest a model in which protein phosphorylation is instrumental for the recruitment of these proteins to active sites of transcription in vivo