Architectural authorship in generative design

The emergence of evolutionary digital design methods, relying on the creative generation of novel forms, has transformed the design process altogether and consequently the role of the architect. These methods are more than the means to aid and enhance the design process or to perfect the representation of finite architectural projects. The architectural design philosophy is gradually transcending to a hybrid of art, engineering, computer programming and biology. Within this framework, the emergence of designs relies on the architect- machine interaction and the authorship that each of the two shares. This work aims to explore the changes within the design process and to define the authorial control of a new breed of architects- programmers and architects-users on architecture and its design representation. For the investigation of these problems, this thesis is to be based on an experiment conducted by the author in order to test the interaction of architects with different digital design methods and their authorial control over the final product. Eventually, the results will be compared and evaluated in relation to the theoretic views. Ultimately, the architect will establish his authorial role

A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVELS AND PREDICTORS IN GREEK OLDER ADULTS: THE SURVEY ON HEALTH, AGEING AND RETIREMENT IN EUROPE

Studies have indicated that participation in physical activity (PA) enhances health and reduces mortality rates. The current study investigated longitudinal PA levels in Greek older individuals, analyzing data of the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). In addition, predictors of the PA levels in 2020 were examined including the PA measures in 2017 and various variables. The SHARE is a cross-national database of non-institutionalized older population from 28 European countries. The current study analyzed the Greek sample of SHARE’s waves 7 and 8. In particular, 1767 individuals, 748 men and 1.019 women (69.40 ± 9.56 years) filled in the PA questions in both studies. To identify differences over time and PA predictors, Wilcoxon tests and Multinomial regression analyses were conducted respectively, due to the categorical form of the PA variables. Significant decreases were found between the vigorous PA measures in 2017 and 2020 (z = -2.80, p < 0.05), as well as between the moderate PA assessments in 2017 and 2020 (z = -4.88, p < 0.01). Young age, low alcohol consumption, few chronic diseases and activities’ limitations, low depression, as well as positive feelings and satisfaction with life and high levels of longitudinal PA, life expectancy and participation in sport and social clubs were significant predictors of high PA levels. Therefore, to enhance PA levels, interventions promoting active and healthy aging, positive feelings, life satisfaction and social activities should be adopted.  Article visualizations

Blue-collar workplace communicative practices: a case study in construction sites in Qatar

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the role of language in multilingual blue-collar workplaces by investigating how communication is realized in construction sites in Qatar. The State of Qatar offers a unique and, hence, very interesting setting for the linguistic investigation of migration-related issues, such as multilingualism (Pieti inen et al. in Sociolinguistics from the periphery: small languages in new circumstances, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016), due to the fact that over 90% of its population consists of non-citizens (Ahmad, in: Kamrava, Babar (eds) Migrant labor in the Persian Gulf, Hurst & Company, London, pp 21 40, 2015). In addition, after its successful bid to host the World Cup 2022, the country is currently witnessing a rapid transformation of its landscape evident through its massive number of construction sites, where people of different national, ethnic and social class backgrounds from all over the world are hired to work together in developing the infrastructure that is part of the ambitious Qatar Vision 2030. Against this backdrop, the focus is on the sociolinguistic resources (Blommaert in The sociolinguistics of globalization, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) mobilized in a construction site at a university in Qatar. The multilingual community of practice (Lave and Wenger in Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991) investigated consists of blue-collar workers from India and their communication practices with their supervisors, who are project site engineers from all over the world. In such transnational fields, where effective communication is a sine qua non not only for the successful completion of the project or infrastructure itself but also, and perhaps most importantly, for the safety of everybody involved in the construction, multilingualism is the norm. It is argued that communication is realized through spatial repertoires (Canagarajah, in: Canagarajah (ed) The Routledge handbook of migration and language, Routledge, New York, pp 1 28, 2017), that are constructed and used as ingroup markers to facilitate communication among people from different nationalities, ethnicities and social classes. The ethnographic data, collected for almost 13 months, comprise voice-recorded interactions, field notes from on-site participant observation as well as ethnographic interviews with select blue-collar workers and their supervisors. The linguistic and exolinguistic analysis is contextualized in the broader socio-political and economic forces of Qatar (Fromherz in Qatar. A modern history, Georgetown University Press, Washington, 2012; Kamrava in Qatar: small state, big politics, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2015; chapters in Kamrava and Babar in Migrant labor in the Persian Gulf, Hurst & Company, London, 2015).Scopu

A.-F. Christidis: The Citizen-Linguist

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The political economy of unemployment, labour market institutions and macroeconomic policies in open economies: the cases of Germany and the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s

The question that this thesis addresses is how western European countries with regulated labour markets managed to reduce their unemployment rates in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the accounts in mainstream economics literature have been trying to explain this turnaround in performance in terms of labour market reforms that were undertaken in the direction of deregulation and by stressing potential interactions between such reforms in labour market policies, backing their claims with econometric evidence that is usually not robust. This thesis takes a different approach both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, it develops the hypothesis that in open economies, coordinated collective wage bargaining can lead to moderate wage/price outcomes in the presence of conservative/stability oriented macroeconomic policies even in the presence of generous labour market protection policies. Moreover, in countries with regulated labour markets, the effectiveness of moderate bargaining outcomes and labour market reforms in combating unemployment will depend on the size and openness of the economy: the smaller and more open an economy is, the more effective moderate bargaining outcomes and labour market reforms will be in reducing the equilibrium rate of unemployment. This hypothesis is an alternative to the ‘deregulation thesis’ rather than a competing one. This hypothesis is explored and further qualified in this thesis through qualitative comparative analysis-QCA with fuzzy-sets and the detailed study of the cases of the Netherlands and Germany in the 1980s and the 1990s. The upshot of the analysis of this thesis is that the effects of labour market policies and institutions on labour market performance should be considered within the context of macro-level institutions (e.g. macroeconomic policies) and characteristics (e.g. openness to trade) if we want to accurately assess the need to reform them

Setting the Syrian stage: A case study of dance and power

This article first presents the Syrian stage of official dance representations as portrayed by the Ba’thist regime. Second, it criticises the official ideology on the basis of anthropological/ philosophical understandings. Third it shows how criticisms are always already embedded within the official ideological discourse. The aim, thus, is twofold: on one hand it strives to underlie the necessity for more political ethnographic studies of dance, and on the other, it aspires to show how, in the context of the ideological populism of the Syrian regime, alternative readings resisting and challenging authoritarian hegemonic ideological writings, are already embedded not only in the ideological contradictions of the official portrayal, but even in the syntax and the grammar the official rhetoric employs

The gift of the code: A culture of an operating system

“The Gift of the Code” explores the boundaries between technology and sociality, computers and cultures. Based on long-term ethnographic research among users and developers of GNU/Linux Operating System, this work analyses how Linux developers and users consume, create and exchange an as much technical as cultural discursive construction of sociality. Like a modern-day kula ring, the Linux code is analysed in terms of a gift: one cannot keep it for one’s self, it contains obligations and a promise of future reciprocity. It is a collective gift of the self-ascribed Hackers that come from different geographic places and meet in lines of code, socializing by exchanging ideas about the code and about themselves. This work shows by what means the computer hackers of Linux, abiding to the original definition of the word, actively constitute their community using discourse: language, e-mail, internal meritocratic hierarchies based on technical ability and ethics of the group, boundaries of exclusion and inclusion. This project is about power relations, resistance networks and the hegemony of a techno-scientific self-indulgence of some post-residents of an imagined cyber-West. Equally, it is about the giving of gifts, hacker culture and the ‘fun’ of hacking, creating and maintaining a ‘guerrilla’ operating system. Studying the anthropology of GNU/Linux operating system is a journey towards an investigation of what makes the social into technology and how technology is translated into sociality