Art, Spectacle, and Permanence. Notes on Le Corbusier and the Synthesis of the Arts

In the light of contemporary architecture, last century’s emblematic ‘artist-architect’ may appear at once disquietingly prophetic and almost surrealistically antiquarian. This essay explores the hypothesis that Le Corbusier’s ultimate passion was the museum, and his ultimate dream that of being assigned a key place in the history of art. Though this may sound simple enough - perhaps trivial - it may help re-organizing a very well-known (but also partly unknown) body of knowledge on the master and to understand better the paradox of the continuing presence in current architectural discussions

"Pastillas" de preguerra y políticas de posguerra

La fascinación y confianza del movimiento moderno en el poder de la forma abstracta tuvo una de sus repercusiones más evidentes en el establecimiento de la “pastilla” como morfología paradigmática y síntesis de muchos de sus postulados. Más allá de la repetición del calificativo, la historiografía del término desde Espacio, tiempo y arquitectura, de Sigfred Giedion, permite descubrir distintas acepciones del mismo adaptadas a las corrientes políticas de autoridades y promotores que dieron forma a las capitales del siglo XX

Criterion Validity and Test-Retest Reliability of a Modified Version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF) in Kidney Transplant Recipients

INTRODUCTION: Accelerometry, the clinically valued standard of physical activity monitoring, has limited acceptance in transplantation rehabilitation; therefore, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) self-report instrument is widely used. However, while the IPAQ's repeatability is good, its criterion validity is unsatisfactory. We hypothesized that adding a concise oral introduction would help overcome this shortfall. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a secondary analysis of a RCT in a sample of kidney transplant recipients that underwent observational follow-up. We assessed criterion validity of our modified version of the four-item IPAQ-Short Form (mIPAQ-SF) via Pearson, and test-retest reliability via intraclass correlation coefficients. The main difference in the new version is an oral pre-measurement introduction to the questionnaire's concepts. We compared our results with those of published studies. RESULTS: Post-kidney-transplantation data of 92 patients were analyzed. Across the four IPAQ-SF/mIPAQ-SF items, values of correlations between mIPAQ-SF responses and accelerometry records ranged from 0.07 (min in vigorous activity) to 0.35 (min in moderate activity) for criterion validity, and from 0.19 (days with moderate activity) to 0.58 (min in moderate activity) for test-retest reliability. DISCUSSION: Regarding moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, mIPAQ-SF self-reports' correlations to accelerometry records improved considerably on those of the IPAQ-SF (r = 0.18 vs. r = 0.33), i.e., improved criterion validity. We therefore conclude that a pre-measurement oral explanation of key IPAQ-SF/mIPAQ concepts enhances criterion validity regarding self-reported moderate-to-vigorous physical activity

« Déphasages »

Stanislaus von Moos, « Phasenverschiebungen », archithese, n°16, 1975, p. 26. © archithese Arrière-plan Le présent article prend l’Amérique comme prétexte afin de pouvoir parler sans prendre trop de gants de l’évidence, c’est-à-dire de ce qui se passe ici, en Suisse. À contre-courant de la mode, il traite essentiellement d’apparences extérieures et d’impression personnelles. On peut tenter de les subsumer sous la forme de trois thèses vaguement liées entre elles – thèses qui serviront d’arri..

«Gedächtniskirche à la carte». Notes on the Political Fortunes of a «Pile of Stones»

The life-cycle of an ordinary building typically begins with a plan and ends with a quiet process of decay. Not so, when national interests are at stake, as is the case with Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, consecrated in 1895). In such cases, a building’s collapse, especially if caused by deliberate ruination, tends to entail either a radical damnatio memoriae or a second life in the form of its physical reconstruction (a process ominously demonstrated in the demolition and subsequent reconstruction of the Berliner Schloss 1951- 2023). In the present case, what happened was the monumentalization of the remains that document its downfall. The essay tries to highlight some moments in that process. That the Gedächtniskirche’s long history roughly coincides with the growth and decline of the illustrated postcard as a means of mass communication is perhaps a coincidence. Yet if what one may call the political symbolism of a building is the result of complex dynamics of production and reception, then the magnitude of the visual archive left behind by postcards, “the first world-wide social network” (Lydia Pyne, 2021), turns out to be a stunningly vivid visual record of such processes. Especially so in the case of the Memorial Church, given its key position in Germany’s troubled history of imperial ambitions and subsequent self-awakening as a modern Western democracy