Maintenance factors in building design

The degree to which the design of a building embraces maintenance considerations has a major impact on its performance. In Malaysia for instance, most designers claimed to have knowledge and experience on building maintenance aspects but only few are aware of the importance to consider maintenance factors during design stage. A survey was carried out on 38 designer firms (architectural, civil & structural consultant firms) and 30 maintenance firms located in Shah Alam and Kuala Lumpur districts. The aim was to find out the building defects and other maintenance problems that are heavily attributed to design deficiencies, inadequate information gathering, material limitations and lack of maintenance knowledge. The data were analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package of Social Sciences). Findings show that main problems that the maintenance firms are currently facing are caused by building design deficiencies, poor construction quality and poor performance of building which is directly related to functional layout, choice of building material and choice of building equipment. It appears that designer firms consider maintenance factors like ease of cleaning, access to cleaning area and repair and replacement to be the least important when designing buildings. Lack of communication between designer firms and maintenance firms as well as building users or owners resulted in designer firms not fully aware of the maintenance-related problems frequently reported by building owners. Designers seem to be neglecting the benefits of designing for ease of maintenance that can prolong the building lifespan, reduce defects rate and therefore reduce maintenance costs. Therefore, it is important for project team management to develop awareness and policy from the very early start of project to ensure the concept for ease of maintenance can be understood and implemented successfully in local construction practice

VLSI Implementation of Cascaded Integrator Comb Filters for DSP Applications

The recursive comb filters or Cascaded Integrator Comb filter (CIC) are commonly used as decimators for the sigma delta modulators. This paper presents the VLSI implementation, analysis and design of high speed CIC filters which are based on a low-pass filter. These filters are used in the signal decimation which has the effect on reducing the sampling rate. It is also chosen because its attractive property of both low power and low complexity since it dose not required a multiplier. Simulink toolbox available in Matlab software which is used to simulator and Verilog HDL coding help to verify the functionality of the CIC filters. Design procedures and examples are given for CIC filter with emphasis on frequency response, transfer function and register width. The implementation results show using Modified Carry Look-ahead Adder for summation and also apply pipelined filter structure enhanced high speed and make it more compatible for DSP applications

Heritage, gentrification, participation : remaking urban landscapes in the name of culture and historic preservation : introduction

This special issue explores the relationship between heritagization, shifting economies, and urban struggles in different cities around the globe. Our aim is to examine the conditions that have brought history, culture, an old/new urban aesthetics, real estate values, and housing struggles in a relational nexus by looking at the ways in which differently-situated actors mobilize the language of cultural heritage to act upon urban spaces. Ideas of what constitutes a beautiful and livable city are changing along with capital accumulation strategies and urban social geographies. The growing heritagization of historic neighborhoods enables local governments and real-estate developers to engender massive spatial and social changes in the urban landscape. City authorities renovate last swaths of urban fabrics in the name of historic preservation and of the ‘common good’, but this often means that local residents are evicted while private developers allied with these authorities realize huge profits by ‘regenerating’ depressed areas. Yet, local residents also resort to the language of cultural heritage to combat the destruction of their urban worlds. What are the consequences for those who cannot afford to live in the newly restored quarters? What kinds of heritage rhetoric are being mobilized by involved actors? How do rooted political cultures shape the local instantiation of this globalizing phenomenon? Recent urban struggles in the Middle East and Europe reveal an inextricable link between heritagization, gentrification, and urban politics. We invite contributors to submit papers dealing with such links between heritagization and housing struggles, evictions, cultural capitalism, and changing urban aesthetics.