Philip Tong and Hans-Christian Wilhelm
Sloping topographies in urban areas are often under-utilised due to complex designs and difficult access, resulting in low construction productivity and high cost. Automated…
Abstract
Purpose
Sloping topographies in urban areas are often under-utilised due to complex designs and difficult access, resulting in low construction productivity and high cost. Automated construction techniques are usually limited to flat sites or lab spaces. This research combines concepts for automated and prefabricated construction with hillside dwelling design. It proposes a strategy to integrate both aspects and to equally inform design process and design output. The aims are to turn hillside access and construction automation into design generators, improve productivity and use more affordable hillside sites.
Design/methodology/approach
Analysis of typologies for hillside housing and automated construction techniques is used to derive principles and parameters to inform a strategy and generative script for setting out, volumetric disposition and access and using the topography as a design-generator. The output from the generative script and tool can then form the basis of a high-density, low-rise dwelling development suited for serial, automation-assisted construction. The strategy is tested on a case study site.
Findings
The typological analysis helps devising strategies for integrating construction robotics and design criteria for hillside housing. The generative script illustrates how a strategy is implemented and used in a design tool able to absorb varying input data, including topographies. This generates innovative, site-specific design outcomes, suited for a process that adapts contemporary construction automation techniques and allows for more efficient use of hillside sites.
Originality/value
This research builds on construction automation methods and proposes novel combinations and adaptations for use on hillside sites. It demonstrates how robotics and generative tools can inform early design stages.
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The purpose of this paper is to profile the role played by the House of the Wannsee Conference, a house used by Nazis which is now an educational centre.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to profile the role played by the House of the Wannsee Conference, a house used by Nazis which is now an educational centre.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides a descriptive analysis supported by relevant literature.
Findings
The paper concludes that one of the biggest challenges for educational work at such a dark tourism site lies in simultaneously revealing and breaking or contextualizing the link between the site and the perspectives and the thinking of the perpetrators.
Originality/value
The paper provides a practitioner perspective on the challenges of linking education on a dark tourism theme with the history and atmosphere of the location itself.
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This article concerns the development of a German Language Children’s Literature Collection at Louisiana State University (LSU) that is used in conjunction with the German…
Abstract
This article concerns the development of a German Language Children’s Literature Collection at Louisiana State University (LSU) that is used in conjunction with the German Language Program at LSU. The article discusses the rationale behind such a collection and provides the tools and selection criteria necessary to develop a successful collection. Also included are sample titles chosen using the process that is discussed during the course of the article.
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Full‐text CDROM is a powerful tool and publishers are finding ways to build more into their product. World Library has upgraded Library of the Future with a third edition (World…
Abstract
Full‐text CDROM is a powerful tool and publishers are finding ways to build more into their product. World Library has upgraded Library of the Future with a third edition (World Library Inc., 1991–1994, Library of the Future, 3rd Edition. Irvine, CA, USA). Library of the Future is a CDROM tool to access classic literature, some religious works and some important documents in full text. World Library has added Windows operation and new graphic effects to the product.
Natalie Le Clue and Janelle Vermaak-Griessel
A motif, as defined by Jean-Charles Seigneuret (1988, p. 17), is an ‘essential part of a contemporary academic discipline known as thematology or thematics’ and that ‘two factors…
Abstract
A motif, as defined by Jean-Charles Seigneuret (1988, p. 17), is an ‘essential part of a contemporary academic discipline known as thematology or thematics’ and that ‘two factors may explain the rise of the thematological method: its interpretive potentialities and its intrinsic congruency with the history of ideas’.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first introduced the story of Snow White and her evil stepmother the Queen in 1812. Decades later, the character of the Queen, who later becomes the Evil Queen, is depicted in copious narratives and several different mediums. A central parallel in most of the representations of this character is that she is presented as evil. As such, how the Evil Queen character is represented in media sees a congruence of specific aesthetical characteristics, which combines to symbolize a rhetorical motif for evil.
We live in the Age of Knowledge, which is impelling us towards the Age of Imagination. The technological wave rises and with it rises a wave of change that will affect both the…
Abstract
We live in the Age of Knowledge, which is impelling us towards the Age of Imagination. The technological wave rises and with it rises a wave of change that will affect both the economy and society. When these two waves will reach the coast where knowledge meets ignorance, and how to ride them, are questions that require us to imagine the future. We must, therefore, embark on the vessel of imagination, leaving behind us the baggage of what we know and understand. Imagination is not just the springboard for ideas; it also acts to connect ideas in different ways that may blossom in the garden of an entrepreneurial renaissance. Symbols, metaphors and concepts that belong to our tacit knowledge come to light in our memory. It is from here that the imagination draws its lifeblood, broadening our horizons, inducing us to interact with others who may be the bearers of other cultures. Are we ready to engage in an imaginative learning process to join business with innovation and art? Are we prepared to design a wide-open white space where the actors of entrepreneurship, innovation and art can generate a constructive tension that will sweep away what appears to be mutual antagonism or incompatibility?
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IN his admirable survey of library methods and problems in Great Britain, read—unfortunately by proxy—at the St. Louis meeting of the American Library Association, which the…
Abstract
IN his admirable survey of library methods and problems in Great Britain, read—unfortunately by proxy—at the St. Louis meeting of the American Library Association, which the author of this paper had the pleasure of hearing, Mr. Bond, in writing of open access, was courageous enough to say that the system in question was the system of the future. It is true that he put that future a long way off, but it is none the less creditable to Mr. Bond's fairness and foresight that he recognises and admits that some time the system of shelf access—perhaps a better term than open access—is bound to prevail, and become the rule rather than the exception in the library administration of this country. One has therefore a shrewd suspicion that much of the fierceness with which the system and the personalities of those who have adopted and approved it, have been assailed, is due to an uneasy feeling on the part of its opponents that time is on the other side, and that they can at best only put the clock back, not stop it.
It was the aim to apply basic epistemological concepts, as presented by Heinz von Foerster, to current problems of medicine and biology.
Abstract
Purpose
It was the aim to apply basic epistemological concepts, as presented by Heinz von Foerster, to current problems of medicine and biology.
Design/methodology/approach
The relation of genes and human behaviour is an important issue in current medical discourse. Many states and diseases are claimed to be caused by a genetical disposition. To prove the soundness of such claims, a strict methodology has to be applied.
Findings
The usual approach of combining genetical findings with observed behaviour is based on an insufficient epistemology. The neglect of recursive processes leads to misinterpretations that have far‐reaching consequences, especially if disease and therapy are concerned.
Research limitations/implications
A precise analysis of recursive traits would allow more reliable models of the relation between genetical disposition and environmental influence.
Originality/value
The paper reflects trivial or non‐trivial relations in social behaviour that are often neglected.
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CD‐ROM technology has reached the point where just a few discs can equal the holdings of a small print library. Reference works used by libraries in hard copy are available on…
Abstract
CD‐ROM technology has reached the point where just a few discs can equal the holdings of a small print library. Reference works used by libraries in hard copy are available on CD‐ROM; encyclopedias, news and periodicals are also in full text on disc. If the appropriate reference is found on disc, searchers need go no further than the CD‐ROM being examined. This article gives a brief overview of a number of CD‐ROMs which the author has bought to create his own personal library.