Showing papers on "Architecture published in 2003"

System and method for designing, developing and implementing internet service provider architectures

Abstract: System and method for designing, developing and implementing Internet Service Provider (ISP) architectures. One embodiment of a method for designing and implementing ISP architectures may include formulating a set of design requirements for an ISP architecture, establishing an architectural model for the ISP architecture using the set of design requirements, generating a logical design for the ISP architecture from the architectural model and the set of design requirements, and generating a physical design for the ISP architecture using the architectural model and the logical design. One embodiment may also include selecting one or more components of the ISP architecture and implementing the ISP architecture according to the logical design and the physical design. In one embodiment the system and method for designing, developing and implementing ISP architectures may be used to design, develop and implement an N-tiered ISP architecture.

Architecture in the digital age : design and manufacturing

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Digital Morphogenesis 3. Digital Production 4. Information Master Builders 5. Digital Master Builders? 6. Design Worlds and Fabrication Machines 7. Laws of Form 8. Evolution of the Digital Design Process 9. Real as Data 10. Towards a Fully Associative Architecture 11. Between Intuition and Process: Parametric Design and Rapid Prototyping 12. Scott Points: Exploring Principles of Digital Creativity 13. Making Ideas 14. Designing and Manufacturing Performative Architecture 15. Generative Convergences 16. Other Challenges 17. Extensible Computational Design Tools for Exploratory Architecture 18. Building Information Modelling: Current Challenges and Future Directions 19. Is there More to Come? 20. The Construction Industry in an Age of Anxiety 21. Performance-Based Design 22. Challenges Ahead

The RETSINA MAS Infrastructure

Abstract: RETSINA is an implemented Multi-Agent System infrastructure that has been developed for several years and applied in many domains ranging from financial portfolio management to logistic planning. In this paper, we distill from our experience in developing MASs to clearly define a generic MAS infrastructure as the domain independent and reusable substratum that supports the agents' social interactions. In addition, we show that the MAS infrastructure imposes requirements on an individual agent if the agent is to be a member of a MAS and take advantage of various components of the MAS infrastructure. Although agents are expected to enter a MAS and seamlessly and effortlessly interact with the agents in the MAS infrastructure, the current state of the art demands agents to be programmed with the knowledge of what infrastructure they will utilize, and what are various fall-back and recovery mechanisms that the infrastructure provides. By providing an abstract MAS infrastructure model and a concrete implemented instance of the model, RETSINA, we contribute towards the development of principles and practice to make the MAS infrastructure “invisible” and ubiquitous to the interacting agents.

What is model driven architecture

Abstract: OMG promotes Model Driven Architecture (MDA) as the new direction for system development, especially supporting integration, interoperability and portability. But what is MDA really about, and what is model driven architecture? These are fundamental questions, to which precise answers are surprisingly hard to find. Not even the term “model driven” is clearly defined. This article views MDA as a framework for constructing methodologies for model driven development of system architectures. The exact meaning of this position is presented in detail, and a definition of the term “model driven” is proposed. The main concepts in MDA are explained, with an emphasis on giving specific guidelines as to which interpretation should be chosen in cases where the official documentation is ambiguous or unclear. In particular, the important notions of refinement and transformation are examined, and it is explained how these similar, but different, concepts are related. The conclusion gives a short survey describing to which extent current methodologies fulfil the visions of MDA, and points at important areas with a particular need for more research.

Virtual Machines and Consciousness

Abstract: Replication or even modelling of consciousness in machines requires some clarifications and refinements of our concept of consciousness. Design of, construction of, and interaction with artificial systems can itself assist in this conceptual development. We start with the tentative hypothesis that although the word 'consciousness' has no well-defined meaning, it is used to refer to aspects of human and animal information processing. We then argue that we can enhance our understanding of what these aspects might be by designing and building virtual- machine architectures capturing various features of consciousness. This activity may in turn nurture the development of our concepts of consciousness, showing how an analysis based on information processing virtual machines answers old philosophical puzzles as well enriching empirical theories. This process of developing and testing ideas by developing and testing designs leads to gradual refinement of many of our pre-theoretical concepts of mind, showing how they can be construed as implicitly 'architecture-based' concepts. Understanding how human-like robots with appropriate architectures are likely to feel puzzled about qualia may help us resolve those puzzles. The concept of 'qualia' turns out to be an 'architecture-based' concept, while individual qualia concepts are 'architecture-driven'.

Integrating Plot, Character and Natural Language Processing in the Interactive Drama Façade

Abstract: Facade is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic narrative - an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hy- per-linked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. We are completing a three year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture that inte- grates emotional, interactive character behavior, drama-managed plot and shal- low natural language processing. In this architecture, authors can organize hierarchies of reactive behaviors and natural-language discourse contexts into entities called story beats, achieving rich, robust local interaction; a drama manager globally sequences beats chosen from a large pool in order to make story tension rise and fall to match an Aristotelian arc. Within this architecture we are building a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the user experiences a theatrical drama from a first-person perspective. Facade will be publicly released as a free download in 2003.

An Intelligent Broker for Context-Aware Systems

Abstract: We describe Context Broker Architecture (CoBrA) – a new architecture for supporting context-aware systems in smart spaces. Our architecture explores the use of Semantic Web languages for defining and publishing a context ontology, for sharing information about a context and for reasoning over such information. Central to our architecture is a broker agent that maintains a shared model of the context for all computing entities in the space and enforces the privacy policies defined by the users and devices. We also describe the use of CoBrA in prototyping an intelligent meeting room.

The Dominion of the Dead

Abstract: In The Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison explores the many places where the dead cohabit the world of the living - the graves, images, literature, architecture, and monuments that house the dead in their afterlife among us. This elegantly conceived work devotes particular attention to the practice of burial. Harrison contends that we bury our dead to humanize the lands where we build our present and imagine our future. Through inspired readings of major writers and thinkers such as Vico, Virgil, Dante, Pater, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Rilke, he argues that the buried dead form an essential foundation where future generations can retrieve their past, while burial grounds provide an important bedrock where past generations can preserve their legacy for the unborn. A profound meditation on how the thought of death shapes the communion of the living, and a work of enormous scope, intellect, and imagination, this book speaks to all who have suffered grief and loss.

Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World

Abstract: This richly illustrated and designed book in the "Architecture in Focus" series reconsiders critical regionalism and demonstrates the global viability of one of the most visible trends in contemporary architecture. As globalization increasingly enters every facet of our lives, its homogenizing effects on architecture, urban spaces and the landscape have compelled architects to embrace the principles of critical regionalism, an alternative theory that respects local culture, geography and climate. In this reexamination of critical regionalism, two prominent architectural critics argue for a truce between the seemingly antithetical philosophies of critical regionalism and globalization. The authors trace the genesis of critical regionalism to its ancient historical and political roots, and focus on its modern expression in the works of Alvar Aalto, Richard Neutra, Oscar Niemeyer and others. They point to the increasing use of the theory in the recent works of a truly global selection of visionary architects - including Santiago Calatrava in Spain, Renzo Piano in the South Pacific and Berger and Parkkinen in Germany. Discussions of Tropical Architecture and contemporary work in Asia round out this important contribution to a topical debate about architecture's role in the world.

Apparatus and method for an energy efficient clustered micro-architecture

Abstract: In some embodiments, a method and apparatus for an energy efficient clustered micro-architecture are disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes the computation of an energy delay 2 product for each active instruction scheduler and one or more associated function blocks of a current architecture configuration over a predetermined period. Once the energy delay 2 product is computed, the computed product is compared against an energy delay 2 product calculated for a prior architecture configuration to determine an effectiveness of the current architecture configuration. Based on the effectiveness of the current architecture configuration, a number of active instruction schedulers and one or more associated functional blocks within the current architecture configuration is adjusted. In one embodiment, the number of active instruction schedulers and one or more associated functional blocks may be increased or decreased to improve power efficiency of the cluster micro-architecture. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture

Abstract: Bringing together essays and photographs by leading Israeli practitioners, and complemented by maps, plans and statistical data, A Civilian Occupation explores the processes and repercussions of Israeli planning and its underlying ideology It demonstrates how, over the last century, planning and architecture have been transformed from everyday professional practices into strategic weapons in the service of the state, which has sought to secure national and geopolitical objectives through the organization of space and in the redistribution of its population In fact, as the book shows, Israeli architecture has consistently provided the concrete means for the pursuit of the Zionist project of building a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel As such, it is the first study to supplement the more familiar political, military and historical analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict with a detailed description of the physical environments in which it is played out The banning of the first edition of this book by its original publisher was proof, if any were needed, that architecture in Israel, indeed architecture anywhere, can no longer be considered a politically naive activity: the politics of Israeli architecture is the politics of any architecture With contributions by Meron Benvenisti, Zvi Efrat, Nadav Harel, Gideon Levy, Ilan Potash, Sharon Rotbard, Efrat Shvily, Eran Tamir-Tawil, Pavel Wolberg, and Oren Yiftachel

Architecture, design, implementation

Abstract: The terms architecture, design, and implementation are typically used informally in partitioning software specifications into three coarse strata of abstraction. Yet these strata are not well-defined in either research or practice, causing miscommunication and needless debate. To remedy this problem we formalize the Intension and the Locality criteria, which imply that the distinction between architecture, design, and implementation is qualitative and not merely quantitative. We demonstrate that architectural styles are intensional and non-local; that design patterns are intensional and local; and that implementations are extensional and local.

Conceptual Model and Architecture for MAFTIA

Abstract: The files are stored in PDF, with the report number as filename. Alternatively, reports are available by post from the above address.

Actions of Architecture: Architects and Creative Users

Abstract: Drawing on the work of a wide range of architects, artists and writers, this book considers the relations between the architect and the user, which it compares to the relations between the artist and viewer and the author and reader. The book's thesis is informed by the text 'The Death of the Author', in which Roland Barthes argues for a writer aware of the creativity of the reader. Actions of Architecture begins with a critique of strategies that define the user as passive and predictable, such as contemplation and functionalism. Subsequently it considers how an awareness of user creativity informs architecture, architects and concepts of authorship in architectural design. Identifying strategies that recognize user creativity, such as appropriation, collaboration, disjunction, DIY, montage, polyvalence and uselessness, Actions of Architecture states that the creative user should be the central concern of architectural design.

Architecture for account reconciliation

Abstract: An architecture and methodology provides a uniform approach for reconciling accounts in a manner that ensures proper controls, both legal and financial, are being met. In the described implementation, the architecture offers a web-based solution that facilitates online account reconciliation in a central and controlled method across many different divisions and business units, located within in the U.S. or around the world. The system architecture enables creation and maintenance of reconciliation profiles that define how different accounts are to be reconciled. The system architecture further supports creation of reconciliation documentations, based on the reconciliation profiles, which are used to reconcile individual accounts.

The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space

Abstract: This is a historical and theoretical analysis of corporate architecture in the United States after World War II. Its title refers to the aesthetic and technological extension of the military-industrial complex, in which architecture, computers and corporations formed a network of objects, images and discourses that realigned social relations and transformed the postwar landscape. In-depth case studies of architect Eero Saarinen's work for General Motors, IBM and Bell Laboratories and analyses of office buildings designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill trace the emergence of a systems-based model of organization in architecture, in which the modular curtain wall acts as both an organizational device and a carrier of the corporate image. Such an image - of the corporation as a flexible, integrated system - is seen to correspond with a "humanization" of corporate life, as corporations decentralize both spatially and administratively. Parallel analyses follow the assimilation of cybernetics into aesthetics in the writings of artist and visual theorist Gyorgy Kepes, as art merges with techno-science in the service of a dynamic new "pattern-seeing". Image and system thus converge in the organizational complex, while top-down power dissolves into networked, pattern-based control. Architecture, as one among many media technologies, supplies the patterns - images of organic integration designed to regulate new and unstable human-machine assemblages.

Creating a Strategic IT Architecture Competency: Learning in Stages

Abstract: IT architecture is often assumed to follow business strategy, to align IT with the business's strategic objectives. Increasingly, though, many business strategies depend on specific underlying IT capabilities. To develop a synergy between business strategy and IT architecture, firms must develop organizational competencies in IT architecture. My research has identified four IT architectural stages, each with its own requisite competencies. The "application silo architecture stage" consists of IT architectures of individual applications. The "standardized technology architecture stage" has an enterprise-wide IT architecture that provides efficiencies through technology standardization. The "rationalized data architecture stage" extends the enterprise-wide IT standards to data and processes. And the "modular architecture stage" builds onto enterprise-wide global standards with loosely coupled IT components to preserve the global standards while enabling local differences. Each stage demands different organizational competencies to implement the architecture and prepare the firm to move to the next stage

"Physical hypermedia": organising collections of mixed physical and digital material

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of organizing material in mixed digital and physical environments. It presents empirical examples of how people use collectional artefacts and organize physical material such as paper, samples, models, mock-ups, plans, etc. in the real world. Based on this material, we propose concepts for collectional actions and meta-data actions, and present prototypes combining principles from augmented reality and hypermedia to support organising and managing mixtures of digital and physical materials. The prototype of the tagging system is running on digital desks and walls utilizing Radio Frequency IDentifier (RFID) tags and tag-readers. It allows users to tag important physical materials, and have these tracked by antennas that may become pervasive in our work environments. We work with three categories of tags: simple object tags, collectional tags, and tooltags invoking operations such as grouping and linking of physical material. Our primary application domain is architecture and design, thus we discuss use of augmented collectional artefacts primarily for this domain.

Architecture for generating responses to search engine queries

Abstract: Architecture for generating responses to search engine queries. Question/answer pairs are used to provide a predefined question hierarchy to facilitate a search. Informative terms and one or more questions are associated with each question node of the hierarchy. A question posed is mapped into the hierarchy to the most similar question class node, as determined by passages of the question and/or comparing the informative terms of the question and the question/answer node. Weighted informative terms associated with that node are then returned, and can be used by an automatic question answering system to more effectively find an answer to a question.

Art and Aesthetics at Work

Abstract: Preface A.Carr & P.Hancock PART 1: ART AND AESTHETICS AS A WAY OF KNOWING ORGANIZATION Art and Aesthetics as a Way of Knowing Organization A.Carr & P.Hancock Art as a Form of Knowledge A.Carr Looking Into/Out Of Organisations Through the Rear Window: Voyeurism and Exhibitionism in Organization Studies G.Cairns & T.Jeffers Reconciling Aesthetics and Justice in Organization Studies M.Boyle PART 2: WORK AS AN AESTHETICALLY ORDERED ACTIVITY Introduction P.Hancock & A.Carr We're All Partying Here: Target and Games, or Targets as Games in Call Centre Management C.Alferoff & D.Knights The Power of Organizational Song N.Nissley, S.Taylor & O.Butler On the Manager's Body as an Aesthetics of Control N.Harding PART 3: CRITICAL ENGAGEMENTS WITH AESTHETICS AT WORK Introduction P.Hancock & A.Carr The Barren Landscape: Reading US Corporate Architecture A.Kersten & R.Gilardi An-aesthetics and Architecture K.Dale & G.Burrell Aestheticizing the World of Organization P.Hancock

Modern Architecture and the End of Empire

Abstract: Imperial panorama - panorama of architecture The double end - training architects for the Empire Oil and architecture The National Pavilion - "A building which needs no name" The commonwealth of architecture Dialects of internationalism - architecture in Ghana 1945-1966 The view from Penang Hill: Modernism and nationalism in Malaysia Discrepant cosmopolitanism.

The Reconfigurable Streaming Vector Processor (RSVP

Abstract: The need to process multimedia data places large computational demands on portable/embedded devices. These multimedia functions share common characteristics: they are computationally intensive and data-streaming, performing the same operation(s) on many data elements. The Reconfigurable Streaming Vector Processor (RSVP TM ) is a vector coprocessor architecture that accelerates streaming data operations. Programming the RSVP architecture involves describing the shape and location of vector streams in memory and describing computations as data-flow graphs. These descriptions are intuitive and independent of each other, making the RSVP architecture easy to program. They are also machine independent, allowing binary-compatible implementations with varying cost-performance tradeoffs. This paper presents the RSVP architecture and programming model, a programming case study, and our first implementation. Our results show significant speedups on streaming data functions. Speedups for kernels and applications range from 2 to over 20 times that of an ARM9 host processor alone.

Introducing sustainability into the architecture curriculum in the United States

Abstract: A brief review of the five collateral organizations that influence architectural education in the USA and their priorities indicate they may have reached the point of recognizing that sustainability is a core issue of architecture. To reflect this recognition, sustainability will need to be integrated into the architecture curriculum. The question is now one of how to achieve integration. Differing approaches to introducing sustainability into an architectural program are proposed and examined. They range from assuming sustainability already permeates the curriculum by its nature and therefore is integrated, expanding the existing courses concerning environmental systems, and revising the entire curriculum to fully integrate into each subject. To assist in the task of integration, criteria are proposed. The task of integrating sustainability is not to be understated, but if architectural education and practice is to focus beyond state and national levels a global responsibility will need to be assumed.