Architecture

About: Architecture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25849 publications have been published within this topic receiving 225266 citations.

The Informational City

Abstract: What will our future cities look like? Will they look strikingly different to the cities of today, and be constructed with the latest materials and designed using the latest design methods? Or will they look much like our existing cities, with occasional new buildings, but with most existing building stock retained and simply retrofitted with the latest information technology? This article argues that the most likely driver of change in our future cities is less likely to be new architectural forms, than informational systems that have already revolutionized other industries It explores the impact of the computational interface as the site of information exchange in the transportation industry in particular, and argues that not only is a similar revolution likely to sweep across the building industry, but that it has already begun to leave its mark It also argues that with the advent of ‘big data’ the discipline of architecture needs to be reinvented not just through the introduction of BIM, GIS and other information based services, but also through a radical rethinking of its operations What needs to be designed, then, the article concludes, are not new forms of architecture – or indeed new architectural forms – but an entirely new information based approach to the discipline of architecture

Architecture and health care: a place for sociology

Abstract: Sociologists of health and illness have tended to overlook the architecture and buildings used in health care. This contrasts with medical geographers who have yielded a body of work on the significance of places and spaces in the experience of health and illness. A review of sociological studies of the role of the built environment in the performance of medical practice uncovers an important vein of work, worthy of further study. Through the historically situated example of hospital architecture, this article seeks to tease out substantive and methodological issues that can inform a distinctive sociology of healthcare architecture. Contemporary healthcare buildings manifest design models developed for hotels, shopping malls and homes. These design features are congruent with neoliberal forms of subjectivity in which patients are constituted as consumers and responsibilised citizens. We conclude that an adequate sociology of healthcare architecture necessitates an appreciation of both the construction and experience of buildings, exploring the briefs and plans of their designers, and observing their everyday uses. Combining approaches and methods from the sociology of health and illness and science and technology studies offers potential for a novel research agenda that takes healthcare buildings as its substantive focus.

Exploiting ADLs to specify architectural styles induced by middleware infrastructures

Abstract: Architecture definition languages (ADLs) enable the formalization of the architecture of software systems and the execution of preliminary analyses on them. These analyses aim at supporting the identification and solution of design problems in the early stages of software development. We have used ADLs to describe middleware-induced architectural styles. These styles describe the assumptions and constraints that middleware infrastructures impose on the architecture of systems. Our work originates from the belief that the explicit representation of these styles at the architectural level can guide designers in the definition of an architecture compliant with a pre-selected middleware infrastructure, or, conversely can support designers in the identification of the most suitable middleware infrastructure for a specific architecture. In this paper we provide an evaluation of ADLs as to their suitability for defining middleware-induced architectural styles. We identify new requirements for ADLs, and we highlight the importance of existing capabilities. Although our experimentation starts from an attempt to solve a specific problem, the results we have obtained provide general lessons about ADLs, learned from defining the architecture of existing, complex, distributed, running systems.

Architecture of the Symbolics 3600

Abstract: The Symbolics 3600 is a family of high-performance, single user computers optimized for the Lisp language and for interactive use. This paper briefly discusses some of the interesting aspects of the architecture, including the representation of data, the instruction set used for compiled code, the function calling discipline, and the way exception traps and interrupts are handled. The reader is assumed to have some previous exposure to the basic concepts of Lisp (4).

Pompeii: An Architectural History

Abstract: Excavations at Popeii have been going on for more than two centuires, since 1748, and discoveries there have regularly produced new and important information about ancient Roman life. The site holds a rich concentration of municipal buildings, houses of every size and condition, villas, and tombs. Now in paperback, the first book of this century written in English devoted to Pompeian architecture and urban development tells the story of the city and its buildings. With text and illustrations, L. Richardson, jr portrays Pompeii in context, as a keystone in the architectural history of antiquity.Pompeii's life was comparatively short. From its meteoric rise as a seaport and shipbuilding center during the First Punic War until its abrupt destruction with the eruption of Vesuvius in A. D. 79, the city passed through four major building periods. After a general introduction to Pompeii's history and geography, the book proceeds through each period, discussing its public buildings, private buildings, and tombs. Each building is described and placed according to its importance in the development of its particular architectural form. Richardson offers new dates and arrives at new conclusions about the development of such important features as the city plan, fortifications, and the atrium/peristyle house. Fifty ground plans and twenty-five photographs illustrate the text."There has long been a need for a comprehensive account in English of the architecture and urban development of Pompeii. Richardson's book makes a valiant effort to remedy the deficiency, and will be particularly welcome to all students of Roman architecture"--Classical Review