Architecture

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

European Identity and Architecture

Abstract: Architecture has become an important discourse for new expressions of post-national identity in general and in particular for the emergence of a `spatial' European identity. No longer tied to the state to the same degree as in the period of nation-building, architecture has become a significant cultural expression of post-national identities within and beyond the nation-state. The article looks at four such discourses, first, taking the Millennium Dome in London and the Reichstag in Berlin, we show that architecture can express in a reflexive way contested and ambiguous national identities; second, the case of architecture in post-communist European societies illustrates the dual identity of architecture as a project of building and of re-building; third, the EU's search for a cultural form is discussed with respect to the architectural designs on the Euro banknotes; and finally the question of architecture as a relation to a lived space is considered with regard to cityscapes as yet another expression of a tendentially spatialized European identity.

The CU communicator: an architecture for dialogue systems.

Abstract: This paper presents our recent work towards development of the University of Colorado (CU) Communicator, an interactive dialogue system for airline, hotel and rental car information. The CU Communicator integrates speech recognition, synthesis and natural language understanding technologies using the DARPA Hub Architecture to allow users to converse with an automated travel agent. During a typical telephonebased interaction, users can retrieve up-to-date travel information such as flight schedules, pricing, along with hotel and rental car availability. The CU Communicator has been under development since April of 1999 and represents our test-bed system for developing robust human-computer interactions where reusability and dialogue system portability serve as two main goals of our work. This paper will focus on describing our recent system improvements and will present an analysis of dialogues received and lessons learned.

Agile Architecture Interactions

Abstract: Agile development starts to build before the outcome is fully understood, adjusts designs and plans as empirical knowledge is gained while building, trusts the judgment of those closest to the problem, and encourages continual collaboration with the ultimate consumers. Architecture establishes a technology stack, creates design patterns, enhances quality attributes, and communicates to all interested parties. The combination of these two spaces is agile architecture-an approach that uses agile techniques to drive towards good architecture. Agility and architecture aren't at odds. Agile development gives the architect repeated opportunities to work closely with the business and technical teams to continually guide systems in the direction of good architecture.

Sustainable landscape architecture: implications of the Chinese philosophy of unity of man with nature and beyond

Abstract: As the world population continues to grow and as global urbanization continues to unfold, our ecosystems and landscapes will be increasingly domesticated and designed. Developing and maintaining sustainable landscapes have become one of the most challenging and imperative tasks for scientists and stakeholders of all sorts. To accomplish this task, landscape ecology and landscape architecture can and must play a critical role. Landscape architects intentionally modify and create landscapes, and their imprints and influences are pervasive and profound, far beyond the physical limits of the designed landscapes. As an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary enterprise that integrates the science and art of studying and influencing the relationship between spatial pattern and ecological processes, the theory, methods, and applications of landscape ecology are directly relevant to sustainability. However, neither landscape ecology nor landscape architecture is likely to achieve its expected goal if they are not truly integrated to produce a sustainable landscape architecture. In this paper, we argue that the ancient Chinese philosophy of “unity of man with nature” and its associated design principles can provide useful guidelines for this integration as well as for the development of a sustainable landscape architecture. We discuss several principles and models of Chinese landscape architecture, including “unity of man with nature” philosophy, “peach blossom spring” ideal, “world-in-a-pot” model, and Feng–Shui theory, and their implications for developing a sustainable landscape architecture. Although differences in the philosophical roots and design traditions between Eastern and Western landscape architecture will continue to exist, interactions and integration between the two will continue to increase under the theme of sustainability. To promote the translation of scientific knowledge into practice, we urge landscape ecologists to work proactively with landscape architects to integrate pattern–process–scale and holistic perspectives into the design and planning of landscapes.