Interactive design exploration for constrained meshes

In architectural design, surface shapes are commonly subject to geometric constraints imposed by material, fabrication or assembly. Rationalization algorithms can convert a freeform design into a form feasible for production, but often require design modifications that might not comply with the design intent. In addition, they only offer limited support for exploring alternative feasible shapes, due to the high complexity of the optimization algorithm.We address these shortcomings and present a computational framework for interactive shape exploration of discrete geometric structures in the context of freeform architectural design. Our method is formulated as a mesh optimization subject to shape constraints. Our formulation can enforce soft constraints and hard constraints at the same time, and handles equality constraints and inequality constraints in a unified way. We propose a novel numerical solver that splits the optimization into a sequence of simple subproblems that can be solved efficiently and accurately.Based on this algorithm, we develop a system that allows the user to explore designs satisfying geometric constraints. Our system offers full control over the exploration process, by providing direct access to the specification of the design space. At the same time, the complexity of the underlying optimization is hidden from the user, who communicates with the system through intuitive interfaces.     

城市形象的建筑环境美学设计问题

城市形象是创造富于个性化城市的关键,而建筑环境美学设计水准则是体现城市形象的要素之一。据此,作者从分析中国城市形象的美学误区出发,研究了不同城市建筑品位的形成特点,进而提出塑造好宜人城市美学空间的科学思考。     

商业创新模式下的建筑设计服务

购物中心作为一种现代的零售商业模式,从上世纪90年代进入中国后,已为一般民众厂为接受。文章首先简要地介绍了美国购物中心的开发历史和类型,尤其是近年来出现的生活方式中心的特点和发展趋势。对于购物中心在中国的开发、规划设计中经常遇到的一些内容,如融资方式,主力商店和专卖店等进行了讨论。最后对于建筑师在这新的商业模式下如何与设计团队一起提供专业服务方面根据自身的经验提出了自己的看法。     

The computer: liberator or jailor of the creative spirit

A discussion of the historical and aesthetic questions raised by the Fine Arts community regarding the uses of the computer by artists, its limitations and its potential. Creating a texture and context for this discussion necessitated the weaving into this discussion the role of technology, science, mathematics, the humanities, and aesthetics in the visual arts.     

照亮都市空间的光纤之美

光导纤维如今已广泛应用于现代社会的各个领域,它不但适用于通信、医学、传感器等科学应用领域,缤纷的都市空间更是展现光纤之美的重要舞台。本文主要介绍了西方发达国家在城市建筑照明、室内照明、景观与公共艺术照明等诸多城市空间领域光导纤维的应用情况,旨在为丰富我国的城市空间提供一些有益的参考,并由此倡导光纤照明这样一种绿色、安全、时尚的城市照明方式。进而为其将来更好地服务于现代社会,提升城市生活品质做好理论与实践两方面的充分准备。     

避暑山庄的选址

造园首在选址。选址得当,可以事半功倍。计成在《园冶》中指出,只有“相地合宜”,才能“构园得体”。地址要好,清洁卫生,有丘有壑,草地和树林相间”。避暑山庄之所以能够在造园史上独树一帜,选址得当是其中一个重要原因。避暑山庄当时所以选择这块地方建造宫苑,除政治上的原因之外,主要是因为它具有优越的自然条件。避暑山庄的园林艺术成就,已得到世人的公认,造园家相地择址的匠心,也会给我们许多有益的启示。     

“以人为本,师法自然”——基于中国传统美学思想的绿色包装设计

随着社会经济的不断发展,包装设计已经渗透到我们生活的方方面面。为更好的促进东西方文化交流,提高国内外市场竞争力,绿色包装设计应运而生。而绿色包装设计这一理念无论在情感上还是文化层面上都与寻求人与自然和谐统一的中国传统美学思想有着密不可分的联系。     

Past and future of software architectural decisions – A systematic mapping study

ContextThe software architecture of a system is the result of a set of architectural decisions. The topic of architectural decisions in software engineering has received significant attention in recent years. However, no systematic overview exists on the state of research on architectural decisions.ObjectiveThe goal of this study is to provide a systematic overview of the state of research on architectural decisions. Such an overview helps researchers reflect on previous research and plan future research. Furthermore, such an overview helps practitioners understand the state of research, and how research results can help practitioners in their architectural decision-making.MethodWe conducted a systematic mapping study, covering studies published between January 2002 and January 2012. We defined six research questions. We queried six reference databases and obtained an initial result set of 28,895 papers. We followed a search and filtering process that resulted in 144 relevant papers.ResultsAfter classifying the 144 relevant papers for each research question, we found that current research focuses on documenting architectural decisions. We found that only several studies describe architectural decisions from the industry. We identified potential future research topics: domain-specific architectural decisions (such as mobile), achieving specific quality attributes (such as reliability or scalability), uncertainty in decision-making, and group architectural decisions. Regarding empirical evaluations of the papers, around half of the papers use systematic empirical evaluation approaches (such as surveys, or case studies). Still, few papers on architectural decisions use experiments.ConclusionOur study confirms the increasing interest in the topic of architectural decisions. This study helps the community reflect on the past ten years of research on architectural decisions. Researchers are offered a number of promising future research directions, while practitioners learn what existing papers offer.     

Beauty is more than screen deep: Improving the web survey respondent experience through socially-present and aesthetically-pleasing user interfaces

Web surveys are rapidly becoming standard issue in many researchers’ toolkits; however, measurement error has been shown to affect web surveys to a greater extent than paper-and-pencil surveys (Couper, 2000, Manfreda and Vehovar, 2002). Principles of aesthetic design and social presence have been applied to web surveys to reduce the prevalence of such error with promising results, which were further investigated in this research. A sample of 181 first-year psychology undergraduate students participated in this study. Participants were randomly allocated to view one of eight web survey interfaces, which varied by aesthetic quality and social presence. Exploratory structural equation modeling using the partial least squares method revealed that classical aesthetic quality and social presence were both positively related to perceived ease of use of the web survey interface and positive state affect; social presence and perceived ease of use were positively related to trust in the web survey researcher; classical aesthetic quality was negatively related to negative state affect; and, expressive aesthetic quality was negatively related to perceived ease of use and positively related to positive state affect. Interestingly, expressive aesthetic quality was also positively related to negative state affect. These relationships between aesthetic quality and social presence should inform best practice web survey design recommendations, and future empirical work should extend and test the generalizability of these findings.