Mixology

What is the New Mix in architecture? Why is it emerging now? Is there a direct correlation between the widening of the ethnic origins of practitioners and diversity in design? What are the impacts on the formal language of architecture? Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson consider issues related to mixology, defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as ‘the study or skill of preparing mixed drinks’. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hooke Park As a New AA Initiative in Education

Architectural education is passing another milestone. Whilst the reverberation of the 20th-century avant-garde can still be registered, a barrage of questions and choices is facing the next generation of graduates and their educators. Mark Prizeman argues a case to nourish designing by making as a passionate, cultural, intellectual and human activity. Through making, he concludes, three stages of building a confident architecture are found. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Expressing More Than Structure

Virginia Fairweather's critical appreciation of the work of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, Expressing Structure: The Technology of Large-Scale Buildings, presents more than the title suggests, say Kate and Ian Abley. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Piercy Conner

Piercy Conner first came to broader public attention with its prototype for the Microflat. Displayed in the windows of Selfridges on London's Oxford Street, it ignited discussions in the press about means of realising affordable urban housing. Lucy Bullivant describes this young practice's enduring commitment to high-density public-housing solutions and the work it has undertaken in communication techniques. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-Build Housing in Peckham

Bruce Stewart discovers the whys and wherefores of self-build for both architects and occupiers at a new development in south London.     

Architecture + Textiles = Architextiles

A hybrid term, ‘architextiles’ encompasses a wide range of projects and ways of thinking that unite architecture and textiles. By way of introduction to this issue, guest-editor Mark Garcia highlights the significant rise of interest in this confluence by theorists, architects, engineers, textile designers, materials scientists and artists. He also explains how, as a hybrid mode of design and practice, architextiles is better able to respond to society's fast-changing cultural and consumer demands, enabling the production of more dynamic, flexible, interactive, event and process-based spaces. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How do simple programs behave

Whereas once the world view of the ancient world was shifted by Pythagorean mathematics, scientific knowledge and human perception has been contested in the 21st century by developments in computation. In his ground-breaking book Stephen Wolfram, the British physicist and creator of the Mathematica program, asserted that the complexity of the universe could be clearly understood in terms of simple programs. Here in an exclusive extract, Wolfram describes how one of the most straightforward programs, cellular automata, despite adhering to simple rules, yields some surprisingly complex results. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

格蒂中心与迈耶

格蒂中心是本世纪末建成的最大的博物馆群,也是R·迈耶至今完成的是重要的作品。该工程的建成引起全世界的关注,国际建筑界反映良好,但在美国建筑界却评价不高。本文深入分析了该工程的设计构思及具体的建筑处理手法,力图比较客观地介绍该工程的优缺点,同时也对R·迈耶的建筑风格的形成及影响进行了探讨。     

‘Visual excitation’ in Richard Neutra's residential architecture: An analysis using weighted graphs and centrality measures

The famous modernist architect Richard Neutra argued that movement through, and understanding of a building could be choreographed by controlling the visual stimuli that is available to a person. These claims are tested by quantifying the lines of sight and intelligibility of five of Neutra's residential designs. A computational method, weighted axial line analysis, is used to investigate lines of sight and movement in five of Neutra's house designs. The cumulative lengths of axial lines required to reach public and private spaces are compared, and centrality measures are calculated for each design that are weighted with line length data. Intelligibility metrics are calculated from these centrality measures. The first hypothesis, that visual stimuli in Neutra's architecture is greater when accessing public rather than private spaces is supported by the results. The second hypothesis, that Neutra's architecture is highly intelligible, is not supported by the results. This research tests two theories used to explain the works of a famous architect and it develops a new variation of well-known Space Syntax technique, to account for axial line lengths.     

解读理查德·帕多万的《比例——科学、哲学、建筑》

英国建筑学家理查德·帕多万所著的《比例——科学、哲学、建筑》是一部探讨建筑比例和科学、哲学的关系的书,其主要目的是对建筑比例本身进行认识论的分析。该文对其进行了简要解读,同时,也提出了几点不足和个人体会。