Challenge in Protecting Famous Historic and Cultural Cities in New Situation and Some Issues in Understanding

China is now in a period of fast economic growth withlarge-scale construction.Especially since 1992 some statelevel famous historic and cultural cities are undergoing aprocess of land leasing and transferring the the land userights,trying to attract domestic and foreign fund for devel-opment of their old city propers.Therefore, it has becomeextremely urgent as to how to handle properly the relation-ship between conservation of these cities and their econom-ic development and construction. It is well known that China is a country with an an-cient civilization.Its rich historic remains and cultural heri-tage are appreciated by the whole world. The protectionand preservation of this heritage is an issue of concern notonly for all the decendents of the Chinese nation but alsofor other countries and peoples,for this heritage is an essen-tial part of the cultural heritage of the whole mankind.Tenitems from China have been included in the list of the worldnatural and cultural heritages under protection publish     

Teaching Sustainability in Design without Greenwashing

Teaching design incorporating a sense of sustainability to architecture students is a challenge today, primarily because of the trend to label every design as sustainable or green even though it is no different from a more traditional one. The result is a ＂green-washed＂ education in architecture. To address this issue, this paper describes a teaching methodology of architectural design with a special focus on sustainability implemented in the Graduate School of Architecture in Clemson. This method includes an analysis of the location, the climate conditions, the materials needed and the construction process. Knowing that sustainable design is generally perceived as being expensive, there is a special focus on simplicity and affordability. Rather than relying on expensive technical solutions, students are encouraged to design for the given environment and apply passive strategies. In the approach discussed in this paper, the design process is a number of logical scientific decisions rather than an intuitive draft. The goal of this pedagogy is to raise awareness about how to handle global resources carefully and to show the importance of the later performance of the project as a key to design. The teaching strategy is described here along with the successful participation by our graduate students in a number of refereed competitions.     

Application of Norms Models with Vectoral System in Construction Projects

Normization, i.e., the system of norms is a structure that defines the group of elements containing the norm values for the requirements of a certain resource. Resources comprise of materials, machines and labor. All the requirements of the measure units of the resources are given statically and with the discrete data. Thus, every slight change in the expense list item reference causes a change in norm and our norm is not flexible and features a discrepancy with the real life situations. In order to achieve a higher level of preciseness and to speed up the technological processes of planning and norming the engines of a company that lead to the regulation of the system, the discrete elements of the working （time-related） norms should be replaced by the dynamic ones. This is made possible through setting up norms models that in turn can be presented by formulae in the vectoral system. The use and implementation of the new technologies in terms of production, computer science and cybernetics provides for upgrading the norm requirements. New working tasks in turn require a new norm standardization, which can be applied to the hydrodemolition of concrete constructions by means of water robots that use high pressure water jets.     

西方常见十大迷信

<正>Editor’s note:You are mistaken if you think that Westerners do not believe in superstitions.The superstitions might be different,but pretty much every country around the world has them.Here’s a list of some of the common superstitions followed in the West to help you get a better insight into their cultures and customs.编者注:要是你认为西方人不迷信,那你就大错特错了。不同国家迷信内容或许不同,但几乎所有国家都存在迷信。下面是一份西方共有迷信的清单,以方便大家深入了解西方文化与风俗。     

The Search for Authenticity in the Work of Cesar Pelli

The Argentinean-born Cesar Pelli is one of the most important and influential architects practicing in the world today. Since 1965, the date of the earliest project in this publication,he has amassed an impressive list of buildings to his credit, and his architectural production has spanned the difficult cultural transition of our times from modernism to postmodernism. A crucial concern of architecture in both periods, and one often expressed by Pelli himself when discussing his work, is "authenticity." This involves the relationship between a building's image and its reality; or put another way, between what it appears to be, and what it actually is in terms of its physical construction and purpose. In our     

Sustainable Maintenance of Rural Roads in Slovakia

Systematic approach to the maintenance of rural road network is a very important issue from the viewpoint of public costs. Most countries developed custom PMS （pavement management systems） based on deterministic or probabilistic approach. The main goal is to ensure safety and continuity of road traffic on road network with low intensity and lower technical requirements. Article presents PMS used for Slovakia rural road network based on road construction diagnostics, traffic volume, climate factors and evaluation of maintenance works economics effectives by using of software tools like HDM-4 developed by World Bank. Local road administrators of rural road networks often lack the software equipment, most PMS, however effective, are often cumbersome, demanding in regard to energy, know-how and software equipment. The majority of local road administrators of rural road networks thus resort to non-effective reactive maintenance strategies. This article describes an easy to use method, based on predetermined maintenance repair and rehabilitation standards. A simple method, based on road user cost, is introduced that administrator can use to prepare a list of road section eligible for repair according to their repair priority.     

An experimental study on using a mass radiant floor with geothermal system as thermal battery of the building

Storing thermal energy in mass concrete floors would have a major impact on the stability of the temperature in buildings. The concept of a thermal battery refers to storing the supplied radiant heat and releasing this heat the next day through radiation and convection. In this study,an approach is introduced to examine the idea of thermal battery in thick concrete flooring( 1.22 m) using the earth as a heat source. Controlled experiments were built and conducted on an instrumented 3000 m~2 industrial facility. The heating radiant floor combining with ground source system was operated during off-peak hours and the ai conditioning system was disabled for 24 h during the test period.The heat pumps were operated in single stage using less powe compared to when operated on demand. Indoor air temperature showed that 100 °F( 37. 78 ℃) supply temperature at the groundsource heat pump would be enough to maintain a stable warm temperature during cold days. Two weather conditions in the winter were selected to do the tests. The second test had a colder ambient temperature to verify the procedure. The indoor air temperature showed that the night heating system performs well for both cases because it maintained a constant temperature for the entire operational day even in the daytime when every heating unit was off. This approach of applying the heating at nighttime with lower electricity rates would lead to significant operational cost savings in the building.     

Discrimination on the Concept of Historic City in China

In 1982,the State Council announced a list of historic cities in China,aiming to set up a conservation measure to conserve the cultural heritages from the perspective of a city.The historic city is a concept in relation to urban administrative governance.Its conservation scope and specific contents should be defined in conservation planning.Since the conservation planning of historic city is a part of the city master planning,its planning area should be the same as that in the master planning,with focus on the central urban area.The conservation planning of a historic city should define its objects in view of the interconnection between city history and culture and thus specify its conservation scope and contents accordingly.     

Parametric Analysis of the Stability of Degraded Railroad Platforms

The current study is developed based on one of the types of subgrade rupture risk suggested by Selig and Waters （1994）. It aims to evaluate subgrade stability railroad, which consists of the slope stability analysis of a railway yard embankment subjected to a wagon load type gondola parked on this track. This proposed analysis was taken into consideration because there are Brazilian railroads in high deterioration level. In some of these lines the tracks are submitted to increasing amount of load every year. The adopted model slope stability to the studied railroad embankments considers the rupture on circular line. It was applied the Geoslope-Slope/W software, version 6, to the evaluation of the platform-slope system. Several situations are adopted to reach the minimum safety slope, permitting to analyze the platform stability to keep railroad traffic under adequate safety level.     

A Portrait of an Architect

This Special Issue displays a wide array of Pelli's projects. It is a gallery of his lifetime of achievement.One might be justifiably in awe of the imagination andcreativity that has produced such diverse and exciting works. This interview with a brief introduction for each aspect of Cesar Pelli's career as an architect, is an attempt to unveil a portrait of an outstanding architect.