What is IAQ?

In spaces for human occupancy indoor air quality (IAQ) is often defined as the extent to which human requirements are met. But what requirements do people have in relation to indoor air? The desire is that the air be perceived as fresh and pleasant, that it has no negative impact on their health, and that the air is stimulating and promotes their work, i.e. it increases their productivity and the learning of their children in the classroom at school. Present ventilation standards and guidelines do not care about productivity and learning and have the very modest requirement that the indoor air shall be 'acceptable,' meaning that the most sensitive group of persons (usually 20%) perceive the air as unacceptable while the remaining less sensitive persons may find the air barely acceptable. With such a modest aim it is not surprising that comprehensive field studies in many countries in buildings in which ventilation standards are met show high percentages of dissatisfied persons and of those suffering from sick building syndrome symptoms. Recent studies show that improvement of IAQ by a factor of 2-7 compared with existing standards increases office productivity and school learning significantly, while decreasing the risk of allergic symptoms and asthma in homes. To make indoor air acceptable, even for the most sensitive persons, an improvement of 1-2 orders of magnitude may be required. The paper will discuss the development of new methods that can provide such substantial improvements of IAQ while maintaining or even decreasing ventilation and energy usage. A paradigm shift is required and further future shifts are foreseen where we learn how to make indoor air equally fresh and pleasant as outdoors when it is best. Or even better, i.e. 'out of this world.' PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The paper estimates an enormous potential for improving IAQ in practice utilizing new emerging technologies. This will enable us to provide IAQ which is acceptable even for the most sensitive persons. Already modest improvements compared to present minimum standards and typical conditions in practice can significantly decrease the risk of asthma/allergy in homes, improve learning in schools and increase productivity.     

What is a City?

On the 75th anniversary of Lewis Mumford's rhetorical essay ‘What is a City?’, Austin Williams asks whether we risk defining cities out of existence. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What is wrong with energy efficiency?

At first sight the purpose of energy efficiency is plain: it is to reduce the amount of energy used and the carbon emissions associated with the design and operation of things like buildings, domestic appliances, and heating and cooling technologies, or with the organization of bureaucratic, business or industrial processes. National and international responses to climate change are dominated by policies that promote energy efficiency and by people who take this to be a self-evidently important thing to do. Established criticisms, including those which focus on problems of rebound, draw attention to the unintended consequences of such strategies, but rarely challenge the conceptual foundations of ‘efficiency’ as a topic in its own right. This paper uses Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993) notion of purification and Ian Hodder’s Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things (2012) ideas about entanglement to develop a more fundamental critique and to argue that, far from being a solution, efficiency, as currently constituted, undermines that which it is expected to achieve. It is concluded that if carbon emissions are to be reduced on any significant scale, then it is essential to consider the meanings and levels of service and the types of consumption and demand that efficiency policies support and perpetuate.     

What is western about western regional science?

After defining regional science as social science with a sense of place, I examine alternative speculations about the meaning of a western sense of place, concluding that it is about a relationship with a unique landscape, one characterized by extremes in climate and geology, great distances between places, and a colorful past of commodity extraction. But visions of this relationship with the landscape are in conflict. I then search for the western in western regional science by examining the residential location of members of the Western Regional Science Association (WRSA), and the place names (or lack thereof) in titles of conference papers, and conclude that the most western aspect of western regional science is the field trip or landscape tourism nature of the annual meeting. The paper ends with an appeal to expand the western sense of place in the WRSA.Based on a presidential address to the 35th annual meeting of the Western Regional Science Association, February 25–29, 1996, in Napa, California     

What is ‘architectural design research’?

The September 2007 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Research Symposium was particularly and perhaps unexpectedly well attended this year. This review speculates on the context for this renewed interest in research in architecture. The audience was swelled by many more practitioners than the organizers expected, architects interested in understanding more about ‘reflective practice’. This evocative term, credited to Donald Schon, was given new force on the day by keynote speaker Leon von Schaik's account of his Melbourne Masters Architecture initiative. Subsequent speakers reported here included Piers Gough, Sean Griffiths, Kathryn Findlay, Jane Rendell, Deborah Saunt, Alex de Rijke, and Susan Francis who tackled, from various directions, the principal question emerging on the day: ‘What is design research as applied to architecture?’ Speakers presented built and unbuilt projects as ‘design research’. In one notable case, the designer denied absolutely any research dimension to his work, anxious that an increased level of consciousness would dismantle inspiration. How might what the general academic research community considers as research, rigorously applied methodology, and unprejudiced analysis, have affected the projects shown? Is it helpful for design to be cast as research? Is there a missing third category, a funding stream for gathering innovative design work to add to those of ‘teaching and learning’ and ‘research’? Might this new stream stimulate more than self-reflection, a much-needed innovative design programme outside conventional practice, but within academic institutions collaborating closely with practice?

Le Symposium de septembre 2007 du RIBA (Institut royal des architectes britanniques) consacré à la recherche a rencontré cette année un succès particulier et quelque peu inattendu. Cet article s'interroge sur le contexte de l'intérêt renouvelé pour la recherche en architecture. Les participants comptaient dans leurs rangs beaucoup plus de praticiens que les organisateurs n'attendaient, des architectes cherchant à mieux comprendre la pratique restrictive. Ce terme évocateur, attribué à Donald Schon, a reçu le soutien du principal orateur, Leon von Schaik, évoquant son initiative Melbourne Masters Architecture initiative. Parmi les autres orateurs, on notait Piers Gough, Sean Griffiths, Kathryn Findlay, Jane Rendell, Deborah Saunt, Alex de Rijke et Susan Francis qui se sont attaqués sous des angles différents à la principale question de la journée: « Qu'est-ce que la recherche conceptuelle appliquée à l'architecture?». Les orateurs ont présenté des projets construits et non construits en matière de ‘recherche conceptuelle’. Dans un cas remarquable, le concepteur a rejeté toute dimension de recherche dans son travail, insistant sur le fait qu'un niveau de conscience plus élevé détruirait l'inspiration. Comment ce que la communauté des chercheurs académiques en général considère comme recherche, méthodologie rigoureusement appliquée, et analyse sans préjudice pourraient affecter les projets présentés? Est-il utile que de la conception soit classée dans la recherche? Existe-t-il une troisième catégorie manquante, un flux de financement pour rassembler les travaux de conception novateurs et les ajouter aux travaux d'enseignement, d'apprentissage et de recherche? Ce nouveau courant pourrait-il stimuler davantage que l'autoréflexion, un programme de conception novateur très nécessaire en dehors des pratiques classiques, mais au sein d'institutions universitaires collaborant étroitement avec les praticiens?

Mots clés: pratique architecturale, recherche conceptuelle, politique publique, pratique réfléchie, programme de recherche, stratégie de recherche     

Optimum mix design of enhanced permeable concrete – An experimental investigation

Permeable pavement, due to its high porosity and permeability, is considered as an alternative to traditional impervious hard pavements for controlling stormwater in an economical and friendly environmental way. Permeable concrete normally made of single-sized aggregate bound together by Portland cement, using restrictedly as a pavement material, because of its insufficient structural strength. Aimed at developing a new type of permeable concrete with enhanced structural strength, various mix designs were attempted and their effects on the compressive strength and permeability of permeable concrete were investigated in this research. The optimum aggregate and mix components design were consequently recommended for enhanced permeable concrete.     

What is project governance and what are its origins?

Although there is an ever-increasing discussion on governance in recent project research, the concept of project governance and its main origins remains ambiguous. In this paper, we examine project governance literature and contrast it to general governance literature published outside the domain of project research. Our analysis revealed the existence of two distinct and relatively independent streams of research. One of these streams addresses project governance as a phenomenon external to any specific project, while the other views project governance as internal to a specific project. Our results further indicate that while project governance literature bases most of its argumentation on established project research it also, to a significant extent, draws from the transaction cost economics literature. Based on our findings, we argue that there exists considerable potential for bridging project governance literature and general governance literature further.     

What is the role of tensile cracks in cohesive slopes?

The traditional limit equilibrium method (LEM) is often used to search for the failure surface with a minimum safety factor of slope. In this method, the failure surface is considered as a shear surface, irrespective of its form. However, tensile cracks are frequently found at the outcrops of landslides. In this study, three sets of tests on small-scale landslides with different inclination angles were conducted. The test results demonstrated that tensile cracks could arise in the slope sliding process and the failure surface is composed of both a shear and a tensile fracture surface. Based on the test results, we used the improved LEM, and replaced the traditional shear failure surface by a tensile-shear coupling one, thus new tensile failure modes for slope stability analysis can be established. The safety factors of slope in different failure modes were compared, which show that when considering soil tensile failure and tensile strength less than a certain value (e.g. 15 kPa, 44 kPa and 55 kPa for linear, circular and logarithmic spiral failure surfaces, respectively), the safety factors of slope with three different failure surfaces are less than the one that did not consider the tensile failure. The most critical failure surfaces of the slope may be composed of shear and tensile damages because the tensile strength of the soil cannot be generally greater than its cohesion.