Prosthetic Mythologies

The forest wilderness of Kielder in Northumbria is one ofEngland's remotest areas. Sharing an ecology similar to much of northern Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, it shares none of its native culture or folklore. Only planted in the 1920s, the conifer forests are relatively recent - a graft on the natural landscape. Kate Davies and Emmanuel Vercruysse of LIQUID FACTORY describe how their site-specific performance piece sought out the psychological power of the forest, embuing it with ‘Prosthetic Mythologies’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Artists of the Floating World: SANNA,Niedermayr and the Construction of Atmosphere

Hugh Campbell expands upon the mutually collaborative spatial qualities evoked in the photographic works of Walter Niedermayr and the architecture of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based practice SANAA. Describing their relation as forming a ‘thickened presence’, he alludes to a particular atmosphere reliant on an ambiguity of scale, detail and discernible proximity that serves to liberate the architecture and the photographs from mere documentation whereby instead they figure as transparent recordings of spatial intentions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Drawn into Space: Zaha Hadid

Visionary New York architect Lebbeus Woods reviews the evolution of Zaha Hadid's work from the 1970s to the present. Tracking the shifts in her work from a Suprematist-informed fragmentation in the 1980s to a more contemporary fluidity and a preoccupation with complex curvilinearity, he throws light on the relationship between Hadid's drawing and her architecture. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shape and the City

At a time when architecture's historical relationship to the city -founded on various formal and, more recently, informal homologies – has been rendered inoperative, how might a renewed architecture constructively inform the megalopolis? RE Somol flings all the formal and informal protocols offered to the city by architecture out of the pram and calls for a politics of shape, a potential trajectory tested with two projects by Zago Architecture.     

Basking in a World of Your Own Making

As the credit crunch bites in, are pockets of young architects reviving a battle against commodified materialism? Neil Spiller describes how he has experienced this close to home with his own class of 2009 at the Bartlett which has reactivated its own brand of Surrealist cybernetic research, inspired by Dalí. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism): An Interview with Bernard Tschumi

Michele Costanzo interviews Bernard Tschumi about his work and his vision of the changing field of contemporary design research. How do the younger generation of students receive Tschumi's seminal theoretical works? Is a lack of time merely the current scapegoat for a more considered conceptual approach? How does Tschumi view the proliferation of architectural fetishes in the urban landscape? How is his own theoretical landscape shifting? Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meeting the New Boss: After the Death of Theory

Christopher Hight seeks to find out what might be left over after the death of theory. Have theoretical questions become merely replaced by reproducible techniques and business plans? How should architects think and practise if they no longer - in the wake of Koolhaas - solely think architecturally? Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In the Mi(d)st Of

It's in the air. The first thing that the term atmosphere evokes is in the air, the intangibility of air. A gaseous layer enveloping the planet, a zone where clouds move about, atmosphere is the invisible shroud around each object emanating (such is the meaning that the word has taken on over time) a sort of fragrance or warmth. Atmosphere is created by the particular subject matter or place – it is given off from it – and corresponds to it like a sort of spirit that floats around, revealing, betraying a certain essence of the place or subject matter, but remaining ever visible. Michel Orsoni, ‘Point of view: A question of atmosphere’, 1998¹. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Visceral City and the Theatre of Fear

Over the last decade in India, intensive urbanisation, with the aid of the mass media, has unleashed a new culture of fear. Widespread access to TV, text messaging and the Internet have heightened and played upon individuals' anxieties. Ravi Sundaram describes how in Delhi, in particular, the media provided the catalyst for ‘mass hysteria’ and ‘psychosis’ during the summer of 2002. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recombinant Landscapes in the American City

How are urban actors, such as landscape designers, community groups, developers and local politicians, actively restructuring their environments to meet the challenges of the American city in the new global context? Grahame Shane outlines the approaches to landscape that have been emerging since the mid-20th century and are set to recombine urban assemblages whether they are located in historic city centres, postindustrial waterfronts or suburban sprawl. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A New Overground Line and the Sense of Place

Robert Harbison describes how the upgrading and extension of the old East London Line, which connects the city east and south, enables new explorations and insights. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross the River by Touching the Stones: Chinese Architecture and Political Economy in the Reform Era: 1978-2008

China's Open Door Policy and economic development set in motion in 1978 can be regarded as the triumph of pragmatism over theory - specifically Chairman Mao's brand of Marxist theory. Tao Zhu traces the progress of reform over the last 30 years, and its impact on Chinese architectural culture. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Defining Distinction,or Four Good Reasons for Success: The Extraordinary Career of Renzo Piano

For 30 years, Renzo Piano has been producing distinguished buildings and delighting the world with his innovation and sensitivity. Here, Livio Sacchi attempts to tease out some of the reasons behind Piano's sustained success. Having gained an almost unparalleled international profile during the last couple of decades, a period that has been notoriously difficult for Italian architects, Piano's career has an almost mythic quality. It boasts one of the most unlikely competition wins of all time that ceded one of the most prestigious sites in the world, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, to two completely unknown architects in their late 20s. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Study on the treatment of the sulfite pulp CEH bleaching effluents with the coagulation-anaerobic acidification-aeration package reactor

The coagulation-anaerobic acidification-aeration package reactor was designed for the treatment of pulp CEH bleaching effluents, the efficiencies in CODcr, BOD(5), AOX and toxicity removal achieved were 88.1%, 81.0%, 98.4% and 92.0%, respectively, with 15 h HRT. The toxicity and AOX were removed mainly through coagulation and anaerobic process, while the COD and BOD(5) were removed mainly through coagulation and aerobic process. The pretreatment of coagulation precipitation decreased the following organic load, which decreased the following treatment retention time and increased the stability of the system.The results of GC-MS showed: pollutants of wastewater were mainly chlorinated organics, most of AOX and the toxicity were removed by reductive dechlorination and acidified hydrolysis in anaerobic unit, the high COD removal in aerobic unit showed further degradation of pollutants. Chlorine atoms in the ortho position were preferentially dechlorination, that in para position were difficult to remove from chlorinated phenols during biological treatment.