The palace,the city and the past: controversies surrounding the rebuilding of the Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul, 1990–2010

In step with economic and political growth, the Korean government is in the process of restoring the main palace, the Gyeongbok Palace, of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910), which was destroyed by the Japanese during the colonial era (1910–1945). The ensuing public debate regarding the method and extent of the restoration has brought to the fore the significance such a project carries in Korean society of the twenty‐first century. The restoration of this palace complex has created a number of controversies relating to history and the built environment, urban morphology and national identity. Questions about historical authenticity, both in terms of what has happened to the site since the palace was destroyed and the best means of restoring it; questions about the historical origins of Seoul and the need to restore the palace to make its role in this clear; questions about the methods and materials of restoration, are all matters of debate. There are also cultural and political issues: the role of the built environment in aiding public education; sustaining a sense of national identity; encouraging the development of traditional craftsmen’s techniques for public benefit; bolstering self‐confidence for national progress and expanding the infrastructure for the Korean tourism industry. This paper argues that not only is the physical restoration of the ‘new’ historic buildings and structures important, but also the cultural and social meanings (as outlined above), and that these justify the controversial restoration of the national historic monument.     

The Industrial Heritage and the New Architecture： Teaching, Researching, Designing the Place Identity

The new architecture may provide unusual opportunities for the abandoned areas involved by former industrial processes, both in the city centers and in the landscape. In fact, it may create new centralities and give new collective function for deprived areas. The case study of the architectural and educational project for a new museum park devoted to the technique and the science in the Apennine＇ s landscape near Parma （Italy） may give an interesting point of view about the role of the teaching and the research of the architecture in the former industrial heritage, and to avoid the abandonment and the pauperization of the territory around.     

Materials, Sensuality, Esthetics- the emotional facets of an exterior

The exterior of a building is largely the visible mark of a structure. It links outer and inner spaces, protects against the effects of weather, and certainly promotes lowering of a building＇s energy needs. More than ever, the exterior is becoming the testing ground for novel applications of new materials - especially esthetic surfaces. These days, the diversity of demands placed on the exterior by far surpasses the requirements covering other building elements. The design of an exterior has become a complex challenge.     

Conceptualizing ‘the Urban’ Through the Lens of Durban,South Africa

Contemporary urban theory raises many questions about how ‘the urban’ is being conceptualized in a fast changing world that is approaching an urban epoch. Evolving debates about what it means to be urban, including the similarities and differences between so-called northern and southern cities, the future of cities, the way to manage and sustain cities, and cities’ relationships to the new Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, reveal the need for urban theory that can explain and provide insights into contemporary urban governance, processes, and outcomes. This special issue uses Durban as a lens to provide insight into the changing nature of cities in the Global South and Africa in particular, which encapsulate and reflect both formality and informality; tradition and modernity; uneven and unequal growth and social transformation; environmental crises and ‘resilience and sustainability’. This paper reflects on the dominant processes shaping the development of the city, revealing the challenges, tensions, and opportunities that emerge as the city assembles new ways of being urban, through the rationalities, knowledge, experiences, practices and actions of the state, citizens, and the private sector.     

Showcasing Vällingby to the world: post-war suburban development,informational infrastructures,and the extrospective city

Vällingby – one of the first post-war suburbs in Stockholm – became a well-known and much visited development, a prominent place in the geographical imaginations of many planners and architects during the 1950s and 1960s. This article will consider the ways in which Vällingby was ‘showcased’ to planners and architects outside of Sweden during this period. It will demonstrate how this was achieved through three practices in particular: (1) the hosting of visitors to Vällingby; (2) the promotion of Vällingby by those governing and marketing the development; and (3) the reporting of the development in English language planning and architect journals. In so doing, the article will speak to the academic literature on policy mobilities and two important concepts within it: informational infrastructures and the extrospective city.     

Management Innovation,Leadin the Way 管理创新,领先之道

中国的勘察设计行业与共和国同龄,特别是改革开放30年来,中国勘察设计行业更是以前所未有的发展速度激情前行,从改革之初人均产值不到3万元,队伍规模近30万人,完成年投资额80多亿元,发展到2010年人均产值68万元、从业人员140多万人、完成年合同额7747.6亿元,如今的勘察设计行业无论是业务模式、业务范围还是企业性质,都发生了巨大的变化.勘察设计行业也迎来了它更高、更大、更广阔的发展新阶段.     

On the Scale,Structure and Development Strategy

An important part of the developmentand policies strategy for the cities and townsis to determine the scale and structure of cit-ies and towns that suit the Chinese condi-tions.At present,city planners hold com-pletely different views over the development     

Virtual enclosure,ecosystem services,landscape’s character and the ‘rewilding’ of the commons: the ‘Lake District’ case

Abstract

It is paradoxical that, while there is a generally increasing recognition of the scientific and cultural importance of conserving ‘semi-natural’ pastoral environments, and the negative effects of their widespread abandonment and overgrowth, British ‘rewilding’ activists and environmental managers are effectively advocating policies that will have a similar negative effect on the character of the semi-natural pastoral commons of places like England’s iconic Lake District. This situation, it will be argued, owes to the mindset of ‘virtual enclosure’ whereby the character of landscape is pre-defined by an assumed, behind-the-scenes, Euclidean/Ptolemaic spatial logic that leads to the comprehension of nature as a bounded scenic property; an (e)state of nature with its own economic system and services. This mindset is antithetical to both the practice of pastoral commoning and much contemporary natural science and conservation policy. It fits well, however, with older teleological ideas of nature, as well as modern ideas of privatisation, private property and management control.     

Experimental investigation of the aerodynamic stability of the “Endless Column”, Romania

Wind tunnel tests have been performed on several models of the “Endless Column”, a 30 m tall sculpture, created by C. Brancusi in 1938. In spite of its slenderness, the Column, located in Targul Jiu, Romania, has shown a great stability against wind. In order to clarify if the symmetric, original shape has influence upon its stability, we have carried out tests on section models of “Endless Column” shape (EC models) and square shape (SQ models), of various Sc numbers. Across-wind response was determined in smooth flow for wind speeds in wind tunnel of 1–10 m/s (Re=4000–46,000) for angles of attack 0°, 10° and 45°. Furthermore, an aerolastic full model was created and tests under smooth and turbulent flow conditions were performed for angles of attack between 0° and 45°. For low wind speeds, in the area of vortex-induced vibrations, the EC models had similar response with the SQ models; however, for higher wind speeds the EC models proved to be more stable. Based on measurements of aerodynamic drag and lift coefficients and by a verification of Glauert den Hartog criterion, it could be concluded that is a very low possibility for EC model to encounter galloping; for extremely high wind speeds though, this might not be impossible.     

Corporate Capital and the Techniques of Modernity—Problems in the Mass Production of Space,Image, and Experience

This article seeks to accomplish two tasks. The first is to employ a materialist approach to the study of architecture that emphasizes the nature of practice as a set of techniques within history, rather than emphasizing the form of the finished work. The second task is to study the implications of the corporate franchise for the practice of architecture and for the landscape and to argue that this particular device has participated in the establishment of a new category of architectural production, that is, a mass production of architecture. The article also suggests that such mass production has created a new physical context—accessible networks of accommodation—that serves to fulfill a vision of the United States as a complex, integrated market.     

Housing and the Material Imagination – Earth,Fire, Air and Water

This paper focuses on the possibilities of the material imagination as a theoretical and practical lens for contemporary housing research. The emphasis is on housing/home as complex material cultural assemblages interwoven across the four key ancient elements: earth, air, fire and water. The principle behind the material imagination is that “matter” – which we are immersed in and indeed ourselves composed of – is important, indeed underpins everything, and yet is typically rendered invisible within housing theory and research. As a critical response to social scientific engagement – “a needed radical corrective” – the potential of the material imagination for housing theory and practice is considered in ways that purposively attend to the elemental dimensions of housing as dynamic, fluid environments comprised of living matter. Suggestions for taking this approach forward through empirical housing studies are outlined.     

‘Assessing the visual impacts of urbanization from the highway: a visual evaluation of the South Fork interchange site,North Bend,Washington’

This study is noteworthy as an application at project design scale of a methodology developed in 1976 by Jones & Jones for the Federal Highway Administation course ‘Esthetics and Visual Resource Management’ currently being given to highway professionals around the country. It also demonstrates the transfer of this methodology from highway facilities to urbanization.     

Introduction to a special issue: the future of landscape characterisation,and the future character of landscape – between space,time, history,place and nature

Abstract

In any discussion of landscape characterisation the elephant in the room is the question of just what is landscape? Another way of putting this question is to simply ask: ‘How would you characterise landscape?’ What this implies is that there is a certain circularity in landscape characterisation because, through the very act of characterising landscape, one is also defining what one means by landscape. The European Landscape Convention’s definition of landscape as ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’ suggests a similar circularity because the character of an area, as it results from the action of natural and/or human factors, is dependent upon human perception, which is presumably also, in addition, one of the human factors acting upon the landscape. This circularity, or ‘circulating reference’, to use Bruno Latour’s term, is fundamental to Denis Cosgrove’s analysis of the origin of the modern concept of landscape as scenic space, and his analysis, we would suggest, helps explain some of the questions raised in this special issue concerning landscape characterisation and the future character of landscape .     

“Glamourized Houses”: Neutra,Photography, and the Kaufmann House

The current debate on reproduction and architectural publication has established new terms for the examination of architectural photographs. No longer treated simply as a species of architectural documentation—such as renderings or plans—photographs of building are acknowledged as sharing in the cultural power of the photographic medium and must consequently be examined as a form of social production. The publication of Richard Neutra's 1946 Kaufmann house reveals the power of the print media in the establishment of an architectural canon; moreover, Neutra's habit of reworking photographs of his built designs suggests the appropriateness of reexamining his contribution to the legacy of involving photography and the media in the architectural process.     

CIAM and the Communist Bloc, 1928–59

Despite a widespread perception of close linkages between CIAM (the International Congresses of Modern Architecture) and Soviet housing and planning, there was in fact very little direct overlap between the two after 1933. Although CIAM concepts of housing and urbanism were closely related to mostly theoretical developments in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s, by the time the Soviet ‘Communist Bloc’ came into existence in the late 1940s, CIAM and other examples of Western avant-gardism had long been officially proscribed by the Soviet authorities. In that era of Stalinist ‘Socialist Realism’, various forms of modernised neoclassical planning became the official direction instead. After 1954, when Stalin's death and his successor Nikita Khrushchev's subsequent repudiation of Socialist Realism again made modernism possible in the USSR, Soviet architects began to build in a Western functionalist way, but without any involvement by CIAM architects. With a few exceptions, the same was largely true in Eastern Europe down to the end of the Communist Bloc there in 1989. So the topic is a paradoxical one: social and architectural ideas that were fused together in the 1920s, leading to CIAM's ultimately unsuccessful effort to hold its Fourth Congress in Moscow in 1933, followed different paths thereafter. This article examines these parallel but separate trajectories in more detail.     

Revisiting the role of architects in planning large-scale housing in the USSR: the birth of socialist residential districts in Tallinn,Estonia, 1957–1979

In Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, housing estates are often associated with inhumane architecture and unwelcoming public space, an outcome that can be attributed to strict design requirements in a rigid centralized system. Due to the uniformity of residential housing produced during socialist times, both the design process and its master – the architect – are believed to have played only minor roles in shaping townscapes. This study, situated in the large housing estates of Tallinn, Estonia, challenges these assumptions using analyses of archival material (relating to planning procedures during state socialism) and articles in specialized magazines. The study also explains – through first-hand interviews with senior architects who were key players in building socialist cities – the relations between Soviet regulations and vital elements of the city-building process, including creativity, power, and artistry. Analysis of primary source materials highlights an oversimplification of socialist modernism, which suggests more nuanced explanations for town planning outcomes. Findings suggest that regulations issued in Moscow for Union of Soviet Socialist Republic-wide planning played a less important role than previously assumed in town planning outcomes in Estonia. International modernist city planning ideals, combined with local expertise, strongly influenced town planning practice in the Soviet ‘West’.     

Reconstruction and planning in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer South African War: the experience of the Colony of Natal, 1900–1910

The idea of ‘reconstruction’ is now well established in the historiography of South African planning. Particular attention has been paid to ‘reconstructionist planning’: during and immediately after World War; in the apartheid era; and, in the recent context of post-apartheid development. The centenary celebrations of the Anglo-Boer South African War (1899–1902) are, however, directing attention to the programme for the reconstruction of the previous Boer republics that was initiated by the imperialist proconsul, Lord Milner, and is the subject of ongoing controversy. Natal was not a direct target of Milner's programme but the aftermath of conflict in this British colony was linked to important socio-economic and spatial transformations. The idea of ‘town planning’ was only in an embryonic form at the time but ‘post-war reconstruction’ in Natal included interventions in the shaping of urban and rural space that provided the basis for future programmes of reconstruction and planning, including that of racial ordering under apartheid. For example, the system that developed in Durban to finance the construction and administration of segregated municipal housing for Africans was later exported to the rest of South Africa and became a major feature of the National Party's programme of ‘township development’.