Education and the location of work: a continued economic role for central cities?

Using data on individuals from the 2008 American Community Survey, we examine the relationship between educational attainment and the location of jobs in fifteen large metropolitan areas in the United States. We focus on whether individuals with higher educational attainment tend to work in the central city versus the suburbs, and we do so taking into account the residential location of households (central city vs suburb). We show that central cities tend to be the work site of more highly educated workers—those with a bachelor’s degree and above. Workers with less than a high school degree also tend to work in the city. Taking account of the residential location preferences of highly educated workers mildly diminishes the direct effect of higher education on city job location, but it does not negate it. In contrast, central city job opportunities for workers with less than a high school education are not so abundant; these workers tend to work in the city mostly because they also live there.     

Cause for concern — noise pollution of the work environment

Man is subjecting himself to ever increasing levels of noise. In Britain, in his home, he is provided with a fair degree of protection, both in common law and in statutory law, against anyone who causes him annoyance by producing excessive noise. However, at work, he is virtually defenceless against whatever noise his employer may choose to inflict upon him. If the level exceeds 60 dBA it can cause him annoyance; if it exceeds 85 dBA it can eventually deafen him as well as making him less productive for certain tasks. The triple effects of noise pollution, in the work environment, upon the mental and physical health of the worker are examined. It is shown that all three adversely affect the efficient running of a firm. Noise annoyance is one of the factors in a high turnover of labour. Compensation claims from noise deafened employees are becoming a real threat and no employer can contemplate low productivity resulting from inefficient operation of his plant. It is argued on both humanitarian and on economic grounds that this country cannot afford not to legislate for noise control in factories and offices and not to provide adequate financial compensation for noise deafness.     

“Composition” and regularisation of architectural production in contemporary China

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the “Beaux-Arts” “composition” sustained the constitution of design principles for architectural production in China in the last two decades of the twentieth century. “Composition”, a key technique of the “Beaux-Arts” system, is not a simple act of “putting elements together” into a unified whole, but also relates to an array of different “constructions” of architectural knowledge which regulate and sustain the act of design. Through analysing the structure of three “textbooks” published in the early 1980s, this paper examines three aspects of the “constructions”: the setting up of the principles for governing architectural forms, regularisation of design methods and approaches for architectural practice, and the construction of a “tradition” for the expression of “Chineseness”.     

Professionals’ knowledge and use of environmental assessment in an architectural competition

In early design phases, architects, landscape architects and urban planners are key actors whose decisions determine the environmental impact of planning and building projects. Environmental and sustainability assessment tools for buildings and neighbourhoods have been developed to promote sustainable building, but their usage has not been thoroughly evaluated. This study investigated self-reported knowledge and usage of such tools among competitors and jury group from 10 European countries involved in the international architectural competition ‘A New City Centre for Kiruna’ in Sweden. The questionnaire revealed that 13% used environmental assessment tools or management systems in the competition, although 47% had used them previously. Tool users reported greater knowledge of how to handle environmental impacts than non-users. However, the self-rated experience of handling various environmental impacts, in the competition and in general, was low for both groups. Nevertheless, the self-rated importance of environmental impacts was high among all participants. Based on this study, it is concluded that environmental assessment tools, issues and goals can be better integrated into the processes of early design in planning and building projects, and in architectural competitions. Furthermore, to limit environmental impacts in building and planning projects, professionals need to be educated about environmental strategies and solutions.     

Crystalline Waterproofing——How to choose and verify the right product system for the correct application

Crystalline Waterproofing Systems have been used successfully in various waterproofing applications for many decades. These systems have been used along with traditional waterproofing systems as well as in place of conventional materials such as liquid ap…     

The Rosewood experiment — Building information modeling and interoperability for architectural precast facades

The Rosewood experiment examined building information modeling (BIM) and product data exchange in the design and fabrication of architectural precast façades. The façade panels of a 16 story office building were designed and fabricated using traditional CAD, while a parallel workflow was performed independently using BIM tools. No limitations were encountered in designing and detailing of precast façade pieces with current software. Production of the same set of drawings showed a productivity gain of 57% over the CAD process. However, the data exchanges between architectural and precast engineering systems were incomplete and inconsistent, confirming the need for BIM exchange standards. The existing Industry Foundation Classes schema (IFC version 2x3) lacks precast-specific entities and property sets. The majority of the difficulties can be traced to a loss in translation of semantic meaning for the objects exchanged.     

Review and Exploration of the Development of Planning for the Conservation of the Famous Historical and Cultural Cities in China

To comprehend the development of the famous histori-cal and cultural cities in China and their conservation plan-ning, it is necessary to understand, first of all, the back-ground of their history and present condition. This back-ground has taken shape in the historic development of thecities and is influenced by many complicated factors of thepresent time. To discuss these factors in simple way, theycan be summarized as follows:The impact of the historical and cultural ideas;The impact of the physical and environmental condi-tion;The impact of the present socialand economicsituation.The impact of the historical and cultural ideasChina is a country with ancient civilization. TheChinese cultural has been shaped through development, in-heritance and harmony in a history of 5000 years on the ba-sis of the ancient Huaxia Culture with the Yellow River andthe Yangtse River as the main arteries.The rising of ancient cities in China can be traced backto over 3500 years ago. China is a multinational country. Int     

XENIOS—a methodology for assessing refurbishment scenarios and the potential of application of RES and RUE in hotels

Hotels rank in the highest levels of energy consumption in the tertiary building sector. Improved service quality mandates that hotel building, facilities and installations are maintained to the highest standards in order to remain competitive, thus renovations are becoming common. Renovation is usually financially attractive when compared to demolition and reconstruction. This offers great opportunities for promoting energy efficient measures, exploitation of renewable energy sources (RES) and rational use of energy (RUE) in the hotel sector. The XENIOS methodology and software permits the user to perform a preliminary hotel audit and make a first assessment of cost-effective energy efficient renovation practices, technologies and systems. This paper presents a brief overview of the methodology and the various features of the XENIOS software and focuses on the results from four audits and a pilot study carried out in Mediterranean hotels.     

The Hong Kong professional publication of the architecture and design field

As a Professional-whether an architect, designer or advertiser-YOU know how important it is to be well-informed, have the winning edge and know your competitors business movements and artistic direction. What Hinge brings you is a well-balanced dialogue of entertaining, quirky yet useful regular features as wel as the serious stuff. The essential read to keep you updated on architectural and design developments. Knowing who's who in the design world, and judging what's just around the corner is vital. Get yourself     

‘Mart of the World’: an architectural and geographical history of the London Stock Exchange

A stock exchange is a spatial contradiction. Conceived as a marketplace for the trade in securities and other financial instruments, it is intended to provide a regulated forum as a fair and free market for its members: an open economic environment made possible by institutional confinement. Once the largest and most influential in the world, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) embodied this contradiction. Established in the heart of the imperial metropolis, the LSE emerged at the core of a global financial network that sustained Britain's territorial and ‘informal’ Empire. Concurrently, its self-regulated standing within the City of London and reliance on an esoteric world of gentlemanly connections positioned it as an establishment shaped and assisted by its locality.

Established to finance overseas trade in the seventeenth century, the London stock market materialised as the informal appendage of commodity markets in the alleyways surrounding the Royal Exchange. The next three hundred years saw the consolidation and growth of the LSE from classicising institutional grandeur, to concrete monolith in the 1970s and most recently, to the corporate serenity of Paternoster Square.

In mapping the movement of global markets alongside the shifting terrain of the LSE buildings, this paper addresses the manner in which the latter reflects the geographical scope of Britain's capital accumulation throughout the last three centuries. The LSE is looked at in the context of the rise and fall of the British Empire and in its more recent role as channel for international (and offshore) capital, in order to assess whether its architectural choices might reflect shifting attitudes towards economic expansion. At present there are no dedicated architectural accounts of the LSE at any point of its existence. This paper intends to traverse the gap between economic geography and architectural history by means of a methodology of spatial scales, moving from the cartographic to the bodily. In producing a dialogue between macroscopic and microscopic analysis, this enquiry intends to expose more tangible interpretations of an immaterial system that increasingly distorts our material reality.     

Beyond the romantic and naı¨ve: the search for a complex ecological aesthetic design language for landscape architecture in New Zealand

Landscape design is an expression and repository of cultural values and beliefs, and in Aotearoa, New Zealand, the designed landscape faces particular challenges. Globalization is seen as a potential threat to landscape identity, which is even more significant for a country which has built its economy and self-image from its unique natural landscape. The potential for resistance is limited by the small size and youth of the profession of landscape architecture in New Zealand. While traditions of farming and gardening extend back to early European settlement in the mid nineteenth century, and beyond to indigenous Maori practices of land modification, professional landscape design is a relatively recent development (the first tertiary course in landscape architecture began at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) in 1969). Landscape design in New Zealand draws its vocabulary from the power of the country's natural heritage landscapes, convinced that a naturalistic aesthetic exclusively represents environmental health. Some of the core values of New Zealand society are, however, overlooked by designers. The need to develop a critically informed design language which includes the farming landscape along with the natural one is argued. The invention of such a language, referred to as a complex ecological aesthetic, is seen as a potential source of design expression that is invigorated by the tension between mechanistic and natural landscape aesthetics. It therefore has the potential to promote environmental health, while being regionally grounded, and can help face the challenges that globilization poses to the landscape.     

Prospects for the Compositions of City Planning System in China——Initiated from the development and puzzlement in modern western city planning

This essay is intended to draw up anoutline for the study of this subject,thougha big one,since the present development ofcity planning in China can provide the neces-     

‘The Congo must have a presence on Belgian soil.‘ The concept of representation in governmental discourses on the architecture of the Ministry of Colonies in Brussels, 1908–1960

While parliament buildings and governor‘s palaces have been studied as embodiments of governmental or colonial power, the architecture of the often more mundane state administrative office buildings has only received scant attention from architectural historians. In this article, we seek to demonstrate that political discourses concerning such buildings can nonetheless reveal important conceptions of colonial power. Rather than focussing on how such power was accommodated in and shaped by state-built architecture overseas, this article draws attention to the representational aspects of colonial governance in a mother country through an analysis of various projects proposed for the Belgian Ministry of Colonies (1908–1960). In the 1930s, when it was still housed in an eighteenth-century neoclassical building in Brussels, the Ministry of Colonies was included in a visionary but unsuccessful civil service reform, which was aimed at a modernisation of the Belgian state bureaucracy and its office buildings. After the Second World War, when colonialism became increasingly criticised in international fora, successive Belgian Ministers of Colonies pleaded for the construction of a new, grandiose ministerial complex, which was supposed to symbolise efficiency, modernity, and—above all —the permanence of the colonial undertaking. Even though important steps were taken to realise this complex, the project was outrun by the global decolonisation process, of which the independence of the Belgian Congo (1960) was an inevitable outcome.     

Does office space occupation matter? The role of the number of persons per enclosed office space,psychosocial work characteristics,and environmental satisfaction in the physical and mental health of employees

The study examined the effects of office space occupation, psychosocial work characteristics, and environmental satisfaction on physical and mental health of office workers in small‐sized and open‐plan offices as well as possible underlying mechanisms. Office space occupation was characterized as number of persons per one enclosed office space. A total of 207 office employees with similar jobs in offices with different space occupation were surveyed regarding their work situation (psychosocial work characteristics, satisfaction with privacy, acoustics, and control) and health (psychosomatic complaints, irritation, mental well‐being, and work ability). Binary logistic and linear regression analyses as well as bootstrapped mediation analyses were used to determine associations and underlying mechanisms. Employee health was significantly associated with all work characteristics. Psychosocial work stressors had the strongest relation to physical and mental health (OR range: 1.66–3.72). The effect of office space occupation on employee health was mediated by stressors and environmental satisfaction, but not by psychosocial work resources. As assumed by sociotechnical approaches, a higher number of persons per enclosed office space was associated with adverse health effects. However, the strongest associations were found with psychosocial work stressors. When revising office design, a holistic approach to work (re)design is needed.     

Cultural Heritage and the Three-Position Theory——Respect for Tradition and the Future of Landscape Design Methodology

In the era of globalization, the inheritance issue of regional culture should by prudentially faced by each type of cultures, especially the non-mainstream ones. As to the development of modern Chinese landscape architecture cause, a lot of unavoidable century tasks are in the face of the landscape architecture designers in China, such as: how to inherit and develop Chinese outstanding garden     

The role of organizational objects in construction projects: the case of the collapse and restoration of the Tjörn Bridge

The construction industry immutably produces built environments that directly influence the everyday lives of human beings. Nevertheless, materiality, defined as intransient physical matter socially enacted in the form of artefacts and objects as well as built constructions, is often overlooked and simply regarded as passive and inert matter. In contrast, a growing body of literature recognizes the agency of materiality and examines how materiality and agency are co-produced. When examining a spectacular event like the collapse of the Tjörn Bridge on Sweden’s west coast, it is argued that organizational objects are capable of interpellating various actors, thus enabling informed and adequate action. The concepts of the organizational object and interpellation are thus useful analytical terms when examining construction project organization, helping scholars of the construction industry and practising managers to rethink the role of materiality as something that both acts and is acted upon.