Walter Pichler

Throughout his lifetime, the Austrian-born artist, maker and recluse Walter Pichler has defied an easy understanding of his work or its purpose. ‘Coming into contact with any product [of Pichler's],’ writes critic David Dunster , ‘elicits for me the sensation of a chilling proximity to the inevitable.’ Pichler, the practitioner of personal obsessions, ‘created a commentary that is far from private but retains the nature of an archetypal investigation’. In a rare look at his work, Dunster here offers us an eloquent personal insight that stirs a potent array of emotion. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TYIN tegnestue Architects. Integrating On-Site Education and Practice

Founded by Andreas Grøntvedt Gjertsen and Yashar Hanstad, TYIN tegnestue Architects grew out of an initiative to provide sleeping accommodation for an orphanage in Thailand when the principals were only third-year architecture students. Norwegian architect Lisbet Harboe explains how the student-architects built up a practice while in schools by refocusing their studies and those of their peers on learning through their own experiences of construction.     

Site/Non-Site: Extending the Parameters in Contemporary Landscape

As the world teeters on the verge of environmental collapse, landscape architecture has taken on a new significance offering a longed-for sanctuary for our increasingly urbanised lives. Here, in his introduction to the issue, guest-editor Michael Spens explains how by taking its impetus from land art, landscape architecture, as an expanded field, transcends the conventional confines of site. This renders it possible to read architecture ‘as landscape, or as non-landscape, as building becomes non-site’ and the ‘site indeed materialises as the work per se’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contextual Counterpoint

In recent decades, conservationists and planners have co-opted contextualism, reducing it to a tool for enforcing urban conformity. Here Charles Jencks reclaims contextualism as a dynamic design strategy. He identifies four different contextual treatments that as well as ensuring continuity are potentially transformative. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accuracy of black carbon measurements by a filter-based absorption photometer with a heated inlet

Long-term measurements of black carbon (BC) aerosols by filter-based absorption photometers with a heated inlet (COSMOS) in different regions have been useful in elucidating spatial variations and radiative impacts of BC. Evaluations of mass concentrations of BC (M_BC) measured by the COSMOS have been made by our previous studies through comparisons with other measurement techniques. However, how variations in the microphysical properties of BC and the co-existing light scattering aerosols affect the COSMOS measurements should be evaluated in more detail. In this study, we assessed these potential effects under various field environments in the Arctic and in the East Asia. From the slopes of the correlation plots between the M_BC values measured by the COSMOS and a single-particle soot photometer, the average accuracy of the COSMOS was estimated as ～10% in the M_BC range 1–3000?ng m^?3. On an hourly basis, the estimated sensitivity of the COSMOS M_BC values to the changes in the BC size distributions was less than 10%, within the typical variabilities of BC size at individual observation sites. The COSMOS measurements depended little on the mixing states of BC and the concentrations of co-existing light scattering aerosols, except in the maritime air masses of East Asia, where the relative abundance of sea salt to BC was very high. The M_BC measured by COSMOS also well agreed with elemental carbon measurements. Our results demonstrate the high reliability of COSMOS measurements under various environments.

Copyright © 2019 American Association for Aerosol Research     

The Employment of Reason

Rationalism in the Netherlands is characterised by pragmatism. As Charles Rattray explains it is a practical bent that was driven in the 20th century by the exigencies of building cheaply and quickly a large amount of social housing on a relatively small amount of land. It is a strand that has been underscored by a belief in reason across time and a confidence in an analytical approach. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.