Antoni Gaudí and Frei Otto: Essential Precursors to the Parametricism Manifesto

As Senior Architect to the Basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Mark Burry has been ‘thinking parametrically’ for almost his entire career. Here he describes how his longstanding role overseeing the completion of Antoni Gaudí's masterpiece has afforded unique insights into the work of a great geometer and parametric thinker. Burry places the contribution of Gaudí alongside that of Frei Otto – the other eminent 20th-century Proto-Parametricist.     

The Hinterland Urbanised?

What defines the urban? And can the non-urban necessarily always be classified as rural? Neil Brenner , Director of the Urban Theory Lab at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, reflects on the lack of an overarching theory to describe these realms, and argues that what we call the countryside or the hinterland has become key to the process of capitalist urbanisation.     

Design for the Future: Educational Institutions in the Gulf

Despite a distinguished heritage of learning in the Middle East, the expansion of provision for higher education is currently at an unprecedented scale. The Gulf States, in particular, are seeking to keep up with accelerated population growth and a demographic ‘youth bulge’. Guest-Editor Kevin Mitchell describes the architectural approaches employed in the design of institutions in the region from the first universities in Saudi Arabia to Foster + Partners's ground-breaking sustainable design for the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi and future projects.     

Quality practices in design organizations

Design organizations play a major role in the construction industry: they are the media that transfer the requirements of the client to the contractor and ensure that they are met. Thus they need to provide a high quality of service to ensure that their client's project achieves the best possible standards of cost, time and quality. Seventy quality practices (QP) were identified as having a bearing on the quality of service provided by the local design organizations. These quality practices were grouped into fifteen sections termed quality sections (QS). The prevalence of these practices among the local design organizations was surveyed and determined. The results indicate a significant need for improvement in the quality sections ‘working relationship’, ‘employee training and education’, and ‘performance quality audit’. The study reveals the need for the establishment of a design code, and evaluation standards for local design organizations.     

中东原油馏分油加氢生产润滑油基础油

分析了中东原油馏分油的基本性质，综述了加氢裂化、加氢处理、加氢脱蜡、加氢精制及组合工艺的工业应用情况，探讨了由中东原油馏分油生产润滑油基础油应注意的问题，提出了适合炼油厂生产润滑油的建议。     

Contractors’ Views of the Potential Causes of Inconsistencies between Design and Construction in Saudi Arabia

The study identifies the causes of inconsistencies between the design and construction of large building projects. To achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire survey was carried out to collect information on potential causes of inconsistencies at the project design and construction interface. Responses from 27 contractors were analyzed. The results suggest that the involvement of designer as consultant, communication gap between constructor and designer, insufficient working drawing details, lack of coordination between parties, lack of human resources in design firm, lack of designer’s knowledge of available materials and equipment, and incomplete plans and specifications were considered as the most important causes of the project design and construction interface inconsistencies. On the other hand, project management as a professional service, weather conditions, nationalities of participants, involvement of the contractor in design conceptual phase, unforeseen problems, involvement of the contractor in design development phase, and government regulations were the least important causes of inconsistencies between professionals at the project design and construction interface in large building projects.     

Information technology (IT) in Saudi Arabia: Culture and the acceptance and use of IT

The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), a model of the user acceptance of IT, synthesizes elements from several prevailing user acceptance models. It has been credited with explaining a larger proportion of the variance of ‘intention to use’ and ‘usage behavior’ than do preceding models. However, it has not been validated in non-Western cultures. Using a survey sample collected from 722 knowledge workers using desktop computer applications on a voluntary basis in Saudi Arabia, we examined the relative power of a modified version of UTAUT in determining ‘intention to use’ and ‘usage behavior’. We found that the model explained 39.1% of intention to use variance, and 42.1% of usage variance. In addition, drawing on the theory of cultural dimensions, we hypothesized and tested the similarities and differences between the North American and Saudi validations of UTAUT in terms of cultural differences that affected the organizational acceptance of IT in the two societies.     

Le monde de la recherche

The factors used in this model are financial stability, experience, references, past performance, current work load, staff availability, manpower resources, company organization, office location, experience in geographic location of project, quality performance, failure to complete contracts, procurement experience, safety consciousness and claim attitude.     

Subtractive Clustering-Based K-means Technique for Determining Optimum Time-of-Day Breakpoints

In many countries, the most widely used method for timing plan selection and implementation is the time-of-day (TOD) method. In TOD mode, a few traffic patterns that exist in the historical volume data are recognized and used to find the signal timing plans needed to achieve optimum performance of the intersections during the day. Traffic engineers usually determine TOD breakpoints by analyzing 1 or 2?days worth of traffic data and relying on their engineering judgment. The current statistical methods, such as hierarchical and K-means clustering methods, determine TOD breakpoints but introduce a large number of transitions. This paper proposes adopting the Z-score of the traffic flow and time variable in the K-means clustering to reduce the number of transitions. The numbers of optimum breakpoints are chosen based on a microscopic simulation model considering a set of performance measures. By using simulation and the K-means algorithm, it was found that five clusters are the optimum for a major arterial in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia. As an alternative to the simulation-based approach, a subtractive algorithm-based K-means technique is introduced to determine the optimum number of TODs. Through simulation, it was found that both approaches results in almost the same values of measure of effectiveness (MOE). The proposed two approaches seem promising for similar studies in other regions, and both of them can be extended for different types of roads. The paper also suggests a procedure for considering the cyclic nature of the daily traffic in the clustering effort.