Distinguishing Between the Drawn and the Made

Here Bob Sheil , Director of Technology and Computing at the Bartlett School of Architecture and co-organiser of the 2011 Fabricate Conference at UCL, pulls back on the rush towards material computation. With the blurring of the projected image and the constructed artefact, there is the very real danger of reducing ‘architectural production to a systematic industrial exercise’. This fails to recognise the extent to which ideas and performance are transformed, developed and refined through the very process of making. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MAXXI,Rome: Zaha Hadid Architects

Mark Garcia , editor of The Diagrams in Architecture (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), one of the first significant accounts of the diagram in architectural design, provides a unique insight into the diagrammatic form of Zaha Hadid Architects' new MAXXI museum in Rome. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Grounds of a Renewed Practice: Groundlab's Approach Towards Landscape and Infrastructure

Based in London and Beijing, Groundlab is an emerging international practice that specialises in landscape urbanism. Eva Castro, José Alfredo Ramírez and Eduardo Rico of Groundlab describe the potential that the ground itself provides for a new urbanism, which is able to integrate multiple fields and scales while also engaging with greater territorial systems. They explain how landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was influential in establishing an approach that uses ecological infrastructure as the basis for design. They proceed in describing two Groundlab projects that integrate ground remediation and water infrastructure techniques: Paisajes Latentes urban design masterplan for Valle De Chalco Solidaridad in Mexico City (2011) and the Ground Ecologies masterplan for the redevelopment of the Jiading District in Shanghai (2010).     

Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia

Brasília is renowned the world over for its realisation of a visionary Modernist plan, designed by Brazilian architect and planner Lúcio Costa (1902–98). The reality of the city's design and its development, as explained by architect, author and academic researcher Thomas Deckker , is, however, much more complex. Contrary to public perception, Brasília falls a long way short of being ‘a unified city’, though it is one that has prospered with a growing population and stronger economy than other Brazilian cities.     

Review of Freud and the Legacy of Moses.

Review of book: Richard J. Bernstein. Freud and the Legacy of Moses. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998, xii & 151 pp. Reviewed by Emanuel Rice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing the homogenizing effect of low copper sulfate concentrations on the size distribution of Portulaca oleracea seedlings in vitro

Traditionally, toxicological bioassays rely upon the differences in mean-based statistical tests between the exposed and unexposed plants, and exceptional plant individuals are treated as statistical outliers. Recently, low toxicant concentrations have been observed to affect gene regulation in exposed plant stands and to change the frequency of the largest individuals even if mean plant size remains unchanged. In this paper, we present the results that the latter phenomenon is not restricted to a single toxicant and plant species. Our data analysis consists of two statistical methods that may be of general interest. We utilized the one-tailed Moses extreme reactions test by comparing exposed groups to control plants with and without the trimming of a certain amount of potential outliers from both treatments compared. We also propose that Mann-Whitney U or other tests at ordinal scale can be utilized to analyze if the largest plant individuals in exposed and control treatments come from a single ‘survivor’ population. We conclude that the results supported the hypothesis that very low toxicant concentrations may have ecological effects on fast-growing plant species. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the statistical methods currently in use.     

Alice Tully Hall,New York

This sensuous redesign of a 40-year-old concert hall at the Julliard School is the first major project completed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in their planned remodelling of the entire Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. Jayne Merkel believes this lively, elegant, personal and welcoming building bodes well for the dozen other public places and performance spaces that the architects will be renovating there over the next few years. It also suggests that the most respectful way to treat historic structures may be to meet them head-on. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.