bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Regionale gebiedsontwikkeling
Authors: van Steenbergen Guus
Published: November 2023

Nationale opgaven zoals het woningbouwbeleid, de energietransitie en klimaatadaptatie zijn vraagstukken die door regionale instanties concreet moeten worden gemaakt in samenhang met de vraagstukken van de regio zelf. De regio, het niveau tussen de gemeenten en de provincie, heeft meestal geen duidelijke bestuurlijke grens en geen formele plaats in het Nederlandse bestuur. In dit proefschrift is gezocht naar de betekenis van de provincie als regionale gebiedsautoriteit in een situatie waarin diverse publieke en private partijen samenwerken en maatschappelijke organisaties hun stem laten horen. Het onderzoek is gericht op gebieden tussen grote steden waar een aanmerkelijke verstedelijking, ingebed in groen- en waterstructuren, was voorzien. Plannen en planprocessen zijn geanalyseerd, net als het handelen van de provincie in drie regio’s: de regio Rotterdam-Zoetermeer-Gouda, het gebied tussen Arnhem en Nijmegen en de regio Eindhoven-Helmond.
Het proefschrift laat onder meer zien dat planologische sturing een zwakker instrument is dan financiële sturing. Na de decentralisatie van ruimtelijke ordening en landinrichting is de invloed van de rijksoverheid op regionale gebiedsontwikkeling groot gebleven. Voorts blijkt uit het onderzoek dat planconcepten in de praktijk flexibel zijn. Als de uitvoering aan de orde komt neemt het risico toe dat het planconcept uit elkaar valt. Het onderzoek toont aan dat de provincie haar rol als regionale gebiedsregisseur actiever zou kunnen invullen. De Omgevingswet zou dat mogelijk moeten maken.
Towards a future sustainable housing stock
Authors: van der Bent Herman
Published: November 2023

This thesis examines the energy performance of dwellings of Dutch non-profit housing associations towards a future sustainable housing stock. Improving the energy performance of dwellings aims to improve the quality of dwellings and therewith to lower the actual energy consumption. Lowering the actual energy consumption of dwellings contributes to the battle against climate change. This thesis addresses four studies. Study 1 assesses the energy performance progress of over two million dwellings of Dutch non-profit housing associations between 2017 and 2020. It gives insights into the development of the housing stock, the effect of changes of and within the stock, the effect of characteristics of housing associations and it relates the improvement of the energy performance to the sectoral goal. Study 2 assesses advanced models to improve estimations of actual energy consumption of dwellings and therewith to better estimate the effect of renovation measures on actual energy savings. Study 3 assesses the energy performance of dwellings with heat pumps. It gives insights into the energy performance of dwellings with heat pumps as a promising renovation measure towards a future sustainable housing stock. Study 4 assesses the process to create a model to benchmark the energy performance in a changing policy context. The four studies contribute to the understanding of the improvement of the energy performance of dwellings of non-profit housing associations towards a future sustainable housing stock.
Integrating High-speed Railway Stations and Urban Areas in China
Authors: Wang Biyue
Published: November 2023

There is an increasing need for understanding the impacts of institutions on the integrated planning of transport and land use. High-speed railway (HSR) station areas, as nodes in transport networks and mixed-use areas, have become a focus in planning. The fast development of HSR station areas in China causes many problems, such as remote locations, oversized station areas, transfer difficulties, and unsustainable urban development. Facing these problems, this study aims to explore the influences of actors, decision-making processes, and institutions on the planning and development of HSR station areas in China. An analytical framework is built based on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), Policy Network Theory, Institutional Analysis and Development Framework, and State Entrepreneurialism. Qualitative methods offer an effective way of investigating Chinese governance in the development of HSR station areas, including content analysis, case studies, and interviews. The findings show that HSR station areas are mainly used as a tool to promote urbanization. Both the Chinese national government and local governments have an important role to play in the planning of HSR station areas because they control different resources. Their interactions in the decision-making process, influenced by institutions, determine the location of HSR stations and the size of station areas, and lead to transfer difficulties and slow development of station areas. This dissertation reveals the causes of the development problems of Chinese HSR station areas, demonstrates the drawbacks of the current mechanism, and proposes strategies to promote the integration of transport and land use in China.
Architectural Photovoltaic Application
Authors: Haghighi Zoheir
Published: November 2023

The urgency to use renewable technologies within the built environment results in new interpretations of and approaches to Architecture. New building regulations, together with international pledges for addressing climate change, made the implications of photovoltaic systems (aka ‘solar panels’) in the buildings more crucial than ever. Moreover, the current mainstream of placing PV systems on the roof and façade of buildings is neither aesthetically appealing nor technically efficient and consequently not a sustainable, long-term, and reliable approach. In response to this issue, the concept of Integration is introduced as an alternative to this approach.

This research suggests the notion of Architectural Photovoltaic Application (APA) in response to the various shortcomings of the Integration, with its current definitions, for being adapted to different architectural styles and approaches. APA can be defined as an approach in which PV technologies are meant to be sources of on-site renewable energy and considered a part of building services that is also incorporated to the building anatomy through the design process. Through APA, PV systems do not need to play a role in the building construction, instead these systems are fully accommodated by Architects in the design process as another element of the building service.
Beyond good intentions
Authors: dos Santos Gonçalves Joana
Published: November 2023

Sustainable Conservation are the processes of change through which the components of the inherited ecosystem from the past retain their value for present and future generations. As such, the value assessment is critical to recognise the values of heritage, not only by its aesthetical and historical values, but also by its contribution to a more sustainable future. Despite recent policies and standards highlighting the role of heritage for sustainability and encouraging urban conservation, sustainable conservation is not yet the most common practice. The behavioural dimension is intrinsic to the decision-making process; however, studies analysing designers’ decision behaviours regarding sustainability in built heritage are seldom found in recent literature.
This research aims to increase the understanding of the gap in the implementation of best practices of sustainable conservation of built heritage, and to achieve solutions for behavioural change. It applies methods from psychology to analyse designers’ decisions behaviours, by eliciting common beliefs, challenges, and opportunities in the implementation of conservation intentions towards heritage buildings.
The results demonstrate that design decisions result from conscious and unconscious processes, some of them socially driven, while others result from individual attitudes. Targeting the primary belief in the study population on the (in)compatibility between sustainability and heritage conservation, a building passport for sustainable conservation was developed aiming at raising awareness in the value of built heritage to sustainability.
The results of this research can support the redesign of heritage buildings and demonstrate the importance of considering behavioural factors in the development of future sustainable conservation policies and tools.
Housing justice as expansion of people’s capabilities for housing
Authors: Kimhur Boram
Published: November 2023

Housing inequality is a growing concern in our society. In recent decades, this inequality has been exacerbated by the phenomenon of housing being financialized and commodified as a means for wealth accumulation. Management of financial institutions and housing markets has become the centre of attention in policy discussion. The questions of how to promote the moral values tied to housing, such as human rights, dignity and freedom, and how to better enable people to access suitable housing have been marginalized. As a way forward, the states’ re-intervention and redistribution policies, and the human rights-based approach to housing policies are discussed, but this thesis advocates for a more ambitious paradigm shift. By extending Amartya Sen’s capability approach to housing, the thesis argues for resetting the primary goal of housing policies as expansion of people’s capabilities for housing—expanding opportunity, ability and security to lead their valued ways of residing—beyond the distribution of monetary and material resources for housing, such as housing benefits and dwelling units. This thesis presents the theoretical foundations of this argument and proposes basic principles to guide housing policies, which can serve as a normative basis of housing debates on necessary policy actions. An essential tool to guide housing policies towards this newly proposed goal is to evaluate policy outcomes and housing affairs of people—well-being, deprivation and inequality in housing—with capability considerations. The thesis suggests how this evaluation can be done and can help policies address the inequalities in what people can do to pursue their suitable housing options and how well they are actually residing.
Design as Exploration
Authors: Yang Ding
Published: November 2023

There are an increasing number of optimal-design paradigms used in architectural design nowadays. In these paradigms, a design task is formulated, or partially formulated, as an optimization problem. Multi-Disciplinary Optimization and Multi-Objective Optimization, as two important optimal-design paradigms, have shown their great potential in improving the performances of complex buildings in recent decades. Nevertheless, current paradigms for ill‑defined conceptual architectural design still lack ways to ensure the achievement of a reliable optimization problem, which hinders reliable design solutions despite the use of advanced optimization algorithms.

To address this problem, it is necessary to shift the focus from Optimization Problem Solving to Optimization Problem Formulation. This research particularly focuses on knowledge‑supported, dynamic and interactive Optimization Problem Re-Formulation in order to construct a new Multi‑Objective and Multi-Disciplinary Optimization (MOMDO) method suitable for use in ill‑defined conceptual architectural design. The proposed method consists of two subtype methods: Non‑dynamic, Interactive Re-formulation method (Subtype-I) and Dynamic, Interactive Re‑formulation method (Subtype-II), which can be used to explore design space in a convergent and divergent manner respectively. To support the re-formulation, various kinds of information and knowledge need to be extracted by utilizing different computational techniques, such as advanced sampling algorithms, Self-Organizing Map, Hierarchical Clustering, Smoothing Spline Analysis of Variance, Two-Level Variable Structure and modular programming. Moreover, a software workflow that can provide these computational techniques is developed; it integrates McNeel’s Grasshopper, ESTECO's modeFRONTIER and simulation software tools Daysim, EnergyPlus and Karamba3D. With the support of this software workflow, the proposed method is demonstrated via two case studies concerning the conceptual design of indoor sports halls.
Physiomimetic Façade Design
Authors: Gosztonyi Susanne
Published: November 2023

Adaptive façades are designed to actively regulate the exchange of material and energy flows and thus improve the balance between comfort and energy consumption. However, their technical complexity leads to higher development efforts, maintenance and costs, and ultimatelyfewer implementations. Embedded adaptive functions could be an opportunity to reduce these drawbacks. If embedded adaptivity is to work within a design, the particularities of geometry and material arrangements must be considered. Nature offers fascinating models for this approach, which frames the objectives of this doctoral dissertation. The dissertation examines both adaptive façades and biology criteria that support a function-oriented transfer of thermo-adaptive principles in the early design stage. The research work discusses whether the technical complexity can be reduced by biomimetic designs and which role geometric design strategies play for thermo-adaptive processes. The research work is divided into three phases, following the top-down process in the discipline biomimetics, supplemented by methods from product design and semantic databases. The first phase is dedicated to the analysis of the contextual framework and criteria of façades aiming at thermal adaptation. Further, transfer systematics are developed that guide the analysis and selection process. In the second phase, analogies in biology are collected that appear suitable. Selected examples are examined to identify and systematically describe their functional principle. Two exemplary descriptions herald the third phase, in which functional façade models are created and evaluated. The result of this research work provides a conceptual approach to generate function-imitating biomimetic façade designs, so-called physio-mimetic façade designs.
In the Name of Conservation
Authors: Zhu Kaiyi
Published: November 2023

This thesis investigates the introduction, adaption, and implementation of the modern concept of heritage conservation in modern China after the opening of its treaty ports. Through an analysis of the different layers of disseminating and receiving knowledge in transnational exchanges, it explicitly points out the divergence between the Eurocentric concept of conservation and the Chinese tradition of treating historic buildings and sites. As a result of the complexity of understanding and adapting an imported idea, the heritage discourse in China is characterised by its own ambiguity. Conservation of modern heritage, in particular those built under colonial power, has seen conflicts of perceptions between conservation planning and interest-led practice. A progressive legislative framework for heritage conservation has had a limited binding effect on stakeholders’ actions to protect listed immovable built cultural heritage sites from artificial damage in China’s contemporary urban practices. By analysing various actors’ interpretations and expressions of the concept of “conservation” (known as “保护” in Chinese) derived from different temporalities, it explores the causes and effects of heritage strategies and approaches created by individuals, groups, and the state apparatus. Theoretically, it challenges the local acceptability of classic conservation principles that are primarily based on European thoughts and cultural background. Practically, it provides adequate clues for a multi-faceted consideration of listed heritage sites in future development. It highlights the significance of creating a powerful local narrative under the authoritative heritage discourse at a crossroads of ongoing globalisation and growing nationalism.
Towards a Better-Functioning Private Rented Sector in Metropolitan China
Authors: Li Bo
Published: November 2023

In recent years, the Private Rented Sector (PRS) has witnessed rapid growth across numerous jurisdictions, with Chinese metropolises notably standing out. Throughout the history of housing policy development in China, the PRS has been largely disregarded. It was not until 2015 that the government proposed the idea of “accelerating the development of the rental housing market” to achieve a “balanced development between home renting and purchasing”. However, the PRS in China is still in its immature stage, as evidenced by unstable rents and tenure, insufficient tenant rights, low levels of tenant satisfaction, minimal institutional landlord participation, and a lack of motivation among local governments to develop the PRS. This dissertation aims to gain an indepth understanding of the PRS in metropolitan China and explore how to improve its functioning using Shenzhen as a case study. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected to examine the determinants of tenants’ intention to rent and residential satisfaction, the relationship between residential environment, social exclusion, and life satisfaction, the impact of landlords' management practices on tenants' housing experiences, and main challenges and solutions for a well-developed PRS. The results suggest that the PRS in Shenzhen is highly heterogeneous and comprised of several distinct sub-sectors. Housing policies should be tailored to each subsector's unique characteristics. The dissertation also reveals that the PRS is interconnected with other institutions such as the hukou system and education system. Therefore, a well-functioning PRS depends on the simultaneous reform of other sectors and institutions.
Commuting behaviour and subjective wellbeing
Authors: Tao Yinhua
Published: November 2023

This thesis has investigated the relationship between daily commuting behaviours and long-term subjective wellbeing from a longitudinal perspective. The underlying problem that motivated the thesis is the inconsistent research evidence on the commuting-wellbeing relationship, and more importantly, the insufficient theoretical conceptualisation of this relationship. As a response to the gap between theoretical understandings and empirical research, this thesis used a processual approach to frame the commuting-wellbeing relationship as an interdependent process over time. To operationalise this processual approach, two ways forward were proposed for longitudinal research, namely retrieving the upstream process that leads to changes in commuting behaviours and enriching the contextual understanding of commuting-wellbeing relationships. The upstream process of commuting changes pertains to the reason for people to (not) change their commuting behaviours, while the contextual understanding relates to the commuting-wellbeing relationship as time- and place-specific. Following these two ways forward, the empirical analysis of this thesis drew upon the nationwide panel data from China, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to longitudinally investigate the relationships between commuting behaviours and subjective wellbeing over time. The aim of this thesis is not to identify a unidirectional commuting-wellbeing causality uniform to the general population and across research areas, but to acknowledge, operationalise and better understand the interdependent commuting-wellbeing relationships situated in the life courses of people and the socio-spatial contexts of places.
Border Formation
Authors: Tona Grazia
Published: November 2023

This doctoral thesis examines the militarisation of the Southern border of Hungary as a process of spatial formation, expanding the debate on borders from the political to the architectural arena. Combining spatial theory with empirical research on the case study, the thesis rethinks the border as a complex spatial system, with an agency of its own. From this perspective, it contests the enforcement of spatial boundaries from the above and related ideas of fixity. It brings attention to the agency of space in the advancement of a material becoming; the role of migration in the radical redefinition of meanings and functions of space; and the action of technologies in the strategic manipulation of measures and scales. While conceptualising the border as a space in formation, this thesis builds a diagrammatic method of study and moves the research in an ontoepistemological direction. With the aim of fostering a change in those structures that control the partition and governance of space, this doctoral study calls the discipline of architecture to review its questions, methods, and practices. It invites to use architectural knowledge to engage with borders’ complexity and challenge their established meanings and makings.
ShoreScape
Authors: van Bergen Janneke
Published: November 2023

Urbanized sandy shores around the world suffer from coastal erosion due to a lack of sediment input and sea level rise. These dynamics place new demands on coastal spatial planning. To compensate for coastal erosion in a more natural and systemic way, sand nourishments are deployed as a ‘Building with Nature’ technique, restoring the sediment balance and promoting dune formation as coastal defence.
In this research, Building with Nature is reframed as a landscape approach, regenerating the coastal landscape by tuning the interactions between the geomorphological, ecological, and urban system, to adapt to sea level rise. To this end, design principles have been developed that integrate nourishment dynamics, natural succession, and adaptive urban design to build towards safe and multi-functional coastal landscapes— Shore-Scapes. They focus on spatial coastal configurations utilizing wind-driven sedimentation processes to build up the coastal buffer, supporting dune formation, multifunctionality, and landscape differentiation.
To direct sediment dynamics for coastal reinforcement and landscaping, three subsequent tools for dynamic design have been derived: morphogenesis, dynamic profiling, and aeolian design principles. With these principles, validated by fieldwork, GIS, and computational modelling, spatial arrangements can be composed enhancing the aeolian build-up of the coastal landscape over time. These principles were applied and contextualized in four case studies along the Dutch coast. They illustrate how dunes along urbanized shores can grow naturally after nourishment and allow coastal safety, recreation, and nature to complement each other.
The diverse pathways of social inequality transmission in the neighbourhood
Authors: Troost Agata
Published: November 2023

This PhD thesis aims to move beyond the standard treatments of neighbourhoods in research on spatially transmitted inequality. The research questions explored in the four empirical chapters of the thesis delve into under-researched elements of sociospatial inequality transmission in neighbourhoods. The thesis uses statistical models to analyse register and survey data, and relies on different operationalisations of neighbourhoods: administrative and bespoke. Chapter 2 finds that controlling for selection reduces neighbourhood effects compared to when only individual characteristics are controlled for, and provides insight into the differing patterns of neighbourhood selection and effects in Dutch regional housing markets. Chapter 3 shows that the strength of the observed relationship between neighbourhood poverty and educational attainment is dependent on how exposure is measured and conceptualized, and highlights the importance of choosing the temporal aspects of individual neighbourhood histories based on the theoretical scope of a study. Chapter 4 finds that in the Netherlands, the positive effect of neighbourhood affluence on educational attainment is stronger than the negative effect of neighbourhood poverty. Chapter 5 addresses the discrepancy between the registered data-based measurements of neighbourhood characteristics, specifically the share of neighbours with foreign background and low income, and the individual perceptions of those characteristics by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. The findings of the thesis confirm the validity of treating the neighbourhood as a social setting that interacts with the micro and macro contexts, rather than simply as an aggregated characteristic which can be controlled for.
Architectural Theory: A Construction Site
Authors: Moravánszky Ákos
Published: November 2023

Around 1968 we saw the birth of a new architectural theory as the conjunction of architectural history and politically engaged architectural criticism. Not the aesthetics of architecture, but architecture itself in its structural relations with social life became the focus of attention. As a result of this development, it is no longer possible to study architectural history without a critical reflection on the method of the study itself and without a grade of interdisciplinarity. Traditional methods of historiography and iconography have been replaced by new approaches configured by psychoanalysis, deconstruction, cultural studies etc. Appropriation has become the proof of criticality both in architectural theory and in design; however, the understanding of the concepts and methods of other disciplines is basically metaphorical. The problem for a school of architecture lies not in the ‘criticality’ of the kind of architectural theory we described as emerging from the spirit of 1968, but in its discursive nature. The disciplinary specificity of architecture resists a discursive approach, and architectural students frequently question the usefulness of theory which undermines the notion of the ‘project’, without articulating a constructive proposal. Projectivity does not seem to provide an answer; its claim of performativity lacks the program to regain its organising power over contributions from other specialised disciplines and practices. Theory should focus on the terms of our discipline, which are so close to our ‘core beliefs’ regarding architecture that we usually take their meaning for granted. It would be wrong to see this focus of theory as a withdrawal into the realm of language. Indeed, after a period of theory alienating architects and the general public, it could now create a rhetoric to influence our understanding of our environment, which is itself organised on the level of language. The requirement that theory should not be directly involved in design practice, but help students to grasp the underlying problems and their historic roots, will allow theory to exert its influence on design development.
The Memory Works: Between Monuments and Ruins, The Case of Contemporary Budapest
Authors: Rieiro Díaz Rodrigo
Published: November 2023

This review article argues that Benjamin’s project to  construct a political explanation of the surrounding cultural world in developed capitalist societies, raised to a source of knowledge about the historical truth, finds an unmatched case of study in the contemporary ruinous urban nature of Budapest. Departing from the park of statues Memento Park, some urban features of the city are examined in the light of Benjamin’s semantics of the fragment to try to answer whether these thoughts apply to the discarded material world of our time. Could the already-there in Budapest provide a motivational basis for a reconstruction of the surrounding material world from the fragments of the past? The local phenomenon of romkocsma is addressed to wonder whether re-use of ruins could house this emancipatory potential or serve the interests of the hegemonic groups and the contemporary dominant discourse.
Paris and Berlin: On City Streets and Loggias
Authors: Symons Stéphane
Published: November 2023

This review article probes a conceptual duality that can be recognized as central to two of Benjamin’s essays on cities: his essay ‘Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century (Exposé of 1935),’ and his autobiographical text Berlin Childhood around 1900. On the one hand, Benjamin renders numerous analyses and descriptions of buildings and experiences that present themselves as absolute and internally unified, giving the impression of being autonomous and immutable. On the other hand, Benjamin interrogates objects and perceptions that present themselves as transient and in flux and are therefore experienced as contingent and incomplete. These latter objects and perceptions derive their significance from something that is inevitably external.
Revolutionary Climatology: Rings of Saturn, Ringed by Red Lightning
Authors: Stanley Sarah K.
Published: November 2023

Walter Benjamin’s concept of historical materialism is considered as a practice of media archaeology invented through literary montage and photo philosophy. The Arcades Project that facilitated this new research methodology involving a mobile archive. The main case involving architectural theory considers how Benjamin redeployed Sigfried Giedion and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Building in France as a media environment, drawing upon its layout design, photo illustrations and textual systems. In terms of his urban writing, a reading of ‘A Berlin Chronicle’ considers how the diagram contributes to Benjamin’s archaeological methods, as a theory to generate site writing. Benjamin’s mode of media archaeology is then employed to map the arcades architecture onto the train stations and libraries in Berlin and Paris, sites that informed The Arcades Project. The final section assembles a set of citations as ‘Revolutionary Climatology’, thought-images as flashes of red lightning.
Anxious Architecture: Sleep, Identity, and Death in the US-Mexico Borderlands
Authors: Grabowska Sam
Published: November 2023

The Mexico-US borderlands have been militarised by the technology, weaponry, and policies of both the American Border Patrol agency and Mexican cartels. Upon this contested ground, border-crossers interrupt their taxing journey to build small informal works of architecture. These structures – most commonly fashioned from whatever materials are at hand like thorny mesquite branches, rocks, and grasses – become a locus of crises. Like the migrants, drug mules, or guides who build it, border-crosser architecture has overlapping and competing agendas and motivations. Drawing on the analysis of architectural form, artifacts of material culture, and interviews gathered from fieldwork in the United States and Mexico, I identify three ways architecture acts ‘anxiously’ as a spatial relationship to conflict: 1) sleep (insomnia), 2) identity (anonymity), and 3) death (haunting). In these modes, an architecture born in the borderlands both embodies and emotes anxiety as an adaptive spatial tactic to respond to conflict and trauma.
On the Spaces of Guerre Moderne: The French Army in Northern Algeria (1954–1962)
Authors: Henni Samia
Published: November 2023

The French Colonial War of Anti-Algerian Independence (1954–1962) is widely regarded as the precursor of civil-military counterinsurgency operations, and thereby of the rhetorical Global War on Terror of today. Its theories, known as the guerre moderne, were secretly transferred to North and South America in the sixties. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, the United States and other Western powers have overtly expressed their interest in French military practices in Algeria, but seldom in the fields of architecture and territorial planning.

This article examines the intrinsic relationships between the doctrines of the guerre moderne, the resultant built environments, and the socio-economic consequences of the two over the course of the French war in Algeria. It considers two major timeframes: first, the years between 1954 and 1958, which were characterised by the extraordinary fusion of civil and military authorities, and the construction of camps called centres de regroupement. Second, the period between 1958 and 1962, which brought General Charles de Gaulle back to power, divided military from civil powers, and transformed the camps into ‘rural settlements’. The two phases shared a common attitude, however, which considered the entire Algerian population as potential suspects, and that Algerians should thus be strategically and continuously overseen.
The Interface: Peace Walls, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Authors: O'Leary James
Published: November 2023

In 2013, the Northern Ireland Executive outlined a goal to ‘create a ten year programme to reduce, and remove by 2023, all interface barriers’ in Northern Ireland.  This unexpected statement helped to focus attention on the difficulties inherent in making this commitment a reality.  Made during a period of fieldwork in Belfast between 2014 and 2016, this work of text and image frames the thirteen clusters of separation barriers that divide communities across Belfast as a single system entitled ‘The Interface’.
The Pyramid and the Mosaic. Otto Neurath’s encyclopedism as a critical model
Authors: Dutto Andrea Alberto
Published: November 2023

Otto Neurath, one of the founding members of the Vienna Circle, took up a firm opposition in relation to his colleagues. Instead of searching for an ideal language, he asserted the possibility of a ‘universal empiricist slang’, including both everyday and scientific language. Particularly, Neurath conceives of a comprehensive theory of a unified science that postulates the necessity of orchestration within the discursive procedures in science, inspired by the model of encyclopedism.

In the field of architecture, a similar encyclopedic endeavor was undertaken in Italy by Mario Ridolfi who, together with other leading exponents of architectural culture, conceived the Manuale dell’Architetto at the end of World War II. This construction handbook provided  support to engineers  during the intense period of post-war reconstruction. Unlike any previous attempt to document building culture, this collective work aspired to create a shared language able to cross the boundaries among the various fields of building science.

Finally, encyclopedism is considered as a possible ‘foundation’ for building design as a shared practice, with a specific focus on Ridolfi’s late research on the relation between traditional construction methods and housing design, in the countryside around Umbria.
The Triumph of Function over Form The Role of Analytic Philosophy in Planning and Analysing Modern Architecture
Authors: Jasz Borbala
Published: November 2023

The most dominant dialectical succession of architectural thinking during the 20th Century was between form and function. The latter of these two modern ways of architectural thinking is based on the results of Carnapian Neopositivism. The keywords of this philosophical school, that are empiricism, logic, verification, unity of language and science, could still be applied to interpreting modern architecture. I will explain the antecedents and the first connection between analytic philosophy and architecture, and some characteristic points of their influence during the 20th Century: the triumph of function over form as analogous to triumph of analytic philosophy over metaphysics.

After the theoretic grounding of the form-function debate, I am going to focus first on the characteristic appearance of form: the Façadism of Socialist Realism in the architecture of East-Central Europe. Second, I will explain that architectural tendencies of classical modernism did not disappear in this period, they were just hidden in case of public buildings or migrated to the industrial planning. Third, I am going to claim that after this socialist realist gap, the architectural theory and planning tendencies of the interwar period – especially the work of Le Corbusier – returned and continued.
The Persistence of Buildings and the Context Problem
Authors: Bacchini Fabio
Published: November 2023

Raising the persistence question about architectural entities consists in asking what is necessary and sufficient for a past or future architectural entity, like a building, to exist now. In this paper I investigate how the persistence question about buildings is affected by their spatial relocation. Why do we normally doubt that Notre Dame can survive its meticulous stone-by-stone transfer to Las Vegas? I argue that, since architectural plans are not capable of specifying all the constitutive properties of a building, the source of differentiation among constitutive and non-constitutive properties for buildings lies in a property’s being eligible or not eligible to be aesthetically relevant in the aesthetic judgements about them. As a matter of fact, our aesthetic judgements about buildings often concern, and are grounded on, extrinsic contextual properties. This explains why buildings can usually not survive relocation: because normally there is no basis for ruling out any extrinsic contextual feature of the building as inessential. I also try to explain why the change from thirteenth century Paris to contemporary Paris proved not to be lethal to Notre Dame’s persistence, in spite of its being more significant than other imaginary context changes that we would easily count as fatal.
Reflections on Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Architecture
Authors: Macarthur David
Published: November 2023

Two recent collections on architectural theory and practice invoke the name of pragmatism as marking the hope of a new more intimate alignment of theory and practice after a period of what I call ‘philosophical vampirism’.  This paper examines what role the philosophical tradition of pragmatism might play in relation to architecture. I argue that pragmatism is best understood as a method of overcoming intellectualist and metaphysical obstacles to clear thinking as opposed to a philosophical ideology of some kind. Against Rem Koolhaas’s argument for post-criticality I show that we are always already critical. Pragmatism’s task is to make criticism better. I end by invoking the craft ethos as articulated by Richard Sennett in his book The Craftsman (2008), as perhaps the best model of what a pragmatist architecture might look like.
Architecture Thinking in a ‘Post-truth Era’: Recalibrations through analytic philosophy
Authors: August Karan , Schrijver Lara
Published: November 2023

This issue of Footprint explores the potential role of analytic philosophy in the context of architecture’s typical affinity with continental philosophy over the past three decades. In the last decades of the twentieth century, philosophy became an almost necessary springboard from which to define a work of architecture. Analytic philosophy took a notable backseat to continental philosophy. With this history in mind, this issue of Footprint sought to open the discussion on what might be offered by the less familiar branches of epistemology and logic that are more prevalent and developed in the analytic tradition.

The papers brought together here are situated in the context of a discipline in transformation that seeks a fundamental approach to its own tools, logic and approaches. In this realm, the approaches of logic and epistemology help to define an alternate means of criticality not subjected to personalities or the specialist knowledge of individual philosophies. Rather the various articles attempt to demonstrate that such difference of background assumptions is a common human habit and that some of the techniques of analytic philosophy may help to leap these chasms. The hope is that this is a start of a larger conversation in architecture theory that has as of yet not begun.
Trans-architecture
Authors: Gough Tim
Published: November 2023

Starting from the intense experience of the gay club, this paper asks whether that experience or event can be acknowledged by architectural theory. Via a reading of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Jacques Derrida’s Before the Law, it posits that the transing of gender can be a clue as to the transing of architecture away from essentialising ontologies. It then uses Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of an assemblage to show how this can be done, making reference to the assemblage of the gay seduction scene in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and the image of the interplay of orchid and wasp that is inspired by it. The paper concludes by showing how this ontology relates to a specific instance of transing architecture in the gay and SM clubs of Vauxhall, South London.
Between Delft and Stockholm
Authors: Burroughs Brady , Bonnevier Katatrina , Frichot Hélène , Grillner Katja
Published: November 2023

Over the years, colleagues at the Architecture School of Stockholm have developed a most remarkable and inspiring approach to architecture and writing in terms of performances and the performative while integrating feminist and queer theory. Of particular interest are the Critical Studies in Architecture group, the group Fatale for feminist architecture theory and practice, and the Mycket collaboration. By way of an interview between Footprint editors Dirk van den Heuvel and Robert Gorny, and the Stockholm colleagues Brady Burroughs, Katarina Bonnevier, Katja Grillner, and Hélène Frichot questions of pedagogy, research and methodology are further investigated, how to ‘stay with the trouble’ and where to situate newly emerging knowledge models.
'Des Yeux Qui Ne Voient Pas...': The smartphones
Authors: Di Lorenzo Luca
Published: November 2023

Three of the most influential chapters of Le Corbusier’s Vers une Architecture are collected under the common title ‘Des yeux qui ne voient pas…’ (Eyes which do not see…). Liners, airplanes, and automobiles are shown as the expression of the powerful beauty of practical form: honest, simple, functional and technological. These very famous pages remind us that form is not only derived from precise typological choices or from reasoned morphogenetic diagrams, but it could also be a direct expression of the Kunstwollen.

What are the paquebots of the twenty-first century? Which buildings embody this new paradigm? This graphic analysis starts from the statement that one of the ‘not seen’ features of this era is the smartphone. The subject of the survey is the first BMW Guggenheim Lab, designed in 2010 by Atelier Bow-Wow. Described by the architects themselves as a ‘travel toolbox’ or ‘pop-up fly loft theatre in the city’, this compact architecture is the incarnation of three interesting formal qualities usually associated with smartphones: the clear division between the hardware and the ergonomic user interface; the possibility to operate different functions (or software) in the same space (or screen); and the real and virtual connection with different urban situations.
Autonomy by Drawing: Gianugo Polesello on Route ’66
Authors: Corbellini Giovanni
Published: November 2023

This article questions the revival of ‘La Tendenza’ in the recent architectural debate, taking the work of Gianugo Polesello as a privileged vantage point. The Italian architect – along with Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi, Guido Canella and other protagonists of that approach – taught in the Venetian PhD programme attended by the author, who recalls here his first-hand experience.

The economic, ecological, and social crisis we are dealing with has generated, in academic discussions, a widespread re-emergence of political engagement, felt as a necessary alternative to the neo-liberal pensée unique that has dominated recent decades. Various important theoretical contributions from mid-1960s, such as the ambiguous mixture of populism and formal research, of radicalism and reactions against modernism, are therefore back in the architectural debate. Among the several approaches produced by that agitated moment, the Italian movement ‘La Tendenza’ contributed to redefine the disciplinary field in terms of language and autonomy, shifting its focus from design to composition and from the transformative attitude of the zeitgeist to a continuity with existing typo-morphological contexts.

Gianugo Polesello, a partner in some early projects of Aldo Rossi – main protagonist of that movement – and a member, with Rossi and other young architects, of the journal Casabella’s ‘think tank’, shared that theoretical operation, conducted, however, through a more explicit and precise medium: architectural design or, more precisely, architectural drawing applied to design. His approach provides an interesting vantage, able to shed some light on a period and a generation that, at a closer look, appear less coherent than their latest reconstructions.
Blankness
Authors: Couling Nancy , Hein Carola
Published: November 2023

Energy logistics is the management and implementation of energy flows and their physical artefacts. This sector has perpetuated and profited from a spatial and conceptual void produced by national and corporate strategies in order to optimise logistical flows and to avoid larger societal debate. Offshore developments, in particular, take place far from the public eye and imagination though they form a core layer of the global petroleumscape. This article explores the history and development of the industrialised void of the North Sea and how energy logistics, strongly determined by the oil and gas industries, shields its presence while at the same time shaping and structuring the built environment at sea and across dedicated land-sea thresholds. Throughout this process, it persistently avoids the emergence of architectural form. We propose that the concept of blankness, first formulated by Roberto Mangabiera Unger and further discussed by Jeffrey Kipnis, is a useful framework for interrogating the architecture of energy logistics, its apparent invisibility, and global impact. For both Unger and Kipnis, blankness signified a potential liberation from established norms, opening the way for new forms of democratic life and architectural expression. Such an interpretation of blankness could enable design professionals and the general public to reclaim architectural expression for the spaces left without meaning by logistics. In conclusion we argue for urgent architectural intervention beyond pure logistics and towards an integrated vision for the common space of the sea.
The Zone in Reverse
Authors: Sebregondi Francesco
Published: November 2023

This essay proposes a reconstruction of the problem of logistics as seen through the prism of Gaza. Questioning the common approach of logistics strictly in terms of the flows that it releases and speeds up, it argues that the Gaza blockade itself constitutes a vast logistical operation. The essay proceeds by setting Gaza’s architecture of confinement against the ‘architecture of flow’ that typically characterises logistical sites around the world. By underlining the material connections between these, the essay calls for an approach of processes of restriction of mobility as a mirror image of the fast-tracking operations that logistics is primarily known for. On this basis, it proposes a notion of logistical power as a mode of power specifically exerted through the production of a differential regime of mobility.
New Interfaces in the Automated Landscapes of Logistics
Authors: LeCavalier Jesse
Published: November 2023

Metaphors of flows are often used to describe aspects of logistics, thereby suggesting smooth and inevitable operations while also obscuring the frictions and contingencies that characterize the industry. This article explores the consequences and possibilities of these modes by first elaborating some aspects of logistical operations in order to connect them to the contemporary built environment. It looks at the architectural components of the company Walmart in order to present hypothetical scenarios related to the future of the logistical landscape. By connecting these visual experiments to questions of representation, automation, and systems thinking, the article explores the ways we might challenge and extend the possibilities of logistics.