‘opened out […] like an oyster shell': the Roach bed Portland stone cladding of the Smithsons’ Economist Building

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-182
Author(s):  
Freya Wigzell
Keyword(s):  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Oyster Shell ◽  
Independent Group ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Human Association ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Hidden Orders

Alison & Peter Smithson's Economist Building in London (1960–1964) has been much written about, but one of its most distinctive features – the Roach bed Portland stone cladding – has been relatively little discussed. Although there have been various retrospective explanations for the choice of this previously unused stone, whose surface is marked by cavities of now vanished shells, no direct evidence from the time fully accounts for the decision. Reliance upon inference, and upon retrospective statements, mean that no definitive explanation for the choice is now possible. Some new evidence from archives and interviews, and a re-examination of the contemporary concerns of the Smithsons, and of their artist friends Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson, fellow members of the Independent Group during the 1950s, however, suggest a plausible, though speculative, interpretation. When considered in light of the Smithsons' and their friends' interests in pattern, in hidden orders, and in the problems of ‘human association’, the choice of Roach bed Portland stone seems less surprising. More than just ‘pretty’, as Peter Smithson was later to describe the material, it can be seen to connect with a fascination with underlying, non-human, systems of order, while at the same time providing a particularly expressive form of protection for human identity in the modern city.

Intermedia – (Not Only) The Visual in the Hypertext of Contemporary Art

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mladen Mladenov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
The Common ◽  
The 1950S

The article presents some historical and theoretical aspects defining intermedia as an aesthetic, cultural and social phenomenon. Its appearance in the 1950s and 1960s was triggered by the changed attitude towards art in the conditions of growing technology in society and the blurring of boundaries between different arts. The concept of intermedia is created by a group of artists who unite under the common name Fluxus, meaning „ flow of life“. Group Manifesto – Dick Higgins, composer, poet, publisher - formulates intermedia as a merger into a „ flow“ of different ways of artistic expression and means of communication. The most important distinctive features of intermedia – accessibility, non-commerciality, freedom, social engagement, compliance of modern lifestyle and the new media in it are traced. It explains the role of this aesthetic practice as an instrument in creating the hypertext of contemporary art.

scholarly journals The effect of semantic relatedness on associative asymmetry in memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vencislav Popov ◽  
Qiong Zhang ◽  
Griffin Koch ◽  
Regina Calloway ◽  
Marc N Coutanche
Keyword(s):  
Recall Test ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Semantic Relatedness ◽  
Cued Recall ◽  
Associative Symmetry ◽  
Single List ◽  
Symmetry Hypothesis ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Holistic Representation

We provide new evidence concerning two opposing views of episodic associations: The independent associations hypothesis (IAH) posits that associations are unidirectional and separately modifiable links (A→B and A←B); the associative symmetry hypothesis (ASH), to the contrary, considers the association to be a holistic conjunction of A and B representations. While existing literature focuses on tests that compare the equality and correlation of forward and backward associations and favors ASH over IAH, we provide the first direct evidence of IAH by showing that forward and backward associations are separately modifiable for semantically related pairs. In two experiments, participants studied 30 semantically unrelated and 30 semantically related pairs intermixed in a single list, and then performed a series of up to eight cued-recall test cycles. All pairs were tested in each cycle, and the testing direction (A-? or B-?) alternated between cycles. Consistent with prior research, unrelated pairs exhibited associative symmetry – accuracy and response times improved gradually on each test, suggesting that testing in both directions strengthened the same association. In contrast, semantically related pairs exhibited a stair-like pattern, where performance did not change from odd to even tests when the test direction changed; it only improved between tests of the same direction. We conclude that episodic associations can have either a holistic representation (ASH) or separate directional representations (IAH), depending on the semantic relatedness of their constituent items.

scholarly journals New Evidence for Accretion Disks in AGNs

1989 ◽  
Vol 134 ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
Jules P. Halpern ◽  
Kaiyou Chen
Keyword(s):  
Line Profile ◽  
Accretion Disks ◽  
Electron Scattering ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Radio Galaxy ◽  
Narrow Range ◽  
Thin Disk ◽  
Line Profiles ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Lines Of Evidence

We have refined our calculation of the line profile of a relativistic, Keplerian disk by incorporating a variety of emissivity laws, as well as broadening due to turbulence or electron scattering. The significant improvement in the fit to the double-peaked Ha line profile of the elliptical radio galaxy Arp 102B provides the most convincing direct evidence for an accretion disk in any AGN. Arp 102B appears to be a low-luminosity analog of 3C 390.3, and several lines of evidence point to the existence of small, hot ion tori illuminating an outer thin disk in both of these galaxies. The rarity of these emission-line profiles might be understood if this particular combination of ion torus/thin disk occurs only for a narrow range of ṁ(= Ṁ/ṀEdd).

The Roman-Period Necropolis of Ariassos, Pisidia

1996 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah H. Cormack
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
New City ◽  
City Plan ◽  
New Evidence

New evidence of Roman tomb architecture from the necropolis at Ariassos in Pisidia demonstrates distinctive features of funerary architecture in the east. Over fifty built tombs are in different states of preservation, allowing identification of some features paralleled at other sites in Pisidia, while some features seem unique to Ariassos itself. The similarity of form of one elaborate tomb to the western podium temple reflects the influence of Roman religious architecture, while other tombs reflect features grown out of indigenous Anatolian traditions.Ariassos was founded in the Hellenistic period, and is located c. 50 km. north of the modern city of Antalya. It minted coins in the late Hellenistic period and contains buildings of Hellenistic date, including a prytaneion, bouleuterion and small temple. The majority of the ruins at the site, however, date to the Imperial period, including an extensive nymphaeum and bath complex, a triple arched gateway dating to the third century A.D., and a substantial domestic area. The site was visited in the 1880s by the Austrian team headed by K. Lanckoronski, who thought that the ruins were those of the site of Cretopolis. A few years later the site was correctly identified by a French epigraphical expedition headed by V. Bérard. The Pisidian Survey project, under British directorship, completed a new city plan, focusing attention on Ariassos after years of neglect. [See Fig. 1.]

RAY CHAMBERS AND ERNEST WEINWURM – SCHOLARS IN UNISON ON MEASUREMENT IN ACCOUNTING

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme W. Dean ◽  
Frank L. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Capital Markets ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
Accounting Measurement ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The U.S

Drawing on new evidence (Napier, 2002), we examine how ideas on measurement in accounting developed in the 1950s and 1960s. We show that for the question of measurement to be addressed properly, there is a need to consider the function of accounting. The analysis of private correspondence between Professors Ray Chambers (Sydney University, Australia) and the U.S.'s Ernest Weinwurm (DePaul University, Chicago) reveals that those ideas were nurtured in a way not previously disclosed. We provide unequivocal insights into how the latter, a scholar relatively unknown in accounting, mentored the former through the maturation of Chambers' accounting measurement ideas following his 1955 a “Blueprint for a Theory of Accounting” and 1957 “Detail for a Blueprint” articles, his theory matters in general, and other matters in particular being considered by the profession's standard-setters especially in the U.S. The analysis reinforces the differing notions of what accounting researchers perceived as “scientific,” from the so-called “Golden Age” theorists' [Nelson, 1973] reasoned thinking based on observations of the commercial foundations within which accounting sits, to the narrower notions emerging from theorists within the economic capital-markets paradigm.

scholarly journals The Independent Group Looks at London’s West End

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hornsey
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Independent Group ◽  
Civic Society ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City ◽  
British Culture

In the early 1950s, British culture was dominated by welfare-state visions of urban reconstruction. These projections of a stable civic society were premised on a particular way of looking at and reading the metropolitan environment. At odds with this project, the Independent Group’s discussions and collaborative work developed an alternative urban semiology, which found the city to be already rich in visual resources for fashioning a more profound form of social democracy. Soon, this critical engagement would develop in different directions, represented here by Lawrence Alloway’s commentary on Piccadilly Circus in his essay ‘City Notes’ and the London footage inserted by John McHale into his film for the Smithsons’ Berlin Hauptstadt project (both 1959). By the end of the 1950s, members of the erstwhile Independent Group had produced two contrasting critical accounts of how the metropolitan centre should be looked at, which challenged the strictures of post-war reconstruction in distinct and conflicting ways.

Personality, consumption and architectural pedagogy in the UK, 1958–1968

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 325-335
Author(s):  
Alise Upitis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Pop Art ◽  
Independent Group ◽  
Consumer Education ◽  
Product Review ◽  
Consumer Law ◽  
American Consumer ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Uk

The Pop-Art doyens of the Independent Group (IG) and the British design establishment were in two minds about burgeoning British consumerism during the 1950s. Members of IG were busy collaging images appropriated from American consumer culture while members of the British design establishment were fiercely opposed to adopting principles of capitalist consumerism, such as expendability of goods and planning for obsolescence. Protests against consumerist values were voiced by figures of the Modernist design establishment such as historian Nikolaus Pevsner and Michael Farr, then editor of the Council of Industrial Design's publication Design. Their views were reinforced by the stances of the British Standards Institution, the Molony Committee, created in 1959 to review and revise consumer law, and the Consumers' Association, publisher of the popular product-review magazine Which? These organisations held paramount design's durability, function and use. However, such institutionally-sanctioned concerns, in the tradition of the nineteenth-century preoccupation with social empiricism and consumer education, hardly stemmed a rising fascination with what an increasing consumption of goods could teach design.

The Abbotts and Their Book: A Dynasty of Decorative Plasterers and Their Work in Devon, c. 1580-1727

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 285-320
Author(s):  
Jenny Saunt
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
South West ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Design And Production

ABSTRACTThe 'Abbott Book' is a seventeenth-century pocketbook of over three hundred pages of drawings and notes on decorative plaster and paint made by members of the Abbott family of Devonshire. It has a long and contested history. From the 1920s through to the 1950s, it was given sixteenth-century origins and described as a compilation made by several generations of the Abbott family. During this period, the book's drawings were used to attribute much sixteenth- and seventeenth-century decorative plaster in the south-west of England to the Abbott dynasty of plasterers. Then, through the 1980s and 1990s, the Abbott story was revisited and dramatically revised. The book was declared a post-1660 work and previous notions of several generations of Abbotts creating it were dispelled. The whole work was reattributed to one man, John Abbott, who was born in 1642 and died in 1727. As a result, plasterwork across the south-west was reattributed to an anonymous 'Devon School' of plasterers and, with its new and dramatically shortened lifespan, the book's usefulness as a source for the broader practices of plasterwork in the period was diminished. Using new evidence relating to watermarks, the genealogy of the Abbotts, the plasterwork they produced and the print sources they used for drawings in the book, this article rewrites the Abbott Book story. It restores the notion that the pocketbook was used by several different members of the Abbott family — at least three and possibly four — over the 150 years between c. 1580 and 1727. By providing a logic and a timeline for its complex compilation pattern, it allows the drawings in the book to shed new light on the design and production processes of seventeenth-century plasterwork not just in Devon, but also in England as a whole.

Etruscan Architecture

Classics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Edlund-Berry
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Public Buildings ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
New Evidence

The study of Etruscan architecture suffers greatly in comparison with its Greek and Roman counterparts because of the building materials used. Whereas Greek temples, such as the Parthenon in Athens, and Roman public buildings, such as the immense bath complex of Caracalla in Rome, immediately catch the attention and admiration of students and travelers, Etruscan architectural remains consist for the most part of underground tombs, foundation walls, models of huts and houses, and fragments of terracotta roof decoration. At the same time, thanks to the description by the Roman architectural historian Vitruvius (Ten Books on Architecture 4.7.1–4), the proportions and layout of the so-called Tuscan temple are well known and have been much admired and studied during the Renaissance and later. The perception of Etruscan architecture has, however, changed much since the advent of large-scale excavations in the late 19th century, and since the 1950s new evidence has produced important results for our understanding of the architectural traditions in ancient Italy.

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