scholarly journals O2: An Investigation into the Architectural Agency of Air

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tasenka Guilford

<p>Miyake Jima, an island off the East coast of Japan, was home to 3,600 residents until 2000 when an escalation in volcanic activity caused noxious gas to burst from the crater, sending twenty thousand tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the air each day. The noxious gasses forced a mass evacuation, leaving the island uninhabitable for five years. Since 2005, two thousand eight hundred residents have returned to the island but are at constant risk of gas eruptions. Residents’ solution is to don gas masks when the sulphur dioxide levels become too high; however this does not ameliorate an ever-present, and real, danger from the air.  In this research, Miyake Jima Island is employed as a testing ground to explore how air can influence architecture. Miyake’s problematic atmosphere is used as a starting point for a series of experiments that interrogate air’s architectural agency. Design experiments explore the problem of noxious air across a range of scales, from the human body to the scale of landscape. These experiments have a twinned focus: combining scientific and aesthetic understandings of air, design explorations are informed by a rich mix of chemical and material dynamics, human dynamics, and intuition. The results of these experiments give insights into two research objectives: to understand air as an aesthetic and conceptual driver in architecture, and, to propose architectural solutions to Miyake’s ever-present threat of noxious air.  The research draws on the work of Jane Bennett (2010) and N Katherine Hayles (2014), in the areas of New Materialism and OOI (Object-Oriented Inquiry), to develop a methodology of designing and physical modelling where material agency takes precedence. This is addressed through design research, by way of design experiments at three scales: an installation, at human scale, focusing on “making air visible”; an Air Safety Pod, at “mid” scale; and an Air Crisis Centre. The Crisis centre is at landscape scale and designed to accommodate the island’s population in the event of a sulphurous air event. Critical analysis of site, theoretical contexts, and case studies are undertaken to aid the explorations. The thesis connects with key thinkers on the aesthetics and science of air, such as Sean Lally, Malte Wagner, Jonathan Hill and architect Phillip Rahm. This context is supported by specifically chosen case studies that relate to and support each scale of experiment.  The residents of Miyake Jima have shown resilience to continue living on the island, and this research contributes to helping them create a sustainable future. In doing so, the design research explores how air can be powerful in shaping architecture: how air, the primary component of architectural space, can influence architecture.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tasenka Guilford

<p>Miyake Jima, an island off the East coast of Japan, was home to 3,600 residents until 2000 when an escalation in volcanic activity caused noxious gas to burst from the crater, sending twenty thousand tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the air each day. The noxious gasses forced a mass evacuation, leaving the island uninhabitable for five years. Since 2005, two thousand eight hundred residents have returned to the island but are at constant risk of gas eruptions. Residents’ solution is to don gas masks when the sulphur dioxide levels become too high; however this does not ameliorate an ever-present, and real, danger from the air.  In this research, Miyake Jima Island is employed as a testing ground to explore how air can influence architecture. Miyake’s problematic atmosphere is used as a starting point for a series of experiments that interrogate air’s architectural agency. Design experiments explore the problem of noxious air across a range of scales, from the human body to the scale of landscape. These experiments have a twinned focus: combining scientific and aesthetic understandings of air, design explorations are informed by a rich mix of chemical and material dynamics, human dynamics, and intuition. The results of these experiments give insights into two research objectives: to understand air as an aesthetic and conceptual driver in architecture, and, to propose architectural solutions to Miyake’s ever-present threat of noxious air.  The research draws on the work of Jane Bennett (2010) and N Katherine Hayles (2014), in the areas of New Materialism and OOI (Object-Oriented Inquiry), to develop a methodology of designing and physical modelling where material agency takes precedence. This is addressed through design research, by way of design experiments at three scales: an installation, at human scale, focusing on “making air visible”; an Air Safety Pod, at “mid” scale; and an Air Crisis Centre. The Crisis centre is at landscape scale and designed to accommodate the island’s population in the event of a sulphurous air event. Critical analysis of site, theoretical contexts, and case studies are undertaken to aid the explorations. The thesis connects with key thinkers on the aesthetics and science of air, such as Sean Lally, Malte Wagner, Jonathan Hill and architect Phillip Rahm. This context is supported by specifically chosen case studies that relate to and support each scale of experiment.  The residents of Miyake Jima have shown resilience to continue living on the island, and this research contributes to helping them create a sustainable future. In doing so, the design research explores how air can be powerful in shaping architecture: how air, the primary component of architectural space, can influence architecture.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Maryati Maryati ◽  
Rully Charitas Indra Prahmana

Indonesia has many cultures, one of which is in the form of traditional crafts namely Anyaman Bambu. It’s a form of traditional craft in the community that uses bamboo as its basic material. However, people only see these crafts as only a form of traditional craft, even though there are many motifs in these crafts that can be used as a starting point in learning mathematics, namely geometry transformations. Therefore, this research aims also to produce the learning trajectory of students in learning one subject in geometry transformations namely translation, which develops from informal to formal level through the Indonesian Realistic Mathematics Education (IRME) approach. The research method used is design research starting from preliminary design, design experiments, and retrospective analysis. This study explores how the motifs of Anyaman Bambu make a real contribution for ninth-grade students to understand the concept of translation. The results of design experiments show that the context of the motifs of Anyaman Bambu can stimulate students to understand their knowledge of the concept of translation. All the strategies and models that students find, describe, and discuss that show how students' constructions or contributions can be used to help their initial understanding of the translation.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Jenny Stenberg ◽  
Lasse Fryk

Children’s participation in planning has been investigated to some extent. There are, however, unexplored topics, particularly concerning what is needed for children’s participation to become a regular process. Based on case studies in Sweden, this article draws some conclusions. It is quite possible to organize ordinary processes where children participate in community building, in collaboration with planners, as part of their schoolwork. The key question is how this can be done. Clearly, it needs to occur in close collaboration with teachers and pupils, however it also needs to be implemented in a system-challenging manner. Thus, rather than looking for tools with potential to work in the existing school and planners’ world, it is important to design research that aims to create learning processes that have the potential to change praxis. Hence, it is not the case that tools are not needed, rather that children need to help to develop them.


Relations ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Sabrina Tonutti

This article reflects on some epistemological and methodological tenets of cultural anthropology such as the informants’ role in ethnographical research, the relation between collective phenomena and individuals, and that between case studies (individual level) and abstraction (generalization). These tenets will be addressed focusing on the lack of recognition of animals’ individuality and agency in social relations, and on the related humans/animals opposition. With the topic of the emotional lives of animals as a starting point, the essay sets out to reflect on how the narratives we use to interpret and describe them inform our enquiry within an anthropocentric and essentialist view, consequently biasing our understanding of diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 11-31
Author(s):  
Fernando Clara

The essay takes as a starting point Goebbels’ speech delivered at the closing session of the Continental Advertising Congress, held in Vienna in June 1938, and explores the transformations that the communicational public space of the first half of the twentieth century underwent following the two world conflicts that erupted then. In the first part, the essay addresses the progressive hybridisation of public discourse at the time, the increasing blurring of information, advertising and propaganda, and the rapid acceleration of the international circulation of communication during the period. In this context, special attention is paid to actors who, though not new to the international political scene – such as foreign correspondents and news agencies –, gained a new and decisive importance throughout the period in question. The second part analyses two case studies involving these actors and their power on the international political scene during World War II. Geographically, the two case studies are centred around an axis that is usually considered peripheral to the war – neutral Portugal – but which appears central and, in a way, paradigmatic to the “Great War of Words” that was also being fought in the international public space.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarl K Kampen

Aim: The temptation to provide simple answers to complex problems exists for politicians and scientists alike. This essay attempts to briefly outline the complexity of present day problems at global level, taking as a starting point the question “how quick will the EU collapse?” Design / Research methods: Brief discussions are given of separate yet interconnected, causally related and overlapping natural and social research domains, illustrating the need for qualified multidisciplinary spokesmen able to separate facts from “alternative facts.”Conclusions / findings:  Making the simple anthropological observation that people can choose policies that are self-destructive does not make social science politicized or value-biased. A society that considers global warming, depletion and pollution caused by fossil fuels as mere externalities makes a demonstrable erratic choice. Because one of the major goals of science is to establish (in)validity of “common sense,” it is duty of academics to tell our students that societies, including entire scientific departments, can make consistent erratic choices.Originality / value of the article: This essay may help scholars and practitioners to start to look at their research domain in a (much) wider global context.


Author(s):  
Nina Boyd ◽  
Jan Smitheram

This project examines the relationship between architecture and the tourist experience. In architecture, an understanding of the active tourist body is underdeveloped as visuality is often positioned as the dominant mode of analysing tourism. This project mobilizes the tourist by recognising a paradigmatic shift from the”‘gaze” towards “performance”, which privileges the multisensuous experiences of the tourist engaged with architecture. The project investigates how architecture can stage and amplify the performances of tourists in order to produce place, en route. To test this enquiry, a “design through research” methodology is employed where the design proposition is developed through iterative design experiments. The design proposition is explored across three increasing scales, progressing the research through stages of development and refinement. The first experiment engages with the human scale through a 1:1 installation. The next experiment amplifies the practices of performing tourism through the design of a hotel. In the final experiment, the design of an artificial island stages the public performances of tourists.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elis Muslimah Nuraida ◽  
Ratu Ilma Indra Putri

This study aims to explore the students’ mathematical understanding in integer division operation through the context of archipelago traditional cakes in class VII. This research is related to the Indonesian Realistic Mathematics Approach (PMRI) as a learning approach used. The methodology used in this study is Design Research consisting of three stages: preliminary design, experimental design, and retrospective analysis. The study was conducted on VII grade students of Palembang 1 Junior High School. The learning path (Hypothetical Learning Trajectory) in design research plays an important role as a research design and instrument. The Hypothetical Learning Trajectory (HLT) was developed together with a series of activities using the context of archipelago traditional cakes such as: omelette roll, bakpia, milk pie, etc. The medium used in this study was the Students’ Activity Sheet. The results of this study indicate that exploration using the context of traditional archipelago cakes can help students understanding in multiplication and division of integers. The conclusion of this study is the use of archipelago traditional cakes as starting point in mathematics learning in integer division operation material helps the students to explore their understanding in solving mathematics problems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Maryati Maryati ◽  
Rully Charitas Indra Prahmana

An essential part of learning transformation geometry is rotation. Before learning more about other parts of the transformation geometry topic, such as translation, dilation, and reflection, firstly, students are required to understand well about rotation. However, several students have not been able to understand this subject properly due to the stages of learning in the rotation has not been appropriately arranged. Thus, this study aims to design a student learning trajectory in learning rotation, which develop from informal to formal level through the Indonesian Realistic Mathematics Education (IRME) approach. Furthermore, researchers used a design research method divided into three stages, namely preliminary design, design experiments, and retrospective analysis. This study describes how the bamboo woven motif contributes significantly to 31 ninth-grade students understanding the rotation concept. As a result, the woven bamboo motif's context can stimulate students' understanding of rotation. It is proven based on the strategies and models of students during their learning process which contributes to their fundamental knowledge of rotation.


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