scholarly journals Italian Rationalist Design: Modernity between Tradition and Innovation

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Federica Dal Falco

This article is devoted to the Italian modern project of the 1930s, which involved architecture and design. The main theme is the influence that the autarchic economic policy of the Fascist regime had in the choice of materials and technologies, and, above all, the manner in which this choice led to innovative practices and figurative research. Through significant examples, the essay provides some insight into the style of Italian rationalism, whose contradictory aspects—conditioned by the regime’s policy—shaped urban planning, architecture, and design in the 1930s. I show that the Italian rationalist culture is a field of investigation that is of considerable scientific interest because it represents the idea of an integral project comprised of all the elements associated to a building, including those that are still used today. In particular, I present a case study centered on the Physics Institute of Rome’s Sapienza University (1933–1935) designed by the architect Giuseppe Pagano Pogatschnig, analyzing its materials, technologies, and architectural features, as well as its furnishings. Along these lines, the objective of this investigation is the transmission of a specific knowledge, looking at objects as essential parts of the aesthetics of Rationalism in order to protect and enhance the cultural heritage of modernity.

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd L VanPool ◽  
Christine S VanPool

Paquimé, Chihuahua, was the ceremonial center of the Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) Casas Grandes world, and the focus of regional pilgrimages. We use a relational perspective to explore the connections that were created and expressed during the pilgrimage. We propose that Paquimé was considered a living city, and that pilgrims actively supported its vitality through offerings of marine shells and other symbolically important goods. A region-wide network of signal fires centered on Cerro de Moctezuma, a hill directly overlooking Paquimé, summoned pilgrims. Ritual negotiations also focused on the dead and may have included at least occasional human sacrifice. While the pilgrimages focused on water-related ritual, they also included community and elite competition as reflected in architectural features such as the ball courts. Central to the pilgrimage was negotiation with the horned serpent, a deity that controlled water and was associated with leadership throughout Mesoamerica and the Southwest. The horned serpent is the primary supernatural entity reflected at the site and in the pottery pilgrims took with them back to their communities. Thus, the pilgrimages were times when the Casas Grandes people created and transformed their relationships with each other, religious elites, the dead, the landscape, and the horned serpent. These relationships in turn are reflected across the region (e.g., the broad distribution of Ramos Polychrome). This case study consequently demonstrates the potential that the relational perspective presented throughout this issue has for providing insight into the archaeological record and the past social structures it reflects.


Romanticism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Ruth Knezevich

The genre of annotated verse represents an under-explored form of transporting romanticism. In annotated, locodescriptive poems like those in Anna Seward's Llangollen Vale, readers are invited to read not only the spatiality of the landscapes depicted in the verse but also the landscape of the page itself. Seward's poems, with their focus on understanding geographical, political, and historical spaces both real and imaginary, provide geocritical insight into poetic productions of the early Romantic era. Likewise, geocriticism offers a fresh and useful – even necessary – analytic approach to such poems. I adopt Anna Seward as a case study in annotated verse and argue that attending to the materiality and paratextuality of her work allows us to access the complexities of her poetry and prose as well as her position within the wider framework of transporting Romanticism.


Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svenja J. Kratz

Abstract: Presented from an ArtScience practitioner's perspective, this paper provides an overview of Svenja Kratz's experience working as an artist within the area of cell and tissue culture at QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI). Using The Absence of Alice, a multi-medium exhibition based on the experience of culturing cells, as a case study, the paper gives insight into the artist's approach to working across art and science and how ideas, processes, and languages from each discipline can intermesh and extend the possibilities of each system. The paper also provides an overview of her most recent artwork, The Human Skin Equivalent/Experience Project, which involves the creation of personal jewellery items incorporating human skin equivalent models grown from the artist's skin and participant cells. Referencing this project, and other contemporary bioart works, the value of ArtScience is discussed, focusing in particular on the way in which cross-art-science projects enable an alternative voice to enter into scientific dialogues and have the potential to yield outcomes valuable to both disciplines.


Author(s):  
Jifeng Chen ◽  
Peilin Song ◽  
Thomas M. Shaw ◽  
Franco Stellari ◽  
Lynne Gignac ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, we propose a new methodology and test system to enable the early detection and precise localization of Time-Dependent-Dielectric-Breakdown (TDDB) occurrence in Back-End-of-Line (BEOL) interconnection. The methodology is implemented as a novel Integrated Reliability Test System (IRTS). In particular, through our methodology and test system, we can easily synchronize electrical measurements and emission microscopy images to gather more accurate information and thereby gain insight into the nature of the defects and their relationship to chip manufacturing steps and materials, so that we can ultimately better engineer these steps for higher reliable systems. The details of our IRTS will be presented along with a case study and preliminary analysis results.


Author(s):  
Kaye Chalwell ◽  
Therese Cumming

Radical subject acceleration, or moving students through a subject area faster than is typical, including skipping grades, is a widely accepted approach to support students who are gifted and talented. This is done in order to match the student’s cognitive level and learning needs. This case study explored radical subject acceleration for gifted students by focusing on one school’s response to the learning needs of a ten year old mathematically gifted student. It provides insight into the challenges, accommodations and approach to radical subject acceleration in an Australian school. It explored the processes and decisions made to ensure that a gifted student’s learning needs were met and identified salient issues for radical subject acceleration. Lessons learned from this case study may be helpful for schools considering radical acceleration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-29
Author(s):  
JESRINA ANN XAVIER ◽  
EDMUND TERENCE GOMEZ

This article investigates changes in the conduct of ethnic enterprises followingthe emergence of a new generation of owners with varying class resources andas market conditions transform. The case study method is used to examinethe impact of changing class resources and market conditions on ethnicallybasedenterprises, exploring the effects of generational transitions among smallIndian owned companies in the food industry in Malaysia. The results providean insight into key changes in the evolution of Indian owned enterprises. Theyindicate that changes in class resources and market conditions have enabledIndian owned food-based companies to alter their products to fit a largermarket, while responding to the demands of a rapidly modernizing society.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Petronis ◽  
◽  
Vincent Twomey ◽  
William McCarthy ◽  
Craig MaGee
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Nóra Veszprémi

Abstract After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the sanctioning of new national borders in 1920, the successor states faced the controversial task of reconceptualizing the idea of national territory. Images of historically significant landscapes played a crucial role in this process. Employing the concept of mental maps, this article explores how such images shaped the connections between place, memory, and landscape in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Hungarian revisionist publications demonstrate how Hungarian nationalists visualized the organic integrity of “Greater Hungary,” while also implicitly adapting historical memory to the new geopolitical situation. As a counterpoint, images of the Váh region produced in interwar Czechoslovakia reveal how an opposing political agenda gave rise to a different imagery, while drawing on shared cultural traditions from the imperial past. Finally, the case study of Dévény/Devín/Theben shows how the idea of being positioned “between East and West” lived on in overlapping but politically opposed mental maps in the interwar period. By examining the cracks and continuities in the picturesque landscape tradition after 1918, the article offers new insight into the similarities and differences of nation-building processes from the perspective of visual culture.


Author(s):  
Lu Zhang ◽  
Zhenghong Peng

As the most historically and culturally valuable city district in Nanning, Xingning Block has gradually formed its own unique color characteristics and architectural style in the slow process of urban historical development, showing the unique local customs and architectural features. However, restricted by the specific development conditions, many undesirable aspects can be found in the overall architectural landscape color of some nodes on the block, such as lack of systematic planning, poor material matching, messy building color, as well as various challenges of contemporary social development to the architectural environmental color on the block.The architectural environmental color of urban traditional blocks is an important part of the specific history, culture and spirit of the times of a city, which plays a vital role in the development and change of the city. Therefore, how to effectively and reasonably do a good job in sustainable urban planning and development is an issue that must attract the attention of competent authorities at all levels, scientific research institutions and planning practitioners.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 260
Author(s):  
James Ellis ◽  
David John Edwards ◽  
Wellington Didibhuku Thwala ◽  
Obuks Ejohwomu ◽  
Ernest Effah Ameyaw ◽  
...  

This research explores the failure of competitively tendered projects in the UK construction industry to procure the most suited contractor(s) to conduct the works. Such work may have equal relevance for other developed nations globally. This research seeks to teach clients and their representatives that “lowest price” does not mean “best value”, by presenting a case study of a successfully negotiated tender undertaken by a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) contractor; SME studies are relatively scant in academic literature. By applying the “lessons learnt” principle, this study seeks to improve future practice through the development of a novel alternative procurement option (i.e., negotiation). A mixed philosophical stance combining interpretivism and pragmatism was used—interpretivism to critically review literature in order to form the basis of inductive research to discuss negotiation as a viable procurement route, and pragmatism to analyse perceptions of tendering and procurement. The methods used follow a three-stage waterfall process including: (1) literature review and pilot study; (2) quantitative analysis of case study data; and (3) qualitative data collection via a focus group. Our research underscores the need to advise clients and their representatives of the importance of understanding the scope of works allowed within a tender submission before discounting it based solely on price. In addition, we highlight the failings of competitive tendering, which results in increased costs and project duration once the works commence on site. These findings provide new contemporary insight into procurement and tendering in the construction industry, with emphasis on SME contractors, existing relationships, and open-book negotiation. This research illustrates the adverse effects of early cost estimates produced without first securing a true understanding of project buildability and programming. Our work concludes with a novel insight into an alternative procurement option that involves early SME contractor involvement in an open-book environment, without the need for a third-party cost control.


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