Intelligent Technical Textiles Based on Fiber Bragg Gratings for Strain Monitoring

In this paper, the concept design of intelligent technical textile blocks implemented with optical fibers that include fiber Bragg gratings for strain and temperature sensing is briefly introduced. In addition to the main design of the system, a design of measurement blocks with integrated fiber Bragg grating elements for strain measurement is also presented. In the basic measurement, the created textile block was tested for deformation sensitivity when a load was applied. Moreover, a unique robust and low profile connector was designed, created and verified. The fibers are terminated with GRIN lenses, allowing easy manipulation and completion of the connector in the field, with an average insertion loss of 5.5 dB.

A Model House and a House's Model: Reexamining Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa Project

This article examines Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa project, which, despite its familiarity to most historians of twentieth-century architecture, has never been thoroughly studied within the general context of Wright's expansive oeuvre and the specific circumstances of the Museum of Modern Art's 1932 Modern Architecture: International Exhibition. Numerous drawings for the project survive in the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at Taliesin West, although only photographic evidence survives of the original model. Scattered references to the project appear in Wright's writings, most notably his correspondence with wealthy Denver businessman George Cranmer, whose family served as a kind of inspirational muse for the architect. Of special importance is a letter from Wright to critic Lewis Mumford recently discovered in the Lewis Mumford Papers at the University of Pennsylvania. Handwritten on the back of a photograph of the project's model, Wright's letter sheds new light on some of the project's technical innovations, which included textile-block walls, cantilevered roofs, and stepped casements. Less a response to the International Style, as is commonly held, the project was Wright's model of individualized, machine-age luxury for a merit-based democracy.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollyhock House, and Olive Hill, 1914-1924

The decade 1914-1924 was crucial in the career of Frank Lloyd Wright. He was at work on two major projects, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the Barnsdall commission for Olive Hill in Los Angeles. The Imperial Hotel, although vast and impressive in its grandeur as a finished building supervised closely by Wright, is not as revealing as the Barnsdall commission of the process of transition that these years represent. During the decade Aline Barnsdall called upon Wright to design for her 45 buildings, of which 2 were major theaters (one for Chicago, one for Olive Hill); 2 were her own residences (one for Olive Hill, one for Beverly Hills); 16 were stores; 21 were houses; 1 was an apartment building; 1 an entrance pavilion; 1 a motion picture theater; and 1 a playhouse-kindergarten. In addition, he designed a master plan for her property that included the majority of these buildings and anticipated his later theories of planning as developed in Broadacre City. These buildings span the range of Wright's designs from the late Prairie House to the fully worked out textile block system for concrete.