New Form, New Material and Color Scheme, the Exposed Concrete Phenomenon—The Centennial Hall in Wrocław

The aim of the article is to present the remarkable changes in architecture that took place in the 20th century. They can easily be called a revolution regarding the architectural form and the color scheme. Progress was being made through the development of reinforced concrete production methods. In the German Empire (Deutsches Kaiserreich), this material quickly found applications in more and more interesting solutions in architectural structures. In Wrocław (formerly Breslau), then located in the eastern German Empire, exceptional architectural works were realized before and after the First World War using new technology. In 1913, an unusual building was erected—the Centennial Hall, designed by Max Berg (inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2006). Berg’s work was inspired by the works of both Hans Poelzig and Bruno Taut. On the one hand, it was a delight with the new material (the Upper Silesian Tower at the exhibition in Poznań, designed by H. Poelzig) and, on the other hand, with the colorful architecture of light and glass by B. Taut (a glass pavilion at the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne). Max Berg left the concrete in an almost “pure” form, not hiding the texture of the formwork under the plaster layer. However, stratigraphic studies of paint coatings and archival inquiries reveal a new face of this building. The research was carried out as part of the CMP (Conservation Management Plan—prepared by the authors of the article, among others) grant from The Getty Foundation Keeping It Modern program. According to the source materials, the architect intended to leave the exposed concrete outside of the building, while the interior was to be decorated with painting, stained glass, and sculpture. The stratigraphic tests showed that the external walls were covered with a translucent yellowish color coating. Thus, the Centennial Hall shows a different face of reinforced concrete architecture.

Specifics of the color solution of the modern coworking center

The purpose of the article is to determine the features of the color component of interior design and to identify the aesthetic and artistic features of the color scheme of a modern work area on the example of the capital's coworking centers. Methodology. Art and art analysis in the aspect of design creativity is applied; structural-semiotic analysis, which involves the identification of symbolic, differentiating functions that are embedded in the color of the interior of the coworking center; the method of structural analysis, which contributed to the study of sign systems of the color of the interior of coworking centers with the decoding of the meanings embedded in them; method of comparative analysis, which establishes common features in the perception of color by modern man, identified the characteristics of the role of color in the interior design of the workspace. Scientific novelty. The semantic significance of color in the interior design of a coworking space is studied; the informativeness of color is analyzed on the basis of three parameters (tone, saturation, and brightness); the compositional and decorative function of color is considered; the aesthetic and artistic features of the color scheme of the modern work area are revealed on the example of Kyiv coworking centers and the priority color scale is determined, which contributes to the increase of working capacity. Conclusions. The basis of color perception – physiological, psychological, and aesthetic factors that determine color associations, semantics, and symbolism of color – are ancient archetypes formed under the influence of socio-economic and sacred factors. A variety of color harmonies are widely used in modern workspaces, in the process of organizing production processes, to create psychological accents that improve performance and reduce fatigue. In the context of coworking center design, the approach to color interior design is based primarily on the desire to create an atmosphere that promotes positive emotions, inspires workers to cooperate and productivity. The study found that the rich creative source of the artistic image of the interior of the coworking center is played by archetypes, which involve the image-associative thinking of designers. The color component is not limited to the characteristic scales that meet the latest trends – it is much wider and demonstrates the diversity of design searches. Key words: coworking center, interior design, colors, semantics, color, working capacity.

Art Nouveau and Neoclassicism of buildings in Tyumen financed by merchants late in the 19th and early 20th centuries

The problem of preservation of the historical and architectural environment in Russian cities is currently rather relevant. Research and popularization of the different architectural styles play an important role in preservation of the unique historical environment of the city. Architectural styles of buildings in Tyumen are from Siberian Baroque to large-scale buildings of neoclassicism, which is characteristic of the architecture of this period.The paper describes the buildings the construction of which is financed by the merchants. The building architecture belongs to a particular stye typical for the period of Art Nouveau and neoclassicism. The architecture of Tyumen buildings is of regional color scheme represented by the decoration of window trimmers and other architectural details.The research implications include a study of historical and modern photographs of buildings of various types, namely from educational institutions to residential buildings. The paper utilizes historical and archival and bibliographic data and field research.Research findings: the significance of the studied buildings is preserved in the modern urban environment and architecture of Tyumen. At the turn of the 19–20th centuries and today, these objects retain their role in urban planning and function.

From Three-Dimension to Two-Dimension: The Formation of Henri Matisse’s Painting Style

Through his life as a pupil in his early years and the transformation into a Fauve (wild beast), Henri Matisse learnt that he must forgo the traditional techniques of the masters and understand art in his own way. He first replaced the color scheme in his paintings with purer colors and clearer outlines of color ranges; in his later life, he devoted himself to two-dimensional coloring and finally to two-dimensional paper cut-outs. Therewith, a unique style brought forth by Henri Matisse took shape, ushering the diversification of the drawing medium. Since then, paintings are no more confined to rigid classicism, which only explores the relationship between colors in sketch-based three-dimensional spaces, but a reflection of the painters’ scrutiny of the nature of painting.

Automated color detection in orchids using color labels and deep learning

The color of particular parts of a flower is often employed as one of the features to differentiate between flower types. Thus, color is also used in flower-image classification. Color labels, such as ‘green’, ‘red’, and ‘yellow’, are used by taxonomists and lay people alike to describe the color of plants. Flower image datasets usually only consist of images and do not contain flower descriptions. In this research, we have built a flower-image dataset, especially regarding orchid species, which consists of human-friendly textual descriptions of features of specific flowers, on the one hand, and digital photographs indicating how a flower looks like, on the other hand. Using this dataset, a new automated color detection model was developed. It is the first research of its kind using color labels and deep learning for color detection in flower recognition. As deep learning often excels in pattern recognition in digital images, we applied transfer learning with various amounts of unfreezing of layers with five different neural network architectures (VGG16, Inception, Resnet50, Xception, Nasnet) to determine which architecture and which scheme of transfer learning performs best. In addition, various color scheme scenarios were tested, including the use of primary and secondary color together, and, in addition, the effectiveness of dealing with multi-class classification using multi-class, combined binary, and, finally, ensemble classifiers were studied. The best overall performance was achieved by the ensemble classifier. The results show that the proposed method can detect the color of flower and labellum very well without having to perform image segmentation. The result of this study can act as a foundation for the development of an image-based plant recognition system that is able to offer an explanation of a provided classification.

A Data-Driven Personalized Lighting Recommender System

Recommender systems attempt to identify and recommend the most preferable item (product-service) to individual users. These systems predict user interest in items based on related items, users, and the interactions between items and users. We aim to build an auto-routine and color scheme recommender system for home-based smart lighting that leverages a wealth of historical data and machine learning methods. We utilize an unsupervised method to recommend a routine for smart lighting. Moreover, by analyzing users’ daily logs, geographical location, temporal and usage information, we understand user preferences and predict their preferred light colors. To do so, users are clustered based on their geographical information and usage distribution. We then build and train a predictive model within each cluster and aggregate the results. Results indicate that models based on similar users increases the prediction accuracy, with and without prior knowledge about user preferences.

Effective uncertainty visualization for aftershock forecast maps

Earthquake models can produce aftershock forecasts, which have recently been released to lay audiences following large earthquakes. While visualization literature suggests that displaying forecast uncertainty can improve how forecast maps are used, research on uncertainty visualization is missing from earthquake science. We designed a pre-registered online experiment to test the effectiveness of three visualization techniques for displaying aftershock forecast maps and their uncertainty. These maps showed the forecasted number of aftershocks at each location for a week following a hypothetical mainshock, along with the uncertainty around each location’s forecast. Three different uncertainty visualizations were produced: (1) forecast and uncertainty maps adjacent to one another; (2) the forecast map depicted in a color scheme, with the uncertainty shown by the transparency of the color; and (3) two maps that showed the lower and upper bounds of the forecast distribution at each location. Unlike previous experiments, we compared the three uncertainty visualizations using tasks that are systematically designed to address broadly applicable and user-generated communication goals. We compared task responses between participants using uncertainty visualizations and using the forecast map shown without its uncertainty (the current practice). Participants completed two map-reading tasks that targeted several dimensions of the readability of uncertainty visualizations. Participants then performed a comparative judgment task, which demonstrated whether a visualization was successful in reaching two key communication goals: indicating where many aftershocks and no aftershocks are likely (sure bets) and where the forecast is low but the uncertainty is high enough to imply potential risk (surprises). All visualizations performed equally well in the goal of communicating sure bet situations. But the visualization with lower and upper bounds was substantially better than the other designs at communicating surprises. These results have implications for the communication of forecast uncertainty both within and beyond earthquake science.

Gennady Gorbaty's painting: crypto-realism as overcoming imitation of reality

The purpose of this article: analysis of Gennady Gorbaty's painting, in the work of which the transition from a realistic reflection of the world to the art of postmodernism, characteristic of Ukrainian art of the late 20th century, was reflected in a peculiar way. The methodology is the application of art analysis, methods of comparison and generalization, biographical and historical approach. The scientific novelty lies in the discovery of the peculiarities of the transformation of the traditional for Soviet art reflection of reality into visual practices of the late 20th – early 21st centuries on the example of the work of a particular artist. Conclusions. Gennady Gorbaty studied at the Kyiv State Art Institute (1981–1987), so his formation was significantly influenced by the traditional school of painting with a mostly realistic reproduction of the world around it and a purely academic hierarchy of genres. The socio-political situation in Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s not only contributed to the liberation from such a view of art, but also intensified attention to the development of both contemporary world art and modernist manifestations that existed in the culture of the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, many artists became interested in the history of Ukraine, especially in its tragic or dramatic pages, which led to the emergence of numerous compositions with a complex system of symbols and associations, elements borrowed from the paintings of past eras. In the work of Gennady Gorbaty can be consistently traced a variety of influences, which demonstrate his search for his own plastic language, the gradual departure from the conditionally realistic art of the Soviet era and the formation of a peculiar manner of performance. This was facilitated by an acquaintance with Western European art of the late 20th century, as the artist has been working in Germany since the early 1990s. It was one of the German art critics G. Beck who defined the stylistics of G. Gorbaty's works as crypto-realism, in which the emotional beginning, reflected in the color scheme and expression of picturesque textures, is combined with supposedly hidden motives of visible reality. In the works of this author, the blurring of genres, the synthesis in one picture of elements of different artistic epochs – from the Middle Ages to postmodernism – is also noticeable.