Arrangement Plan of Inner Mongolia Buddhist Temple

Since BC, the construction of cities has been started in the Mongolian Plateau with the establishment of dynasties, but many were turned into ruins. However, the Tibetan Buddhist temples built after the 16th century, which are an indispensable element in the process of settling the Mongolians from nomadic life, have been relatively well preserved in Inner Mongolia. These temples have been thought to be the epitome of the Mongolian economy, culture, art, and construction technology. Therefore, it has a great significance to research them systematically. Interestingly, these temples in Mongolia were originated from Inner Mongolia, which is located on the south side of Mongolia. The architectural design of these temples has been primarily influenced by Chinese and Tibetan temple architecture, suggesting that the temples appear to be considered a vital sample for studying temple architecture in Mongolia or East Asia. So far, there is still no study systematically on temple architecture in Inner Mongolia. Therefore, this research aims to study the arrangement plan of Inner Mongolian Tibetan Buddhist temples, which is the most important factor to consider in the first stage of temple construction.

Influence of Ancient Mesopotamian Aesthetics of Gardens/Parks and Water Installations on the Development of Landscape Architecture

Based on the information from fundamental historical sources, the oldest origins of civilization can be found in the river valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Throughout Mesopotamia important routes of trade and migration of peoples followed, which influenced the emergence and development of one of the world’s first urban-type civilizations. It was here that the Sumerian civilization evolved, leading to a major cultural and technological breakthrough. Their widely used irrigation canals influenced not only the landscape, but also the entire ecological, economic and political systems of the time, water being a particularly important factor in this civilization. The oldest known gardens have also expanded here, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon still fuel people's imagination. Due to its unique geographical location, the region has had a profound impact on the surrounding nations, and it is no accident that the Assyrian Imperial Parks of Northern Mesopotamia exerted a great influence on the civilizations that followed. Undoubtedly, ancient Mesopotamia occupies a fundamental place in the development of garden art. With the growing use of roof gardens and the use of plants in modern architectural constructions as an extremely important tool for composition, it is worth exploring more closely the origins of this landscape-relevant process.

How Can Landscape Architecture Influence Systemic Change to Achieve Sustainable Cities and Regions

This paper presents how the ideas of landscape, design quality and drawings can influence systemic change to result in sustainable cities and regions. The research related to this paper explores project frameworks and design methods in order to reveal innovative ways and processes for creating environmentally friendly cities and regions that will have the power to adapt and mitigate climatic issues of the future. Through a series of explorations on existing landscape projects and while using a series of stakeholder engagement workshops contacted at a pan-European level the paper examines ways in which systemic change is possible and the outcomes it has in relation to the landscape. Using previously implemented and ongoing landscape projects such as the Room for the River (the Netherlands) and the West Midlands National Park (UK), the paper discusses how bold landscape-led visions influence decision making and support systemic change on a spatial scale. Drawing on experience gained during a series of stakeholder engagement workshops, where the projects of the Tame Valley Wetlands Partnership (UK) and the Urban Farming and Growing Network (UK) were selected as case studies, the research presents key findings and presents lessons learned that can build capacity and improve the understanding and management of stakeholders when it comes to spatial planning and urban design. The paper argues that a new way of thinking in design, policy or governance is not enough if these disciplines act individually. The breakthrough comes when each discipline collaborates with the aim to future proof our cities and regions. By presenting pioneering examples and models giving us tools for a systemic change, the paper aims to demonstrate that large scale developments can be brilliant examples of the new methodologies applied and lessons learnt. This research concludes that systemic change is represented across all levels, policy, decision making, governance, design and implementation if the aim is to deliver a sustainable city.

The Role of Nursing Homes Architectural Design in Mitigating the Risk of COVID-19 Pandemics: The Case of Slovenia

Currently, many older people live in institutions for various social and health reasons. In Slovenia, this proportion is almost 5% of the population aged 65 and over. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the elderly proved to be the most vulnerable social group, as they are exposed to a number of comorbidities that increase the risk of mortality. At that time, nursing homes represented one of the most critical types of housing, as seen from a disproportionate number of infections and deaths among nursing home residents worldwide, including Slovenia. During the emergency, a number of safety protocols had to be followed to prevent the spread of infection. Unfortunately, it turned out that while the safety measures protected the nursing home residents, they also had a negative effect on their mental health, mainly due to isolation and social distancing. It follows that especially in times of epidemics of infectious respiratory diseases, the quality of life in nursing homes requires special attention. In this context, it is also necessary to consider whether and how an appropriate architectural design can help mitigating the spread of infections, while at the same time enable older people to live in dignity and with a minimum of social exclusion. To this end, the present study examined 97 nursing homes in Slovenia, analysing the number of infections in nursing homes and their correlation with the degree of infection in the corresponding region in Slovenia. Additionally, 2 nursing homes were studied in more detail with the use of newly developed “Safe and Connected” evaluation tool, analysing the architectural features of each building. The advantages identified so far include living in smaller units, single rooms with balconies, the possibility of using green open spaces and the use of an adequate ventilation. Conclusions of this study are useful for further consideration of design of new nursing homes and the refurbishment of existing ones.

A City of Promenades

Studying old maps showing the transformation of Mexico City can unveil possible footprints of historic facilities and utilities that have disappeared in the process of urban modernization. The objective of this exercise is to uncover the location of old structures of Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Mexico City as a basis for creating a new footprint of urban memory and identity. A city of promenades proposes the remembrance and use of public space, such as the recuperation of lost cultural and geographic landscapes. It takes the routes and paths, the aqueducts, the roads, the moats, the ramparts, the gates of the historic city and its connections to other villages, which now conform this great metropolitan area and it revives them in order to bring communities together. Inhabitants experience a sense of belonging to a meaningful place, while looking back to the past of a growing city. These paths will serve as initiators of projects and actions which will improve patterns of use and sense of identity, offering landmarks, establishing linear parks as connectors of different scales of existing parks and, through modern design, creating a rediscovered footprint of monuments, landscapes and infrastructures long gone. This proposal is an integral project for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. It begins at the neighbourhood level and forms part of an urban park system; connecting the surrounding natural landscapes and woodlands, the urban parks, sports clubs, neighbourhood parks, squares, bridges, central reservations, sidewalks, tree and flower beds, chapels, rights of way, unused railways, roads, avenues, greenhouses, agricultural trails, cemeteries, brooks and waterways, ravines, canals, terraces, balconies, cloisters and convent patios, archeological sites and unbuilt urban block cores. The city of paths and strolls, of boulevards, of old roads to haciendas and convents, of dikes, gateways, old custom house gates, water fountains and springs, canals, causeways, watermills and aqueducts is an academic exercise with students and teachers to find a meaningful representation of the layers of history that builds a city and creates identity.

Bottom-up Urban Regeneration and Vacant Buildings: A Framework to understand how Empty Properties can be Strategically Embedded in Bottom-up Projects

The bottom-up projects, in the years after the Great Crisis, have been considered as a popular measure to solve urban issues, overcoming the conditions of austerity faced by public actors. However, these initiatives not only seem confined to solve very specific issues but are often linked to a more comprehensive urban regeneration strategy, thus capable of addressing the economic, social and physical aspects of a wider part of the city. This article presents the first findings of wider research, which analyses the link between bottom-up practices and the concept of urban regeneration. In particular, this article focuses on an element that appears to be fundamental for the development of these bottom-up urban regeneration practices: the presence of vacant buildings available for the reuse. This article suggests the possibility to analyse how vacant buildings are embedded in these practices through three steps, called steps for the regeneration through the reuse of vacant buildings (SteRVs), namely Recognition, Appropriation and Design. The validity of the three phases is demonstrated through a multiple case study analysis, that considers two renowned bottom-up urban regeneration cases developed in Europe mainly after 2000: Farm Cultural Park, in Favara (Italy) and NDSM wharf, in Amsterdam.

Building “Working with, not for” into Design Studio Curriculum

Design ManifesT.O. 2020 is a Participatory Action Research project currently underway in Toronto, Canada and is working with communities to uncover stories of grassroots placemaking and community building done through creative practice. An unexpected discovery during data collection highlighted how communities are still being left out of decision-making processes that directly affect their collective values and living conditions and are being disrespected by designers and researchers — exposing very large gaps in the education of designers in terms of values-based learning, design ethics, and informed methods for working with communities. This paper interrogates design pedagogy and practice in order to stimulate further discourse and investigation into how to successfully integrate ethical and responsible protocols into design curriculum to support co-design practices where social justice and equity becomes normalized in practice. In other words: giving students the tools to “work with, not for” communities. Demonstrating social conscience is ethically desirable in design education but if students are not given the tools required to work with communities through respectful and collaborative processes then we are training the next generation of designers to continue a form of hegemony in design practice that is undesirable.

Art and Architecture as Opponents against the Cultural Identity Loss in the Context of a Post-Industrial Environment - The Case of the Manufacturing Villages of Cebolais de Cima and Retaxo, Portugal

Facing the dramatic desertification extent of the territory under study, this article presents the results of an experimental methodology approach on the regeneration of landscapes in the national territory, where man, communities, architecture, art and landscape combine in a visible result, image of synthesis, itself revealing the problem. The deactivation process of the local textile industry, in the territory of Cebolais de Cima and Retaxo, Castelo Branco, Portugal, was marked by a period of stagnation, abandonment and degradation of its manufacturing sites and consequently, of deep degradation of the urban and human landscape. This landscape, which was mainly characterized by an intensive work environment and industrial production, is today essentially portrayed through a legacy of abandoned buildings, materials and machinery, scattered throughout the distorted scenery. It is therefore in a physical, social and human environment with a high rate of abandonment and degradation that matrixes will be found for a process of collaboration between an active group of local forces and the critical mass offered by the University. This was intended to incite a strong awakening of the various agents involved in the alarming conformism installed in these settlements, an environment that transcends the entire frontier territory of the interior border between Portugal and Spain. The beginning of this path with several steps and still in a preliminary stage was offered to students of architecture in Lisbon. It was the opportunity to learn realities other than those of their daily lives, in a universe of excess of information, but weak reflection. It also allowed them to challenge their points of view against the ones of those few who still live in the territory and preferred to stay rather than emigrate as most already did. For this difficult rendezvous, several actions were planned during two years, in Lisbon and Cebolais de Cima and Retaxo, culminating in the so-called Creative Assault, the "occupation" of an abandoned factory intended as a wake-up call for awareness. For three days, various activities and exhibitions took place in this space, inviting the community and local authorities to participate, as well as the students involved in the various moments of work.

Building on the Border: Architecture as a Meeting Place

To establish a border signifies defining a fixed point from which to start and to which to refer in order to circumscribe controlled and measured environments. It is not important whether it is a border between states and regions or private and public spaces, because the main effect of the border is to sanction a diversity. This proposal will analyse three case-studies that, starting from antiquity to the contemporary age, have proposed over time different ways of conceiving the border, making architecture the convergence point. The first is the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, a monument created by Greek artists located in Persian territory. It stood on the peninsula of Anatolia, the border land par excellence in the Hellenistic world, a place where the dominant Western cultures of Greece and Persia clashed. The second is Castel Velturno, a border utopia belonging to Prince-Bishop Cristoforo Madruzzo, who deposited his dreams of unification between the North and the South of Christianity which were torn apart by the theological demands addressed during the Council of Trento. Finally, this proposal will examine the contemporary project entitled the Bi-National Community Skyscraper, which proposes a reinterpretation of the walls erected on the border between the USA and Mexico by building a skyscraper on it in which the two communities can meet and merge together.

Between Earth and Sky: Art and Architecture in Dialogue in the Work of Rui Chafes and Camilo Rebelo

In a former hotel, bought and remodeled by a seed Portuguese producer, in Switzerland, in one of the underground spaces, an architect and a sculptor, also Portuguese, worked together to give life to an egg-shaped space. A space born from the need to give hospitality to a sculpture, Semente by Rui Chafes, has become a pretext for the reflection on numerous themes; the creative and process interaction between art and architecture, the symbolic force of a form like the egg, the possibility of creating a place inside the space and out of time. This collaboration opens the doors to a second chance of project, the client is the same, the place is Portuguese: Grandola, in Alentejo. This time the theme is housing, a concept that brings with it a series of reflections on the relationship between the identity of the person who designs the space and who will then live in it. The collaboration of the two protagonists is measured on this occasion not only with elements experimented in the previous project (the matter, the material, the form), but also with the landscape (its heights, its extensions), with nature (the colors, the smells, the temperature), with the time that will pass and that will put all this to the test. The present text aims to analyze the artistic path of both architect and sculptor, starting from the story of these two occasions in which art and architecture reach a moment of harmonious tangency in the silence and universality of forms. This analysis will reflect on their creative modes, possibly trying to recognize similarities, tangencies or deep divergences. It will also be an opportunity to continue to reflect on the timeless question of the interconnection between art and architecture.