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Towards an Architecture Operating as a Bio-Cyber-Physical System
Full text linkToday’s physical-digital continuum challenges designers and architects to envision architecture as a Bio-Cyber-Physical System that is operating as part of a larger ecosystem while addressing societal challenges with a broader understanding of sustainability in mind. This paper identifies current conditions, challenges and opportunities, while proposing an intercultural dialog toward achieving a better future. The purpose is to enlighten and explore the threshold where the physical interlaces the domain of immaterial flows of information as well as identify some of the digital and material design aspects shaping the multiple facets of bio-cyber-physical-systems in order to propose some possible solutions for current design challenges.
 
Temporal Dimensions in the Mediation between Machines, Humans and Spaces
Full text linkThis paper questions the need to introduce into the design methodologies and education, the temporal dimension in architectural design. It questions the need, to introduce methodologies and protocols to be able to define, design, and measure the variables involved in the actuation of spaces.
While in the history of design, spatial qualities have been central in the search for techniques and tools, temporal qualities have entered, with the advent of the digital revolution, as qualities capable of deforming, compressing, reconfiguring spaces and supporting new ways of living. The paper investigates various time-based approaches developed by scholars and designers from different disciplines, and the consequent proposals that have been developed so far.
The directions that time-based design has explored concern:
Spaces: Digital technologies of algorithmic design/production have made spaces and components adaptable in order to guarantee kinetic or sensorial performance over time through integration with robotic actuators.
Experience: Interactive technologies have made possible a continuous adaptability of spaces to human needs, through a continuous dialogue between humans and spaces via machines and computer systems that are able to formulate proposals for the customization of spaces.
Behaviours: Communication technologies, which have changed people’s behaviours and their interaction with spaces. The spaces have been imbued with distributed digital media hosting the temporalities of real life. The times of ‘online’ life have introduced new configurations of experiential space.
The paper explores the directions taken by design that can be considered time-based, to identify the cardinal points and the new paradigms for contemporary spaces.
 
Absorbed in the Limestone Garden: Registering the Historic Island Metropolis Valletta
Full text linkThe term landscape metropolis and its associated practice of reading the city through the terminology and ‘lens’ of the landscape rather than the normal conventions of urban studies is generally applied to the contemporary city and its expansion beyond the historic centre. Yet, this approach also chimes with the peculiarities of the historic island city and the close relationship such cities have with the restricted, liminal ground on which they are founded. This paper explores the hypothesis that an island city can be understood as a metropolitan landscape as a consequence of peculiarities of geography, ecology, culture, place, and resiliency. By focusing on one such city, Valletta, a heightened case, in which a 16th Century metropolis was founded as Renaissance ‘ideal’, the paper examines the reciprocity between this projected ‘ideal’ and the actual landscape where the metropolis is fused and, indeed, confused with the landscape so that the spatial coherence between city and landscape determines the nature of the metropolis
Port Heritage, Planning Challenges and the Role of GIS Tools in Multi Layered Cities: Yenikapi Metro Station, Istanbul
Full text linkThe aim of this study is to present arguments showing that on the port heritage area, underground cultural inventory should be considered from the historic landscape point of view within the framework of the conservation plans. This study focuses on the Yenikapı region, whose settlement history of the Historical Peninsula changed following the rescue excavation performed at the end of The Bosphorus Rail Tube Crossing Project (Marmaray). The area covering the Port of Theodosius, whose multi-layered urban formation started in the Neolithic period and which was one of the most significant grain trade ports in the Byzantine era, and the port heritage within the background of this area consist of important spatial formations. However, waterfront regeneration projects have disrupted the spatial continuity of cultural heritage under the effect of neoliberal policies. The methodology of the study, which involves the use of GIS, is based on the overlapping of the archaeological surveys from the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, geological structure data from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, and historical maps. The conservation planning approach in a metropolitan city like Istanbul, whose archaeological layers reflect the port heritage, should be developed by applying the concept of historic urban landscape
Jaffa Port, Israel: From a thriving port town to a socio-ethnic enclave
Full text linkThe material extant of the fortifications of Jaffa, the physical markers of memory, narrates the contrasting status and evolution of one of the oldest port towns in Israel: from grandiose to decline, from thriving multicultural neighbourhoods to immigrant communities over time, from town centre to marginalised significance and shifting centralities in the wake of political and economic events. Its town centre, propagating social interaction, existed through complex and evolving agricultural, industrial, and residential land uses. This port town bears a testimony to the dynamic and enormous shifts in land use, communities, and collective social memory. The alternate port of Tel Aviv came into existence during the revolt in 1936-39 by Arabs of Mandatory Palestine. The drastic decline of the Arab population in Jaffa and its environs and the rise in the Jewish population in the new modern city of Tel Aviv was an antagonistic process of negation and exclusion. The asymmetric planning of Tel Aviv that emerged in the early 1900s identified it as uncivilised geography, turning into a dilapidated district. Communal and national identities were built on the premise of antithesis giving rise to significant demographic transformations. This socio-spatial metamorphosis of Tel Aviv-Jaffa became a representational space leading to physical and cognitive boundaries evident in the planning policies. Since the mid-1980s, the spatial overturns have led to the radical restructuring of the urban space through gentrification with political and socio-economic implications such as population displacement and the production of urban alterities. This oxymoron of creative destruction suggests the tensions at the heart of urban life that embodies the erasure and re-inscription of culture and economics. This article will explore the historical evolution of the old port town, cultural geography, and the current state of exclusion and gentrification in Jaffa, and underlines the need for discourse on socio-spatial analysis and assessment for decision-making processes for urban heritage design. 
Rising above surface: Comparative Review of Xinghua Duotian and Chinampas Water Systems
Full text linkhe present research aims to explore a method of landscape reading and analysis through traditional water systems. Throughout the collection of local knowledge about water management in two opposite parts of the world it is possible to learn how natural resources have been used in local communities for hundreds of years to generate resilient, circular and multi-functional water and land management. In order to create a base knowledge to provide lessons for today’s urban challenges, we have analyzed two traditional water systems: The Xinghua Duotian agro system in China and the Chinampas floating gardens in Mexico. Through a systematic collection of data and generation of comparative drawings, maps and diagrams, we were able to understand the logic behind the water management and to extrapolate possible design and strategic principles to be applied in present landscape and urban design. To achieve the proposed objectives, the ‘illustrative method’ (Bobbink and Ruy, 2017) was used. The illustrative method is based on the form-layer method (Steenbergen et al. 2008), which is used as an analytical tool to comprehend the relation between landscape interventions and its site based in 4 basic layers: basic form, program form, image form, and special form (Bobbink, 2019). During the research process, the method was adapted in order to analyze the specific cultural landscapes used as case studies (Xinghua Duotian and Chinampas). Because the form-layer method has been developed for landscape architectonic design we found it necessary to extend the analysis in further layers to reveal other landscape values such as use, maintenance and the circularity of human made traditional water systems (Bobbink, 2019). From the analysis of both water systems, we could extract two main lessons that can help us to design and plan more resilient and sustainable cities. Firstly, the possibility of designing a method of settlement and urban expansion based on natural principles where circularity is a key element to generate a sustainable way of extraction and restoration of natural resources. And secondly, that specific landscape identities, such as wetland and lakes, can be a provider of multi-functional development for cities where agriculture, economy, urban expansion and ecology are part of the similar network. Using these principles that are the basis of the analyzed water systems, we can come back to a more sustainable, circular and multi-functional way of using our natural resources
Dialogues on Architecture
Full text linkDialogues on Architecture is a series of dialogues between researchers and practitioners, who are embracing the intellectual model of high technology and are involved in its advancement and application in architecture. Dialogue #4 focuses on the technology transfer between on- and off-Earth research and its impact on society, and in particular on industry and education. The dialogue takes place between Henriette Bier (HB), Paul Chan (PC), Advenit Makaya (AM), and Angelo Cervone (AC)
Design-to-Robotic-Production of Underground Habitats on Mars
Full text linkIn order for off-Earth top surface structures built from regolith to protect astronauts from radiation, they need to be several meters thick. Technical University Delft (TUD) proposes to excavate into the ground to create subsurface habitats. By excavating, not only can natural protection from radiation be achieved but also thermal insulation, as the temperature is more stable underground. At the same time, valuable resources can be excavated via in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). In this process, a swarm of autonomous mobile robots excavate the ground in a downwards sloping spiral movement. The excavated regolith will be mixed with cement, which can be produced on Mars through ISRU, in order to create concrete. The concrete is then 3D printed/sprayed onto the excavated tunnel to reinforce it. As soon as the tunnels are reinforced, the material between the tunnels can be removed in order to create a larger cavity that can be used for habitation. The proposed approach relies on design-to-robotic-production (D2RP) technology developed at TUD for on-Earth applications. The rhizomatic 3D-printed structure is a structurally optimized, porous shell structure with increased insulation properties. In order to regulate the indoor pressurised environment, an inflatable structure is placed inside the 3D-printed cavity. This inflatable structure is made of materials that can at some point also be produced on Mars via ISRU. Depending on location, the habitat and the production system are powered by a system combining solar and kite-power. The ultimate goal is to develop an autarkic D2RP system for building subsurface autarkic habitats on Mars from locally-obtained materials. 
Circular Water Stories #2
Full text linkCircular Water Stories focusses on the changing circumstances of the water system and water chain, and the consequential spatial transformation. The approach highlights the vulnerable interdependency between traditional, marginalized water communities and their environments. The papers of this second Spool issue on Circular Water Stories in the Landscape Metropolis #8 investigate traditional water systems as a source of inspiration for today’s water, characterised by the concepts of too much, too little, and too dirty from two main perspectives: the people-orientated cultural perspective and the systemic spatial perspective. 
Narratives of Eastern Mediterranean and Atlantic European cities
Full text linkPort cities have traditionally played an essential role in local and transnational networks. The spatial imprints of cross-border flows and socio-spatial interactions in port cities have left intertwined and entangled histories. However, the physical presence of these rich histories is not always visible.
Port cities have undergone a number of socio-spatial metamorphoses since the early 20th-century. A series of local and global events have triggered significant transformations, among these:
Globalisation
Natural and human-made disasters
De-industrialisation and changes in regulation (neo-liberal policies)
Changing social conditions (migration and population exchanges)
Such events have resulted in rapid, sometimes haphazard, urbanisation while, in other cases, regeneration projects have erased traces of history in many places. Many East Mediterranean and Atlantic European cities were also affected by armed conflicts. Contemporary waterfront regeneration projects produce generic results that further conceal the marks from the past.
Despite the physical transformations of port cities, historical narratives remain. Global trade and transnational exchange left tangible imprints on urban patterns and manifested themselves in cultural expressions such as paintings, engravings, travelogues, novels, travel books, and poems. Authors, artists, and travellers found inspiration in port facilities such as quays, customs houses, warehouses and site-specific urban typologies and street patterns, and social spaces in the cities.
Many protagonists are brought together in such narratives, from elite traders, local governors, and white-collar workers (e.g. engineers, developers), to the domestic and foreign labour classes, transit passengers and sailors, and local inhabitants.
This issue of Spool seeks to investigate narratives on the architecture, culture and development of coastal cities. We have challenged authors to present how narratives inform designers and how narratives are used in contemporary design approaches?
What is the role of the architect/planner in the contemporary narrative formation of port cities, particularly in the changing context of port-city relations?
We have selected seven contributions for this issue of Spool, four from the Eastern Mediterranean basin (Istanbul, Beirut, Acre and Jaffa) and three from Atlantic Europe (Bodø, Matosinhos and Gafanha da Nazaré)