ENQUIRY: The ARCC Journal
Not a member yet
167 research outputs found
Sort by
Building Integrated Transparent Photovoltaic as a Strategy Towards Net Zero Energy Building in the Tropics: Considerations, Approach, and Feasibility based on Energy Performance
Full text linkPrevious studies have found the potential of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) implementation on vertical facades. The implementation was suggested for buildings with a minimum of 45 percent window-to-wall ratio (WWR). This number is quite challenging for tropical buildings where the suggested WWR ranges around 20 to 40 percent. Furthermore, the installation may appear less efficient due to the lower irradiance received on tropical vertical facades. Given the abundance of vertical facades in tropical high-rise buildings, there exists an opportunity to offset power reduction. Therefore, this study aims to determine the feasibility, influencing factors, and approach for installing building-integrated thin film transparent photovoltaics (BITPV) in tropical regions, focusing on energy production. The objective is achieved through a combination of literature review and simulation. Three layout configurations on three different geographical locations, which present a typical classroom module for school buildings, are observed. Treatment is applied based on orientation, WWR, and the cell coverage ratio. The feasibility is shown by at least 23 percent energy substitution promoted by several configurations. East is suggested for classrooms with 1:1 and 3:2 modules, while north is suggested for classrooms with 2:3 modules. For buildings with minimum WWR (20 percent), TPV installation with ≥40 percent cell coverage ratio (on the specified orientation) is suggested to achieve the mixenergy use target. Additionally, this study presents the influencing factors and design approach for BITPV to provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject
Navigating a Climate in Crisis through a Biomimetic Epistemology: Rethinking Design Education in the Anthropocene
Full text linkWe have entered a geological epoch where environmental change is driven primarily by human activity. The technology-centric approach to sustainable development as the dominant model of innovation in industrialized countries has led to expansive ecological degradation. This paper critiques this paradigm and builds on existing literature from environmental philosophy to propose a new model of ethical, bio-inspired architectural thinking. Though Biomimicry is often celebrated as a model for nature-inspired innovation, it can inadvertently reinforce notions of mastery over nature, a harmful phenomenon that environmental philosopher Freya Mathews calls ‘anthropocentric triumphalism.’
In response to those challenges, this paper explores the philosophical underpinnings of bio-inspired design to advocate for a transformative pedagogical model within architectural education and practice. By exploring the conflicts implicit in biomimetic processes, we aim to disentangle students’ thinking from techno-centric models and prepare them for the broader societal implications of a necessary energy shift. This exploration emphasizes the importance of cultivating a holistic understanding of ecological systems, urging designers to appreciate the intricate relationships within ecosystems rather than viewing them solely as sources of technological inspiration.
By addressing the conflicts inherent in biomimetic processes, this paper calls for a more comprehensive and ethical approach to biomimicry – one that emphasizes both the source of knowledge as well as its application. Ultimately, we seek to foster a responsible relationship between architecture and the natural world, paving the way for a sustainable future that goes beyond mere imitation to encompass true coexistence
Reshaping concrete: Inclusive design for low-carbon structures
Full text linkLess Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs) struggle to meet the demand for affordable housing in their growing cities. There are several reasons for this, but a major constraint is the high cost of construction materials. In LEDCs, material costs can constitute 60 to 80 percent of the total cost of residential construction. Nonetheless, their construction mimics the materially inefficient practices of the More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCs), which were developed to reduce labor over material costs. As a result, prismatic beams and flat slabs are often used despite their structural inefficiency. The mounting use of steel-reinforced concrete structures in LEDC cities also raises concern for the environmental costs of construction; construction accounts for 20-30 percent of LEDC carbon emissions.
This research addresses these challenges with a flexible and accessible methodology for the design and analysis of materially efficient concrete elements that may reduce the economic and environmental costs of urban construction. Designed for the constraints of LEDCs, structural elements are optimized to reduce the embodied carbon associated with the concrete and reinforcing steel while resisting the required loads of a standard building structure. The optimization method includes a novel approach to 3D-shape parameterization, as well as a decoupled analytical engineering analysis method that accounts for the key failure modes and constraints of reinforced concrete design. This method is then built into an open-source toolkit, combined with machine learning for real-time analysis and visualization, and tested using lab- and full-scale prototypes.
The goal of this research is to present several generalizable methods that are applicable and accessible to LEDC building designers. These methods can enable the design of concrete elements for multiple performance criteria such as structural behavior, acoustic transmission, and thermal mass. They can also enable an accessible design practice through machine learning, real-time iterative workflows, and visualization tools that include the end-user in the architectural design process. This paper provides a high-level overview of ongoing research that explores how materially efficient design methods might enable sustainable development through low-cost, low-carbon concrete structural systems for affordable housing in LEDCs
Towards Designing for the Postdigital Hybrid Workplace: A Systematic Literature Review
Full text linkThis paper frames the future workplace as a postdigital hybrid space of practice that foregrounds humanistic values and holistically accommodates various requirements of individuals and collectives who make up the socio-cultural context of the workplace, wherever work may occur. However, to move towards designing for the postdigital hybrid workplace, it is necessary to first have an overview of the requirements foreseen for the future of workplace that are pertinent to notions of the postdigital and hybridity within the scholarly domain. On this basis, the paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of workplace design and management literature (2010-2022) informed by the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Studies were sourced through Scopus and Google Scholar, and screened for comprehension, relevancy, and certainty. Studies were appraised for quality before inclusion in the SLR, using a framework that combines a Weight of Evidence (WoE) framework (Gough 2007) with a set of appraisal criteria that can be used in qualitative research (Hannes 2011). Through a thematic analysis of the final 37 studies, the following seven requirements were identified: 1) embodied, intuitive and multimodal experiences, 2) a balance between privacy and interaction, 3) environmental comfort, 4) disconnection, 5) a culture that empowers the individual, 6) social territories and collective synergies, and 7) heterogeneity. The paper discusses that collectively the requirements identified signify the importance of the socio-spatial context in which work occurs. Therefore, as the ecosystem of work continues to change and adapt to hybridity, changes in meanings, perceptions and behaviours related to these requirements should be further investigated in order to better support design and management strategies. In addition, the paper acknowledges the inevitable juxtapositions of opposing expectations and requirements in a flexible workplace, and brings light to the behavioural, temporal and connectivity dimensions under which rivalling issues should be considered for a postdigital hybrid workplace
Towards an Anti-Antiutopia: Solarpunk Cities and the Precarity of Our Urban Future
No full textThis paper examines Darko Suvin’s and Kim Stanley Robinson’s assertion that the late-stage capitalism and neoliberalism of our world can be understood as an “antiutopia” that actively works to suppress the imagination of better futures. It argues that the relatively new science fiction sub-genre of solarpunk—which sets itself in direct opposition to the dystopian visions of the more well-known subgenre cyberpunk and imagines worlds that focus on the community rather than the individual, on environmental sustainability rather than environmental degradation, on social justice rather than subjugation and inequality, and on optimism rather than nihilism—offers some of the most promising paths toward the rejection of this antiutopia in favor of an anti-antiutopian (and therefore utopian) approach that actively works to bring about a better future. The paper suggests that the solarpunk futures currently emerging in literature, art, and online communities offer architects, landscape architects, and urban designers powerful inspiration for the future of our increasingly urban world. It examines a selection of short stories, novels, films, and other media—as well as innovative projects of urbanism—for examples of how embracing the practical utopianism of solarpunk can provide both visions of better worlds and potential paths for achieving them
The Missing Link: Telecommunications, Tropical Postmodernization, and the Production of Precarity in the Philippines, 1972–Present
No full textFor the vast majority of agricultural workers in the tenant peasantry class, the direct relation to a landscape valorized by a plantation economy is simultaneously a constantly mediated, ever-precarious economic relation to global capital. Since 1945, discourses of development have only deepened extractive and deeply unequal modes of governance and sociality in this context and across the Global South*. It is in this context that I aim to assess the politicized technics of precarity, weather prediction, and economics of agriculture in the Philippines under the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos. In studying the Philippines during its violent neoliberal transformation period, I hope to extract an ideal portrait of the environmental, technological, and economic logics of postcolonial globalization. To do so, I will assess a subtle yet crucial point in the Philippines’ history of science, technology, and the environment: the implementation of a meteorological telecommunications network and Marcos’s reordering of these stations as the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, or PAGASA (meaning “hope” in Tagalog). By understanding the several scales of political economy at work in direct relation to such a network, this paper seeks to illuminate the multiple dimensions of social instability rooted in the Philippine government’s neoliberal conflation of environment and economy. The architectures and technologies of network, then, highlight the numerous ways in which weather forecasting, agricultural production, and political control intersect in infrastructural development
Insuring Artificial Stone
Full text linkThis paper examines experiments to increase the durability of architecture as a means to manage the risk of catastrophic loss through tangible systems of artificial material and intangible systems of insurance. At the intersection of these dyads is Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory conducting experiments in architecture to yield an ornament useful in securing capital from 1769 - 1821. Selling goods from the south bank of the River Thames in London, Coade’s made use of a catalog to mediate the global exchange between the site of production and construction. For architects and builders, these commodities construct a modern architecture relying upon cheapness, mass production, and abstraction. The utility of this artificial stone explicates a relationship between durability and catastrophic failure at work in the manufacture of modern architecture
Re-constituting Precarity for the BIM-Architect
Full text linkAs architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) practices become broadly mediated by computational methods, this article considers the modes of precarity implied for the architect adopting BIM as a medium of modelling and design. Situating the computational apparatus as a prosthesis to the BIM-architect, the article outlines the degree of agency configured for operators of BIM applications while they utilize the structures and methods of software pre-programmed by the application’s original developers. Exploring the structures of Autodesk Revit’s database via the Application Programming Interface (API), the paper interrogates the rationale and logic of building encoded by the program through a reading of its operative code in textual form. Situating an interplay between the Revit-architect and application, who programmes a building model while their intention and conceptualization is programmed in turn, the conditions of precarity installed for the Revit-architect as operator are considered as a result of their limited capacity to modify the programme’s operative methods. Drawing from a political history of technology to interrogate the distributed agency between the Revit-architect and technical apparatus, the article ultimately explores how the architect might adopt the phenomenal experience codified by the procedural operations of algorithms through alternative means. It concludes by drawing from autoethnographic practice and situated experiences at the site of the author’s studios, offering material from which to construct an alternative and differentiated notion of algorithm-aided modelling and design according to a nuanced attention to the depth of building
Soft Knitted Tensile Membrane Tensegrity Helix-Tower
No full textThis paper explores project-based research approach for using knitted textiles as a participating element in a tensegrity structural system. The design of the tensegrity Helix-Tower takes advantage of the emergent elastic properties of knit material and the self-stress, self-stabilizing characteristics of tensegrity structures. The paper outlines the workflow for working with knit materials, including the feedback loop between small studies, digital models, and simulations, and from small to large prototypes. The resulting prototype is a 2.74-meter (9-foot) helix structured tensegrity tower, which is lightweight, deployable, and at a small architectural scale. The assembly process for the final construction is simple and requires no tools.
The research is novel in its exploration of using knit membranes in tensegrity structures, resulting in a structure that is ultimately more flexible and responsive to movement than traditional tensegrity structures. The design also provides more interactivity with human bodies and the environment. The paper examines the benefits of knitted membrane, including their heterogeneity and uneven stretching. Which provides softness, flexibility, and more movement to the structure. However, questions remain regarding the potential for other environmental factors such as wind or water.
Future work includes exploring the potential and problems of knitted compared to other materials used in tensegrity structures and examining the incorporation of the design into real architectural elements
A tale of the city of Kolkata through the eyes of the “common women"
Full text linkThis paper focuses on working-class women from the informal settlements of Kolkata, India and their precarious relationships with the city. Their existence at the margins of society (socially, spatially, historically, and sometimes even geographically) tends to make them invisible actors in the production of contemporary urban spaces of Kolkata. This paper examines the role of class, caste, and gender in informing the spatial practices of these minoritized women that occur in the city’s liminal landscapes. These practices are quite distinct from those of women from middle- and upper-classes in Kolkata. Terms like “public women” or “bad women” or chhotolok (a common Bengali term used for people from lower classes or castes) have been used to represent and mark these working-class, lower caste women as deviant bodies in terms of their class, caste, and even sexualities. These labels are important to understand how these women have been represented historically in the urban history of Kolkata. By analyzing secondary literature, archival texts, songs, films, poems, and photographs, the paper investigates the following interrelated questions. First, how has the spatial organization of urban Kolkata historically determined the ways in which these women have navigated, engaged with, and attempted to overcome a wide array of structural and systemic constraints? And second, how have these women produced and applied various forms of situated spatial knowledge in the city’s liminal landscapes?
In terms of the paper’s structure, I start by analyzing the existing literature on gender and urban space in India. Thereafter, I lay a theoretical groundwork to elucidate the importance of adopting an intersectional lens to understand overlapping regimes of power that affect the life-worlds of minoritized bodies; in this case, the working-class lower caste women of Kolkata. Finally, I use a chronological approach to examine the changes in Kolkata’s urban fabric and its material culture that have significantly added to the precarities faced by these minoritized and marginalized women. In other words, I trace an alternate urban history of Kolkata through the eyes of these “common women.