157 research outputs found
"Characters in Search of an Author". Human figures and storytelling in architectural design communication
No full textIn a presentation drawing, human figures have a natural attitude to work as an optical reference to measure the design space and to provide a sort of instructions to use it, but over the centuries, their agency has been multifaceted. The practice of photo-collages, which was fed by photography and cinema development, has recently spread thank to the digital techniques and human figures in architecture renderings seem to have become as fundamental as a top-modes for a fashion magazine cover. Besides providing a recognizable mark to the design entry, selecting peculiar figures can visually connect a design to a specific place and time, working as a cultural, situationist and sensorial agent. This seems to be true particularly for the cultural typologies. In renderings of museums, theatres or libraries, often ordinary people are integrated by figures of artworks and celebrities, like in Alberto Campo Baeza and Raphael Gabrion’s design for a Louvre new building in Lievin, France, whose figures are placed in the renderings not only to explain the functions but also to remind the ambiguous threshold between representation and reality
La rampa e il piano inclinato nella città del Novecento
No full textUsati tradizionalmente per lo spostamento di animali, veicoli e merci, la rampa e il piano inclinato hanno accompagnato la crescita degli spazi urbani nel XX secolo e lo sviluppo di tipologie innovative, che segnano la transizione architettonica dal paradigma industriale a quello ambientale. Attraverso la rilettura di una serie di progetti chiave, l’autore descrive la loro evoluzione da dispositivi funzionali a estetici ed etici, rivelando il loro ruolo nel rappresentare e promuovere differenti idee di umanità.Traditionally used for the movement of animals, vehicles and goods, the ramp and the inclined plane accompanied both the growth of urban spaces in the twentieth century and the development of innovative typologies, which marked the architectural transition from the industrial paradigm to the environmental one. Through the reinterpretation of a series of key designs, the author describes their evolution from functional to aesthetic and ethical devices, revealing their role in representing and promoting different ideas of humanity
Hierarchical image analysis using Radon Transform: an application to error concealment
No full textIn this contribution, we show how a hierarchical edge image analysis at macroblock, block and subblock levels allows identifying prominent directional image components. The analysis, performed in the Radon domain, selects the scale level at which the image features present a directional structure that can be better reconstructed by a directional spatial interpolation. When the directional information is known at the decoder side it can drive the spatial error concealment. The experimental results, referring to the case of H.264 coded video, show the significant improvement of the decoded video visual quality achievable by the described technique. © 2005 IEEE
Knowing (by) building. Full-scale models in design space envisioning
No full textItalian architect Umberto Riva has often expressed his secret wish to be allowed to build a former project, experience it and demolish it in order to re-build it with an higher acknowledge. Such a rare privileged condition is partially achieved by architect’s working back on his works years later or by his direct decisional engaging in the building phases. In the continuous research for the most exhaustive and involving envisioning tool, able both to give back the artist a wide spatial knowledge of his own design and the client a heartening image of his endeavour, full-scale modelling can offer a very realistic experience of a project. Mock-ups were used by Renaissance and Baroque artists to design the visual corrections to be applied to their geometric proportionated buildings, but they can be conceived as a direct-forming tool as they can convey unpredictable feed-backs to their author as well as productively involving clients in a participated design process
‘Captions Not Included’. Notes on the Architects and ‘Their’ Images
No full textArchitects not only produce images of their projects but also take pictures of the reality around them, eventually appropriating of pictures made by others. In particular, this process of mediated assimilation of reality is quite hard to define as it follows many different criteria that tend to turn the pictures themselves into analogical devices oriented to the design development. Often, a fundamental step of the process is to make them wordless images by removing (intentionally or not) the caption. This action opens the pictures to a wide range of interpretations and uses (as well as misinterpretations and abuses) that are part of the omnivorous creative process of the architects. In order to frame the phenomenology of this process in the extended field of the 20th century art production, this article proposes a chaotic assemblage of major and minor episodes whose considerations indirectly reflects both the mostly unconscious process of the architects and the ‘under-construction’ mental scheme of the author. In this sense, this early, partial, subjective map provides no answers but questions and conjectural work-areas to be tested through further connections and developments
Grids and Squared Paper in Renaissance Architecture
No full textSquared and graph paper played an important role in the practice of architects, both in the analysis and measuring of the human environment and ancient monuments, and in the design process. They have been addressing not only the graphic procedures but also the architects’ way of thinking, like every tool does. In the centuries that preceded the industrial production of squared paper, which began by the late 18th century, drawing a grid onto a sheet often involved the superimposition of graphic, procedural and philosophical intentions at one time.
The idea of the square grid in architecture is generally linked to Greek civilization, mathematics, the Hippodamian city, and the square module of Hellenistic temples, but is also intertwined with the Roman centuriatio and the medieval ad quadratum composition. It is possible that in antiquity architects used squared panel as a design support but squared paper did not appear before the Renaissance. Even at that time, it was mainly used by artisans who worked with fabrics and tapestries. Apart from the perspective applications of the grid, the painters learnt to transfer and enlarge small sketches onto the walls by associating grids of different sizes, while Albrecht Dürer, in some famous engravings, adopted it as a graduated picture plane to illustrate how to reproduce three-dimensional elements onto a two-dimensional support in a pseudo-scientific way.
The architects, who used to entrust their design process to a few ratios between integers, used the grid as a modular and operational support for their drawings. Filarete used two types of square grid – one for the proportions and one for the scale drawing – while Bramante is the author of the famous half-plan for the new church of St. Peter drawn onto a grid, whose meaning and role is quite controversial. Certainly, Bramante also has the merit of teaching his numerous collaborators, such as Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassarre Peruzzi, the benefits of such a working method, which is testified by some of their designs. After his Italian travel, Philibert De l'Orme promoted the use of the square grid, too, and, in Nouvelle Inventions (1567), superimposes a grid on the table of the architectural orders and shows how to proportion the section of a church starting from a 7x7 square grid. Promoted by the circulation of treatises and prints, other innovative uses of the squared paper can be found in the work of north-European artists and gardeners, like Hans Vredeman de Vries and other Dutch architects who applied this tool to different design fields.
This article focuses on the role squared paper had in the Renaissance decades in contributing to the transition from an organic-anthropometric paradigm to a mechanical-mathematical one. The squared paper gradually became a specific design environment alternative to the Vitruvian addresses in which to size and assemble the components of architecture already disassembled and organized in the illustrated treatises. In following the operational logic of movable type printing and proto-industrial production, this design process became distinctive of the engineering schools, as already testified by the positions of Bernardo Vittone, in Istruzioni elementari and Istruzioni Diverse, contributing to their historical separation from the arts academy
The Rear as an Unintentional Façade. The Farnesina ai Baullari in Rome
No full textThe design for Thomas Le Roy’s palace in Rome, although conditioned by the small, irregular site, was conceived as a C-shape plan around a square courtyard, in order to provide a sophisticated, celebrative route leading from the opaque, solid facade in Vicolo dell’Aquila to the loggia at the noble floor. When the building was still under construction, Paul III Farnese promoted urban works that caused the demolition of part of the insula the palace belonged to and exhibited its previously hidden rear on Via dei Baullari, turning it into the most visible part of the palace. From that moment onwards, both the works of the different owners and the graphical interpretations provided by artists from XVII to XIX century contributed to connote the verso as the new recto. While the original experience of the palace is being gradually lost, the rear is elected as an unintentional façade, conditioning the Farnesina’s role and development till the XX century
Imaging techniques in ALS
No full textAmyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by degeneration of both upper and lower motor neuron located in the spinal cord and brainstem. Diagnosis of ALS is predominantly clinical, nevertheless, electromyography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) may provide support. Several advanced MRI techniques have been proven useful for ALS diagnosis and, indeed, the combination of different MRI techniques demonstrated an improvement in sensitivity and specificity as far as 90%. This review focus on the imaging techniques currently used in the diagnosis and management of ALS with brief considerations on future applications
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