Architecture

Twenty-first century education of architects is further challenged by new markets, users and contractual situations and whole countries and civilizations which here-to-fore had little or no need for professional architectural services as practiced in already industrialized and developed nations.

As part of our efforts to document the cultural and architectural heritage of Alexandria, the Description of Alexandria team will begin publishing a regular issue, titled The Journal. Our first installment documents the Casa Di Riposo (The Retirement Community of Chatby). The Journal incorporates sketches of the retirement community, focusing on individual aspects of the building in addition to the place overall. Within the issue, you will also find information about the building’s history and the impact of the Italian community in Alexandria through the years. The Description of Alexandria team hopes you enjoy this issue and we look forward to providing further documentation of the cultural and architectural heritage of Alexandria in future issues of The Journal.

As part of our efforts to document the cultural and architectural heritage of Alexandria, the Description of Alexandria team publishes a regular issues, titled The Journal. This installment documents the Spahi Villa in Stanley. When most Alexandrians talk about the Stanley neighborhood, they are usually referring to the massive bridge that dominates the area and has become a major landmark in the modern city. However, sitting quietly across the natural bay that is the neighborhood’s namesake stands a fading villa, ignored by most, but holding its own. As the face of Alexandria shifts, the Spahi Villa watches on, a testament to a former life that is still hanging on.

“What if in one moment you would forget everything and you don’t know where you were, or how you got there, how could you tell who you are, how do you know where to go. Our cultural heritage stands as a pointer, would show us where we came from” Unknown source.

As part of our efforts to document the cultural and architectural heritage of Alexandria, the Description of Alexandria team publishes a regular issues, titled The Journal. This installment documents the Jesuit Cultural Center.

The word “Synagogue” comes from the Greek and means an assembling together. But the earliest actual place of worship of the Jews is known as the tabernacle, which mainly means the movable tent. “It is said that Maimonides (Mousa abou Ammar ibn Maimon Abid Allah) arrived with his family in Alexandria in 1165, where he was respectfully received by the rabbis Meshoullam and Anatoli. He probably remained in the city for about a year before moving on to Fustat (in Cairo now).

Heritage places are characteristically imbued with a multiplicity of meanings contingent on the specificities of the society, time and space in which such places are perceived. The interpretation of places also depends on the affordances of the representational medium through which these places are perceived and the ways in which such a medium is socially deployed and interpreted. Using the ancient settlement of Sirkap, located in modern-day Pakistan, as a case study, the present article demonstrates that a change in the representational medium entails a change in the interpretation of archaeological records. Most conventional historical accounts of Sirkap use two-dimensional site maps and city plans as the primary media to represent the urban fabric of the ancient settlement. These media lend themselves to interpreting the Block D Apsidal Temple complex as the dominant socio-religious structure in the affluent northern parts of the settlement. When the authors developed an interactive three-dimensional reconstruction of Sirkap using gaming technology, a medium that allows users, through their avatars, to explore the settlement from the standpoint of a pedestrian, it was immediately obvious that the aforementioned Block D Apsidal Temple complex did not demand such an interpretation. Instead, the authors argue that, at least in the affluent northern parts of the settlement, the northern gate, its adjacent fortifications, and the Block A stupa court were the dominant structures. Such an interpretation leads the authors to question the canonical understanding of the role of the state and its military apparatus in the socio-religious life of Sirkap.

Reports show that numerous heritage sites are in danger due to conflicts and heritage mismanagement in many parts of the world. Experts resorted to digital tools to attempt to conserve and preserve endangered and damaged sites. To that end, this applied research aims to develop a deep learning framework applied to the decaying tangible heritage of Historic Cairo, known as “the city of a thousand minarets.” The framework targets Cairo’s historic minaret styles as a test case study for the broader application of machine learning in digital heritage. It comprises a recognition and classification task, which uses a deep learning segmentation model trained on two data sets representing the two most dominant minaret styles in the city, namely Mamluk and Ottoman minarets. The proposed approach can potentially aid in creating a multi-dimensional model from just a photograph of a historic building, which can help in quickly cataloging and documenting a historic building or element. The study also sheds light on the obstacles preventing the exploration and implementation of deep learning techniques in digital heritage.

Multimodal models that combine different media like text,  image, audio, and graph have revolutionised the architectural design process, which could provide automated solutions to assist the architects during the early design stages. Recent studies use Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to learn topological information and Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) to learn spatial information from floorplans. This paper proposes a deep learning multimodal model incorporating GNNs and the Stable Diffusion model to learn the floorplan's topological and spatial information. The authors trained a Stable Diffusion model on samples from the RPLAN dataset. They used graph embedding for conditional generation and experimented with three approaches to whole-graph embedding techniques. The proposed Stable Diffusion model maps the user input, a graph representing the room types and their relationships, to the output, the predicted floorplans, as a raster image. The Graph2Vec and contrastive learning methods generate superior representational capabilities and yield good and comparable results in both computationally derived scores and evaluations conducted by human assessors, compared to the Graph Encoder-CNN Decoder.

Purpose-The aim is to examine, critique, and synthesize commonly used methodological approaches that capture middle-aged children's experiences of their physical environments. Design/methodology/approach-The systematic review identified 174 empirical studies from peer-reviewed journals published in English between 2014 and 2023. Fifty-two studies met the inclusion criteria. A thematic analysis (1) identified study characteristics and common methodological approaches, (2) synthesized the literature to reveal major themes and trends, and (3) pointed out significant research gaps. Findings-Qualitative methods, combining traditional and participatory approaches, are most effective in capturing children's spatial experiences. Participatory methods offer more authentic insights and reduce power imbalances compared to traditional methods. Place-based methods, such as child-led walks and participant observations, are particularly valuable for capturing the multidimensional and sensory aspects of children's interactions with their environments. Research limitations/implications-The choice of keywords, selected databases, and the English-language criterion restricted the number of captured reviewed articles that might contribute to the topic. Originality/value-This systematic review contributes to a deeper understanding of the methodological approaches used in researching middle-aged children's experiences of their physical environments. It highlights common strategies used with children to communicate their experience of place, identifying the strengths and limitations of each method. Additionally, the review discusses the various aspects of space revealed by different methods.

The study compared IAQ, thermal quality, and lighting quality between 5 different office types in LEED-certified buildings in relation to employees' environmental satisfaction and their job performance. This was to provide workplaces where workers in each specific office environment could be provided with appropriate office settings regarding these IEQ criteria when organizations comply with LEED standards. The five types of office included private enclosed, private shared, open-plan with high cubicle over 5′, open-plan with low cubicle lower than 5′, and open-plan with no partitions (bullpen) offices. The study found IAQ enhanced workers' job performance in enclosed private offices more than both high cubicles and low cubicles. All four office types had higher satisfaction with the amount of light and visual comfort of light as well as more enhancement with job performance due to lighting quality than high cubicles. There was no difference in thermal quality between the five office types. IAQ and lighting quality were not different between enclosed private, enclosed shared, and bullpen office types, either. The study findings suggest a careful workplace design considering the height of partitions in LEED-certified buildings to improve employee's environmental satisfaction and job performance.