Lake Shore Drive Apartments

[Book] The potential of electric light as a new building “material” was recognized in the 1920s and became a useful design tool by the mid-century. Skillful lighting allowed for theatricality, narrative, and a new emphasis on structure and space. The Structure of Light tells the story of the career of Richard Kelly, the field’s most influential figure. Six historians, architects, and practitioners explore Kelly’s unparalleled influence on modern architecture and his lighting designs for some of the 20th century’s most iconic buildings: Philip Johnson’s Glass House; Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum; Eero Saarinen’s GM Technical Center; and Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, among many others. This beautifully illustrated history demonstrates the range of applications, building types, and artistic solutions he employed to achieve a “nocturnal modernity” that would render buildings evocatively different at night. The survival of Kelly’s rich correspondence and extensive diaries allows an in-depth look at the triumphs and uncertainties of a young profession in the making. The first book to focus on the contributions of a master in the field of architectural lighting, this fascinating volume celebrates the practice’s significance in modern design.

The Euro-American psyche and the imaging of Samoa in the early 20th century

Drawing on English language sources and material from Western Samoa (now Samoa), this examination of photographically illustrated serial encyclopaedia and magazines proposes an alternative historical analysis of the colonial photographs of Samoa, the most extensively covered field in Oceanic photographic studies. Photographs published between the 1890s and World War II were not necessarily from that era, and despite claims in the text of illustrated publications of an unchanged, enduring, archaic tradition in Samoa, the amazing variety of content and subject matter often offered contradictory evidence, depicting a modern, adaptive and progressive Samoa. Contrary to orthodox historical analysis, the images of Samoa in illustrated magazines and encyclopaedia were not limited to a small, repetitive gallery of partially clothed women and costumed chiefs.

Re-strengthening 20th century architectural heritage : A case study of Brisbane City Hall restoration

Restoring old buildings to conform the current building policies and standards is a great challenge to engineers and architects. The restoration of the Brisbane City Hall, a heritage building listed by the State of Queensland in Australia, developed an innovative approach to upgrade the building using the method called ‘concrete overlay’ following the guidelines of both the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the Burra Charter of Australia. Concrete overlay is a new method of structural strengthening by drilling new reinforcement and placing new concrete on top of the existing structure, akin to a bone transplant or bone grafting in the case of a human being. This method is popularly used for newer bridges which have suffered load stresses. However, this method had never been used on any heritage buildings which were built on different conditions and standards. The compatibility of this method is currently being monitored. Most of the modern historic buildings are rapidly deteriorating and require immediate interventions in order to be saved. As most of these heritage buildings are on the stage of advanced deterioration, significant attempts are being made and several innovations are being applied to upgrade these structures to conform with the current building requirements. To date, the knowledge and literature in regarding ‘concrete cancer’ in relation to rehabilitating these reinforced concrete heritage structures is significantly lacking. It is hoped that the method of concrete overlay and the case study of Brisbane City Hall restoration will contribute to the development of restoration techniques and policies for Modern Heritage Buildings.

Fashion, the body and technology : tracing early 20th century techno-utopian ideas, aesthetics and impulses in 21st century wearable technology

‘Wearable technology’, or the use of specialist technology in garments, is promoted by the electronics industry as the next frontier of fashion. However the story of wearable technology’s relationship with fashion begins neither with the development of miniaturised computers in the 1970s nor with sophisticated ‘smart textiles’ of the twenty-first century, despite what much of the rhetoric suggests. This study examines wearable technology against a longer history of fashion, highlighted by the influential techno-sartorial experiments of a group of early twentieth century avant-gardes including Italian Futurists Giacomo Balla and F.T. Marinetti, Russian Constructivists Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova, and Paris-based Cubist, Sonia Delaunay. Through the interdisciplinary framework of fashion studies, the thesis provides a fuller picture of wearable technology framed by the idea of utopia. Using comparative analysis, and applying the theoretical formulations of Fredric Jameson, Louis Marin and Michael Carter, the thesis traces the appearance of three techno-utopian themes from their origins in the machine age experiments of Balla, Marinetti, Stepanova, Popova and Delaunay to their twenty-first century reappearance in a dozen wearable technology projects. By exploring the central thesis that contemporary wearable technology resurrects the techno-utopian ideas and expressions of the early twentieth century, the study concludes that the abiding utopian impetus to embed technology in the aesthetics (prints, silhouettes, and fabrication) and functionality of fashion is to unify subject, society and environment under a totalising technological order.

Business busts and U.S. auditors' interest in fraud detection: Evidence from the 20th century

We find evidence that U.S. auditors increased their attention to fraud detection during or immediately after the economic contractions of the 20th century, based on a content analysis of the 12 volumes of the 20th-century auditing reference series Montgomery’s Auditing. Contractions, however, do not seem to have affected auditors’ attention to the formal goal of fraud detection. The study suggests that auditors’ aversion to the heightened risks of fraud during economic downturns leads them to focus more on fraud detection at those times regardless of the particular guidance in formal audit standards. This study is the first to find some evidence of a recession-influenced difference between fraud detection practices and formal fraud detection goals.

Impediments to Cosmopolitan Engagement: Technology and Late-Modern Cosmopolitanism

What characterises late modern variety of cosmopolitanism from its classical predecessors is the inherent connection between cosmopolitanism and technology. Technology enables a vital dimension of the cosmopolitan experience – to move beyond the cosmopolitan imagination to enable active, direct engagement with other cultures. Different types of technologies contribute to cosmopolitan practice but in this paper we focus on a specific set of these enabling technologies: technologies which play a crucial role in regulating the free movement of people and populations. We briefly examine how three of the great surveillance states of the 20th century – Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the German Democratic Republic – used hightech solutions in pursuing an anti-cosmopolitanism. We suggest that in the period from 2001 to the present, important elements of the cosmopolitan ethos are being closed down, and once again high-tech is intimately connected to this moment. The increasing (and proposed) use of identity cards, biometric identification systems, ITS and GIS all work to make the globalised world much harder to traverse and inhibit the full expression and experience of cosmopolitanism. The result of these trends may be that the type of cosmopolitan sentiment exhibited in western countries is an ersatz, emptied out variety with little political-ethical robustness.

Writing and the disappearance of architecture theory

One of the first architects to write a book was Vitruvius, the Roman architect who published De Architectura in the 1st century BC, a book that would become the foundation for Western Architectural Thought. When I was an undergraduate, the history of architecture was taught via a series of books by architects that were at least, if not more significant than the buildings. From De Architectura to Alberti’s rejoinder De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building) in the fifteenth century, Palladio’s Quattro Libri (The Four Books of Architecture) 1570, and Laugier’s Essai sur l'Architecture 1753. In the 1990s, we treasured the heroic architecture books of the 20th century from Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, to Aldo Rossi’s the Architecture of the City, Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York, and of course Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas which for me was the very starting point for the postmodern movement.

Sense of modern heritage

As the society matures, there was an increasing pressure to preserve historic buildings. The economic cost in maintaining these important heritage legacies has become the prime consideration of every state. Dedicated intelligent monitoring systems supplementing the traditional building inspections will enable the stakeholder to carry out not only timely reactive response but also plan the maintenance in a more vigilant approach; thus, preventing further degradation which was very costly and difficult to address if neglected. The application of the intelligent structural health monitoring system in this case studies of ‘modern heritage’ buildings is on its infancy but it is an innovative approach in building maintenance. ‘Modern heritage’ buildings were the product of technological change and were made of synthetic materials such as reinforced concrete and steel. Architectural buildings that was very common in Oceania and The Pacific. Engineering problems that arose from this type of building calls for immediate engineering solution since the deterioration rate is exponential. The application of this newly emerging monitoring system will improve the traditional maintenance system on heritage conservation. Savings in time and resources can be achieved if only pathological results were on hand. This case study will validate that approach. This publication will serve as a position paper to the on-going research regarding application of (Structural Health Monitoring) SHM systems to heritage buildings in Brisbane, Australia. It will be investigated with the application of the SHM systems and devices to validate the integrity of the recent structural restoration of the newly re-strengthened heritage building, the Brisbane City Hall.

Landscape Architecture History Seminar Notes 2015

These notes cover landscape design from ancient times to the early 20th century and were compiled from seminars delivered by the author for the DEB202 Introducing Design History unit at QUT.

Landscape landscapism

Clearly the world is a different place to what it was 40 years ago, and much of that difference can be characterised as disturbances to the local on the basis of globalism, particularly due to changes in communication and information technology. Like it did to modernism before it, this societal change calls for, or more aptly calls to, designers to reformulate their practices to reflect this significant new paradigm. This is a rationale that has driven much avant-garde activity in the 20th century, and in this case, 'landscape urbanism' in the 21st. In the case of this discussion, it is important to recognise the avant-garde cycle at work in the development of the discipline, not only to contextualise its production, but so that its greatest values can be welcomed: despite the propaganda and arrogance, important revisions occurred to the canons after all the -isms. That said, I do find myself asking: do we need another -ism?