Resistance of Cyanobacterial Fouling on Architectural Paint Films to Cleaning by Water Jet

Mortar panels painted with three different white acrylic coatings were exposed to the environment in urban (So Paulo) and rural (Pirassununga) sites in Brazil for 7 years. After this time, all panels were almost equally discoloured, and paint detachment was observed to only a small degree. The biofilms were composed mainly of cyanobacteria and filamentous fungi, principal genera being Gloeocapsa and Chroococcidiopsis of the cyanobacteria, and Cladosporium and Alternaria of the fungi. Two of the three paints in Pirassununga became covered by a pink film that contained red-encapsulated Gloeocapsa and clay particles. The third, an 800% elastomeric matt formulation, became discoloured with a grey, only slightly pink, film, although the same cyanobacteria were present. The levels of paint detachments from all films in both locations were low, with rating range of 0-1 of a maximum 5 (100% detachment). After high-pressure water jetting, paint detachments increased at both locations, up to 2 in Pirassununga and 3 in So Paulo. Discoloration decreased; L*A*B* analysis of surface discoloration showed that Delta E (alteration in colour from the original paint film) changed from 28-39 before cleaning to 13-16 afterwards. The pink coloration was not entirely removed from Pirassununga samples, suggesting that cyanobacterial cells are difficult to detach, and microscopic analysis of the biofilms confirmed that Gloeocapsa was still present as the principal contaminant on all surfaces, with Chroococcidiopsis being present as the second most common. Almost no fungi were detected after water jet application.

Dilthey: The hermeneutics of life and the universal aspirations of pedagogy

Dilthey claimed that first psychology and then hermeneutics played the foundational role for his philosophy of life, whose main practical goal is to develop a pedagogy or theory of education. Pedagogy needs help from h ethics to establish its ends, and from psychology to indicate it means. This paper intends to show the relationship between Dilthey's hermeneutics of life and his pedagogy. Dilthey's philosophy of life, in so far it adopts the hermeneutical procedure, engages in the understanding of or the search for the meaning of human socio-historical creations, by adopting a special type of relationship between parts and whole. It is exactly within this hermeneutical balance that we propose to extinguish any indication of a rupture, breach, or contradiction between the quest for universal principles of human behavior and :Dilthey's defense of the impossibility of constructing human moral tasks by means of universal principles. Dilthey began his ethics lectures at the University of Berlin in 1890. These lectures, published in 1958 by Herman Nohl in volume X of Dilthey's collected works, indicate the direction of the trajectory by which formative or social ethics are consolidated as a historical solution for reaching universal principles that can guide human purposes. This trajectory is a result of the distinctively human exercise of self-reflection, by means of which we can fulfill our destiny of manifesting and exteriorizing in time the immanent energy of the absolute spirit. We wish to show that it is possible that such a pedagogy can respect its universal task of orienting the historical development of the younger generation without directing this process by means of fixed and rigid aims.

Drawing and surface: freehand architectural drawing mediated by digital

This paper discusses the redefinition of the function of freehand drawing in the design process in view of intuitive digital media. It sets forth an interpretive analysis of an experiment with drawing on opaque tablets, carried out with a group of students of the Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo. After a brief review of the current debate on freehand drawing and the advent of digital media, we examine the experiment as a possible way to elicit facts that may contribute to the discussion. To this end, our research has concentrated on the intuitive use enabled by existing digital media. It is our intention that this empirical approximation becomes a pilot experiment for the use of digital tablets in the process of construction the gaze of the student in Architecture and Urbanism as a reflection on the different cognitive dimensions that constitute the practice of drawing and its reinterpretation to develop new ideas.