Cost factors affecting the design of ground-supported floors

The cost of concrete ground-supported floor slabs represents a significant proportion of the total capital cost of industrial projects. There are many structural design issues that impact on the concrete contractors’ method of construction. This is becoming more apparent with the use of new high-technology levelling and trowelling equipment, which has significantly increased the pour and finishing rates, resulting in much faster slab construction times compared with the traditional methods of construction. Selection of both the design and the construction methods exerts a large influence on the initial cost. According to the results of the research reported in this paper, it may be possible to save between 2-4 per cent of the building cost if high technology solutions are incorporated into the design and construction process. This paper investigates cost issues that impact on the design and construction of ground-supported floors for industrial buildings.

Using interaction signatures to find and label chairs and floors

The use of interaction signatures to recognize objects without considering the object's physical structure is discussed. Without object recognition, smart homes cannot make full use of video cameras because vision systems cannot provide object-related context to the human activities monitored. One important advantage of interaction signatures is that people frequently and repeatedly interact with household objects, so the system can build evidence for object locations and labels.

An analysis of embodied energy of office buildings by height

Aims to compare the energy embodied in office buildings varying in height from a few storeys to over 50 storeys. The energy embodied in substructure, superstructure and finishes elements was investigated for five Melbourne office buildings of the following heights: 3, 7, 15, 42 and 52 storeys. The two high-rise buildings have approximately 60 percent more energy embodied per unit gross floor area (GFA) in their materials than the low-rise buildings. While building height was found to dictate the amount of energy embodied in the “structure group” elements (upper floors, columns, internal walls, external walls and staircases), other elements such as substructure, roof, windows and finishes seemed uninfluenced.

Strategic design guidance on tall buildings in the Arab region

Globally, there has been enhanced media -and public interest in tall buildings following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York. In the Arab region, tall buildings have also become an important topic of debate. The Middle East is set to grow significantly over the next two decades. Soaring population and jobs growth will increase demands for the better use of residential and commercial office space. This is a vital issue for the growth in the economy of the region. The number of construction sites for tall buildings in the Arab world is staggering when compared to European developments. A statistical review of tall buildings has shown for example that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by the year 2010 will outnumber UK and Germany together in the number of 30+ floors buildings by reaching (446 UAE) compared to [243 UK(130) + Germany(113)]. Today high buildings are considered flagship developments not only in the Arab World but also worldwide that play an important part in regeneration. Tall buildings are likely to continue to be relevant to the master planning of areas with good public transport access and capacity. A successful tall building must adhere to a set of clear urban design guidelines that affect the following areas: edges, use, public space, urban integration and environmental factors. This paper addresses this issue. The challenge for architects, urban designers, and planners in the Arab world is to provide the right type and quality of new space and new place that won't undermine the question of identity. The paper explores the nature of tall buildings in the Arab region and provides examples of the positive and negative transformation of the urban environments in a number of locales. The paper concludes by drawing some guidelines for future development of tall buildings in the Arab World.

Retrieval

Retrieval was a site-specific performance installation which transformed five floors of the National Library of Australia in Nov-Dec 2010. Devised in collaboration with a team of 30 young performers, the production lead the audience on a quest deep into the library to retrieve priceless cultural memories before all was lost. Louise Morris working in collaboration with co-designer Matthew Aberline and the artistic team created the installed environments for the production. The production won numerous awards including Best New Project- Express Media and Best Original Work- CAT awards.

Role assessment of GIS analysis and its reliability while ranking urban sustainability using scenarios specific to regional climate, community and culture

Urban Sustainability expresses the level of conservation of a city while living a town or consuming its urban resources, but the measurement of urban sustainability depends on what are considered important indicators of conservation besides the permitted levels of consumption in accordance with adopted criteria. This criterion should have common factors that are shared for all the members tested or cities to be evaluated as in this particular case for Abu Dhabi, but also have specific factors that are related to the geographic place, community and culture, that is the measures of urban sustainability specific to a middle east climate, community and culture where GIS Vector and Raster analysis have a role or add a value in urban sustainability measurements or grading are considered herein. Scenarios were tested using various GIS data types to replicate urban history (ten years period), current status and expected future of Abu Dhabi City setting factors to climate, community needs and culture. The useful Vector or Raster GIS data sets that are related to every scenario where selected and analysed in the sense of how and how much it can benefit the urban sustainability ranking in quantity and quality tests, this besides assessing the suitable data nature, type and format, the important topology rules to be considered, the useful attributes to be added, the relationships which should be maintained between data types of a geo- database, and specify its usage in a specific scenario test, then setting weights to each and every data type representing some elements of a phenomenon related to urban suitability factor. The results of assessing the role of GIS analysis provided data collection specifications such as the measures of accuracy reliable to a certain type of GIS functional analysis used in an urban sustainability ranking scenario tests. This paper reflects the prior results of the research that is conducted to test the multidiscipline evaluation of urban sustainability using different indicator metrics, that implement vector GIS Analysis and Raster GIS analysis as basic tools to assist the evaluation and increase of its reliability besides assessing and decomposing it, after which a hypothetical implementation of the chosen evaluation model represented by various scenarios was implemented on the planned urban sustainability factors for a certain period of time to appraise the expected future grade of urban sustainability and come out with advises associated with scenarios for assuring gap filling and relative high urban future sustainability. The results this paper is reflecting are concentrating on the elements of vector and raster GIS analysis that assists the proper urban sustainability grading within the chosen model, the reliability of spatial data collected; analysis selected and resulted spatial information. Starting from selecting some important indicators to comprise the model which include regional culture, climate and community needs an example of what was used is Energy Demand & Consumption (Cooling systems). Thus, this factor is related to the climate and it‟s regional specific as the temperature varies around 30-45 degrees centigrade in city areas, GIS 3D Polygons of building data used to analyse the volume of buildings, attributes „building heights‟, estimate the number of floors from the equation, following energy demand was calculated and consumption for the unit volume, and compared it in scenario with possible sustainable energy supply or using different environmental friendly cooling systems this is followed by calculating the cooling system effects on an area unit selected to be 1 sq. km, combined with the level of greenery area, and open space, as represented by parks polygons, trees polygons, empty areas, pedestrian polygons and road surface area polygons. (initial measures showed that cooling system consumption can be reduced by around 15 -20 % with a well-planned building distributions, proper spaces and with using environmental friendly products and building material, temperature levels were also combined in the scenario extracted from satellite images as interpreted from thermal bands 3 times during the period of assessment. Other examples of the assessment of GIS analysis to urban sustainability took place included Waste Productivity, some effects of greenhouse gases measured by the intensity of road polygons and closeness to dwelling areas, industry areas as defined from land use land cover thematic maps produced from classified satellite images then vectors were created to take part in defining their role within the scenarios. City Noise and light intensity assessment was also investigated, as the region experiences rapid development and noise is magnified due to construction activities, closeness of the airports, and highways. The assessment investigated the measures taken by urban planners to reduce degradation or properly manage it. Finally as a conclusion tables were presented to reflect the scenario results in combination with GIS data types, analysis types, and the level of GIS data reliability to measure the sustainability level of a city related to cultural and regional demands.

Ground-based survey methods both overestimate and underestimate the abundance of suitable tree-cavities for the endangered Swift Parrot

Most cavity-dependent species select tree-cavities with a narrow range of characteristics so that only a small subset of available cavities may be suitable for any species. Most surveys for tree-cavities are done from the ground using binoculars to reduce effort, but this technique is prone to error. These errors are likely to contribute to the loss of the cavity resource when used to inform conservation efforts for cavity-dependent species. The Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor) is an endangered migratory bird threatened by ongoing removal of cavity-bearing trees by production forestry. We climbed trees with cavities used for nesting by Swift Parrots and determined that they prefer cavities with small entrances, deep chambers and wide floors. Such cavities are rare and occur in large trees that support higher than average numbers of tree-cavities. Importantly, cavities used by Swift Parrots were also likely to be both overestimated and underestimated using ground-based surveys, and without calibration by climbing, the size and direction of survey error could not be determined. We conclude that the most effective way to gain detailed information about the characteristics and abundance of tree-cavities is to climb a representative sample of trees to calibrate ground-based methods for a specific ecosystem.

The next step in energy rating: the international ETTV method vs. BCA Section-J glazing calculator

The most important prevention in minimizing energy transfer in commercial buildings is the treatment of glazing in the building facade. In a commercial building, while the impacts of roof, walls and floors on the overall heating and cooling loads of the building have low effects, glazing is likely to be the most important factor. This paper investigates the BCA Section-J glazing calculator and the ETTV (Envelope Thermal Transfer Value) methods and tries to look for differences as well as similarities in calculation of building envelopes energy performance. For this investigation, a hypothetical high-rise commercial building in Melbourne, Australia is considered when evaluating the energy performance of the envelope through these two methods. Both methods consider the U-Value of glass and wall materials as well as Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) and Shading Coefficient (SC) of the glass. Findings in this research project indicate differences and significant discrepancies between the BCA Section-J and ETTV methods in evaluating the energy performance of commercial building façades. Issues of calculation weaknesses are identified with the lack of air leakage and infiltration of a particular façade design or window to wall ratio (WWR). Suggestions have been made where improvement to the overall energy calculation through facades of a commercial building is needed.

Painterface: an integrated responsive architectural interface

Interface design is one of the main research areas in human-computer interaction (HCI). In computer science, many HCI re-searchers and designers explore novel interface designs with cutting-edge technology, but few investigate alternative interfaces for existing built environments, especially in the area of architecture. In this pa-per, we investigate alternative interface designs for existing architectural elements—such as walls, floors, and ceilings—that can be created with off-the-shelf materials. Instead of merely serving as discrete sensing and display devices integrated to an existing building’s surface, these liquid and thin materials act as interventions that can be ‘painted’ on a surface, transforming it into an architectural interface. This interface, Painterface, is a responsive material intervention that serves as an analogue, wall-type media interface that senses and responds to people’s actions. Painterface is equipped with three sensing and responsive capacities: touch, sound, and light. While the inter-face’s touch capacity performs tactile sensing, its sound-production and illumination capacities emit notes and light respectively. The out-comes of this research suggest the possibility of a simple, inexpensive, replaceable, and even disposable interface that could serve as an architectural intervention applicable to existing building surfaces.