The transfer of management accounting practices from London counting houses to the British North American fur trade

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries management accounting practices were transferred from London counting houses to the British North American fur trade. This transfer involved a set of practices that was more effective for implementing the strategy being pursued at the time than the set used with the previous strategy. London counting houses had developed management accounting practices to facilitate their backward integration strategies with America and the West Indies. Pivotal to this development was the requirement for sub-unit accountability and responsibility.

Lost houses of the Molonglo Valley : Canberra before the federal capital city

Three generations of settlers, convicts and emigrants occupied the valley of the Molonglo River for eighty years before Canberra was planted here in 1913. Stretched between the great houses of Duntroon and Yarralumla, they lived in some twenty cottages, almost all of which were demolished as the city centre and suburbs developed. This book recreates a lost world via archival sources that describe the land and houses, genealogical records showing the inhabitants and their family relationships around the district, and the work of official photographers and amateur artists who recorded the landscape as the city grew.--Publisher description.

Is there a museum in the house? Historic houses as a species of museum

The historic house museum exemplifies the enormous power of the museum idea to make specimens out of the material world. In fact, houses are an old museum form, very numerous and globally spread. This paper surveys the diverse inspirations of the species, its peculiar expressions, and its formative/deformative relationship to the English country house, via case studies in the UK, the US, and Australia. The paper identifies a characteristic museology that has developed to manage the conditions of house museums and suggests that the contemporary practice of heritage management derives an important strand of its direction from the traditions of house museology. Lastly, it considers the challenge, 'who wants house museums?'

Improving comfort levels in Darwin houses through passive design

Darwin`s climate is hot and humid and as a result the use of residential air-conditioners is high. Although this technology allows the occupant to achieve thermal comfort, its use contributes directly to an increase in the emission of greenhouse gases. More environmentally-friendly ways of achieving residential thermal comfort in this climate need to be investigated. One method is to improve the home`s passive design. The aim of this research was to increase the thermal comfort of typical Darwin homes without the use of air conditioning. Temperature data from two houses (lightweight elevated and concrete) was recorded over a nine-day period and used to validate a TRNSYS simulation model of each house. Simulations were run using these validated models and three months of climatic data (January—March) to evaluate various passive design strategies. The success of three strategies was analysed using PMV and PPD indicators. As a single strategy, it was found that ventilation and air velocity by far increased the level of thermal comfort for occupants of both houses. Although the passive design strategies of increased shading and insulation were beneficial, Darwin`s ovemight low temperature and humidity are still too high to reduce these levels within the house significantly without air conditioning.

Comparison of defects in houses constructed by owners and registered builders in Victoria 1988-1996

The lack of attention to quality control by house builders in the Australian State of Victoria has been a contentious issue for more than two decades. Ina an attempt to improve the quality of housing, various mechanisms such as voluntary and compulsory registration schemes have been adopted and discarded by industry-based organisations and government. While builders are encouraged to improve construction quality, little is known and published about the quality of housing produced by owner builders specifically during the seven year warranty period after construction is completed. With this in mind, this thesis presents research findings that compare the latent defects in houses built by owner builders with those of registered builders. Using inspection reports provided by Archicentre a sample of 1772 houses, of which 1002 were owner builders and 770 were registered builders

Migrant houses in Northcote, Melbourne, Australia, 1950‐1975

The data collection contains documentation of migrant houses in Northcote, Melbourne. It includes photographic documentation of the houses, interviews with the inhabitants, and drawings/sketches of the houses.

The focus of the research is on houses that were built between 1950 and 1975. These houses are themselves a product of the construction skills and processes of post-war immigrants and the waves of 1960s immigrants into Australia from Southern European countries. Typically, these houses are brick veneer and have a strict sense of order and endurance about their design and image of the facade. A series of outdoor and semi-outdoor spaces produce a complexity of inside-outside relations and make possible different lifestyles.

Stories of the migrant house suggest it is an example of what might be called an ‘eco-object’, an object through which ecological practices are interwoven with social and cultural orientations. The houses are also aesthetic artefacts that present a public image through their facades. The project has documented the ‘material history’ of the houses. It illustrates the significance of particular elements/processes including: the terrace, new nature (in the front garden and back vegetable garden), summer kitchen, ongoing construction and storage space.

Migrant Houses in the village Zavoj, Republic of Macedonia, 1988-2010

The focus of this data is on the transformation of the village Zavoj in the Republic of Macedonia, due to emigration from the village, recorded through the architectural changes to the houses in the village. The village had become by default a place for the accommodation of elderly people who did not want to join their offspring abroad in the cities of immigration, or in the fringe suburbs of nearby towns.

The data documents the ‘material history’ of the houses, and constitutes a longitudinal research project tracing the transformation of the architectural fabric of the village since 1988. It includes visual documentation such as photographs and drawings, and includes the houses as HOUSE-STATES as follows:

House-Traditional: Vernacular architecture still in use and maintained as a dwelling.
House-Construction: Buildings that are still being constructed, the house as ongoing construction site.
House-Fragment: An eMigrant house-fragment is juxtaposed with the vernacular dwelling. Typical and affordable techniques of single brick cavity and reinforced concrete structure are evident in the new fragment.
House-Closed: Many new houses have only one door and one window, height, size and volume are minimal; and are closed a lot of the time.
House-Ruin: Vernacular traditional dwellings that are deteriorating. Traditional vernacular dwellings are rarely renovated, reconstructed or repaired.

The data is complemented by several field-work methods including participant observation, interviews, documentation of the village as a totality, recording of oral histories and myths, festivities, and archival statistical research about the vicinity.

This dataset comprises photographic documentation, sketch/drawing documentation, digital interview recordings, and interview notes.

Data mining techniques for the assessment of factors contributing to the damage of residential houses in Australia

This paper reports on the preparation and management processes of inconsistent data on damage on residential houses in Victoria, Australia. There are no existing specific and fully relevant databases readily available except for the incomplete paper-based and electronic-based reports. Therefore, the extracting of information from the reports is complicated and time consuming in order to extract and include all the necessary information needed for analysis of damage on residential houses founded on expansive soils. Data mining is adopted to develop a database. Statistical methods and Artificial Intelligence methods are used to quantify the quality of data. The paper concludes that the development of such database could enable BHC to evaluate the usefulness of the reports prepared on the reported damage properties for further analysis.

The outward gaze and the inward gaze : houses of Italian and Chinese migrants in Melbourne

Not much has been said on the role of the architectural form of housing in the process of migrants’ settlement in the literature. This paper looks at this question through an exploration of the ‘outward gaze’ against the ‘inward gaze’. The outward gaze allows the investigation of exteriors of houses - assumed to be of Italian migrants - by looking at them only from the street, while the ‘inward gaze’ allows the investigation of the interiors of the house as well. In addition to housing exteriors explored in the streets of Melbourne, one Chinese migrant house was examined first through the outward gaze, as seen from the outside of the house by passer-bys, and then by the inward gaze, as seen only by household members and their guests. It is argued that ethnic representations described in the literature are only the visible side of the story, and that there is a lot more that is hidden from the public eye that can be exposed only by the inward gaze. Nevertheless, these unseen representations are vital to the settlement process and are often crucial to its success.

Occupant satisfaction of Star Rated Houses in Victoria, Australia

The Victorian government implemented legislation for all new houses to achieve a 6 star rating since May 2011. It is found that having a higher star rating would provide financial and environmental benefits, however the question remains- is this sufficient to satisfy the occupants living in such houses? Are the occupants actually satisfied with the amount of money they have invested in their home? This study investigates the level of satisfaction of occupants living in different star rated houses, and explores if there is a link between the star rating of the house and the satisfaction of the occupants living in such houses.