Reality bites: Documentary photography and architectural realism = Fragmentos de realidad: Fotografía documental y realismo en arquitectura

En el día de hoy nos enfrentamos a una serie de desafíos económicos, geopolíticos y ambientales que apuntan hacia una transformación profunda del mundo tal y como lo conocemos. La arquitectura esta – siempre lo ha estado – imbricada en todos estos problemas. En nuestra actual condición de recursos limitados e injusticia global surge la necesidad de superar la dicotomía entre progreso y tradición, entre innovación y preservación – la urgencia de redefinir incluso cada uno de estos términos. Los tipos de crisis que encaramos ahora no se resolverán con mas tecnología y más crecimiento – se necesita también una profunda reevaluación de nuestros sistemas de valores e incluso de nuestra sensibilidad. En este contexto, la humilde contribución de esta tesis consiste en proponer la idea de un realismo en arquitectura, entendido como una actitud progresista y atenta a lo que ya existe, dispuesta a abrir los ojos al presente, a las condiciones y los problemas reales que nos rodean. Pensando en esta idea, resulta evidente que si bien el realismo carece de una definición clara en el campo de la arquitectura hoy, cuenta sin embargo con numerosos precedentes parciales, entre ellos algunos de los más notorios episodios de la historia de la arquitectura reciente. Al intentar confeccionar una lista provisional de arquitectos realistas en el último siglo, otro hecho se nos presenta: muchos, por no decir todos estos arquitectos, comparten una fijación por la fotografía, bien apropiándose del trabajo de fotógrafos contemporáneos, bien tomando sus propias imágenes como una forma de mirar fuera de sus estudios e incorporar la realidad del medio construido a sus proyectos. Parece entonces lógico pensar que la arquitectura, como disciplina visual, ha acudido a otra disciplina visual en búsqueda de su propia respuesta al problema del realismo – dentro de este campo la fotografía reverbera con la arquitectura especialmente, ya que ambas son consideradas simultáneamente como practicas utilitarias y como parte de las bellas artes. Parece entonces lógico el organizar la investigación como una serie de casos, con la esperanza de que la acumulación de diversas instancias en las que la arquitectura ha acudido a la fotografía en su búsqueda de un realismo arrojara luz sobre las ideas más generales a debate. Por tanto, cada uno de los episodios en este texto se examina en sus propios términos, si bien una serie de interconexiones emergen a medida que el estudio procede con un suave orden cronológico. Hacia el final del texto cuestiones más grandes recobran protagonismo, a medida que las repercusiones políticas de nuestro estudio se hacen más patentes y comenzamos a interrogar las implicaciones contemporáneas y el potencial futuro de nuestra discusión sobre el realismo. ABSTRACT Today we are faced with a series of economic, geopolitical and environmental challenges that outline a deep transformation of the world as we know it. Architecture is – it has always been – ingrained in all of these problems. In our current condition of limited resources and global inequalities there is a necessity to overcome the dichotomy between progress and tradition, between innovation and preservation – an urgency to even redefine these terms altogether. The types of crises that we are facing will not be solved with more technology and more growth – a deep reevaluation of our systems of values and our sensibilities are also needed. In this context, the humble contribution of this text is to put forward the idea of an architectural realism, understood as an attitude that is both progressive and attentive to what is already in place, willing to open its eyes to the present and accept the real conditions and problems around us. In thinking about this prospect, it immediately becomes apparent that even if realism lacks a clear definition in the field of architecture today, there are numerous partial precedents for it, among them some of the most notorious episodes in the recent history of architecture. In crafting a tentative list of realist architects in the last century, another realization takes place: many, not to say all of these architects, have had a fixation with photography, either appropriating the work of contemporary photographers or taking photographs themselves as a way to look out their windows and bring the reality of the built environment into their practices. It seems then logical to think that architecture, as a visual discipline, has looked to other visual disciplines in search for its own take on the problem of realism – within this field, photography specially resonates with architecture, since both are regarded simultaneously as utilitarian practices and belonging to the fine arts. The idea then becomes to organize the research as a series of cases, with the hope that the accumulation of diverse instances in which architecture has approached photography in its realist drive will shed some light on the larger ideas at stake. Therefore, each of the episodes in this text is examined on its own terms, with a series of interconnections slowly emerging as our survey proceeds with a soft chronologic order. Towards the end of the study, larger issues regain relevance as the political repercussions of our inquiry become more pressing and we start to question the contemporary implications and future potentials of our discussion on realism.

Exploring the link between sustainability reporting and sustainability management: a conceptual framework.

Sustainability managementand Sustainability Reporting (SR) practices have dramatically increased during the last two decades, raising important questions about the relationship between internal practices and external communication. Previous literature on SR has almost exclusively highlighted the role of institutional and stakeholder pressures in driving its adoption. However, as surveys among reporters also identify internal benefits of SR, its full role for company-level sustainability management remains unclear. In order to address this question, we develop a framework accounting for four SR configurations, stemming from different levels of relative importance of external and internal motives for SR. A multiple case study involving four large Spanish companies serves to illustrate the framework and to identify company-level factors that act both as enablers and barriers of SR internal relevance. We conclude that motivations for SR, along with such internal factors, decisively influence its contribution to sustainability management.

Influence of Tillage and Liming on N2O emission from a rainfed crop

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the main greenhouse gas (GHG) produced by agricultural soils due to microbial processes. The application of N fertilizers is associated with an increase of N2O losses. However, it is possible to mitigate these emissions by the introduction of adequate management practices (Snyder et al., 2009). Soil conservation practices (i.e.no tillage, NT) have recently become widespread because they promote several positive effects (increases in soil organic carbonand soil fertility, reduction of soil erosion, etc). In terms of GHG emissions, there is no consensus in the literature on the effects of tillage on N2O. Several studies found that NT can produce greater (Baggs et al., 2003), lower (Malhi et al., 2006) or similar (Grandey et al., 2006) N2O emissions compared to traditional tillage (TT). This large uncertainty is associated with the duration of tillage practices and climatic variability. Liming is widely use to solve problems of soil acidity (Al toxicity, yield penalties, etc). Several studies show a decrease in N2O emissions with liming (Barton et al., 2013) whereas no significant effects or increases were observed in others (Galbally et al., 2010). The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of tillage (NT vs TT) and liming application or not of Ca-amendment) on N2O emissions from an acid soil during a rainfed crop.

Guidelines for Linked Data generation and publication: an example in building energy consumption

Linked Data is the key paradigm of the Semantic Web, a new generation of the World Wide Web that promises to bring meaning (semantics) to data. A large number of both public and private organizations have published their data following the Linked Data principles, or have done so with data from other organizations. To this extent, since the generation and publication of Linked Data are intensive engineering processes that require high attention in order to achieve high quality, and since experience has shown that existing general guidelines are not always sufficient to be applied to every domain, this paper presents a set of guidelines for generating and publishing Linked Data in the context of energy consumption in buildings (one aspect of Building Information Models). These guidelines offer a comprehensive description of the tasks to perform, including a list of steps, tools that help in achieving the task, various alternatives for performing the task, and best practices and recommendations. Furthermore, this paper presents a complete example on the generation and publication of Linked Data about energy consumption in buildings, following the presented guidelines, in which the energy consumption data of council sites (e.g., buildings and lights) belonging to the Leeds City Council jurisdiction have been generated and published as Linked Data.

Post-­‐occupancy monitoring of two flats in Madrid: development and assessment of a mixed methods methodology

Recent research has shown large differences between the expected and the actual energy consumption in buildings. The differences have been attributed partially, to the assumptions made during the design phase of buildings when simulation methods are employed. More accurate occupancy profiles on building operation could help to carry out more precise building performance calculations. This study focuses on the post-occupancy evaluation of two apartments, one renovated and one non renovated, in Madrid within the same building complex. The aim of this paper is to present an application of the mixed-methods methodology (Creswell, 2007) to assess thermal comfort and occupancy practices used in the case studies, and to discuss the shortcomings and opportunities associated with it. The mixed-methods methodology offers strategies for integrating qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate complex phenomena. This approach is expected to contribute to the growing knowledge of occupants’ behaviour and building performance by explaining the differences observed between energy consumption and thermal comfort in relation to people’s saving and comfort practices and the related experiences, preferences and values.

A multi-scale analysis of transforming agricultural markets in the context of globalization: implications for natural resources, food prices and rural poverty in Latin America

Vivimos una época en la que el mundo se transforma aceleradamente. La globalización está siguiendo un curso imparable, la población mundial así como la población urbana siguen creciendo, y en los países emergentes los ingresos promedios aumentan, resultando en un cambio también acelerado de las dietas y hábitos alimentarios. En conjunto esos factores están causando un aumento fundamental de la demanda de alimentos. Junto con la apertura de los mercados agrícolas, estos procesos han provocado un crecimiento del comercio internacional de alimentos durante la última década. Dado que muchos países de América Latina están dotados de abundancia de recursos naturales, estas tendencias han producido un crecimiento rápido de las exportaciones de bienes primarios desde América Latina al resto del mundo. En sólo 30 años la participación en el mercado agrícola de América Latina casi se ha duplicado, desde 10% en 1980 a 18% en 2010. Este aumento del comercio agrícola ha dado lugar a un debate sobre una serie de cuestiones cruciales relacionadas con los impactos del comercio en la seguridad alimentaria mundial, en el medio ambiente o en la reducción de la pobreza rural en países en desarrollo. Esta tesis aplica un marco integrado para analizar varios impactos relacionados con la transformación de los mercados agrícolas y los mercados rurales debidos a la globalización y, en particular, al progresivo aumento del comercio internacional. En concreto, la tesis aborda los siguientes temas: En primer lugar, la producción mundial de alimentos tendrá que aumentar considerablemente para poder satisfacer la demanda de una población mundial de 9000 millones personas en 2050, lo cual plantea grandes desafíos sobre los sistemas de la producción de alimentos. Alcanzar este logro, sin comprometer la integridad del medio ambiente en regiones exportadoras, es un reto aún mayor. En este contexto, la tesis analiza los efectos de la liberalización del comercio mundial, considerando distintas tecnologías de producción agraria, sobre unos indicadores de seguridad alimentaria en diferentes regiones del mundo y sobre distintos indicadores ambientales, teniendo en cuenta escalas diferentes en América Latina y el Caribe. La tesis utiliza el modelo “International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT)” – un modelo dinámico de equilibrio parcial del sector agrícola a escala global – para modelar la apertura de los mercados agrícolas así como diferentes escenarios de la producción hasta el año 2050. Los resultados del modelo están vinculados a modelos biofísicos para poder evaluar los cambios en la huella hídrica y la calidad del agua, así como para cuantificar los impactos del cambio en el uso del suelo sobre la biodiversidad y los stocks de carbono en 2050. Los resultados indican que la apertura de los mercados agrícolas es muy importante para mejorar la seguridad alimentaria a nivel mundial, sin embargo, produce también presiones ambientales indeseables en algunas regiones de América Latina. Contrastando dos escenarios que consideran distintas modos de producción, la expansión de la tierra agrícola frente a un escenario de la producción más intensiva, se demuestra que las mejoras de productividad son generalmente superiores a la expansión de las tierras agrícolas, desde un punto de vista económico e ambiental. En cambio, los escenarios de intensificación sostenible no sólo hacen posible una mayor producción de alimentos, sino que también generan menos impactos medioambientales que los otros escenarios futuros en todas sus dimensiones: biodiversidad, carbono, emisiones de nitratos y uso del agua. El análisis muestra que hay un “trade-off” entre el objetivo de alcanzar la sostenibilidad ambiental y el objetivo de la seguridad alimentaria, independiente del manejo agrícola en el futuro. En segundo lugar, a la luz de la reciente crisis de los precios de alimentos en los años 2007/08, la tesis analiza los impactos de la apertura de los mercados agrícolas en la transmisión de precios de los alimentos en seis países de América Latina: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México y el Perú. Para identificar las posibles relaciones de cointegración entre los índices de precios al consumidor de alimentos y los índices de precios de agrarios internacionales, sujetos a diferentes grados de apertura de mercados agrícolas en los seis países de América Latina, se utiliza un modelo simple de corrección de error (single equation error correction). Los resultados indican que la integración global de los mercados agrícolas ha dado lugar a diferentes tasas de transmisión de precios en los países investigados. Sobre todo en el corto plazo, las tasas de transmisión dependen del grado de apertura comercial, mientras que en el largo plazo las tasas de transmisión son elevadas, pero en gran medida independientes del régimen de comercio. Por lo tanto, durante un período de shocks de precios mundiales una mayor apertura del comercio trae consigo más inestabilidad de los precios domésticos a corto plazo y la resultante persistencia en el largo plazo. Sin embargo, estos resultados no verifican necesariamente la utilidad de las políticas comerciales, aplicadas frecuentemente por los gobiernos para amortiguar los shocks de precios. Primero, porque existe un riesgo considerable de volatilidad de los precios debido a cambios bruscos de la oferta nacional si se promueve la autosuficiencia en el país; y segundo, la política de proteccionismo asume el riesgo de excluir el país de participar en las cadenas de suministro de alto valor del sector agrícola, y por lo tanto esa política podría obstaculizar el desarrollo económico. Sin embargo, es indispensable establecer políticas efectivas para reducir la vulnerabilidad de los hogares a los aumentos repentinos de precios de alimentos, lo cual requiere una planificación gubernamental precisa con el presupuesto requerido disponible. En tercer lugar, la globalización afecta a la estructura de una economía y, por medios distintos, la distribución de los ingreso en un país. Perú sirve como ejemplo para investigar más profundamente las cuestiones relacionadas con los cambios en la distribución de los ingresos en zonas rurales. Perú, que es un país que está cada vez más integrado en los mercados mundiales, consiguió importantes descensos en la pobreza extrema en sus zonas rurales, pero a la vez adolece de alta incidencia de pobreza moderada y de desigualdad de los ingresos en zonas rural al menos durante el periodo comprendido entre 2004 y 2012. Esta parte de la tesis tiene como objetivo identificar las fuerzas impulsoras detrás de estas dinámicas en el Perú mediante el uso de un modelo de microsimulación basado en modelos de generación de ingresos aplicado a nivel los hogares rurales. Los resultados indican que la fuerza principal detrás de la reducción de la pobreza ha sido el crecimiento económico general de la economía, debido a las condiciones macroeconómicas favorables durante el periodo de estudio. Estos efectos de crecimiento beneficiaron a casi todos los sectores rurales, y dieron lugar a la disminución de la pobreza rural extrema, especialmente entre los agricultores de papas y de maíz. En parte, estos agricultores probablemente se beneficiaron de la apertura de los mercados agrícolas, que es lo que podría haber provocado un aumento de los precios al productor en tiempos de altos precios mundiales de los alimentos. Sin embargo, los resultados también sugieren que para una gran parte de la población más pobre existían barreras de entrada a la hora de poder participar en el empleo asalariado fuera de la agricultura o en la producción de cultivos de alto valor. Esto podría explicarse por la falta de acceso a unos activos importantes: por ejemplo, el nivel de educación de los pobres era apenas mejor en 2012 que en 2004; y también las dotaciones de tierra y de mano de obra, sobre todo de los productores pobres de maíz y patata, disminuyeron entre 2004 y 2012. Esto lleva a la conclusión de que aún hay margen para aplicar políticas para facilitar el acceso a estos activos, que podría contribuir a la erradicación de la pobreza rural. La tesis concluye que el comercio agrícola puede ser un importante medio para abastecer una población mundial creciente y más rica con una cantidad suficiente de calorías. Para evitar adversos efectos ambientales e impactos negativos para los consumidores y de los productores pobres, el enfoque debe centrarse en las mejoras de la productividad agrícola, teniendo en cuenta los límites ambientales y ser socialmente inclusivo. En este sentido, será indispensable seguir desarrollando soluciones tecnológicas que garanticen prácticas de producción agrícola minimizando el uso de recursos naturales. Además, para los pequeños pobres agricultores será fundamental eliminar las barreras de entrada a los mercados de exportación que podría tener efectos indirectos favorables a través de la adopción de nuevas tecnologías alcanzables a través de mercados internacionales. ABSTRACT The world is in a state of rapid transition. Ongoing globalization, population growth, rising living standards and increasing urbanization, accompanied by changing dietary patterns throughout the world, are increasing the demand for food. Together with more open trade regimes, this has triggered growing international agricultural trade during the last decade. For many Latin American countries, which are gifted with relative natural resource abundance, these trends have fueled rapid export growth of primary goods. In just 30 years, the Latin American agricultural market share has almost doubled from 10% in 1980 to 18% in 2010. These market developments have given rise to a debate around a number of crucial issues related to the role of agricultural trade for global food security, for the environment or for poverty reduction in developing countries. This thesis uses an integrated framework to analyze a broad array of possible impacts related to transforming agricultural and rural markets in light of globalization, and in particular of increasing trade activity. Specifically, the following issues are approached: First, global food production will have to rise substantially by the year 2050 to meet effective demand of a nine billion people world population which poses major challenges to food production systems. Doing so without compromising environmental integrity in exporting regions is an even greater challenge. In this context, the thesis explores the effects of future global trade liberalization on food security indicators in different world regions and on a variety of environmental indicators at different scales in Latin America and the Caribbean, in due consideration of different future agricultural production practices. The International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) –a global dynamic partial equilibrium model of the agricultural sector developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)– is applied to run different future production scenarios, and agricultural trade regimes out to 2050. Model results are linked to biophysical models, used to assess changes in water footprints and water quality, as well as impacts on biodiversity and carbon stocks from land use change by 2050. Results indicate that further trade liberalization is crucial for improving food security globally, but that it would also lead to more environmental pressures in some regions across Latin America. Contrasting land expansion versus more intensified agriculture shows that productivity improvements are generally superior to agricultural land expansion, from an economic and environmental point of view. Most promising for achieving food security and environmental goals, in equal measure, is the sustainable intensification scenario. However, the analysis shows that there are trade-offs between environmental and food security goals for all agricultural development paths. Second, in light of the recent food price crisis of 2007/08, the thesis looks at the impacts of increasing agricultural market integration on food price transmission from global to domestic markets in six Latin American countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. To identify possible cointegrating relationships between the domestic food consumer price indices and world food price levels, subject to different degrees of agricultural market integration in the six Latin American countries, a single equation error correction model is used. Results suggest that global agricultural market integration has led to different levels of price path-through in the studied countries. Especially in the short-run, transmission rates depend on the degree of trade openness, while in the long-run transmission rates are high, but largely independent of the country-specific trade regime. Hence, under world price shocks more trade openness brings with it more price instability in the short-term and the resulting persistence in the long-term. However, these findings do not necessarily verify the usefulness of trade policies, often applied by governments to buffer such price shocks. First, because there is a considerable risk of price volatility due to domestic supply shocks if self-sufficiency is promoted. Second, protectionism bears the risk of excluding a country from participating in beneficial high-value agricultural supply chains, thereby hampering economic development. Nevertheless, to reduce households’ vulnerability to sudden and large increases of food prices, effective policies to buffer food price shocks should be put in place, but must be carefully planned with the required budget readily available. Third, globalization affects the structure of an economy and, by different means, the distribution of income in a country. Peru serves as an example to dive deeper into questions related to changes in the income distribution in rural areas. Peru, a country being increasingly integrated into global food markets, experienced large drops in extreme rural poverty, but persistently high rates of moderate rural poverty and rural income inequality between 2004 and 2012. The thesis aims at disentangling the driving forces behind these dynamics by using a microsimulation model based on rural household income generation models. Results provide evidence that the main force behind poverty reduction was overall economic growth of the economy due to generally favorable macroeconomic market conditions. These growth effects benefited almost all rural sectors, and led to declines in extreme rural poverty, especially among potato and maize farmers. In part, these farmers probably benefited from policy changes towards more open trade regimes and the resulting higher producer prices in times of elevated global food price levels. However, the results also suggest that entry barriers existed for the poorer part of the population to participate in well-paid wage-employment outside of agriculture or in high-value crop production. This could be explained by a lack of sufficient access to important rural assets. For example, poor people’s educational attainment was hardly better in 2012 than in 2004. Also land and labor endowments, especially of (poor) maize and potato growers, rather decreased than increased over time. This leads to the conclusion that there is still scope for policy action to facilitate access to these assets, which could contribute to the eradication of rural poverty. The thesis concludes that agricultural trade can be one important means to provide a growing and richer world population with sufficient amounts of calories. To avoid adverse environmental effects and negative impacts for poor food consumers and producers, the focus should lie on agricultural productivity improvements, considering environmental limits and be socially inclusive. In this sense, it will be crucial to further develop technological solutions that guarantee resource-sparing agricultural production practices, and to remove entry barriers for small poor farmers to export markets which might allow for technological spill-over effects from high-value global agricultural supply chains.

Religião e Movimento Social: as representações religiosas dos pentecostais do Assentamento Herbert de Souza, Moreno, Pernambuco

Objetiva esta pesquisa descrever e analisar as representações religiosas dos pentecostais do Assentamento Herbert de Souza, localizado no município de Moreno, no Estado de Pernambuco. Percebemos no decorrer da investigação que os assentados pentecostais, todos beneficiados pela ação do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), atualizam suas representações religiosas de acordo com a demanda de vida que os motivou quando da entrada deles nas terras que pertenceram ao Engenho Pinto. Foi constatado também que o lugar e o tempo no qual aconteceu a inserção de cada pentecostal fez com que eles desenvolvessem elaborações religiosas diferenciadas acerca do Movimento, da terra e do que concebem como prática religiosa. Assim eles tecem redes simbólicas de significado que dão ordem às suas concepções de mundo. Procuramos comparar as representações dos pentecostais que já residiam nas terras do Engenho antes da ocupação com as daqueles que vieram depois, já como militantes do MST, ou simplesmente beneficiados pelo processo de democratização da terra. Criamos três tipos idéias de pentecostais: os pré-ocupação, os pós-ocupação e os pró-ocupação. Consideramos, finalmente, que as representações são elaboradas num momento de crise, em que há um intercâmbio de saberes entre o que afirma o MST e o que sistematiza as doutrinas da igreja à qual os fieis estejam vinculados. A situação de contingência é fundamental para o surgimento de um processo de negociação entre as práticas doutrinárias pentecostais e as exigências do MST.(AU)

Religião e Movimento Social: as representações religiosas dos pentecostais do Assentamento Herbert de Souza, Moreno, Pernambuco

Objetiva esta pesquisa descrever e analisar as representações religiosas dos pentecostais do Assentamento Herbert de Souza, localizado no município de Moreno, no Estado de Pernambuco. Percebemos no decorrer da investigação que os assentados pentecostais, todos beneficiados pela ação do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), atualizam suas representações religiosas de acordo com a demanda de vida que os motivou quando da entrada deles nas terras que pertenceram ao Engenho Pinto. Foi constatado também que o lugar e o tempo no qual aconteceu a inserção de cada pentecostal fez com que eles desenvolvessem elaborações religiosas diferenciadas acerca do Movimento, da terra e do que concebem como prática religiosa. Assim eles tecem redes simbólicas de significado que dão ordem às suas concepções de mundo. Procuramos comparar as representações dos pentecostais que já residiam nas terras do Engenho antes da ocupação com as daqueles que vieram depois, já como militantes do MST, ou simplesmente beneficiados pelo processo de democratização da terra. Criamos três tipos idéias de pentecostais: os pré-ocupação, os pós-ocupação e os pró-ocupação. Consideramos, finalmente, que as representações são elaboradas num momento de crise, em que há um intercâmbio de saberes entre o que afirma o MST e o que sistematiza as doutrinas da igreja à qual os fieis estejam vinculados. A situação de contingência é fundamental para o surgimento de um processo de negociação entre as práticas doutrinárias pentecostais e as exigências do MST.(AU)