Architectural engineering | EPFL Graph Search

Architectural engineering or architecture engineering, also known as building engineering, is an engineering discipline that deals with the engineering systems - such as structural, mechanical, electrical, lighting, environmental, climate control, telecommunications, security, and other technologies used in buildings. From reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to the construction of resilient buildings, architectural engineers are at the forefront of addressing several major challenges of the 21st century. They apply the latest scientific knowledge and technologies to the design of buildings. Architectural engineering as a relatively new licensed profession emerged in the 20th century as a result of the rapid technological developments. Architectural engineers are at the forefront of two major historical opportunities that today's world is immersed in: (1) that of rapidly advancing computer-technology, and (2) the parallel revolution arising from the need to create a sustainable pla

The Role of Ocean Space in Contemporary Urbanization

Nancy Raewyn Couling

Although the ocean is investigated by many scientific fields, research about ocean space is scarce. But energy production, extraction of resources, infrastructural and logistical development is increasing incrementally, resulting in a quantum shift in scale and intensity of spatial demands. Almost no part of the global ocean remains unaffected by human impact. The ocean is therefore a site of spatial and environmental convergence, a type of âhinterlandâ to urbanized territories. While these developments are ephemeral in relative urban terms, often remote and hard to decipher, they also carve out vast territories and leave lasting physical legacies. These phenomena have largely escaped spatial articulation. History is rich in examples of radical forms of urbanization which engaged the ocean as a network agent, without claiming territorial rights. Intensified activities, however have led to the territorialization of the ocean through the establishment of fixed exclusive economic zones. A fundamental contradiction between open ocean systems and bounded space becomes apparent. As opposed to to a territory defined by political borders, this thesis proposes an integrated, kinetic definition of ocean territory based on oceanography and biological thresholds with which urbanizing forces interact. Both the oceanâs inherent spatial properties and cultural interventions become active components. Based on this definition, the first objective is to identify and define specific forms of urbanization within ocean space. Extended urbanization refers to one of the three interacting moments of urbanization proposed by Brenner and Schmid as part of their developing theory on planetary urbanization. This has its conceptual roots in the dual urban processes implosion-explosion as described by Lefebvre in The Urban Revolution. As a specific form of extended urbanization, I argue that ocean space participates in the loose, uneven, and indistinct morphologies we are only beginning to recognize as âurbanâ. Ocean urbanization is researched first through literature pertaining to four topics which permeate interactions with ocean space and which each represent a rich field of urban theory; Networks, Seascape, Technology and Ecology. Empirical research is then carried out on two case studies; the Barents and the Baltic Seas. These seas undergo a spatial analysis based on the proposed definition of ocean territory. Under urbanization processes, networks lace the ocean floor, the seascape produces energy, technology monitors ecosystems and ecology embraces petroleum exploration. The study distills properties common to both seas, but also distinct manifestations of urban processes within each context. As a result, nine principles of urbanization can be identified. The seas also revealed dispersed intensities in particular locations. Five such situations were chosen as the object of a closer study, which are then proposed as typological conditions: Interpenetration Contraction, Expansion, Assemblage and Confluence. The second objective of the thesis is to relate these findings to current Marine Spatial Planning. What can architects contribute to the conceptualizing, mapping and managing of ocean space? A critical appraisal of ocean planning practice in relation to the research findings, concludes that the architectural challenge is to redraw limits according to ocean dynamics and to launch the ocean project.

EPFL2015

Vernacular Landscape: memory of a present continuous

Paola Tosolini

In 1984, in his Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, John Brinckerhoff Jackson stated that it is through the study of the vernacular that we could finally arrive to give a complete definition of the landscape and of its beauty because it expresses the idea of a place where man creates his own human organization of space and time, where the slow processes of growth, maturity and decline are deliberately put in brackets and history takes their place. The concept of landscape implies at first a ‘design’ dimension. It is the result of a conscious action made by man for man. It is, quoting Pierre Deffontaines, the “oeuvre paysagique de l’homme”. Vernacular landscape is the place where the relationship between man and environment has been better expressed for what it is the immediate correspondence between structures and human needs, between art of building and local culture. It presents itself as a dictionary of man’s constructive logic, declaring without ambiguity its utility, its links to earth, climate and technique. Its capacity of including changes, of absorbing the passing of time without losing the architectural idea on which it lays has made its forms intelligible, its language accessible to everybody. The cultural dimension of vernacular landscape is far from being only related to the past and to “architecture without architects”. Traces of it could be found throughout the 20th century in some of the most important works of modernity. A large number of Masters travels sketches displays anonymous rural buildings, countryside and coastal landscapes. Their critical writings reveal the changing of these ‘recorded’ images into an ‘operative tool’. Their works are evidence of the ways through which memory has finally become a living present, a source of timeless modernity. The paper will suggest the idea of a vernacular cultural landscape intended as a memory of a present continuous. It will do so by analysing the layers which have been superposed on it by the changing of time and space. It will show, for instance, how the interlocking stone volumes of Scottish rural architecture, the typical chimney of the Swiss Jura farms, the Finnish tupa, the Spanish porxet, the rustic column of Capri’s peasants houses, the Mediterranean patio, the brick walls of north Italian barns and other architectural and spatial elements are to be found in modern architecture, tracing a map of memory and change through the flux of tradition and its absorption.

Ministero de Fomento CEDEX-CEHOPU, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid2007