The Dutch architect and monk, Dom Hans van der Laan (1904–1991) leaves us with a legacy of architectural writings and realisations arising from his search for fundamental principles of architecture. His 1977 manifesto Architectonic Space aims to combine spatial philosophical concepts with practical design tools [1, 2]. The book is a series of fifteen lessons linking concepts, such as the relationships of inside-outside or mass-space, to his proportional series which he refers to as the Plastic Number. This article aims to offer an understanding and critical assessment of Dom van der Laan's poetics of order by unravelling how his buildings are made and how they are perceived [3]. I focus on the case study of the Jesu Moder Marias Convent in Tomelilla, Sweden.

In the case of conventional public housing, urban planners and policymakers design the layout of a housing project in a specific location and then estimate how many households can afford a home. This housing policy has been pursued as a legitimate solution for housing low- and middle-income households where the houses are individually financed by bank loans or mortgages raised by the occupants. John Turner criticised conventional housing solutions by affirming that ‘developing governments take the perspective of the elite and act as if the process of low-income houses were the same as in high-income countries and the same as for the small upper-middle class of their own countries’.1 Bruce Ferguson and Jesus Navarrete extend this argument with their critique of distributing finished houses to low-income populations and then requiring long-term payments, which are harmful to the beneficiaries. They note that ‘governments think of housing as complete units built by developers that households must purchase with a long-term loan rather than as a progressive process’.2

Globalization, while extensively theorized and empirically studied by economic geographers, has yet to be seriously investigated in architecture. There are multiple forms of architectural practice in the United States and some significant changes are under way. In addition the local politics of urban architecture discloses a counterweight to balance globalism's homogenizing tendencies. This paper proposes strategies for a more experimental architecture that partakes of the global-local dialectic.

Why should architects be involved in humanitarian work and the often-complex projects needed to deal with the recovery of post-disaster emergencies? How can the design profession contribute to the longterm reconstruction processes needed to ensure the effective rebuilding of vulnerable communities after disaster?

An important theme in place marketing, branding, and architectural literature – and practice – is the development of a strong, attractive image, through (primarily) visual representation of a location. But considering that today we live in cities that are digital hybrids, in which we are connected to a wider system of information, how is an ‘image of the city’ constructed in this context, and are there other strategies and tactics that should be considered? Using Plato’s notion of chora and Claudius Ptolemy’s notion of chorography as points of departure that will lead us to consider Michel de Certeau’s concept of walking as an experiential and dialectic process through which we relate the spatial stories of places and moreover, in the context of digital locative media, we will point to ways by which this may be accomplished. In introducing the reader to the concept of digital chorographies as a means by which a place’s spatial narratives may be constructed, we suggest that a current emphasis on visual representation (for example, of attractive place product elements/attributes, such as architectural landmarks and cityscapes, etc.) should be considered in conjunction with the articulation and narration of qualities contributing to a place’s realm of meaning.

Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren's interest in ancient buildings has been noted by historians of architecture and natural philosophy alike. The two men used to meet to discuss descriptions – both verbal and visual – and models of ancient buildings that had long since disappeared and were known only through ancient accounts, or that remained only in a ruined or altered form. These included the Temple of Solomon, described at different places in the Bible, Porsenna's tomb, cited as an example of extravagance by Pliny the Elder, and the Hagia Sophia. In 1675, Hooke recorded such a meeting in his diary: ‘With Sir Chr. Wren. Long Discourse with him about the module [model] of the Temple at Jerusalem’.

The Dong carpentry rule is reflective of the Dong's culture, traditions and construction methods related to human measurement. It is dimensioned by a comparable set of lucky and unlucky units instead of abstract geometries, indicating the favorable and unfavorable units that can be applied in construction. As a measurement system derived from the human body, the units celebrate more critical sections such as the head, feet or joints, relating to the proportions of the ‘master craftsman's body. Thus, on a construction site, the representation of the human body acts to convey scale and measurement, and particularly, this ruler holds the human proportion for sacred and public buildings, specifically Drum Towers and ‘Wind and Rain’ bridges. In this paper, the measuring system will be explored to show how it is made and assists the carpenters in dimensioning their buildings. This measurement system establishes a relationship between the construction and their beliefs.

Enhancing the urban ‘quality of life’ has become a major task for actors in the public realm. The now ‘undisputed objective’ of ‘sustainable city development’ is meaningless unless we can turn our cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods into places where people actively want to live, work and play. The spatial quality of neighbourhoods is crucial in this respect. Besides housing typology and access, ‘quality of life’ is primarily defined by the nature of available open space. Public space is one of the most important and strategic instruments of local government. Thus a basic issue for those in planning practice is how to help realise public spaces which contribute to the appropriate level of quality. Although much progress has been made to assess quality of life at the larger level of scale, for example that of a city or a region, much less progress has been made at a smaller and more concrete area level. More than 25 years after Kevin Lynch's opus magnum Good City Form, an operational approach on the level of urban design is still much in need.

Most of an architect's life is concerned with that which has not yet taken place, both foreseeing the near future and expressing an intention of how this future world should be remade. However small the intervention, all design proposals are utopian works. With this in mind, this article is a celebration of the utopian potential of reading science fiction (SF); to make the familiar strange, to reveal fears about the future, to confront us with ourselves, and to shape the world we inhabit. It is an unabashed call from an architect and avid SF reader, for architects to raid the bookshelves for the most lurid cover and glaring font and lose themselves in the exuberant worlds of science fiction.

Psychological needs and human wellbeing are aspects of sustainability that urgently need to be reconsidered in architecture. Too often, the concept of sustainability is connected to quantitative building performance, without enough consideration of how people use and enjoy spaces and how their wellbeing is influenced by their environment. This paper introduces the report Bo-miljø or Living Environment, written by Danish environmental psychologist Ingrid Gehl in 1971, into the current social sustainability discourse in architectural design as a way of gaining perspective into psychological wellbeing. The report is particularly relevant for considering the human dimension in housing design and identifies eight basic psychological needs that people have in relation to their living environments. The analysis of this report, and the synthesis of the findings with newer studies and definitions of social sustainability offer a framework for rethinking social sustainability. This essay analyses the findings from Gehl's report and contextualises it within current interdisciplinary research in this area. Critically analysing leading definitions and concepts in social sustainability and wellbeing, this essay offers an architectural perspective on design for social sustainability and wellbeing.

What is low-energy architecture? What at first glance would seem to be a simple question turns out to be rather more complex. Architectural practice does not exist in a vacuum, but responds to society's wider demands. In this way, low-energy architecture can be seen as developing in relation to the regulative framework that exists at any given time and which sets the boundaries for what is accepted as low-energy, or not.

Modern environmentalism originates with the recognition of ecological connectivity and the negative effects of technological intervention. This paper examines critical concepts developed by the architect Frederick Kiesler and the critic-historian Sigfried Giedion for their relevance to that discourse. Kiesler's principle of Correalism and Giedion's appeal for Equipoise offer both a prehistory to the current mandates about sustainability and cautions about its limitations. The sustainable is ultimately a social condition that cannot be applied therapeutically nor ever wholly institutionalized.

CAD systems provide convenient tools for the creation of simple geometry by direct manipulation on the computer screen. They work well enough for two-dimensional construction, but are often inadequate for creating doubly-curved three-dimensional surfaces. The solution proposed here is to use the in-built programming language provided in most CAD systems for direct creation of geometry. Developed for didactic purposes, the stunning reconstructions of Gothic vaults suggest a method of working likely to be of great value to the geometrically adventurous architect.

One of the most difficult challenges associated with an ageing population will be a significant increase in the number of people living with dementia. In Australia, this number is estimated to triple by 2050; a situation that is reflected globally. This will place increased demands on health and long-term care providers but it should also force an examination of the ability of contemporary cities to facilitate or constrain inclusion. Globally, designers and students of this discipline are contributing their skills to the challenge of dementia but solutions are typically proposed at a product, institutional or suburban scale. This paper will present two propositional projects, created using a speculative design methodology within a design studio at The University of Melbourne, that provoke architects to more seriously interrogate what it means for a city to support social inclusion, independence and choice for those who are ageing in place. These projects illuminate new avenues for critical and necessary research. This paper will begin with a reflection on the limitations of the Hogeweyk Dementia Village (Amsterdam), considered the current gold standard in dementia design, to highlight the value of thinking speculatively within the context of dementia; to disrupt the limitations of contemporary design thinking and ask what role the architect can play in improving the lives of those living with dementia?

In the second half of the twentieth century, the growing recognition of the plurality of history and the constructive nature of monuments, in conjunction with a more general realisation of the intellectual problems of war, resulted in a widespread interrogation – both intellectually and aesthetically – of concepts of memorialisation and commemoration. This interrogation is credited as the catalyst for a series of new approaches to monument-making, famously exemplified by Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington (1982) in addition to a series of holocaust-related memorials, such as those theorised in the seminal writings of James E. Young. These memorials, in conjunction with post-modern discussions of the politics of memory and issues of counter-memory, complicated the culture of commemoration, seeing the emergence of new commemorative types known as counter-monuments, which Young defines as ‘memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premise of the monument’. These are often also identified by terms such anti-memorials or progressive memorials. Among these, new sub-genres also emerged in response to particular methods of commemoration such as living and spontaneous memorials, in addition to more gestural methods of commemoration involving, for example, services or performances that transcend the categories of sculpture and architecture.

During late modernism, the promise of, not only vaguely, but also precisely predicting the future had acquired enormous prestige. When evoked, this predictive project lent power, legitimacy, and a cohesive identity to endeavours in almost any realm of society and culture – including the discipline of architecture. In particular, in cybernetics, seen as a means of regulating and controlling complex systems, these optimistic ideas of ‘mastering the big picture’ flourished.

Under the heading of ‘Cybernetics: Circular Casual, and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems’, the umbrella organisation Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation hosted ten conferences on this very topic between 1946 and 1951. These events, known as the Macy Conferences, provided a forum for the collation and presentation of existing research, and in retrospect can be seen to have been the most important ‘get-together’ of their kind, judged in relation to subsequent crucial findings in the history of science after the Cold War. Based upon the theoretical framework of the terms of ‘information’, ‘feedback’, and ‘analog/digital’, they searched for that single universal theory of regulation and control – which they claimed might be applied to any species, machine, economic or psychological process, aesthetic or sociological phenomenon. As a consequence, cybernetics transformed into a tool to describe and explain methodologies not only in its own core knowledge/ research area, but became seen as a subject capable of giving answers to societal questions of any kind. In doing so, cybernetics linked new scientific-technical methods with all issues of social relevance.

In 2005 the Arts and Humanities Research Council initiated a review of practice-led research in art, design and architecture. The purpose of the review was to develop a ‘comprehensive map of recent and current research activity in the area’. What quickly became obvious to the team that won the bid to run the review (led by the three authors) was that to map activity one first had to attempt to define it. The term ‘practice-led research’ means many different things to different people and so immediately raises debate. The positions range from those who believe that the act of making or designing alone constitutes research, to those who believe that research (as analytical activity) is incommensurable with design (as synthetic activity). For the former, the knowledge contained within the artefact is self-evident and beyond the need for additional explication; for the latter, knowledge resides outside the artefact and in the realm of its dissemination and interpretation. The importance of the AHRC review is not that it will settle these arguments, but that it will provide a much firmer context in which to place them.

This paper is not a comprehensive survey of the architectural career of Arata Isozaki, one of the most distinguished practicing architects in the world today and the 2019 winner of the Pritzker Prize, but a specific look at his formative years of the 1960s when he began to build his own design methodology. It delineates Isozaki’s encounter with the avant-garde art movement of the 1960s, collectively called “Anti-Art, ” against the backdrop of the “anti-spirit” of Japanese society. Although Isozaki’s artistic side has been overstated at times, previous studies rarely addressed how his intensive interactions with art circles played a role in shaping his design methodology. I would like to examine the convergence of creative individuals and cross-disciplinary connections to understand Isozaki’s architectural thinking.

This study examines how Isozaki’s collaborations with his artist contemporaries enabled him to formulate the notion of the “invisible city, ” a radically new design concept characterised by the expansion of the nature of architecture from producing isolated built-forms to all-encompassing natural and manmade environments. However, after drawing on communications and information theory, which prevailed in 60s architectural circles, Isozaki’s destructive and anarchistic connotation of “invisible city” was channeled into a systematic cybernetic model and eventually transformed into a constructive planning method. I will discuss the realisation of a cybernetic environment at the Festival Plaza of Expo’ 70 and trace the legacy of “invisible city” in his later postmodern work.

The housing estate of Julino Brdo was built in the late 1960s in the Čukarica municipality of Belgrade, and housed the ‘middle class’ of Yugoslav selfmanagement socialism – managers, experts, and administrators, in an area that was also populated by the improvised homes of illegal settlers. Approaching the estate from the north, the observer first notices two clusters of homogeneous masses rising out of a plateau known as ‘Grujina Strana’. As the observer moves forward, the estate briefly disappears from sight, only to reappear as a single cluster merged with the steep sides of the plateau.