Builders of the Vision
Builders of the Vision

Author: Daniel Cardoso Llach

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1317755952

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Builders of the Vision traces the intellectual history and contemporary practices of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Numerical Control since the years following World War II until today. Drawing from primary archival and ethnographic sources, it identifies and documents the crucial ideas shaping digital design technologies since the first numerical control and CAD systems were developed under US Air Force research contracts at MIT between 1949 and 1970: the cybernetic theorization of design as a human-machine endeavor; the vision of computers as "perfect slaves" taking care of the drudgery of physical labor; the techno-social utopias of computers as vehicles of democracy and social change; the entrepreneurial urge towards design and construction integration; and the managerial ideologies enabling today’s transnational geographies of practice. Examining the contrasting, and often conflicting, sensibilities that converge into CAD and BIM discourses - globalism, utopianism, entrepreneurialism, and architects’ desires for aesthetic liberation - Builders of the Vision shows that software systems and numerically controlled machines are not merely "instruments," or "tools," but rather versatile metaphors reconfiguring conceptions of design, materiality, work, and what it means to be creative. Crucially, by revealing software systems as socio-technical infrastructures that mediate the production of our built environments, author Daniel Cardoso Llach builds a strong case for the fields of architecture, media, and science and technology studies to critically engage with both the politics and the poetics of technology in design. Builders of the Vision will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners across disciplines interested in the increasingly complex socio-technical systems that go into imagining and building of our artifacts, buildings, and cities.

Infrastructure Computer Vision
Infrastructure Computer Vision

Author: Ioannis Brilakis

Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann

Published: 2019-11-28

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 0128172584

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Infrastructure Computer Vision delves into this field of computer science that works on enabling computers to see, identify, process images and provide appropriate output in the same way that human vision does. However, implementing these advanced information and sensing technologies is difficult for many engineers. This book provides civil engineers with the technical detail of this advanced technology and how to apply it to their individual projects. - Explains how to best capture raw geometrical and visual data from infrastructure scenes and assess their quality - Offers valuable insights on how to convert the raw data into actionable information and knowledge stored in Digital Twins - Bridges the gap between the theoretical aspects and real-life applications of computer vision

Building with Vision
Building with Vision

Author: Dan Imhoff

Publisher: Wood Reduction Trilogy

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13:

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Part green building primer, part architectural photo essay, this is an essential resource for professionals and homeowners interested in the leading edge of environmental building. Imhoff traveled extensively to document and photograph beautiful and novel alternatives to wood intensive-building. Building with Vision is the first book to link residential building with forest impacts. Nearly 1.5 million new houses are built in the United States each year, 90 percent framed with wood, and the average house consuming an acre's worth of trees. But as Building with Vision shows, from framing and siding to new building systems and finish materials, there are many ways architects, contractors, and homeowners can make high-quality, resourceful, long-lasting and beautiful decisions. Details include building techniques as well as materials, including Styrofoam, steel, concrete, straw bales, rammed earth, adobe and much more.

Techniques of the Observer
Techniques of the Observer

Author: Jonathan Crary

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1992-02-25

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9780262531078

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Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle. In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological event. Alongside the sudden appearance of physiological optics, Crary points out, theories and models of "subjective vision" were developed that gave the observer a new autonomy and productivity while simultaneously allowing new forms of control and standardization of vision. Crary examines a range of diverse work in philosophy, in the empirical sciences, and in the elements of an emerging mass visual culture. He discusses at length the significance of optical apparatuses such as the stereoscope and of precinematic devices, detailing how they were the product of new physiological knowledge. He also shows how these forms of mass culture, usually labeled as "realist," were in fact based on abstract models of vision, and he suggests that mimetic or perspectival notions of vision and representation were initially abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century within a variety of powerful institutions and discourses, well before the modernist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.

Ghost
Ghost

Author: Brian Mackay-Lyons

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Published: 2008-05-15

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9781568987361

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"Architecture is a social art. If the practice of architecture is the art of what you can make happen, then I believe that you are only as good as your bullpenthe builders, the engineers, the artisans, the colleagues, the staffwho collaborate with you; those who become possessed by the same urge to build, by the same belief that we are working on something exceptional together." Brian MacKay-Lyons For two weeks each summer, architect Brian MacKay-Lyons uses his family farm on the east coast of Nova Scotia for aspecial event. Among the stone ruins of a village almost four hundred years old, he assembles a community of architects,professors, and students for a design-build internship and educational initiative called Ghost Research Lab. The twoweek projectone week of design and one week of constructionrests on the idea that architecture is not only about building but also about the landscape, its history, and the community. Based on the apprenticeship environment of ancient guilds, where architectural knowledge was transferred through direct experience, Ghost redefines the architectas a builder who cultivates and contributes to the quality of the native landscape. Published to celebrate the event's tenth anniversary, Ghost offers a thorough documentation of the past decade's design-build events including drawings, models, and final photographs of completed structures. Organized chronologically and interwoven with MacKay-Lyons's simple and accessible personal narratives, Ghost also features essays by some of the most eminent figures in architectural criticism, including Christine Macy, Brian Carter, Karl Habermann, Robert Ivy, Kenneth Frampton, Thomas Fisher, Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter Buchanan, and Robert McCarter. In an architectural climatefull of trends and egos, Ghost is the rare manifesto that does not preach but rather inspires quietly with simple ideas that unexpectedly unsettle and arouse.

Building Vision
Building Vision

Author: Jean-Paul Gedeon

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1606088483

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Western culture is changing. Postmodern exigencies are encroaching on all aspects of our lived experiences. With them, these exigencies bring tremendous pressures and challenges to Spiritual Leadership-challenges that must be met and overcome, lest this traditional institution render itself out-dated and outmoded. We are now confronted with the advent of an empowered, educated, and democratically geared population-an epistemological culture that is engaged in its own determination, that has information at its fingertips, that feels entitled to its own points of view, that passionately pursues its own development, and that wants to feel validated in all these pursuits. Postmodern Western society expects its Spiritual Leaders to be able to engage it at a level of depth that is sufficiently cogent to honor individual complexity, personal trajectory and evolution, philosophical differences, scientific relevance, empirical cogency, cultural sensitivity, religious background, emotional inheritance, and existential mystery. It is a sophisticated and elegant culture, steeped in autonomous entitlement and ready to easily discard that which it feels is no longer useful. In the face of such a stark and startling challenge, what can Spiritual Leaders do to keep up? How do we approach our work when so much is demanded of us? How do we conceive of our vocation in such as way as to avoid the slide into potential cultural 'obsolescence'? This book sets forth a framework of spiritual growth and spiritual leadership that addresses these very issues. In its pages, cherished traditional messages are interwoven with post-modern therapeutic and care-giving outlooks, resulting in a product that is a must read for Spiritual Leaders today. Spiritual Leadership must find a way to remain relevant, cogent, and integrated as it toils to disseminate its essential message of growth and transformation into this post-modern world. This book tells us how.

A Philosophy of Landscape Construction
A Philosophy of Landscape Construction

Author: Bruce K. Ferguson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1000336239

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A Philosophy of Landscape Construction outlines a philosophy of values in landscape construction, demonstrating how integral structures, such as pavements and walls, constitute a key element to how people interact with and inhabit the final design. The book discusses how these structures enable, assist and care for people, negotiating between the dynamic processes of site ecosystems and the soil on which they are founded. They articulate spatial, functional, cultural and ecological meanings. Within this theoretical framework, designers will learn to recognize and insert a set of core values into the most technical design stages to reach their full potential. By offering a new perspective on landscape construction, moving away from the exclusively technical characteristics, this book allows landscape architects to realise the ideal vision for their designs. It is abundantly illustrated with examples from which designers can learn both successes and failures and will be an essential companion to any study of built landscapes.

Making Eye Health a Population Health Imperative
Making Eye Health a Population Health Imperative

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-01-15

Total Pages: 587

ISBN-13: 0309439981

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The ability to see deeply affects how human beings perceive and interpret the world around them. For most people, eyesight is part of everyday communication, social activities, educational and professional pursuits, the care of others, and the maintenance of personal health, independence, and mobility. Functioning eyes and vision system can reduce an adult's risk of chronic health conditions, death, falls and injuries, social isolation, depression, and other psychological problems. In children, properly maintained eye and vision health contributes to a child's social development, academic achievement, and better health across the lifespan. The public generally recognizes its reliance on sight and fears its loss, but emphasis on eye and vision health, in general, has not been integrated into daily life to the same extent as other health promotion activities, such as teeth brushing; hand washing; physical and mental exercise; and various injury prevention behaviors. A larger population health approach is needed to engage a wide range of stakeholders in coordinated efforts that can sustain the scope of behavior change. The shaping of socioeconomic environments can eventually lead to new social norms that promote eye and vision health. Making Eye Health a Population Health Imperative: Vision for Tomorrow proposes a new population-centered framework to guide action and coordination among various, and sometimes competing, stakeholders in pursuit of improved eye and vision health and health equity in the United States. Building on the momentum of previous public health efforts, this report also introduces a model for action that highlights different levels of prevention activities across a range of stakeholders and provides specific examples of how population health strategies can be translated into cohesive areas for action at federal, state, and local levels.

The Organization and Management of Construction
The Organization and Management of Construction

Author: David Langford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-10-12

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1135813760

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The proceedings of the CIB W65 Symposium on the Organization and Management of Construction conference are presented here and in the companion volumes as state-of-the-art papers documenting research and innovative practice in the field of construction. The volumes cover four broad themes: business management, project management, risk management, IT development and applications. Each volume is organized to provide easy reference so that the practitioner can speedily extract up to date information and knowledge about the global construction industry. Managing the Construction Enterprise (Volume One): Covers the firm and its business environment, markets and marketing, human resource management strategic planning, and quality management. Managing the Construction Project (Volume Two): focuses upon productivity, procurement, international projects and human issues in relation to management performance of construction organisations. Managing Risk (Volume Two): incorporates discussion of risk away from regulation by government and those safety risks inherent in the construction process. Managing Construction Information (Volume Three, published in conjunction with Construct IT Centre of Excellence): incorporates material on information systems and methods, application of IT to the design and construction processes and how IT theory and applications are best transmitted to students and practitioners. The work represents a collation of wide ranging ideas and theory about construction and how research has contributed to the development of the industry on a global application of research to the problems of the construction industry.