Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemDecolonizing leisurescapes: Sri Lanka's aesthetically integrated resort designs(Taylor and Francis, 2022-07-29)This essay examines the cultural reinvention and validation of exclusive hotel- and particularly beach-side resort architectures in Sri Lanka during the late 20th century, following the establishment, during the 1960s, of tourism as a national industry catering to foreign visitors from Western nations. It uses a critical architectural history of “leisurescapes” that are spatially and programmatically shaped by economic and political conflicts to highlight trenchant social discrimination within the decades-long decolonizing process. The industry has survived initial economic instability, followed by 26 years of civil conflict to enter an era of economic liberalization as convenors of cultural production for local elites, expatriates, and international tourists. Meanwhile, impoverishment caused by the protracted conflict makes ordinary Lankans more reliant on invasive tourism economies. This essay historicizes the industry’s achievements examining the agency it has afforded architects, arguing that resort architectures’ aesthetic integration conceals social disparities.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEnvironmental experience design research spectrum for energy and human well-being(Elsevier, 2022-01-01)Handbook of Energy and Environmental Security educates the reader about the wider dimensions of the distinctive yet intertwined subjects of ‘energy security and ‘environmental security’. The book uniquely addresses these two increasingly important topics in a comprehensive and composite manner, describing the concepts and wider dimensions of energy- and environmental security in technological, economic, social and geopolitical perspectives. Divided into three main parts, the book deals with the subject of energy security in terms of its concepts, broader dimensions and allied issues, focuses on environmental security, and covers subjects in a cohesive manner, discussing their important interfaces and commonalities. Providing valuable scholarship for academics, researchers and analysts in the fields of energy and the environment, and using case studies to illustrate national and international levels, this is a valuable resource for energy- and environmental security challenges, especially in the areas of sustainable development and climate change.
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ItemSketches of Thought: Inside the Black Box of AI(University of Melbourne- Melbourne School of Design, 2020)‘Sketches of Thought’ is a human-machine collaborative design system based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The first aim of ‘Sketches of Thought’ is illustrating an approach to AI-integration within the designer’s creative workflow. The system translates a hand-drawn architecture sketch into a photorealistic image that suggests a possible evolution of the design idea. The dialogue with the system happens through a visual interface whereby the designer communicates by sketching directly on a drawing monitor, while the system responds by showing the results of the image translation process on a second monitor. Interaction with the system does not end after a first iteration. Instead, the designer is encouraged to adjust the initial sketch – or even make new sketches – for several times to explore, with the aid of the machine’s feedback, different elaborations of an idea. This system does not require particular drawing skills, and therefore anyone can experience a proficient ‘exchange of ideas’ with the AI model. The second aim of ‘Sketches of Thought’ is helping the designer familiarise with AI technology. This is achieved by unveiling the black box of the AI model functioning, that is, through a representation of its internal processes. Moreover, as the AI model simulates some aspects of human cognition, a look inside the black box of AI also means visualising a simplified version of the human mental processes. Therefore, learning about AI is an opportunity for humans to learn more about themselves. The relevance of this virtual prototype is twofold. First, it promotes the view of AI as a means to augment rather than replace the human cognitive capabilities. Second, it challenges the current beliefs and prejudices on AI-technology by making the AI internal processes explicit through a visual representation.
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ItemSubaltern-diasporic histories of modernism: working on Australia's “Snowy Scheme”(Routledge, 2021-09-20)In the decades following World War II, Australia partly relaxed its insular White Australia Policy, permitting tens of thousands of non-Anglophone European immigrants to enter the country, including some 170,000 refugees from displaced persons camps across Europe. Many of them worked as compulsory indentured labor on key industrial projects. This ethnically differentiated, impoverished, and gendered work force contributed through industrialization to Australian postwar modernity. The Snowy River hydroelectric scheme, this chapter’s primary case study, employed around 60,000 European workers drawn from 30 different nationalities, domiciled in 121 camps. This chapter aims to understand how the labor of subaltern-diasporic populations, like those who worked on Australia’s “Snowy Scheme,” might be integrated into the broader architectural historiography of “settler societies” and made relevant to global histories of modernism.
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ItemAntipodean Architectures of Displacement(Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)The provisional occupations and ephemeral materialities of human displacement offer limited scope for a discipline focused on formalism and aesthetic value. Consequently, more temporary or abject human spatial experiences have been excluded from the architectural canon in the past. Treating the history of Australia, a settlement colony and postcolonial immigrant nation as a test site, Pieris applies the caveat of displacement to its record of architectural types. The chapter looks beyond the tented encampments of a progressive colonial outpost, built on white Australian immigration, to the repressed spaces that these in turn displace. By linking convict prisons, Aboriginal missions, wartime internment camps, postwar immigrant camps, and contemporary detention centres, the chapter proposes a taxonomy that might politicise the discipline.
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ItemDesign in our industrialised world of capitalist flows: A Scandinavian perspective(URO, 2022-04)This book explores the far-reaching influence of two 20th-century design icons: the Bauhaus art school and the furniture company IKEA.
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ItemDo we change, or do we comply?(URO, 2022-04)This book explores the far-reaching influence of two 20th-century design icons: the Bauhaus art school and the furniture company IKEA.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableApproaches to strengthening fisheries financing and institutional mechanisms: a cross-country comparison of Cambodia, India and Indonesia(Asian Development Bank Institute, 2022-07-18)
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ItemComputational design and robotic fabrication of a self-supporting acoustic shell(CRC Press, 2022-07-08)In the early twentieth century, acoustic shells were primarily conceived as permanent structures, generally made in reinforced concrete. Architects like Candela and Niemeyer exploited the high density and plasticity of concrete to realise forms that could reflect sound efficiently. However, building doubly-curved shapes required laborious construction methods, including using complex and wasteful formworks. This paper presents the development and application of a computational workflow for the design and fabrication of acoustic concrete shells. The workflow allows controlling the shape of discrete, curved panels that can be assembled into continuous surfaces. The panels are designed to comply with the robotic fabrication requirements of a novel Parametric Adjustable Mould (PAM) technology and assembled to create shells that satisfy a set of acoustic requirements. The technology is used to fabricate custom curved concrete panels using a single mould frame that reduces waste in concrete formwork.
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ItemIncremental housing in Villa Verde, Chile: A view through the Sendai Framework lens(Elsevier, 2021-01-01)The development of the Villa Verde settlement in Chile coincided with the 2010 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the city of Constitucion. A private-sector and government-subsidized program developed 484 houses specifically designed to double in size via the efforts of the residents and according to their needs. Low levels of governance have since led to the emergence of several unauthorized self-built extensions that have both reduced livability and increased fire risk. This chapter reveals the benefits and drawbacks of the adopted housing strategy using the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 as a basis for analysis. It shows that the project's architects and developers have been successfully helping to create a dynamic settlement with their “half-house” strategy. Yet, the related development has not been able to effectively deal with another type of risk, namely wildfires, which were overlooked in the design process.