Open House International

Wilkinson, Nicholas

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0001

This is an ‘open’ issue but with a very special message in it. More than a week ago now Arch. Catalina Gandelsonas died of cancer. This sad news was relayed to me via Prof. Pat Wakely in London. Catalina was a remarkable woman. From the days at Lefke University (North Cyprus) she showed herself as a person who was very clear as to what she wanted and was most helpful and careful in achieving her aims. In the early nineties Catalina later became a member of the Open House International Board of editors. Her refereeing was always to the point with brevity. I wish to convey my condolences to her daughter and other family members and hope this message speaks for many of our other friends who also knew her. She was a remarkable person with much goodwill and a great energy and in addition to that she had a very endearing character.

Grichting, Anna; Sturgeon, Kyle

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0002

By way of its uniquely concurrent practice + academic learning model, the Boston Architectural College (BAC) has begun a thriving tradition of community engagement through design. This paper uncovers how design/build formats -cast as a service-learning projects - have the potential to foster profound student learning opportunities, improve the urban environment through design engagement and community action, and inform architectural accreditation. Though exceptionally rewarding, the design/build model is not without challenges. The authors utilize their unique perspectives as design educators and community members to deliver both a narrative account and critical analysis for a case study of one such learning model.The Frederick Douglas Peace Park project, conducted in 2008 as part of the authors’ Urban Design Build (UDB) format is an example of a grassroots initiative met with the support of an institution of design education. The project revitalizes a neglected neighborhood by activating forgotten space - rebuilding a sense of community and creating a place of memorial for a much-revered American Civil Rights Activist. Emanating from Grichting’s neighborhood peace park, Sturgeon’s UDB project extended grassroots momentum to community event programming and served as a catalyst for additional reclamation projects: a string of public spaces and the rehabilitation of a community center once on the verge of being torn down and privatized.

Lin, Jin-Ann

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0003

The balcony, an integral element in modernist housing, can be found in almost every Taipei apartment building. Even so, in Taipei most balconies have been enclosed by users of all social classes. This paper looks into the historical context of the enclosed balcony by arguing that the identity and origins of the Taipei balcony are inseparable from the 1960s birth of a modernist housing type—the Taipei walkup.Balcony provision, governed by building codes inherited from a colonial past, has been incorporated into the system of speculative market housing. For builders, balconies are profitable floor areas that can be promoted as a symbol of modern living; for users, balconies are additional floor space that can be transformed into interior spaces. However, owing to the threefold combination of initial unfamiliarity of apartment buildings, underinvestment in the urban environment, and dire political circumstances, it is the balcony which has borne the brunt of the underdeveloped relationship between public and private life. In the context of this new housing type, the practice of enclosing balconies arose through the complicity of builders and users.

Karassowitsch, Michael

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0004

An unspoken issue of increasing priority in architectural education is the under developed differentiation between architecture and technology. Almost all of the qualifications whereby an architect is prepared for and is permitted to practice professionally are technological parameters. But architecture is not technology. Architecture is, however, both protected by and obscured thru technology being in the forefront that means it is both of benefit and a hindrance.Architecture being undifferentiated from technology and named in terms of technology thus allows the issue to stay safely within the pragmatic assertion of professionalism that is set up during an education mainly controlled by the profession. Within that is a nascent architectural impulse that resides largely unspoken but which is nonetheless evolved and evolving and shared. The unrevealed architecture generates an aura of the mysterious and the radical which that contributes a greatly to the intensity of mundane and well known work.This paper examines how architectural technology obviates a space of differentiation within architecture, which may be examined phenomenologically in terms of the essence of humanity, whereby architecture has an original ontological correlation with human aspiration. This will be supported with the well known — for brevity — theoretical and practical examples around the work of Heidegger, Louis I. Kahn. Along with phenomenology, we will introduce philosophies of spiritual practice collectively called rajayoga. The latter is a millennia long experiment with well documented research into human aspiration. The paper concludes with examples of architecture presencing this space of differentiation and suggests the implications on the profession of an education that scan develop the super-ordinate program that is architectural practice.

Pektaş, Şule Taşlı; Aybar, N. Şule; Savut, N. Yaprak; McKinnon, Hunt

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0005

The success of the efforts for green building depends largely on integrating such approaches with building design education. However, most of the existing studies on green building have focused on the technical issues, while its socio-cultural and educational aspects have been less examined. In order to alleviate the problem, this paper presents an international workshop that explores how green building design can be taught in a global teamwork project using a green building assessment system, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) checklist as a framework and examples of vernacular architecture as precedents. The results of an empirical survey reveals a gap between students' general learning about green building in a developing and a developed country and suggests that a collaborative project experience may facilitate bridging the gap and exchanging technical and cultural information related to sustainability.

Jinxiu, WU; Meiying, Zhang; Lin, Zhao

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0006

High comfort and low energy consumption communities have become an important topic for community planning & design in China. Considering the special situation in China, the meaning of high comfort and low energy consumption communities lies in three aspects: making utmost use of natural climatic conditions, providing enjoyable indoor and outdoor living environments in circumstances of high-rise and high-density development, and holistic design of adjacent dwelling units to provide utmost flexibility. This paper uses design proposals for two real projects in two different cities in China - one in Yixing in South China and another one in Harbin in north China - as examples of how to design high comfort and low energy consumption communities by following local climatological factors and by respecting occupants’ needs in the long run. This paper shows that such communities can be planned in two steps, with special attention to the local climate. First, climatically responsive site planning determines building layout, height of each part, and also the design of open spaces. Second, detailed planning & design addresses the disadvantages of the site, improving space quality. Following local climatological conditions is also one of the key issues in housing design for high comfort & low energy consumption communities. In the housing design of the Harbin project, besides consideration to climate, special attention was also given to flexible/variable dwelling unit design according to occupants’ long-term needs. The “1+1 mode” is put forward to provide utmost flexibility for families with 3 generations for their current and future lives.

Pu, Bo; Qiu, Yanjun

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0007

We performed a bibiometric analysis on urbanization research based on the 3,058 peer-reviewed articles in the SCI and SSCI database from 1984 to 2013. Our analysis revealed document types, scientific outputs, subject categories, major journals and major authors, geographic distribution, highly cited papers and citation networks and temporal trends in keywords burst. Growth of article output has emerged since 1990, and went through two development stages. Environmental sciences, urban studies and ecology came out the most urbanization articles and Landscape and Urban Planning was the most productive journal in urbanization studies. Tothmeresz B was the most prolific author. USA was the most productive country, but Chinese Academy of Sciences was the most high-producing institution. Three streams were identified among the 65 most cited articles in the LCS historiography, and Schueler’s (1994) article has the strongest bursts. A keyword analysis revealed that the “China”, “city” and “globalization” are the research hotspots in the future.

Theisler, Katalin K.

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0008

The paper discusses the position of low rise, high density housing in Hungary on a theoretical level, from the conceptional point of view. The purpose is that the dissemination and popularization of the housing type would be beneficial to the society. Before and after World War Two different nature of this housing type was present in the country, but after the regime change in 1989 the continuity has been lost.This paper aims to support the above assumptions - discussing the benefits of the installaton type in the light of global and local issues, and search of the housing type’s local positions. The actuality of housing issue is relevant because of the planning of 2014-2020 housing program, the fall of yearly built houses, the imbalance of housing allocation and the urgent questions of global problems.The paper’s method is threefold (1) discusses the potential of the housing type in correlation with the three pillars of sustainability, (2) analyses past examples from three different periods of the past century and (3) searches its position according to actual social changes and suggests strategic objectives for the future use of low rise, high density housing in the country.

Nevzat, Meltem Zehra; Atakara, Cemil

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0009

From the 19th century onwards, glass has been used intensively in buildings. During the design process, the importance of aesthetics is very common for architects in general. The application of glass walls as part of the building’s structure has given flexibility in design together with transparency as well as aesthetics.Structural glass systems have been used in different building types for example office, residential, educational, commercial, transportation, cultural … Beyond the high - rise and high - tech buildings, structural glass systems have been applied also to historic buildings during their conservation process. The adaption of the structural glass system and the opportunity to reuse the existing building are other important aspects to be discussed.In this article, the literature review will be formed with a brief explanation of transparency in contemporary architecture, structural glass systems focusing on ‘suspended glass systems with pre-stressed cable trusses’ (SGSPCT) which has three application methods; 1) between floor systems 2) independent body systems 3) distance bridging systems and the reusability of existing buildings. The ‘between floor system’ which is commonly used as a contemporary solution technique for historic buildings together with its effects, will also be analysed with the help of a case study, Esma Sultan Mansion. This historic building’s present glass structure will be studied to create an alternative proposal less dependent to the existing building. Another case study will be the Ballapais Abbey. Part of this gothic building (the common room) that has collapsed in the past will be analysed. An independent glass structured annex designed with SGSPCT will be proposed giving joint details of the adaptation to the existing building. This case of study is a literature analysis based on books, internet resources, articles and architectural drawings, like plans, sections and details related to the buildings. Both case studies will be proposing an alternative glass structured annex that is focusing on gained transparency and reusability in respect to the existing historic building.

Haid, Achim Andreas; Öztüren, Ali

2015 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2015-B0010

This study aims to understand the house owners' energy concerns. An exploratory inductive research design has been chosen to explore the perceptions of households towards the modernization of energy use in residential buildings. Face-to-face interviews with experts and households were conducted in Baden-Württemberg, Germany to collect the data. This study found that most of the house owners do not know about the benefits of increasing the energy performance in residential buildings and which energy efficiency potentials they can acquire. Additionally, house owners’ superficial knowledge creates fears and doubts concerning the modernization of energy use in residential buildings. Moreover, this study found that the local public administration, such as the municipalities, has a good reputation among households. Hence, public marketing activities should be run locally. It is suggested that the public administration should not conduct any public marketing activities without the support, for example, of the mayor. Further, it is necessary to supply the house owners with clear and understandable information on the topic and to demonstrate the functionality of the technologies to increase energy efficiency in residential buildings. Moreover, interpersonal communication such as a hotline and personal advisory service concerning energy-efficient refurbishment of residential buildings can be very beneficial to support the households. Local public administration should aim to introduce public marketing activities to enhance the modernization of energy use in residential buildings.