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ItemGrowth and expansion in post-war urban design strategies: C. A. Doxiadis and the first strategic plan for Riyadh Saudi Arabia (1968-1972)(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-19) Middleton, Deborah AntoinetteThis dissertation resituates C. A. Doxiadis in Post-War urban design history with a detailed examination of how urban growth and change was addressed by urban design strategies as applied in the master plan for Riyadh Saudi Arabia, undertaken between 1968 and 1972. The Riyadh master plan commission is important within Doxiadis' career, occurring in the midst of his prolific writing projects and approximately eight years after he completed the Islamabad master plan, his most renowned project. Most Post-War architects focused on the socio-spatial components of urban life, elaborating architectural projects that intertwined transportation, infrastructure, and concentrated on mass housing strategies. This dissertation argues that Doxiadis' contribution to urban design theory and practice during the Post-War period was to define a rational scientific methodology for urban design that would restructure settlements to enable urban expansion and change while addressing issues of community building, governance and processes of development. The applied urban design for Riyadh Saudi Arabia strongly exemplifies Doxiadis' rational strategy and methodology as outlined in Ekistics theory and the conceptual model of Dynapolis. The comparative analysis examines how Doxiadis applies the Dynapolis model in the urban spatial planning of Riyadh to organize urban territory at the macro and local urban scales, define neighborhood communities, and connect the new master plan to the existing spatial territory of the city. The longitudinal analysis contrasts the Doxiadis master plan, Riyadh's first urban development strategy, to the most recent comprehensive approach MEDSTAR to understand how the Doxaidis' urban design has sustained its spatial continuity over time. This dissertation makes two significant contributions. The first is to broaden knowledge of Post-War urban design specific to the spatial problem of urban expansion and change, and second to resituate Doxiadis within the Post-War history of urban design specifically revealing his previously unrecognized project of the Riyadh master plan undertaken from 1968-1972.
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ItemRisk-conscious design of off-grid solar energy houses(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-16) Hu, HuafenZero energy houses and (near) zero energy buildings are among the most ambitious targets of society moving towards an energy efficient built environment. The "zero" energy consumption is most often judged on a yearly basis and should thus be interpreted as yearly net zero energy. The fully self sustainable, i.e. off-grid, home poses a major challenge due to the dynamic nature of building load profiles, ambient weather condition and occupant needs. In current practice, the off-grid status is accomplishable only by relying on backup generators or utilizing a large energy storage system. The research develops a risk based holistic system design method to guarantee a match between onsite sustainable energy generation and energy demand of systems and occupants. Energy self-sufficiency is the essential constraint that drives the design process. It starts with information collection of occupants' need in terms of life style, risk perception, and budget planning. These inputs are stated as probabilistic risk constraints that are applied during design evolution. Risk expressions are developed based on the relationships between power unavailability criteria and "damages" as perceived by occupants. A power reliability assessment algorithm is developed to aggregate the system underperformance causes and estimate all possible power availability outcomes of an off-grid house design. Based on these foundations, the design problem of an off-grid house is formulated as a stochastic programming problem with probabilistic constraints. The results show that inherent risks in weather patterns dominate the risk level of off-grid houses if current power unavailability criteria are used. It is concluded that a realistic and economic design of an off-grid house can only be achieved after an appropriate design weather file is developed for risk conscious design methods. The second stage of the research deals with the potential risk mitigation when an intelligent energy management system is installed. A stochastic model based predictive controller is implemented to manage energy allocation to sub individual functions in the off-grid house during operation. The controller determines in real time the priority of energy consuming activities and functions. The re-evaluation of the risk indices show that the proposed controller helps occupants to reduce damages related to power unavailability, and increase thermal comfort performance of the house. The research provides a risk oriented view on the energy self-sufficiency of off-grid solar houses. Uncertainty analysis is used to verify the match between onsite sustainable energy supply and demand under dynamic ambient conditions in a manner that reveals the risks induced by the fact that new technologies may not perform as well as expected. Furthermore, taking occupants' needs based on their risk perception as constraints in design evolution provides better guarantees for right sized system design.
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ItemEvidence of existing knowledge of China and its influence on European art and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-16) Zhu, YingThis dissertation investigates the extent of knowledge of China in Europe and, more particularly, Chinese influence on European art and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It attempts to answer the following questions: 1. What visual and literature resources on China and Chinese art in Europe were available in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? 2. To which extent was there any understanding of Chinese art and architecture in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? 3. To which extent might this understanding have affected European art and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Although European contacts with China began in the early sixteenth century, few scholars have touched on the evidence that exists of the extent of European knowledge of Chinese architecture before 1720, even on the possible impact of the Chinese architectural designs that were depicted on Chinese porcelains and other merchandise imported into Europe for two centuries before that date. This dissertation examines the evidence for the employment of new and differing aesthetics derived from Chinese artifacts and then assimilated in European art, architecture and landscape in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After examining the variety of resources from which the new aesthetics derived from Chinese artifacts imported into Europe was evolved, the dissertation analyzes Chinese influence in different nations in an order which follows the most consistently open and effective communications to the Far East. In the process, the dissertation quotes the contemporary historical descriptions of those Chinese artifacts as well as attempting to identify their influence on European art and architecture, thus providing evidence that the interaction between China and Europe served as subtle but active, generative force in European art throughout the period. In sum, the thesis attempts to explore the European understanding of Chinese art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to examine the consequences of that influence as they were reflected in European art and architecture. It analyzes some of the most influential and related social, political, and religious aspects that acted as powerful stimuli, which in turn affected in the growth of Chinese influence on European art, architecture and landscape. This dissertation thus attempts to push back the significance of the Chinese influence on aspects of European artistic styles from the accepted date of the early eighteenth century to the seventeenth and even earlier - the sixteenth century.
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ItemUsing remote-sensing and gis technology for automated building extraction(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-21) Sahar, LioraExtraction of buildings from remote sensing sources is an important GIS application and has been the subject of extensive research over the last three decades. An accurate building inventory is required for applications such as GIS database maintenance and revision; impervious surfaces mapping; storm water management; hazard mitigation and risk assessment. Despite all the progress within the fields of photogrammetry and image processing, the problem of automated feature extraction is still unresolved. A methodology for automatic building extraction that integrates remote sensing sources and GIS data was proposed. The methodology consists of a series of image processing and spatial analysis techniques. It incorporates initial simplification procedure and multiple feature analysis components. The extraction process was implemented and tested on three distinct types of buildings including commercial, residential and high-rise. Aerial imagery and GIS data from Shelby County, Tennessee were identified for the testing and validation of the results. The contribution of each component to the overall methodology was quantitatively evaluated as relates to each type of building. The automatic process was compared to manual building extraction and provided means to alleviate the manual procedure effort. A separate module was implemented to identify the 2D shape of a building. Indices for two specific shapes were developed based on the moment theory. The indices were tested and evaluated on multiple feature segments and proved to be successful. The research identifies the successful building extraction scenarios as well as the challenges, difficulties and drawbacks of the process. Recommendations are provided based on the testing and evaluation for future extraction projects.
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ItemDense urbanism at the old edge: conflict and reconciliation of streets and buildings(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-18) Jiang, PengIn the last few decades, new centers have emerged at the edges of traditional cities and pre-World War II suburbs. As these evolve, do they converge towards the urban forms of traditional cities? This question is explored based on a study of urban areas in the Atlanta Metropolitan Region. Atlanta Downtown, Decatur and Marietta, are compared to the new centers in Buckhead, Cumberland and Perimeter. The evolution of the street network of Buckhead is examined in detail. The morphological history of a particular urban block in Buckheadâ "the Tower Place blockâ "is documented. Morphological analysis, focusing on street patterns, block shapes and sizes, property boundaries and building footprints, is complemented by Space Syntax, focusing on the structure of street networks and connectivity. It is shown that new urban centers tend to grow on very large blocks accessed through major transportation infrastructure, but situated in otherwise sparse and fragmentary street environments. As these centers grow and as the density of land use increases, a secondary private road system is created, to take advantage of development potential and provide access to major building investments. The effective fragmentation of the large blocks suggests a pattern of metric convergence towards an optimum block size. In traditional cities, however, the street network is stable over time and acts as the framework for changes in architecture and land use. In the new centers, the secondary road system serves to access particular private investments without regard to the creation of a public framework of connections. From a syntactic point of view, the new centers are spatially unintelligible, thus substantially diverging from traditional cities, even as they accommodate dense mixed use developments. The thesis points to the need of developing and using subdivision regulations and zoning classifications in order to better regulate the spatial structure of new urban centers in the future.
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ItemPavilion structure in Persianate gardens: reflections in the textual and visual media(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-01-14) Gharipour, MohammadThe pavilion structure has been an integral part of Persianate gardens since its earliest appearance at the Achaemenid garden in Pasargadae (sixth century BC). Despite its significance, the scholarly focus on the study of gardens has somewhat sidelined the study of the pavilions and even neglected the cultural context of the development of the pavilions. The pavilion as a theme appears after the maturation of the concept of paradise as a garden in Near Eastern mythological and religious texts. The Quran is the first known text that integrated the two concepts of pavilion and garden in the imaginary paradise. Later, Persian poetry defines specific relationships between human beings, pavilions, and gardens while stressing the psychological and material values of pavilions and gardens. Three types of resources were consulted to reconstruct the image of pavilion: literary documents (including mythology and poetry), different types of art (ranging from painting to carpets), and historical accounts. Referring to these allows us to explore the diversity of the pavilion's image in each medium and its degree of correspondence to reality. This dissertation explores the diversity of the pavilion (tent, kiosk, or building), its spatial, formal, and functional relationship with gardens as a flexible entity, and its cultural use. The historical accounts discussed in this dissertation prove the existence of buildings in gardens, the common use of tents as temporary residences, gender specificity of pavilions, and the multi-functionality of gardens for encampments, administrative affairs, and pilgrimages. The pavilion as building is well documented in both visual and literary media. While poetry draws a clear boundary between the garden and building as separate entities, painting merges or separates the building and garden (as courtyard or planted area) physically, formally, and symbolically. The building in poetry is usually associated with the materialistic world, whereas the garden is often associated with the ideal world. This is, to some extent, visible in paintings in which the geometrical design of the building and the courtyard acts as a reference to the material world. The frequent reference to iwan as a consistent design element in painting and travelers' accounts proves its significance as an intermediate space between inside and outside the pavilion as a building. Tents in gardens appear less frequently in poetry and painting than they do in textual sources. On the other hand, historical documents rarely point to kiosks or semi-open spaces in gardens, whereas kiosks are widely developed in paintings. The examination of paintings also reveals formal and functional similarities between the throne and kiosk. The kiosk appears in close physical and visual contact with natural components of gardens, and even serves as a connector between the garden and building. The pavilion as a kiosk is, however, to a large extent absent in poetry and historical documents probably due to the dominant interest in buildings. This research proves the dominant cultural view on the functional flexibility of Persianate gardens between the 14th and 18th centuries in using pavilion structures varying in form, function, and scale.