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The construction industry provides employment for more than 2.8 million people, contributed 8.7 per cent of the UK economy's gross value-added (GVA) in 2006. The built environment is estimated to account for some 70 per cent of UK manufactured wealth. The industry's ability to deliver projects successfully in terms of time, cost and design quality has a major impact on the economy's wider performance. Construction is vital for the provision of good quality public services, and plays a role in the delivery of just over half of the Government's 30 public service agreements. It is also key to the long-term objective of making the UK a low-carbon society: buildings account for around half of greenhouse gas emissions. The health of the construction industry is a matter of public concern. The industry is complex and fragmented; it operates on low profit margins. There are difficulties in ensuring that lessons from experience are shared; that the workforce is sufficiently trained; and that appropriate contractual relationships are in place between different parts of the supply chain. The industry has set new targets for itself, and, in conjunction with government, established a Strategy for Sustainable Construction. The Government, because of its roles as both client and regulator, can and must be at the forefront of the drive to embed best practice. The sector also needs strategic leadership, and the Committee recommends the creation of the post of Chief Construction Officer, which both government and the industry should accept as having overall responsibility for construction.
Construction Matters examines the way that architects understand and respond to technological innovation through the creation of new types of spaces, and the materials through which an architectural idea finds its physical realization. Understanding the properties of different materials is indispensable for the creation of architecture that is original, powerful, and meaningful. Organized into chapters on the major methods of construction-masonry, concrete, steel, and wood – Construction Matters examines specific technologies that experienced major transformations in the last century, or were newly invented: a new material, jointing technique, or fabrication procedure for example. The architectural application of this invention is then analyzed with building case studies that are selected based on an obvious formal relationship between the building's form and the new type of construction that it incorporates – ranging from prewar designs in the United States and Europe to recent projects in Asia, and includes built projects as well as significant design proposals. Construction Matters develops a way of thinking about architecture in relation to technology that transcends a particular building method or design task. The architect and educator Georg Windeck conducted independent research that ranges from scientific advancements to philosophical contemplations. The multi-facetted discussion that emerges from this work is developed in close collaboration with artist and journalist Lisa Larson Walker, with mathematician and architect Will Shapiro, and with artist and architect Sean Gaffney. If we are to rescue the physical substance of architecture–the Matter of Construction–and create a practice that celebrates both the physical and the metaphysical aspects of building, we must understand how and why construction matters.
Incorporating HC 1090-i, session 2006-07
Through analyzing talk which goes on in primary school classrooms and some other locations, this text explains the process of teaching and learning as a social, communicative activity. It contains transcribed episodes of speech between learners and teachers, and learners to learners. The concepts described should be useful for teachers concerned with the quality of education in their classrooms.
This volume presents recent developments in the area of Lévy-type processes and more general stochastic processes that behave locally like a Lévy process. Although written in a survey style, quite a few results are extensions of known theorems, and others are completely new. The focus is on the symbol of a Lévy-type process: a non-random function which is a counterpart of the characteristic exponent of a Lévy process. The class of stochastic processes which can be associated with a symbol is characterized, various schemes constructing a stochastic process from a given symbol are discussed, and it is shown how one can use the symbol in order to describe the sample path properties of the underlying process. Lastly, the symbol is used to approximate and simulate Levy-type processes. This is the third volume in a subseries of the Lecture Notes in Mathematics called Lévy Matters. Each volume describes a number of important topics in the theory or applications of Lévy processes and pays tribute to the state of the art of this rapidly evolving subject with special emphasis on the non-Brownian world.
Users have become an integral part of technology studies. The essays in this volume look at the creative capacity of users to shape technology in all phases, from design to implementation. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, including a feminist focus on users and use (in place of the traditional emphasis on men and machines), concepts from semiotics, and the cultural studies view of consumption as a cultural activity, these essays examine what users do with technology and, in turn, what technology does to users. The contributors consider how users consume, modify, domesticate, design, reconfigure, and resist technological development—and how users are defined and transformed by technology. The essays in part I show that resistance to and non-use of a technology can be a crucial factor in the eventual modification and improvement of that technology; examples considered include the introduction of the telephone into rural America and the influence of non-users of the Internet. The essays in part II look at advocacy groups and the many kinds of users they represent, particularly in the context of health care and clinical testing. The essays in part III examine the role of users in different phases of the design, testing, and selling of technology. Included here is an enlightening account of one company's design process for men's and women's shavers, which resulted in a "Ladyshave" for users assumed to be technophobes. Taken together, the essays in How Users Matter show that any understanding of users must take into consideration the multiplicity of roles they play—and that the conventional distinction between users and producers is largely artificial.
An eye-opening adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, from concrete and steel to denim and chocolate, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science.
Modular construction practices are used in many countries as an alternative to conventional on-site construction for residential homes. While modular home construction has certain advantages in terms of material and time efficiency, it requires a different infrastructure than conventional home construction, and the overall environmental trade-offs between the two methods have been unclear. This study uses life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts of constructing a typical residential home using the two methods, based on data from several modular construction companies and conventional homebuilders. The study includes impacts from material production and transport, off-site and on-site energy use, worker transport, and waste management. For all categories considered, the average impacts of building the home are less for modular construction than for conventional construction, although these averages obscure significant variation among the individual projects and companies.