School of Architecture

BackgroundThe first onset of psychosis can be a traumatic event for diagnosed individuals but can also impact negatively on their families. Little is known about how parents of the same child make sense of the illness. In mothers and fathers caring for the same child with early psychosis, the current study assessed their similarities and differences in key areas of their caregiving role.MethodsUsing a cross‐sectional design, parental pairs caring for the same child treated within an early intervention in psychosis service, completed self‐report measures on their caregiving experiences, illness beliefs, coping styles and affect.ResultsData from 44 mothers and fathers were analysed. Analyses confirmed that parents reported similar levels of emotional dysfunction and conceptualized the illness in broadly similar ways with regard to what they understood the illness to be, their emotional reactions to the illness, perceived illness consequences and beliefs about treatment. Significant di...

Background: Carers of patients experiencing first episode psychosis (FEP) are at an increased risk of mental and physical health problems themselves. However, little is known about how the psychological needs of carers may differ between those caring for an adolescent versus an adult who has FEP. Aims: This pilot study aimed to explore any differences in the psychological needs of carers caring for adolescents versus adults with FEP. Methods: We surveyed 254 carers of 198 FEP patients (34 carers of adolescents of 24 FEP adolescent patients). Carers completed self-report measures of anxiety, depression, burnout, subjective burden, coping, and key illness beliefs. The sample was divided according to whether the patient was under (adolescent) or over (adult) age 18, and analysed using mixed model logistic regressions. Results: Compared to the carers of adult patients, carers of adolescents were more than twice as likely (12% vs. 30%) to experience overall burnout syndrome (all three do...

Background: Carer burden at first-episode psychosis is common and adds to the multiple other psychiatric and psychological problems that beset new carers; yet, knowledge of the factors that predict carer burden is limited. Aim: This study sought to investigate the types and predictors of carer burden at first-episode psychosis in the largest, most ethnically diverse and comprehensively characterised sample to date. Method: This study involved a cross-sectional survey of carers of people with first-episode psychosis presenting to Harrow and Hillingdon Early Intervention in Psychosis service between 2011 and 2017. Carers completed self-report measures assessing their illness beliefs, coping styles and caregiving experiences (i.e. burden). Thirty carer and patient sociodemographic and clinical factors were also collected. Mixed effects linear regression modelling was conducted to account for clustering of carers by patient, with carer burden (and its 8 subtypes) investigated as depende...

Objective: To investigate the impact of premature extraction of primary teeth (PEPT) on orthodontic treatment need in a cohort of children participating in the Born in Bradford (BiB) longitudinal birth cohort. Design: Observational, cross-sectional cohort. Participants: We aim to recruit 1000 children aged 7–11 years: 500 with a history of PEPT and 500 matched non-PEPT controls. Methods: After informed consent/assent, orthodontic records will be collected, including extra and intra-oral photographs and alginate impressions for study models. Participants will also complete a measure of oral health-related quality of life (COHIP-SF 19). The records will be used to quantify space loss, identify other occlusal anomalies and assess orthodontic treatment need using the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need. For each outcome, summary statistics will be calculated and the data for children with and without PEPT compared. The records of the children identified to be in need of orthodontic trea...

The article examines the common determinants of childhood dental caries and obesity. Longitudinal data from the Born in Bradford cohort study (BiB1000) (n = 1735) and dental data (dental general anaesthetics (GA) and oral health survey 2014/15) (n = 171) were used to test a framework on the social determinants of childhood dental caries (decayed, missing, filled teeth (dmft) index) and obesity (body mass index (BMI)). The BiB1000 data were collected at pregnancy week 26–28 and after birth at 6, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. The determinants were demographics, wellbeing, socio-economic status (SES), dietary behaviours and physical activity behaviour of the children. Missing data were accounted for through multiple imputation (MI). The framework was tested through structural equation modelling. Overall, the model fit was adequate. No alcohol consumption of the mother after giving birth, higher frequency of child drinking sugar-sweetened beverages, emotional and behavioural difficulties of...

How can the discipline participate in a city that is increasingly organized by infrastructural work? Architecture’s claim to the infrastructural city is through the design of alternative typologies of space in the flow networks that organize the contemporary metropolis. A total of 60 million people travel by air every month in the US and low cost airline travel in Europe doubled between 2003 and 2004. Deploying air travel as a vehicle for urbanism demonstrates that airline infrastructure is a latent site for new opportunities in architectural research and practice.

The paper explores sexism as a product of our global culture. Since sexism against women is a global problem, which affects us, it becomes important to distill the roots from which it stems. The paper highlights sexism in literature, arts and architecture against women by studying the works of Lance Hosey, and Bonnie St Andrews. The results reveal data reveals the presence of sexist attitudes in each of these cultural agents, and a discriminatory attitude against women. Sexism is hardwired to us by culture, and explains why the women of the world still struggle in the way of basic rights. The results ignite awareness in to the reader regarding our global sexist culture, which violates and deprives humans of their basic right and freedom.

By the 1960s the orthodox and snobbish nature of Modernist architecture was realized. Dogmatic and divorced from its poetic context, Modernism soon found itself against competing schools of architectural thought conceived as a reaction to Modernist urban practices. Despite presenting varying proposals the reactive ideologies maintained a common ground in highlighting the importance of context and contextual forces towards the constitution of place/ architecture, opposing the Modernist notion of finding meaning in structure. Amongst many such figures, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour, Rowe and Kotter, and Ian McHarg were individuals who directly advocated the importance of context-physical and psychological-in architectural practice while presenting a critique of Modernism. Nevertheless, Learning from Las Vegas by Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour has had the most influence on new urbanism since it was first conceived. Venturi, Brown and Izenour's ideas presented a new look at the building, advocating an architecture that was communicative, possessed character and were derived from and for the mass culture. Reminiscence of these proposals is evident in new urbanism in cities like Las Vegas, and Dubai, and evident in the works of Zaha Hadid Architects. In addressing Modernism's alienation with its context Ian McHarg in his Ecological Method advocated an efficient engagement and a protection of the natural environment1. His method, fostering the idea of ecological data of a place to determine the design of the place has influenced new urbanism and architectural discourse where the notion of sustainability and green practices has found popularity, with organizations such as L.E.E.D promoting practices with respect to natural systems and processes. Ian McHarg had the opportunity to test his site-specific ecological method in Woodland, Texas. The result of Woodland, Texas reveals the ecological method as a palimpsest processes of physical context with design occurring on the residual void. Given the technique, the primary critique of McHarg's method became his lack of interest in design and the plan becoming a fall out of the mapping method. Despite, having significance in the new urban architecture practice and discourse in terms presenting an architecture that is harmonious with natural processes, McHarg's Ecological Method did not pose a " direct " significant influence on new urbanism and urban planning to a high degree. [Type text][Type text][Type text]

Since 2004, when it first opened its door, the Seattle public library drew both appreciation as well as critics. Such contrasting views were inevitable since the project explicitly challenged preconceived notions of a public library in terms of form, space and program. The project reconstituted the public library that would facilitate the current intellectual atmosphere as well a future shifts. Stated to be " a library that puts on fishnets and hits the disco " 1by New York Times, the Seattle Public library aligns with the ideals of Post modernism and exhibits signs of interior urbanism. Characterized by a sense of hyper rationality, challenging the high modernist notion of flexibility while aligning with Koolhas's five key aspects of interior urbanism, the Seattle public library stands in direct opposition to the high modernist agendas. Joshua Prince Ramus, one of the key architect of the Seattle public library defines the hyper rational process as " a process that takes rationality to an absurd level " 2 as result producing instances that transcend expectations. The project is characterized by hyper rationality as it defies generic notions of space and archetype that may appear to be the result of OMA's and LMN's " whim and ego " 3. Joshua Prince however, explains that the from, as well as the spatial distribution is the direct diagram of the square footage each program consumed, sized and aligned wit zoning codes. This notion of hyper rationality is evident in works of pioneering post modernists, Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour who identified archetype " duck " 4 and " decorated shed " 5 that came about as a result of a rationale that was deeper-speed and scale in case of Las Vegas-yet transcended common notions and understandings while rejecting modernist ideals of deriving rationale through structure. Venture, Brown and Izenour, in rejection of the homogeneity [Type text][Type text][Type text]

The early stages of Fordism in Detroit, ranging between 1905 and 1941, knew an unprecedented level of labor struggle, devoid of any ideology and only “asking for more”: more wages, better working conditions and freedom of assembly. The radical and totally disenchanted bargaining strategy of the workers’ “rude pagan race” produced the finest capitalist technical response: the absolute industrial architecture of Albert Kahn.

His factories literally demonstrated how the opposition of the working class effectively generated the space of production and in which way all the peaks of strife, the “blood and fire” of the American labor history, have been translated into new rational configurations of the workshop layout and in more sophisticated strategies of social integration.

In order to understand the evolving logic of such a dialectics between struggle and development, architecture and revolution, there is nothing more revealing than retracing the evolution of the factory plan. For its intrinsic tendency to approximate the source of living labor, which was reduced by mass production to an abstract generic form - a labor “sans phrase” uniform in quality and only different in quantity - the industrial fixed capital progressively simplified towards its barest form of possibility: a “typical plan”, or a coherent, flexible and reproducible plan scheme, made of an homogeneous envelope, a technical core and a minimum of supports, able to make productive the human tacit potential by means of its calculated indeterminacy, suitable either to force the employees in rational choreographies or simply to let them free of “performing themselves”.

Following the path traced by Mario Tronti in his postscript to Workers and Capital, in which the straight political strategy of the American pre-union workers is elected as a model for the European working class movements in the 60s, a genealogy of the Albert Kahn’s industrial buildings would conceptually redefine the “typical plan” not as a mere default condition of the modern metropolis but rather as the true measure of its deepest principle of growth: the generic ability to produce proper of the human species-being.

According to Carl Schmitt, XX century was the result of a series of secular progressive “neutralizations and de-politicizations” aimed at dissolving antagonism within the sedating domain of market competition and technological religion.

Liberalism was nothing but the replacement of politics with policy, conflict with civilization, enmity with humanity, State with Society and, in this sense, the present “post-political” Empire, which governs through an extended universal neutral democracy made of control apparatuses, management and mass manipulation, seems the outcome of the economical prophecies of modernity, whose fundamental project was to subsume and tame the human generic nature – the innate engendering faculty – as fundamental source for production and development of its system of exploitation.

But if contemporary capitalism undermined any distinction between labor and life, salary and income, consumption and reproduction, work and political action, then precisely labor, in its precarious and most generic form, would offer the most profitable battlefield to elaborate new strategies of exodus “to make the brain of the system mad”.

This essay is thus an attempt to redefine the factory as the architectural paradigm of the modern metropolis, reconsidering “genericness” not as its mere steady default status but rather as its proper ontological source, which provides the conditions for any further evolution and, therefore, the possibility for politically acting within and against the total reality of production.

Beside a magnificent flight of staircases in Kislovodsk, Leonidov did not build anything in his life. Nevertheless, the thin white lines on black backgrounds, the vivid colours and the controlled dynamism within the absolute silent rigour of his plans were totally unknown to the exuberant constructivist explorations of his OSA colleagues and against a certain idealist Soviet avant-garde: his hazardous juxtaposition of pure volumes - mindful of Malevich suprematist compositions - were in fact never utopian or simply conjectured but minutely calculated in each detail and almost ready to be constructed.

Each Leonidov’s project constituted a ‘step towards socialism’, in which he managed to converge the purest idea of plan with Lenin’s critique of the capitalist state-form, promoting innovative strategies of organization, collective dwelling, education and production to integrate the entire Russian territory within a new ways of living (byt): “an architecture of pure program and almost no form” - Koolhaas would later claim - “which could indifferently coexist with whatever other type of architecture opposing the intelligence of Leonidov to the intimidations of Tafuri.”

In this sense, after his outstanding graduation project for a Lenin’s Institute (1926), his internationally acclaimed entries for the Centrosoyuz (1928) and the Palace of Culture (1929), Leonidov’s rectangular typical plan for the House of Industry (1929) epitomised the whole Soviet project for the city between the NEP and the first Five-Years plan, juxtaposing cognitive labour, physical exercise, leisure activities and daily-life rituals across the same horizontal plane, eliminating any distinction between production and reproduction, labour and life: an indifference that would rapidly become a generalised global condition and would unavoidably subvert the typical plan into a managerial apparatus of exploitation.

Referring to the disunion between the plebs and the roman senate which constituted the very propelling source of the republican freedom, in his Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio Niccolò Machiavelli contested the traditional cult of civic concordance assuming conflicts and turmoils as necessary fundament for the state power. In this sense a city that aimed at extending its hegemony over the neighbouring states had to rely both on the faithful support of a popular army and on the art of government of its prince, whose virtuosity should have been aimed at controlling the intestine humores and the territorial extension of the conquered provinces through an organic deployment of political and economical institutions.

For these reasons, the two fundamental forms of Renaissance utilitarian architecture were military constructions, which paralleled the innovations of fire-arms technologies, and the building of bureaucratic apparatuses, related to the progressive capital accumulation managed by what Weber defined a new rising army devoid of condottieri. Deeply influenced by the reiterative modularity of the medieval Procuratie Vecchie in Venice while distant from the authoritarian nobleness of Bramante’s Palazzo dei Tribunali in Rome, Giorgio Vasari’s Uffizi in Florence and Loggia in Arezzo could be considered as two radical paradigmatic projects generated to frame the economical and political context of Cosimo I de’ Medici dukedom (1537-1574) which was characterised by large defence investments and by a marked proliferation of specific ‘immaterial’ professions such as banking, trading, administrative and forensic activities.

If the Uffizi reversed the logic of the architectural ‘objecthood’ by modulating the irregularity of urban texture around the negative void of the strada nuova, the Loggia provided a subtle infrastructure for the trade businesses taking place in the overlooking Piazza grande, hosting shops, offices rooms and residential units for the Monte di Pietà, the Chancellery and the Customs House functionaries within a single building devoid of ornaments, a continuous multi-functional slender slab able to mediate the complex topographical conditions without compromising the overall equilibrium of the massive preexisting buildings.

While the first, as a modern epicentre for the citygovernment, exerted its control over the continuous field of the urban production by structuring the different guilds and magistracies through a unique spatial office module and interiorizing the public soil as a propelling element of the building itself; the latter, conceived as a strategical financial outpost at the confines of Tuscany, acted as homogeneous stable background to control the internal productive activities and commercial exchanges between the princedom and the outer bordering states, in linewith the close Medicean Fortress and the bastioned walls.