by Giuseppe Barbiero ABSTRACT: Affective Ecology is a new branch of ecology concerned with emotional relationships between human beings and the rest of the living world. The basic instinct that guides the evolution and maturation of a well-tuned relationship with the living world seems to be biophilia, our innate tendency to focus upon life and life-like […] read more
by Mathieu Helie Until very recent times, a study entitled Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Design and Construction Rules From Sixth-Century Palestine might have been categorized somewhere in-between ancient history and archeology of architecture, if not relegated to the dusty shelves of legal scholarship. Although it deals with one of the most sought-after secrets of […] read more
by Besim S. Hakim The mind set and associated skills of the contemporary architect whose ideology is rooted in modernism and post-modernism does not provide her or him with the outlook and skills necessary to intervene intelligently in habitat. Developers and home builders have taken the role of habitat producers, driven by the notion that […] read more
by Nikos A. Salingaros “Traditional architecture and urbanism require a sense of modesty and humility from the individual creator towards the sacred creation of the universe, as well as a basic intuition that concepts of beauty, harmony, justice, truth, and rightness are permanent and universal” — Lucien Steil. For the past few years, I have […] read more
by Nikos Salingaros Architecture is indeed linked to biology. This observation is intuitively true from a structural perspective, since human beings perceive a kinship between the different processes — natural and artificial — that generate form. Nevertheless, the broadness of the claim might appear surprising, considering that it comes from architects holding radically different ideas […] read more
by Michael W. Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros Originally published in Metropolis 29, November 2011 In 1984, the environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich made a startling discovery. In studying hospital patients recovering from surgery, he found that one factor alone accounted for significant differences in post-operative complications, recovery times, and need for painkillers. It was the […] read more
by Marco Casagrande The current massive urban immigration movement in China, brings people from every areas of the country to the megalomaniac cities, that all are the same. These farmers’ hands are constructing the new anonymous cities. The same hands that know the rural Local Knowledge through physical labor and passing of traditions through generations, are […] read more
by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros The words “living” and “technology” do not often occur in the same sentence. We think of technology as something mechanical, inert, dead — very different from life, and even dangerous to living systems. And yet the word “technology” simply means “the knowledge of making” — that is, how to create […] read more
by Antonio Caperna Presented at UIA working program “Spiritual Places”, July 6th, 2007 Third International conference “Transmitting outspoken emotions” UIA WP Spiritual Places, Warsaw, Poland Abstract This paper start from two assumption: 1. the illuminist thought has represented a turning point in Western history, but its has “frozen” inside its “rational domain” part of our […] read more
Using the work of Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros, I present a paper that want discuss the philosophical structure that are behind The Pattern Language (PL). Through a simple way I’ll show you the intimate connection existing among the PL and other cultural aspect like painting as well as the fractal geometry. I have referred my philosophical approach especially to the work of Oswald Spengler and his work “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” read more