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Article
Publication date: 26 September 2019

Selma Harrington, Branka Dimitrijevic and Ashraf M. Salama

The purpose of this paper is to focus on Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, giving a general overview of its urban context through five historical periods, as part…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, giving a general overview of its urban context through five historical periods, as part of a research study on its modernist architectural heritage.

Design/methodology/approach

Designed to mimic the theatrical process which unfolds through acts and intervals, the paper combines literary, architectural, journalistic and historical sources, to sketch the key periods which characterise the city’s urban morphology.

Findings

The sequence of acts and intervals points to the dramatic historic inter-change of continuities and ruptures, in which the ruptures have often been less studied and understood. This explains the frequent conceptualising of Sarajevo through East–West binary, which synthesises it as a provincial capital from Ottoman and later Habsburg rule, a regional centre within two Yugoslav states and a capital city of a young state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This highlights the need to study the ruptures as clues to the flow of continuities, in which the care and after care for built environment provide a field of evidence and possibilities for diverse perspectives of examination.

Research limitations/implications

Corroborated by secondary sources, the paper examines the accounts of urban heritage destruction in the 1990s war, as recorded by a writer, an architect and a journalist, and outlines a pattern of unbroken inter-relations between urban and architectural space (tangible) and sense and identity of place (intangible).

Practical implications

This discourse is relevant to the current situation where the city of Sarajevo expands again, in the complexity of a post-conflict society.

Social implications

Challenged by the political divisions and the laissez-faire economy, the public mood and interest is under-represented and has many conflicting voices.

Originality/value

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the accounts from the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, this conceptual paper contributes to the formulation of a cross-disciplinary discursive prism through which the fragments of the city and its periods come together or apart, adding, subtracting and changing layers of meaning of the physical space.

Details

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 13 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2631-6862

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 May 2021

Dalia Aly and Branka Dimitrijevic

This research aims at examining public parks as a complex, interrelated system in which a public park’s natural system and its man-made system can work together within an…

Abstract

Purpose

This research aims at examining public parks as a complex, interrelated system in which a public park’s natural system and its man-made system can work together within an ecocentric approach. It will create a framework that can support the design and management of public parks.

Design/methodology/approach

The article first introduces previous research and justifies the need for a new approach. It then uses conceptual analysis to examine the concepts that construct a park’s system through previous theoretical research. Finally, the public park system is constructed by synthesising its components and showing the interrelations between them. These components are defined based on previous theoretical and empirical research.

Findings

A public park system is defined as consisting of a natural system and a man-made system with multiple components that interact to offer the overall experience in a park. The defined system can be a useful tool for decision-makers, managers and designers in the analysis and evaluation of existing and potential projects to achieve multifunctional parks that are better utilised and have a wider influence.

Originality/value

The research offers an alternative approach for framing public parks that do not deal with their components in isolation from each other. This view of public parks brings together perspectives from different literature into one coherent framework that emphasises mutual dependencies and interactions in one integrated whole.

Details

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 15 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2631-6862

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 November 2022

Dalia Aly and Branka Dimitrijevic

This article presents an evaluation tool that is designed to assess 12 spatial and managerial qualities of public parks. The tool is applied in evaluating public parks in Cairo to…

Abstract

Purpose

This article presents an evaluation tool that is designed to assess 12 spatial and managerial qualities of public parks. The tool is applied in evaluating public parks in Cairo to reveal common management practice issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Features and factors of the qualities were defined and evaluated. The tool was then tested by conducting an evaluation of 48 public parks in Cairo and consulting local experts regarding the assessment criteria. These contributed to enhancing the tool, making it more comprehensive and contextualised to Cairo.

Findings

Application of the tool confirms that the tool has the capacity to provide a comprehensive evaluation of a variety of features and can detect key differences between evaluated parks. Analysis highlights that parks in Cairo are not maintained at optimum level and many exhibit serious deterioration that can have negative influences beyond the boundaries of the parks themselves. The majority of these parks also share problems of heavy commercialisation, wasted potentials, fragmentation and separation of uses.

Originality/value

The evaluation tool provides a new and alternative perspective for the evaluation of the built environment. The tool considers the relationships between the different factors of evaluation, rather than reducing the factors to simple checklists. Managers and other practitioners can use the tool to evaluate existing parks or when designing proposals to achieve better standards in the qualities.

Details

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 18 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2631-6862

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2013

Hasim Altan, Mohamed Refaee, Liangxiu Han and Masa Noguchi

Energy usage of households accounts for a significant portion of total energy consumption and carbon emissions. Scottish homes today are highly energy consumers emitting on…

Abstract

Energy usage of households accounts for a significant portion of total energy consumption and carbon emissions. Scottish homes today are highly energy consumers emitting on average 3 tonnes of CO2 per house annually and the amount exceeds the UK average of 2.75 tonnes of CO2. Moreover, 26% of the households are actually facing fuel poverty and it is therefore a critical task to efficiently manage and minimise energy trends in housing in order to meet carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction and energy consumption cut targets such as 80% overall cuts in carbon emissions by 2080 for the UK, compared with 1990 levels. The study has been undertaken within the Zero Energy Mass Custom Homes (ZEMCH) research network's demonstration projects e.g. ‘ZEMCH 109’. The existing post-council end-terraced house was intended to be extended in South Ayrshire, Scotland in 2012. As part of the project, the Building Environments Analysis Unit (BEAU) research centre has conducted a post occupancy monitoring of the energy and indoor environmental conditions e.g. indoor air temperature, relative humidity and CO2 levels in the Scottish affordable home which will also continue even after the construction of the newly built extension and the refurbishment of the existing home. It is therefore important for the successful demonstration of the ZEMCH 109 project and for the purpose of this study that a detailed monitoring and a post occupancy evaluation (POE) of the exiting NRGStyle home are performed sufficiently in order to investigate the relationship between energy consumption and the indoor environmental conditions and cross-checked with the accepted standards.

Details

Open House International, vol. 38 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0168-2601

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 2006

Thomas Grisham and Derek H.T. Walker

The purpose of this research is to explore and test conceptual issues of how communities of practice (CoPs) are a recognized means of transferring knowledge. Analysis of data…

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore and test conceptual issues of how communities of practice (CoPs) are a recognized means of transferring knowledge. Analysis of data, derived from reflection upon experience gained by close full‐time engagement on three complex, large‐scale engineering construction projects. Five emerging themes that help to explain how CoPs may be nurtured to increase the effectiveness of project management are revealed: creating a knowledge environment, discovering and recruiting potential members, information sharing, time for communicating, and motivation and rewards. The development of CoPs requires time and the creation of a knowledge environment. In the complex world of international construction, most projects are unique physical undertakings, have teams that have never worked together before, have a limited duration, with participants located in numerous countries. Thus, there is a natural tension between the need and the reality that requires strong cross‐cultural leadership, and special techniques, if CoPs are to be utilized. This paper practically illustrates, based on rigorous organizational literature theory largely missing from the engineering community, how CoPs can be actually nurtured and used. The metaphor used to illustrate this should resonate strongly with construction engineers and designers.

Details

Construction Innovation, vol. 6 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1471-4175

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 January 2007

Tayyab Maqsood, Derek H.T. Walker and Andrew D. Finegan

This paper aims to discuss how knowledge‐pull from external knowledge sources could systemise knowledge exchange as a knowledge management (KM) initiative and to argue how it…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to discuss how knowledge‐pull from external knowledge sources could systemise knowledge exchange as a knowledge management (KM) initiative and to argue how it could contribute to successful application of innovative techniques.

Design/methodology/approach

Soft System Methodology (SSM) used to carry out a case study on a specific innovation diffusion initiative within an organisation.

Findings

Construction organisations need to actively participate in knowledge activities possibly organised through universities or other research bodies. This interaction bridges the gap between research and its practical implementation. Much useful academic research goes unnoticed because of a lack of interest by construction organisations in attending knowledge events such as conferences, symposiums or run joint research programs with the academia.

Research limitations/implications

Study recommendations have specific relevance to the organisation under study rather than being more widely generalisable. Only one innovation diffusion example was focused on. However, the SSM approach is generalisable in the study of problems and issues raised and to identify a proposed solution.

Practical implications

This research highlights the gap that exists between academic knowledge and its practical use by construction organisations. Construction organisations and external knowledge sources (e.g. academia) need to think positively about how to make collaboration more practically useful to organisations.

Originality/value

The research provides a template of how one major construction contractor benefited from its approach to participating in external knowledge activities and explains using SSM how it successfully used knowledge‐pull for delivering significant benefit from diffusing an externally developed innovation.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

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