Search results

The purposes of this study are to prove that the content of floor flexibility can be designed objectively with the use of margins, which are an architectural vocabulary visualizing the possibility of formal change, and to conduct a case study on how the existing typical floor plans of South Korean apartments change with the extension of flexibility: the usability of margins and the results.

This study reviews two housing projects with different methods of flexible housing design: one is the flexibility to change the sizes of spaces and the other is the flexibility to change the topology of spaces. In this paper, the architectural term “area margin” is used for the former and “linear margin” for the latter. These were applied to the case of current apartments in South Korea to transform them into floor plans with the two types of flexibility and investigated whether the proposed floor plans satisfy the required efficacy structurally and functionally.

This case study shows that margins can be used as architectural vocabularies representing flexible sizes of rooms and flexible boundaries with neighbors. The final form of the structural framework became homogeneous, even though it conserved its indigenous spatial characteristics of abundant natural sunlight and airflow. In addition, the transformed structural framework has higher rigidity than the original one, even though the transversal wall was cut off with a margin, as shown by the schematic representations in this paper.

The alternative plan, designed as a modification process, is not representative as a flexible floor plan. Rather, it is thought more important to make a range of variations rather than prototyping a model. This study starts from the premise that it is desirable for apartment house plans to share and encourage variations rather than aiming at typical sizes and shapes. Furthermore, this study exemplified the process to modify the existing typical floor plan into a flexible one using margins. Through this modification, it is thought that the typology of the South Korean apartment, which has succeeded in gaining social consensus for half a century, can be preserved while accommodating social changes in the future.

The control of future variations of floor plans will extend the socioeconomic and physical life of a building, enabling a reasonable reinvestment of resources.

This paper deals with a design method applying distinct visual symbols to different contexts of flexibility and using those as architectural vocabularies.

The intent and aim of the research was to look at a particular house type i.e. a terraced house with four floors, which is one of the popular designs commonly used in the last ten years in mass housing projects in Turkey. There are four alternatives of the type related with the cross-sectional relationship with the ground floor level. Emphasis was placed upon the "semi-cellar type" assuming that even though the level of residential satisfaction gradually increases with the possibility of interpreting the use of the open-plan floor space, and by proposing new design elements to create more adaptable and flexible spaces, the users may still experience dissatisfaction with designs where the space cannot be revised. With the use of a questionnaire, participants judged their own house as a whole and evaluated its uses for different functions and activities, complained in respect of changes required, and finally outlined their plans for the future. Despite the high level of satisfaction with having a garden (a unique characteristic in apartment-saturated Ankara), the aspect of dissatisfaction mostly referred to was the kitchen-garden relationship (or lack thereof). The residents, especially the older ones, were generally dissatisfied with the multi-storey design of their house. They prefer to remain on the backyard level without changing floors in different seasons. Besides, the users spending the longest time in the house complained more than the others and the people spending variable time in the house stated that they preferred to change the floors in different seasons. As compared to larger families, the smaller families were more likely to change floors.

The applicability of manufacturing planning and control methods differs between environments. This paper explains the fit between the planning environment and material and capacity planning on the detailed material planning and shop‐floor planning levels. The study is based on a conceptual discussion and a survey of 84 Swedish manufacturing companies. Results show the use of planning methods and their levels of user satisfaction in complex customer order production, configure to order production, batch production of standardized products and repetitive mass production, respectively.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the link between manufacturing strategy formalization and manufacturing strategy implementation, considering the potential moderating role of shop-floor communication.

Multiple linear regression models considering main and interaction effects of strategy formulation and shop-floor communication on strategy implementation were performed using data from the fourth round of the international HPM Project. This includes plants with more than 100 employees in the automotive, machinery and electronics industries from 10 different countries. Unlike other research studies, this research takes into account plant management’s and plant supervisors’ perceptions.

The findings show that formal strategic planning positively influences manufacturing strategy implementation. Furthermore, both feedback and instructive communication practices moderate the manufacturing strategy process, resulting in successful manufacturing strategy embeddedness, and prompt adaptation to change.

This study provides a better understanding of the manufacturing strategy process for scholars and practitioners. In addition, the results suggest that the adoption of some shop-floor communication practices can benefit firms through the strengthening of strategy implementation.

This paper provides empirical evidence to the emerging discussion on whether formal strategic planning helps to adopt a strategy or on the contrary make decision making inflexible.

Currently many real estate developers offer their products through their websites. The aim of this medium is not only to facilitate understanding of the building, but also to capture the attention of potential customers, provoking feelings and emotions that influence the purchase decision, especially in the case of off-plan property sales. Understanding the cognitive factors behind customers' evaluation processes prior to a purchase is of great interest for defining successful design criteria.

The interior space of the property is one of the most important aspect in users' purchase decisions.

The paper aims to determine which property design elements in floor plans provoke the emotions users use to describe its interior design.

A field study was carried out on a sample of 75 individuals who evaluated a set of images of real estate promotions.

The results show that the landings and corridors are fundamental; the area must be spacious so that larger surface areas score best; the living room must be well differentiated from the bedrooms; the valuation of the space depends on the graphic form of presentation, the use of warm colours and the degree of detail in the plans has a positive influence on the assessment.

This information may be of great interest for architects and designers in the graphic representation of the space.

The purpose of this research is to show significant points which can be used in the architectural design process by investigating the basic principles of earthquake resistant design (ERD) in a deductive format and to contribute to the architectural perception in ERD.

First, the structural irregularity types are examined depending on the rules defined in the Turkish Earthquake Code, 2007 (TEC). Then, architectural design failures related to earthquake resistance of buildings under earthquake loading are visualized and solution suggestions in literature are described in detail by supported drawings.

The problems causing structural irregularities are investigated deeply with given solutions in literature. It is obtained that the significant factors affecting the earthquake performance of structures are: architectural form, structural configuration, slenderness ratio, the location and rate of floor openings, projection rates and symmetry, rigidity and strength differences between floors, short columns, pounding effect. Social implications – The practical design decision rules can contribute to the phenomena of earthquake resistant architectural design and can encourage adoption of these rules in building industry.

This study aims to gain an understanding of the problems in projects in terms of structural irregularities, and then manage to solve the problems using problem‐oriented approaches. The suggested solutions can be adopted and applied to future projects for designing earthquake resistant buildings.

DEVALUATION is not a soft option, an easy escape route from our afflictions. Neither is it a source of pride to citizens of a land of whom a famous American wrote last century: ‘The strength of England lies in the omnipotence of her industry’. The reasons for it are complex and in part international in origin, but the stark fact is that events drove the country ineluctably towards a crisis from which devaluation was the only way out.

It is hard to find good news stories about disasters. Disasters seriously damage an organisation’s health. Of businesses that experience a disaster, 40 per cent never reopen and 30 per cent close within 2 years. Perhaps because of this, over 80 per cent of UK facility managers in a recent survey now report that they maintain a Business Continuity Plan which most of them review at least once a year. An increasing number, however, now find themselves responsible for a portfolio of international facilities spanning continents and time zones. This paper looks at some real life implications of global business recovery planning. In the wake of September 11th, one can hardly do less. This paper provides strategies and justifications for international emergency planning procedures and processes. Practitioners will gain valuable information from actual events and case studies to validate the concepts offered as a model. It may seem that some of the information and processes which are outlined in this paper are obvious; but that is the point. The obvious can be overlooked, and excuses can be made for the lack of implementation of emergency plans. But those excuses will not stand in the light of real disasters and cataclysmic events.

This paper outlines how Design for Lean Six Sigma methods aided a medical device manufacturing company in developing a new strategic space management and approval process for its manufacturing site.

The project demonstrates the application of the Design for Lean Six Sigma and structured Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, and Verify methodology in designing and implementing a process that enables the case study manufacturing site to improve its space utilisation and free up space.

The project was validated in one manufacturing department, and the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology resulted in creating 15% new space for that area, with opportunities identified to free up 44.7% of the total manufacturing floor space and realise over €2.2 million cost savings as well as start to manufacture new products launched.

The manuscript highlights for the first time how the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology can be utilised for space utilisation and can be leveraged by other manufacturers. The current study's limitations are that it is a single-site case study application. Future longitudinal case studies on Design for Lean Six Sigma application in more manufacturing space utilisation projects would be useful. This study has implications for identifying best practices for Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology application in the device industry, thus improving the state of the art for introducing new manufacturing lines.

This is the first published work to utilise Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology for space utilisation in a medical device company. This review will provide medical devices and other manufacturing organisations with recommendations on utilising Design for Lean Six Sigma and design for improved space utilisation to reduce costs.

In this study, a novel framework based on deep learning models is presented to assess energy and environmental performance of a given building space layout, facilitating the decision-making process at the early-stage design.

A methodology using an image-based deep learning model called pix2pix is proposed to predict the overall daylight, energy and ventilation performance of a given residential building space layout. The proposed methodology is then evaluated by being applied to 300 sample apartment units in Tehran, Iran. Four pix2pix models were trained to predict illuminance, spatial daylight autonomy (sDA), primary energy intensity and ventilation maps. The simulation results were considered ground truth.

The results showed an average structural similarity index measure (SSIM) of 0.86 and 0.81 for the predicted illuminance and sDA maps, respectively, and an average score of 88% for the predicted primary energy intensity and ventilation representative maps, each of which is outputted within three seconds.

The proposed framework in this study helps upskilling the design professionals involved with the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry through engaging artificial intelligence in human–computer interactions. The specific novelties of this research are: first, evaluating indoor environmental metrics (daylight and ventilation) alongside the energy performance of space layouts using pix2pix model, second, widening the assessment scope to a group of spaces forming an apartment layout at five different floors and third, incorporating the impact of building context on the intended objectives.