Architectural Representation Research Articles

Representing the field of architectural representation: A Kraussian approach / A reproduction of semiotic square

Representing the field of architectural representation: A Kraussian approach / A reproduction of semiotic square

TransVAE-DTA: Transformer and variational autoencoder network for drug-target binding affinity prediction

Background and objectiveRecent studies have emphasized the significance of computational in silico drug-target binding affinity (DTA) prediction in the field of drug discovery and drug repurposing. However, existing DTA prediction approaches suffer from two major deficiencies that impede their progress. Firstly, while most methods primarily focus on the feature representations of drug-target binding affinity pairs, they fail to consider the long-distance relationships of proteins. Furthermore, many deep learning-based DTA predictors simply model the interaction of drug-target pairs through concatenation, which hampers the ability to enhance prediction performance. MethodsTo address these issues, this study proposes a novel framework named TransVAE-DTA, which combines the transformer and variational autoencoder (VAE). Inspired by the early success of VAEs, we aim to further investigate the feasibility of VAEs for drug structure encoding, while utilizing the transformer architecture for target feature representation. Additionally, an adaptive attention pooling (AAP) module is designed to fuse the drug and target encoded features. Notably, TransVAE-DTA is proven to maximize the lower bound of the joint likelihood of drug, target, and their DTAs. ResultsExperimental results demonstrate the superiority of TransVAE-DTA in drug-target binding affinity prediction assignments on two public Davis and KIBA datasets. ConclusionsIn this research, the developed TransVAE-DTA opens a new avenue for engineering drug-target interactions.

Containers

“Something for Nothing”, pause containers, container buildings and other interpretations of the category “Containers” were raised for the first time by the XIX Congress of Architecture in Barcelona as a topical problem of the profession. The representation of architecture as a container, when the form does not follow the function at all, and the content actually becomes a replaceable and transformable filling, changes the traditional ideas about the impossibility to transfer the content of a work into another Form.The ideology of hybrid spaces and flexible offices, the need for reconstruction/modernization of historical and industrial buildings and structures, renovation and gentrification of degrading environments and objects give special importance to the discussion of the “container” as an ongoing discourse of the profession.

Family photos and architectural representation: Using photo-collage sketchbook to understand behaviour patterns in family apartment buildings

This article presents a three-step process of collecting, deconstructing and reconstructing family photos in ethnographic research investigating the sociocultural aspects of behaviour patterns in family apartment buildings. The first author conducted the study for her Ph.D. thesis in architectural design, supervised by the second and third authors. As an architect, the first author created a photo collage sketchbook, combining various representational techniques of her profession with family photographs. While observing the family apartment building and trying to understand the “gecekondu” where the participants lived before the family apartment building, the researcher realised that the interviews were insufficient, and this problem forced the use of a photo collage sketchbook. To synthesise ethnographic knowledge, research started with obtaining family photos. After extracting and grouping, the deconstruction process began. Deconstructed layers are then reconstructed by using various architectural representation techniques and text. This photo collage sketchbook has helped us understand various aspects of the family apartment buildings related to architecture and culture. While doing this, the sketchbook prepared with visual contents combined with short notes represents the data collecting, organising, analysing, interpretation, knowledge-making, and presentation stages. In working with a photo collage sketchbook, obtaining family photographs and overlapping the photographs and interviews’ narratives appear challenging. Therefore, collective interviews have been a critical move to compare and verify the memories recalled by the participants. While interviewing, it is vital to show the photos to every participant from a particular age group because they contribute differently to the photo components because of the place experience. So, this study is not about a set of instructions or tools but experiences about the process or approach to constructing ethnographic knowledge.

The Cabinets of the Sacristy of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and the Representation of Architecture

After Beatrice d’Este’s death in 1497, the duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro, commissioned cabinets for the storage of sacred objects (‘armariis ... ad res sacras custodiendas’) for the sacristy of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where he planned to be buried. Although the archival sources are not unanimous, the cabinets are identifiable with those that nowadays occupy the eastern and western walls of the Dominican room, decorated with coats of arms and mottos of the Sforza family. Existing scholarship focuses on the cabinets’ unusual decorative technique and the general composition of the cycle, based on a calculated perspective, but their place within a broader architectural culture has largely gone unnoticed. Whilst the question of their attribution remains open, this paper argues that the buildings depicted in the background of the biblical scenes give us an insight into the architectural and figurative practice of the anonymous masters.

A tale of four studios: Evolving planning and architecture education towards mixed modality in a post-pandemic world

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic imposed urgent challenges for educational institutions. The sudden shift from on-site teaching to online distance learning offered the possibility to examine new settings of the studio, a core element of planning and architecture education. Although the pandemic is now over, online learning has secured a fixed place in university education, and consequently, educational institutions need to reconsider studio education based on the lessons learned during the pandemic. Through studying four studios taught at Aalto University, Finland, in 2020 and 2021, this article examines student-teacher experiences, and proposes opportunities for evolving studio education. The findings show that distance learning has in general sustained the objectives of studio education. However, challenges remain especially regarding the social aspects of learning. The degree of success of online teaching varied greatly depending on the tasks and the orientation of the studio (design or strategy). Technological aids and devices also had an influence on fulfilling the pedagogical objectives of learning. Professional socialization was highly affected by the online environment both in design and planning studios and the architectural representation witnessed difficulties specifically in design studios. To evolve the studio setting, the article suggests a mixed modality model supporting the social dimension of studio teaching by combining on-site and online learning activities to enrich the learning process. Such a model can harmonize the intended learning objectives and activities with the teaching methods and modality, thus improving the social dimension of studio teaching.

CoordNet: Data Generation and Visualization Generation for Time-Varying Volumes via a Coordinate-Based Neural Network.

Although deep learning has demonstrated its capability in solving diverse scientific visualization problems, it still lacks generalization power across different tasks. To address this challenge, we propose CoordNet, a single coordinate-based framework that tackles various tasks relevant to time-varying volumetric data visualization without modifying the network architecture. The core idea of our approach is to decompose diverse task inputs and outputs into a unified representation (i.e., coordinates and values) and learn a function from coordinates to their corresponding values. We achieve this goal using a residual block-based implicit neural representation architecture with periodic activation functions. We evaluate CoordNet on data generation (i.e., temporal super-resolution and spatial super-resolution) and visualization generation (i.e., view synthesis and ambient occlusion prediction) tasks using time-varying volumetric data sets of various characteristics. The experimental results indicate that CoordNet achieves better quantitative and qualitative results than the state-of-the-art approaches across all the evaluated tasks. Source code and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/stevenhan1991/CoordNet.

From Vision to Realization: The Design of Culture in the Kibbutzim

ABSTRACT The kibbutzim are unique communal settlements in Israel that aimed to establish an exemplary way of living and set a positive example for Israeli society. They sought to differentiate themselves from urban life and instead created a social structure based on socialist principles. This study delves into the cultural aspects of the kibbutzim, with a specific focus on their architectural representation, planning, and design. It demonstrates that architecture plays a pivotal role in shaping the kibbutzim way of life, with architects and members actively participating in the design process. Through their collective efforts, the kibbutzim strive to create physical spaces that embody their values and aspirations, reflecting their commitment to social equality and communal living. This paper thoroughly investigates the significance of developing tangible infrastructure to accommodate kibbutz culture. It examines the relationship between architecture and culture at three levels: the kibbutz’s master plan, the settlement’s cultural complexes, and the individual’s experience within the library space. At each level, this paper uncovers new insights, providing a fresh perspective on the relationship between the kibbutz society and its physical cultural structures.

Göreme Saklı Kilise Özelinde Kaya Oyma Kiliselerinde Koruma Girişimleri/Değerlendirmeleri

Cappadocia contains historical, documentary, aesthetic, artistic, symbolic, social, economic, religious and spiritual values. Many structures and places produced by the rock carving technique have been destroyed and/or are on the way to extinction because of intense destruction in the historical process. Rock-carved churches, unique in their religious, artistic, and cultural values, are among the most affected. In this study, the current status of the Saklı Church, the examination of its historical development, the architectural documentation studies with the monasteries in its immediate vicinity, the structural deterioration, and the reasons for the preservation of the rock-hewn churches in the Göreme Valley, and the current conservation strategies and practices in the rock churches were evaluated. Preservation proposals have been developed so that the cultural heritage can be safely transferred to the future. As a result, the status and deterioration of the Saklı Church have been documented with various architectural representation methods, and conservation proposals have been developed.

Studi Historis dan Analisis Arsitektur Masjid Jamik Silalas Sei Deli, Kecamatan Medan Barat

The integration of Islamic and cultural values, as well as local values in the Medan Barat Subdistrict, is marked by the emergence of new architectural representations in mosque design within the sacred realm of religious activities. This article examines the historical trajectory and architectural development of Jamik Silalas Sei Deli Mosque in the Medan Barat Subdistrict, encompassing its historical establishment, construction, and changes in the orientation of Islamic architectural styles over time. This study falls under the purview of Islamic architectural history and is a qualitative research endeavor employing historical research methods, including source collection, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography, with a specific focus on the Islamic architectural arts. The study reveals that the evolution of Islamic architecture at Jamik Silalas Sei Deli Mosque is influenced by the changing eras and local values in determining the mosque's development model. Furthermore, from a sociological perspective, the values embodied in this architectural art serve as a representation of the social and religious climate, which tends to be integrative within the community.

2D representation of the plant architecture in strawberry

2D representation of the plant architecture in strawberry

Evaluation of Representation in Architecture in the Centenary of the Republic through the Atatürk Cultural Center

Mimaride temsil nesnesi olan kutsallıklar zamanla değişip, dönüşmektedir. Bu süreçte korumanın rolü değişimin kontrol altında tutulmasıdır. Zamanla ihtiyaçlar ve dönemsel siyasi hareketler doğrultusunda değişen Taksim meydanının önemli kırılma noktalarından biri 20. yüzyılda yaşanmıştır. Bu dönem Cumhuriyet ilan edilmiştir ve tüm dünyada yaygınlaşan modernizm akımı Türkiye’de etkisini göstermiştir. Bu kırılmanın temsili olan Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (1977-İstanbul) modernist hareketin etkileriyle yapılan Cumhuriyet Döneminin simge yapısı olarak kent belleğinde önemli bir yere sahiptir. AKM Türkiye’deki önemli değişimlerine şahit olmuştur ve bunların bir nesnesi haline gelmiştir. Bu çalışma kapsamında yeni AKM’nin temsiliyet sorunu, özgünlüğü gibi konular koruma bağlamında ele alınıp, gelecekteki yerine dair sorgulamaların yapılması amaçlanmıştır. Taksim meydanı ve yeni AKM’nin sınırlı ve kontrollü yeni halinin birbirini destekleme durumu ve AKM’nin yıkılıp yeniden yapımının, benzer örneklerle karşılaştırılarak tartışılması amaçlanmıştır. Yeni bir ulusun inşası ile doğan AKM’nin Cumhuriyetin yüzüncü yılındaki temsiliyeti ve yüz sonraki temsiliyetine dair sorgulamalar, yapının gelecekteki yeri için önemlidir. Bu çalışma kapsamında, temsiliyet ve koruma kavramları AKM bağlamında sorgulanmıştır. Kamusal alan ve kültür yapısı ilişkisi AKM ve Taksim Meydanı üzerinden ele alınmıştır. AKM’nin koruma değerleri ortaya çıkarılmıştır. AKM’nin dünü, bugünü ve geleceği arasında bir bağ kurularak yapı ele alınmıştır. Dünyadaki benzer süreçleri geçiren, benzer örnekler ile karşılaştırmalar yapılmıştır. Bu çalışmalara dair değerlendirmeler sonuç bölümünde açıklanmıştır. Yerinde gözlem ve kullanıcı deneyimi ile alanın işlevsel ve fiziksel durumu gözlemlenmiştir. Literatür araştırması sonucu elde edilen bulgular AKM’nin dünü, bugünü ve yarını bağlamında, Taksim Meydanı ile ele alınmıştır. Kavramsal sorgulamaların fiziksel karşılıkları ortaya çıkarılmaya çalışılmıştır. Dünyadaki benzer uygulamalar kategorilendirilerek karşılaştırılmıştır. Ancak yeni ve eski Atatürk Kültür Merkezi’nin arasında geçmişe, günümüze ve geleceğe dair bir diyalog kurulabilirse, yapının yaşatılmasının ve gelecek nesillere aktarılmasının mümkün olabileceği düşünülmektedir.

Neighbors Map: An efficient atomic descriptor for structural analysis

Accurate structural analysis is essential to gain physical knowledge and understanding of atomic-scale processes in materials from atomistic simulations. However, traditional analysis methods often reach their limits when applied to crystalline systems with thermal fluctuations, defect-induced distortions, partial vitrification, etc. In order to enhance the means of structural analysis, we present a novel descriptor for encoding atomic environments into 2D images, based on a pixelated representation of graph-like architecture with weighted edge connections of neighboring atoms. This descriptor is well adapted for Convolutional Neural Networks and enables accurate structural analysis at a low computational cost. In this paper, we showcase a series of applications, including the classification of crystalline structures in distorted systems, tracking phase transformations up to the melting temperature, and analyzing liquid-to-amorphous transitions in pure metals and alloys. This work provides the foundation for robust and efficient structural analysis in materials science, opening up new possibilities for studying complex structural processes, which cannot be described with traditional approaches.

DDNAS: Discretized Differentiable Neural Architecture Search for Text Classification

Neural Architecture Search (NAS) has shown promising capability in learning text representation. However, existing text-based NAS neither performs a learnable fusion of neural operations to optimize the architecture nor encodes the latent hierarchical categorization behind text input. This article presents a novel NAS method, Discretized Differentiable Neural Architecture Search (DDNAS), for text representation learning and classification. With the continuous relaxation of architecture representation, DDNAS can use gradient descent to optimize the search. We also propose a novel discretization layer via mutual information maximization, which is imposed on every search node to model the latent hierarchical categorization in text representation. Extensive experiments conducted on eight diverse real datasets exhibit that DDNAS can consistently outperform the state-of-the-art NAS methods. While DDNAS relies on only three basic operations, i.e., convolution, pooling, and none, to be the candidates of NAS building blocks, its promising performance is noticeable and extensible to obtain further improvement by adding more different operations.

Surrogate-Assisted Cooperative Co-evolutionary Reservoir Architecture Search for Liquid State Machines

Liquid state machines (LSMs) are biologically more plausible than feedforward spiking neural networks for brain-inspired computing and neuromorphic engineering. However, optimizing and training complex recurrent network architectures in the reservoir of LSMs remains challenging. Most existing algorithms aim to adjust the synaptic strength only, without fundamentally modifying the reservoir architecture of LSMs. Recently, it has become popular to simultaneously optimize the architecture and parameters of the reservoir in LSMs. However, most existing architecture representation schemes are too restricted to discover more powerful architectures of LSMs. To address the above issue, this paper proposes a generative liquid state machine, whose reservoir architecture is evolved using a cooperative co-evolutionary algorithm whose weights are tuned by synaptic plasticity rules. To reduce the computation time for evolving the reservoir, random forest is adopted to assist the cooperative co-evolutionary algorithm, together with a data parallelism strategy. The proposed algorithm is assessed on three sequence classification benchmarks and our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art on the benchmark problems. Meanwhile, our analysis shows that the data parallelism strategy is effective in speeding up the evaluation process.

Spatial agency practice in Tai O Village: colonial legacies and spatial-architectural approaches to collaborative urban futures

This paper discusses spatial agency practice within a living lab in Hong Kong. Lab members work in Tai O Village, a historic fishing settlement receiving increased attention due to remnant vernacular housing there. The article presents historical and policy context for ongoing casework conducted with stakeholders in Tai O. It presents Tai O’s history in brief, recent policy developments, and inherent conflicts arising from the interaction of the two. The third section of the article describes informal settlement land tenure conflicts as historical phenomena in Hong Kong. The paper follows this case-specific discussion with global literature review of selected regularisation and settlement upgrading efforts from around the world. These reviews present the article’s thesis that third sector and design-led efforts are critically applicable methods to address informal settlement conflicts that remain due to colonial legacy policies and political inertia. The final section of the article presents ongoing living lab research and initiatives, including collaborative monitoring projects and strategic development proposals. Each living lab initiative presented elaborates the article’s thesis on the interaction between architecture, research, and governance to negotiate complex development transitions. The article contributes to architectural scholarship by summarising unique interactions between history, policy, economics, and demography that engendered the development situation in Tai O. Further, it reflects upon response development methods through architectural science and spatial agency practice, including the role of architectural representation products and discursive distinctions at boundaries between architectural practice and spatial agency practice.

Training audio transformers for cover song identification

In the past decades, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been commonly adopted in audio perception tasks, which aim to learn latent representations. However, for audio analysis, CNNs may exhibit limitations in effectively modeling temporal contextual information. Analogous to the successes of transformer architecture used in the fields of computer vision and audio classification, to capture long-range global contexts better, we here extend this line of work and propose an Audio Similarity Transformer (ASimT), a convolution-free, purely transformer network-based architecture for learning effective representations of audio signals. Furthermore, we introduce a novel loss MAPLoss, used in tandem with classification loss, to directly enhance the mean average precision. In the experiments, ASimT demonstrates its state-of-the-art performance in cover song identification on public datasets.

The Effect of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles of Acalypha wilkesiana Ethyl Acetate extract on Ehrlich ascites Carcinoma Cells.

Nanoparticles' precise targeting properties are becoming increasingly important in treating cancer and starting to outweigh cancer therapies. The in vivo anticancer activity of ethyl acetate iron oxide nanoparticles (NPS EAE) of Acalypha wilkesiana Müll. Mosaica was tested using Ehrlich ascites carcinoma cells (EAC). The value of the median lethal dose LD50 limit was found to be 3000 mg/kg. The value count of EAC cells was significantly decreased to 150±2.01 (106) and 275±2.01 (106) cells for each preventive and therapeutic group related to the positive group (525±4.3 (106) cell. Moreover, the results of biological markers decrease in alanine amino transferase activity (ALT), aspartate amino transferase activity (AST), creatinine (CREAT), UREA, albumin, globulin, and total protein level according to the confident group by restoring the abnormal dissimilarity in the biomedical parameters to normal values. Ethyl acetate nano particles induced apoptosis in hepatic and kidney cells. This was designated by increasing the apoptosis regulator Bcl-2 associated X (BAX) level and significantly reducing antiapoptotic assay B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) level as an antiapoptotic marker. In the apoptotic marker BAX, there was a significant rise in therapeutic activity with a change of 273.87% and a significant increase in the preventive group with a change of 144.69% according to the positive group. However, in the antiapoptotic marker, Bcl-2 highly decreases in the therapeutic group and preventive group with changes -83.20% and -87.82% according to the positive group, which has a highly significant increase with a change of 5855%. Histopathology tests showed anticancer activity against (EAC) in both the preventive group and therapeutic group, especially in the preventive group in kidney organs showed no pathology with normal glomeruli and normal tubules, it also showed in liver foci of lobular inflammation with mild development of a portal tract accompanied by inflammation, but in the therapeutic group showed less activity than the preventive group as in the kidney many tubules displayed appearances of slight tubular injury with mild acute tubular injury and in the liver, the therapeutic group becomes a more effective representation in normal liver architecture, with no detected lobular or portal inflammation or confluent necrosis. So the preventive group was considered as protecting agent for the kidney organ. However, the therapeutic group is supposed to be the treatment agent for the liver organ. This is due to the fact that it has a defensive effect rather than a curative effect. There is a possibility that it is a favorable anticancer agent. Green synthesis of Fe3O4- NPS was successfully done using plant extract acting as a reducing, stabilizing, and capping agent.

Urban notes. Conscious and participatory drawing

Graphic representation in architecture has been drastically transformed with the arrival of new technologies. In this changing contemporary context, freehand drawing’s role and objectives are being reconsidered as an aesthetic goal and as a pedagogical process. The way we transform our urban spaces is also evolving, with increasingly participatory approaches that include diverse perspectives. In search of alternative, innovative learning methods, this article shows the results of Urban Notes, an elective community activity in which students, associations and neighbourhoods exchange ideas about the place through urban drawing. First, a theoretical background is proposed that supports Urban Notes use as a participatory urban exploration tool, and then recent experiments are described. The results reveal a new form of transdisciplinary learning for schools of architecture and urbanism.

A dynamic multiscale model of cerebral blood flow and autoregulation in the microvasculature

Models of the micro-circulatory blood flow in the brain can play a key role in understanding the variety of cerebrovascular diseases that occur in the microvasculature. These conditions are often linked to structural modifications in the vessel network, alterations in the blood flow patterns, as well as impairment in the autoregulatory response, all of which are pathological changes that the model should be able to address if it were to have any clinical value. Furthermore, if the model results were to be validated against clinical MRI data, the model simulations need to be computationally feasible when used on networks on the scale of an MRI voxel. This requires some form of an upscaling approach that bypasses the need for an explicit architectural representation of the whole network while maintaining the relevant anatomical connections. To this end, we developed a hybrid multiscale model of blood flow and autoregulation that traces the dynamic changes in blood flow, volume, and pressure in the cortical microvasculature, where the discrete topology of the penetrating vessels is preserved, and these are then appropriately coupled to the homogenised capillary bed by a spatially distributing support function in the terminal endings. In contrast to the other multiscale models, the model developed here accounts for the dynamic physiological phenomena of the blood flow and the autoregulation processes in the microvessels. We show how the adaptive meshing scheme for the capillary bed developed in this study can be employed to ensure a scale-invariant coupling formulation and numerically accurate simulations, all without compromising the computational feasibility of the model. A statistically accurate cortical network on the scale of an MRI voxel is generated, and the model parameter values are calibrated using a Monte Carlo Filtering analysis to ensure that the model results are physiologically informed. The model is found to be able to capture the steep pressure gradients that have been reported to occur at coupling interfaces. Furthermore, in response to an upstream pressure drop, the network is found to be able to recover cerebral blood flow while exhibiting the characteristic autoregulatory behaviour in terms of changes in vessel calibre and the biphasic flow response. Overall, the model developed here offers a high-quality characterisation of dynamic flow and autoregulation in the microvasculature at improved computational efficiency and lays the ground for whole-brain dynamic simulations.