Iconic Objects Research Articles

SYMBOLISM IN THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT

Statement of the problem: symbolism in the architectural environment is used to express abstract ideas and create images that carry ideological meaning. The relevance of the study of symbolism in the architectural environment is justified by the need to deepen the understanding of its role and significance in the formation of the aesthetic and ideological content of architectural objects. The purpose of the work: to investigate the history of the emergence and features of the use of symbolism in the architectural environment. Tasks of the research: 1. To consider the essence and history of the emergence of symbolism as a direction of art. 2. Compare architectural objects of different cultures and eras from the point of view of their symbolic load. 3. To study the symbolism of iconic objects of the architectural heritage of Ukraine. Research methods: analysis of literary sources, historical-comparative, iconographic and semiotic analysis. Conclusions: 1. The architectural environment of the world is not only a part of the volume-planning solution created and organized by man, designed to ensure the vital activity of society, but also a complex system of signs and symbols that reveals the worldview of different cultures and eras. 2. Analysis and comparison of architectural objects from different parts of the world makes it possible to understand their symbolic meaning. 3. Symbols in the architectural environment: allow to convey ideas, concepts and concepts without a dictionary description; give architectural objects uniqueness and memorability; create a connection between architecture, history, national culture and traditions, as well as a special emotional atmosphere of the architectural environment. 4. Famous architectural objects and landmarks of Ukraine, such as: Sophia Cathedral, Khotyn Fortress, Lychakiv Cemetery, House of Chimeras and Independence Square, are not only monuments of history and culture, but also symbols that reveal the deep meaning of Ukrainian being. 5. The revival and implementation of traditional cultural images of the Ukrainian people in modern art opens up great prospects for the preservation of Ukrainian identity for future generations and gives symbolism to the architectural environment.

МЕТАБОЛІЗМ ЯК НАПРЯМ РОЗВИТКУ АРХІТЕКТУРИ У ПІСЛЯВОЄННІЙ ВІДБУДОВІ

After World War II, the creative thinking of architects in Japan resulted in metabolism, a new architectural direction with an ideology that corresponded to the culture and lifestyle of the state. The metabolism theory was based on the principle of individual development of a living organism (ontogenesis) and coevolution. Metabolism combined ideas about architectural megastructures with ideas of organic growth. In 1960 in Tokyo, Metabolist architects presented their manifesto "Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism", which proposed a vision of the city in constant change and growth. Sustainable Metabolism Architecture, the idea of separating building components and grouping them based on their lifespan, may be an effective resource conservation solution today. Also, the methods and means of metabolic architecture are appropriate for supplementing the destroyed housing stock of Ukraine. Bold planning decisions for the development of "cities on ruins" allow us to rethink the meaning of megastructures and the types of their filling. Numerous studies have been devoted to the architecture of metabolism, the summation of which is a critical photo album by Rem Koolhaas, where he reassessed this phenomenon from the distance of time (Koolhaas and Obrist 2011). In domestic practice, the metabolism ideas were combined with Soviet modernism, and the main concepts were introduced into the educational process (Cherkes Linda, 2011; Kryvoruchko, 2011). Modern researchers believe that disasters force us to reconsider our views on architecture and make decisions. What architects can do for people who have lost everything (Tamari, 2014). Also, modern studies link the metabolism in cities with the goals of sustainable development (Chen F. & Chen Y. 2022) and testify to a new understanding of the metabolism of the city as a whole (Céspedes Restrepo & Morales-Pinzón, 2018). The purpose of the article is to consider the phenomenon of architectural and urban metabolism and their connection with the growth, expansion, and reconstruction of cities; identify in the course of metabolism of approaches and means useful for the reconstruction of destroyed cities; reveal the formation of iconic objects by Japan's leading metabolic architects.

КОМПОЗИЦІЙНО-МИСТЕЦЬКІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ЕВОЛЮЦІЇ СУЧАСНИХ ІНДИВІДУАЛЬНИХ ЖИТЛОВИХ БУДИНКІВ

The article is devoted to the study of artistic features and specifics of the functioning of individual residential buildings. Examples of well-known, iconic objects designed and built at the beginning of the 20-21 centuries are considered. Research directions are conditionally divided into artistic-aesthetic, cultural-semiotic and functional. The main attention is paid to the composition and stylistic features of individual residential buildings, the description of conceptual-artistic, functional and constructive approaches used in the design and construction of these buildings. Examples of well-known architectural objects with analysis of various compositional techniques and stylistic directions are provided as illustrations. The first most famous object is the villa "Savoy", architect Le Corbusier. The villa is designed taking into account the 5 main principles developed by Corbusier for modern buildings, the main structural scheme of which is a reinforced concrete frame. The second object that defined an entire direction in the architecture of the last third of the 20th century is the "Vanna House", architect Robert Venturi. It is with this building that the emergence and development of a new architectural style - "postmodernism" - is connected. The third building is Villa "Soravia" by the well-known Coop Himmelb(l)au architectural office. Two more objects are examples of economy-class housing using the latest achievements in the field of new technologies. These are residential buildings designed by architects Tadao Ando and Renzo Piano. The continuous and purposeful improvement of building technologies and building structures, as well as the constant change and development of aesthetic views, stimulate the emergence of new stylistic concepts and artistic generalizations in modern architecture.

Experimenting with museography: the Musée des Confluences in Lyon

ABSTRACT This article examines innovative forms of museography and their relationship to national narratives involving history, memory and locality. It seeks to assess how definitions of culture have shifted towards world culture and to what extent it can be argued that a radical approach to the anthropology museum or musées de société (also known as world culture museums) has emerged. The discussion is centred on recent exhibitions and iconic objects displayed by the Musée des Confluences in Lyon and the cultural imagination they seek to promote with both local and international visitors. New avenues in creating cosmopolitan civic forms of memories disconnected from colonial legacies will be examined.

The Importance of Architectural Icons of the City of Szczecin for the Transformation of Landscape Identity and Promotion of the City’s Image

The practice of promoting an image of the city using architectural objects, and the need to identify or create architectural icons in urban spaces, outlined in this article, occurs in many cities worldwide. The city of Szczecin in Poland, the subject of this research, is no exception. The turbulent history of the city, which for years remained within the borders of Germany, makes it particularly worth analyzing in these terms because it shows the shifting popularity of architectural objects in the context of changing political, cultural, and economic conditions. The research presented here aims to identify iconic objects commonly exploited to build an image of Szczecin, assess their prominent features, and analyze changes over time in their popularity and use for these purposes. The historical and interpretive research was based on a detailed analysis of old and contemporary architectural objects of Szczecin depicted in postcards from the last hundred years, from the period spanning 1920 to 2023. The analysis covered several digital databases containing archival and contemporary postcards. This analysis enables the identification of the most popular objects, suggests the key characteristics of iconic buildings, and identifies four basic types of buildings, which are distinct in terms of purpose, message, and the specific image of the city to which each contributes. The duration of each type as a popular object, the strength of its impact on the city’s image, and its importance for the urban landscape are also identified. The research revealed that: architecturally iconic buildings are created concerning political, economic, and social conditions and the need to promote a specific image of the city, certain features contribute to a building’s potential as an architectural icon, and the strength of the building’s impact, its importance for the city landscape, and the possibility of creating a specific image depending on its iconic type.

Icebergs, Polar bears and Butterflies: A Study of Climate Change Imagery in Imagination

Imagining climate change and incorporating it in literature is seen as an uphill task. When the world is ravaged by the rapidly escalating climate change issues, literary imagination has been seen as a way of understanding and exploring the manifestations of climate change in culture and society. The paper intends to look into how iconic objects and images such as the ice, polar bears, butterflies, rising seas and erupting volcanoes form crucial and effective tools in depicting the implications of climate change. Special focus will be given to the work Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver but other works with significant representations of related motifs will also be dealt with.

ГЕРОИЗАЦИЯ ИЗВЕСТНОЙ ЛИЧНОСТИ КАК ОСНОВА ДЛЯ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ОБРАЗА ГОРОДА (НА ПРИМЕРЕ Г. САРАТОВА)

Any historical figure whose biography includes the fact of being born or educated in a particular city is considered to become a kind of city symbol. For Saratov in the second half of the 20th century, Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin has become such a symbol. And this is not surprising, because one of the most important events of the second half of the 20th century is the first manned flight into space, to which the above lines from the poem “Great News” by Saratov poet Isai Tobolsky are dedicated. Despite the universalization of the image of Yu. A. Gagarin, the city of Saratov becomes a landmark in the biography of the spaceman. Exactly here in Saratov the fateful landing place is located. Many iconic objects of worship and reverence appear in the city - not only the streets are named after him, but also the technical school where he studied. There are excursions to “Gagarin’s places”. The goal of this article is to find out how glorification at the regional level becomes the basis for the formation of the city’s image

ІСТОРІЯ ФОРМУВАННЯ АРХІТЕКТУРИ КЛУБНИХ БУДІВЕЛЬ ЛЬВОВА

The article shows the history of the formation of the architecture of Lviv clubs from the beginning of their formation to the present day. Today, there is a trend where iconic historical objects, which often have lost their original function, attract the interest of potential investors. In order not to lose valuable objects of the city’s cultural heritage, a policy of integrating the monument into a new functional context is being pursued. Cultural and educational functions prevail among the most popular solutions: media libraries, co-working spaces, social hubs, art and cultural centers. Their main goal is to revitalize cultural communication and public life in the city. Thanks to modern materials and technologies, architects and designers have the opportunity to create flexible, universal spaces that allows quickly respond to changes in user demand and hold a wide range of events. Innovative approaches in the construction process make it possible to preserve iconic objects and bring the architectural environment of the city into European and world contexts. Modern trends in the development of society indicate that there is an acute need for buildings and spaces for the cultural activities of numerous societies and organizations. Recently, as a result of the diversity of urban life, new forms of public communication have appeared, and therefore, new types of buildings in which such communication takes place. The social conditions of each socio-economic formation leave their mark on the type of building, give it a new social meaning and structure. Therefore, in order to predict the development of multifunctional cultural and educational objects today, to determine their optimal functional structure and volume-spatial solution of the auditorium, capable to exist for different types of events, it is necessary to know and use the architectural experience of past times, when cultural and educational buildings and clubs are becoming the most popular, both on our territory and in the world.

LPCL: Localized prominence contrastive learning for self-supervised dense visual pre-training

Self-supervised pre-training has attracted increasing attention given its promising performance in training backbone networks without using labels. By far, most methods focus on image classification with datasets containing iconic objects and simple background, e.g. ImageNet. However, these methods show sub-optimal performance for dense prediction tasks (e.g. object detection and scene parsing) when directly pre-training on datasets (e.g. PASCAL VOC and COCO) with multiple objects and cluttered backgrounds. Researchers explored self-supervised dense pre-training methods by adapting recent image pre-training methods. Nevertheless, they require a large number of negative samples and a long training time to reach reasonable performance. In this paper, we propose LPCL, a novel self-supervised representation learning method for dense predictions to settle these issues. To guide the instance information in multi-instance datasets, we define an online object patch selection module to select the local patches with the high possibility of containing instance area in the augmented views efficiently during learning. After obtaining the patches, we present a novel multi-level contrastive learning method considering the instance representation of global-level, local-level and position-level without using negative samples. We conduct extensive experiments with LPCL directly pre-trained on PASCAL VOC and COCO. For PASCAL VOC image classification task, our model achieves state-of-the-art 86.2% accuracy pre-trained on COCO(+9.7% top-1 accuracy compared with baseline BYOL). On object detection, instance segmentation and semantic segmentation task, our proposed model also achieved competitive results compared with other state-of-the-art methods.

Dissecting the central regions of OH 231.8+4.2 with ALMA: A salty rotating disk at the base of a young bipolar outflow

We present a set of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) continuum and molecular line emission maps at ~1 mm wavelengths of OH 231.8+4.2. This is a well studied bipolar nebula around an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star that is key in investigations of the origin of the remarkable changes in nebular morphology and kinematics during the short transition from the AGB to the planetary nebula (PN) phase. The excellent angular resolution of our maps (~20 mas ≈ 30 au) allows us to scrutinize the central nebular regions of OH 231.8+4.2, which hold the clues to unravel how this iconic object assembled its complex nebular architecture. We report, for the first time for this object and others of its kind (i.e.,pre-PN with massive bipolar outflows), the discovery of a rotating circumbinary disk selectively traced by NaCl, KCl, and H2O emission lines. This represents the first detection of KCl in an oxygen-rich (O-rich) AGB circumstellar envelope (CSE). The rotating disk, of a radius of ~30 au, lies at the base of a young bipolar wind traced by SiO and SiS emission (referred to as the SS-outflow), which also presents signs of rotation at its base. The NaCl equatorial structure is characterised by a mean rotation velocity of Vrot ~ 4 km s−1 and extremely low expansion speeds, Vexp ~ 3 km s−1. The SS-outflow has predominantly expansive kinematics, characterized by a constant radial velocity gradient of ~65km s−1 arcsec−1 at its base. Beyond r ~ 350 au, the gas in the SS-outflow continues its radial flow at a constant terminal speed of Vexp ~ 16 km s−1. Our continuum maps reveal a spatially resolved dusty disk-like structure perpendicular to the SS-outflow, with the NaCl, KCl, and H2O emission arising from the surface layers of the disk. Within the disk, we also identify an unresolved point continuum source, which likely represents the central Mira-type star QX Pup enshrouded by a ~3 R* component of hot, (~1400 K) freshly formed dust. The point source is slightly off-center (by ~6.6mas) from the disk centroid, enabling us to place the first constraints on the orbital separation and period of the central binary system, namely: a ~ 20 au and Porb ~ 55 yr, respectively. The formation of the dense rotating equatorial structure at the core of OH 231.8+4.2 is most likely the result of wind Roche lobe overflow (WRLOF) mass transfer from QX Pup to the main-sequence companion; this scenario is greatly favored by the extremely low AGB wind velocity, the relatively high mass of the companion, and the comparable sizes of the dust condensation radius and the Roche lobe radius deduced from our data. The Vexp∝ r kinematic pattern observed within the r ≲ 350 au inner regions of the SS-outflow suggest that we are witnessing the active acceleration of the companion-perturbed wind from QX Pup as it flows through low-density polar regions.

Some Methods for the Degradation-Fragility Degree Determination and for the Consolidation of Treatments with Paraloid B72 of Wood Panels from Icon-Type Heritage Objects

The main objective of this paper is to develop methods for assessing the deterioration of wooden panels of iconic heritage objects and the effectiveness of consolidation treatments, methods that are easy to apply to the field of wood restoration. During the research, four evaluation methods were identified, respectively: the density method, the excessive porosity method, the Brinell hardness method, and the Mark hardness method. Each method was exemplified on five wooden panels (icons), and when needed, degraded specimens were used and/or treated with Paraloid B72. One of the main conclusions of the research is that, although all methods are minimally invasive and do not require cutting of these heritage objects, the applicability of each is done depending on the type of degradation, often requiring a combined analysis between two or several methods. Additionally, the classification of the cultural good in one of the five degrees of embrittlement-degradation help to design a technological flow regarding the treatments of consolidation/restoration of the heritage object.

The Contribution of Design Discipline in Business Decisions through Design-Oriented Production Diversification: A Case Study in Italian Furniture Sector

AbstractFirm diversification is a growth strategy that allows firms to launch new products in untapped markets to increase revenue. It is the identified approach where industrial designers can contribute to exploring new tactical assets. The paper analyses the design-oriented diversification of a furniture company in Italy, where Design played a crucial role in positioning new demands. The tool applied to display the current and the feasible product portfolio is the Product Space. The company has leveraged its know-how on bent glass to produce iconic objects, winning prestigious design awards.

MOTIF BATIK POLITEKNIK HARAPAN BERSAMA DAN PEMAKNAANNYA SEBAGAI REPRESENTASI DAERAH TEGAL

Makna simbolis becomes important to be studied in an in-depth and structured method of data collection. This research discusses how batik’s patterns are symbolically interpreted and can be taught from one person to another means as an identity of a region, especially in Tegal, Jawa Tengah. These batik’s patterns are planned to be used as an academia civitas of Politeknik Harapan Bersama’s uniform as an outward symbol of identity. This research applies a visual semiotic approach in which the signs in textual and contextual data are examined in batik’s patterns. The definition of meaning itself is the intent of something that is in an object. This view of makna simbolis argues to conceive of cultures as defined by interpreting batik’s patterns. This research shows that batik’s patterns are manifested in society as a local wisdom of a region. Description about symbolic meaning in batik’s patterns was observed in four iconic objects: Monumen Tahu Aci, Monumen Poci, Gunung Slamet, and Pantai Utara. The four iconic objects are analyzed in a sociocultural textual and contextual as an identity and representation of Tegal, Jawa Tengah.

Street Scene understanding via Semantic Segmentation Using Deep Learning

Scene classification is an essential conception task used by robotics for understanding the environment. Like the street scene, the outdoor scene is composed of images with depth that has a greater variety than iconic object images. Image semantic segmentation is an important task for Autonomous driving and Mobile robotics applications because it introduces enormous information needed for safe navigation and complex reasoning. This paper provides a model for semantic segmentation of outdoor sense to classify each object in the scene. The proposed network model generates a hybrid model that combines U-NET with Xception networks to work on 2.5 dimensions cityscape dataset, which is used for 3D applications. This process contains two stages. The first is the pre-processing operation on the RGB-D dataset (data Augmentation and k- means cluster). The second stage designed the hybrid model, which achieves a pixel accuracy is 0.7874. The output module is generated using a computer with GPU memory NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6G, programming with python 3.7.

Semantic Segmentation of Urban Street Scenes Using Deep Learning

Scene classification is essential conception task used by robotics for understanding the environmental. The outdoor scene like urban street scene is composing of image with depth having greater variety than iconic object image. The semantic segmentation is an important task for autonomous driving and mobile robotics applications because it introduces enormous information need for safe navigation and complex reasoning. This paper introduces a model for classification all pixel’s image and predicates the right object that contains this pixel. This model adapts famous network image classification VGG16 with fully convolution network (FCN-8) and transfer learned representation by fine tuning for doing segmentation. Skip Architecture is added between layers to combine coarse, semantic, and local appearance information to generate accurate segmentation. This model is robust and efficiency because it efficient consumes low memory and faster inference time for testing and training on Camvid dataset. The output module is designed by using a special computer equipped by GPU memory NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6G, and programmed by using python 3.7 programming language. The proposed system reached an accuracy 0.8804 and MIOU 73% on Camvid dataset.

The mirror, the magus and more: reflections on John Dee's obsidian mirror

The obsidian mirror associated with the Elizabethan polymath and magus John Dee (1527–1608/1609) has been an object of fascination for centuries. The mirror, however, has a deeper history as an Aztec artefact brought to Europe soon after the Spanish conquest. The authors present the results of new geochemical analysis, and explore its history and changing cultural context to provide insights into its meaning during a period in which entirely new world views were emerging. The biography of the mirror demonstrates how a complex cultural history underpins an iconic object. The study highlights the value of new compositional analyses of museum objects for the reinterpretation of historically significant material culture.

Organic Electronics and Beyond (Advanced Optical Materials 14/2021)

With this Special Issue, we would like to celebrate the 60th birthday of Prof. Karl Leo, one of the leading scientists in the field of Organic Electronics (see also the Guest Editorial, article number 2101108). This front cover shows a cube made of six individual laboratory-sized organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). This OLED-cube has become an iconic object representing the continuous research and development in and around the Dresden Organic Electronics hub that finds its roots in the visionary research of Karl Leo. (Image: IAPP).

Very Important Person Localization in Unconstrained Conditions: A New Benchmark

This paper presents a new high-quality dataset for Very Important Person Localization (VIPLoc), named Unconstrained-7k. Generally, current datasets: 1) are limited in scale; 2) built under simple and constrained conditions, where the number of disturbing non-VIPs is not large, the scene is relatively simple, and the face of VIP is always in frontal view and salient. To tackle these problems, the proposed Unconstrained-7k dataset is featured in two aspects. First, it contains over 7,000 annotated images, making it the largest VIPLoc dataset under unconstrained conditions to date. Second, our dataset is collected freely on the Internet, including multiple scenes, where images are in unconstrained conditions. VIPs in the new dataset are in different settings, e.g., large view variation, varying sizes, occluded, and complex scenes. Meanwhile, each image has more persons (> 20), making the dataset more challenging. As a minor contribution, motivated by the observation that VIPs are highly related to not only neighbors but also iconic objects, this paper proposes a Joint Social Relation and Individual Interaction Graph Neural Networks (JSRII-GNN) for VIPLoc. Experiments show that the JSRII-GNN yields competitive accuracy on NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), MS (Multi-scene), and Unconstrained-7k datasets. https://github.com/xiaowang1516/VIPLoc.

ALMA (finally!) discloses a rotating disk+bipolar wind system at the centre of the wind-prominent pPN OH 231.8+4.2

AbstractWe present interferometric continuum and molecular line emission maps obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of OH231.8+4.2, a well studied bipolar nebula around an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star that is key to understand the remarkable changes in nebular morphology and kinematics during the short transition from the AGB to the Planetary Nebula (PN) phase. The excellent angular resolution of our maps (∼20 mas ∼30 AU) allows us to scrutinize the central nebular regions of OH231.8+4.2, which hold the clues to understanding how this iconic object assembled its complex nebular architecture. We report, for the first time in this object and others of its kind (i.e. pre-PNe with massive bipolar outflows), the discovery of a rotating circumbinary disk of radius ∼30 AU traced by NaCl, KCl, and H2O emission lines. The disk lies at the base of a young bipolar wind with signs of rotation as well. A compact spatially resolved dust disk is found perpendicular to the bipolar outflow. We also identify a point-like continuum source, which likely represents the central Mira star enshrouded by a ∼3 R* shell or disk of hot (∼1400 K) freshly formed dust. The point source is slightly off-centre from the disk centroid, enabling us for the first time to place constraints to the orbital separation of the central binary system.

Remote Sensing Image Scene Classification Based on Object Relationship Reasoning CNN

Remote sensing image has been widely used in many fields such as military reconnaissance and earthquake relief. However, the complexity and diversity of the scene make the target detection and recognition performance poor. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have made breakthrough in remote sensing image processing due to their ability to extract deep features. This letter proposes a remote sensing image scene recognition method based on object relationship reasoning CNN (ORRCNN), which makes use of the relationship between objects to infer the scene information. The method has prior scene-information-based channel and object-detection-based channel to classify the remote sensing image. The prior scene-information-based channel makes use of the feature space to identify the scene, and the object-detection-based channel adopts the relationship between the object and the scene to classify the scene. Afterward, the Bayesian criterion infers the scene more accurately by means of fusing the scene information from the above channels. The experimental results show that the proposed method is excellent especially in the scene where there are iconic objects in the remote image.