Monumental Design Research Articles

A Study on Health Diagnosis of Zelkova serrata (Thunb.) Makino Using Hyperspectral Technique

Background and objective: Health diagnosis is essential for large, old trees that are designated and protected by the Act on the Preservation and Utilization of Natural Heritage and the Forest Protection Act. However, in the field, the overall health of trees is diagnosed by measuring the photosynthetic efficiency (PE) of some leaves. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the possibility of using hyper-spectral technology to replace the PE measurement as an approach for diagnosing the health of Zelkova serrata (Thunb.) Makino, which has a high rate of natural monument designation among South Korea’s natural heritage.Methods: The PE and hyper-spectral values were acquired from Zelkova leaves, and a Monte Carlo simulation was performed based on the spectral bands used to calculate vegetation indices (VI) in previous studies to select bands that have a high correlation with the PE. The explanatory power of these values on tree health was verified through a regression analysis of the VI and PE calculated from the selected bands, and the results of the study are as follows.Results: First, a variance analysis of the PE and VI of leaves found that there were differences depending on direction, and that the hyper-spectral values of leaves collected from the west were the most effective in measuring tree health. Second, it was found that it was effective to use 520 and 570 nm in the green region, 684 nm in the red region, 860 and 890 nm in the NIR region, 500 nm in the carotenoid region, and 531 nm in the xanthophyll region to derive the VI that replace PE metrics from the hyper-spectral values of leaves collected from the west. Third, PRI showed a very high effect with an explanatory power of 73.2% for the maximum quantum yield (Fv/Fm) regression equation. In other words, it was found that PRI can be used as an index derived from hyperspectral values to diagnose and record the healthy parts of Zelkova tree.Conclusion: By expanding the scope of this study to include Pinus densiflora and Ginkgo biloba, it is expected that if the utility and field applicability of this approach for diagnosing the health of large old trees are generally verified, it can be used for regular surveys of such trees designated as natural monuments in the future. Furthermore, it is expected that it can be expanded to diagnose park trees, street trees and the like, in addition to large, old trees.

Penguatan Identitas Lokal melalui Perencanaan Monumen Ikan Lele dan Ikan Nila sebagai Simbol Kearifan Lokal di Desa Aik Bukaq

This community service program aims to strengthen the local identity of Aik Bukaq Village through the planning and construction of Catfish and Tilapia Monuments. The village is recognized as a center for freshwater fish farming, which serves not only as the primary economic resource but also embodies cultural values passed down through generations. The monument is envisioned as a visual symbol of this local wisdom, while also functioning as a tourist attraction supporting the sustainable development of the village. The monument's design was developed through a participatory approach, involving the local community in every stage of planning, from initial concept to final design. The statues of catfish and tilapia, as the monument’s central elements, represent two species essential to the village’s economy and reflect local values such as hard work, sustainability, and harmony with nature. In addition to serving as a village landmark, the monument includes educational facilities with information panels explaining the importance of fish farming and environmental preservation. This program aims to foster a sense of pride and ownership within the community toward the monument, while also strengthening the local identity, which is increasingly recognized at both regional and national levels. Furthermore, the program is expected to boost tourism, positively impacting the village’s economy and raising awareness of the importance of preserving cultural heritage. As a result, the Catfish and Tilapia Monuments will become a tangible representation of efforts to strengthen the local identity of Aik Bukaq Village, reflecting a collective commitment to sustainable cultural and environmental preservation.

A Proposal in Search of the Form of the Theory

More than just constituting the material substance of the object, structure establishes a peculiar way of transferring meaning via metaphor. In design phases, the content constructed with manifestos brings out a context by the form. Both in disciplines of art and architecture, in monument design, the link between the order of elementary geometry and the symbolic values conveyed through it becomes apparent. A monument is a structural object in which meaning, and form integrate. Monument and memorial space-themed design competitions are idea-generating processes in which this desire stands out sharply. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the semantic equivalent of a product with its form through semiotic matching of structural components in its qualitative aspects. For this purpose, the expansion of the correlation will be questioned through a monument proposal for İstanbul Senin/Design Artwork Competition Mihri Rasim (Müşfik) category. The conditions, defining the abstracted person life cycle and way of integration with life are the design layers of the monument. The next stage is aimed to establish the relationship between abstraction and the design principles. The inferences drawn include the pursuit of a conclusion on the monopoly of this hypothesis and a methodology for reading the architectonic expression of other monuments. So, it may be possible to carry the structure beyond being an object by surveying the structure in a holistic order with the theoretical base of design values.

Structural form for inherent seismic safety: Sardar Patel Stadium, Ahmedabad, India

Seismic safety evaluation and performance assessment of existing structures provides an avenue to explore the value of the uniqueness of the structural design of many distinctive historic monuments, which thereby becomes a critical aspect of structural engineering research. Many historic structures have good seismic performance intrinsically incorporated through a careful choice of structural form, orientation of principal load-carrying elements and robustness of their structural design. The Sardar Vallabhai Patel Stadium situated in the city of Ahmedabad is a uniquely designed iconic structure of twentieth-century India. Designed by the architect Charles Correa and structural engineer Mahendra Raj, this historic structure is the first stadium in India to have a cantilevered roof structure. The stadium has been included in the ‘2020 World Monuments Watch’, which includes structures that have significant historical significance and contemporary social impact. Accordingly, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) has included this structure among 13 significant twentieth-century buildings that receive the ‘Keeping It Modern’ grants as part of the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative by GCI. This work looks at presenting a structural appraisal of this iconic stadium and performing a seismic assessment of the structure to explore the fundamental load paths and investigate their adequacy in ensuring seismic safety.

The Greater San Rafael Swell: Honoring Tradition and Preserving Storied Lands. By Stephen E. Strom and Jonathan T. Bailey

When surveyed among the celebrated landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, Utah’s San Rafael Swell is often overlooked. This land of hardened sandstone and sculpted badlands neither has the familiarity nor designations of nearby parks and monuments. Stephen E. Strom and Jonathan T. Bailey urge readers to take notice of it. For over two decades now, locals, officials, and conservationists quietly brokered compromises avoiding the sticky political mire that usually characterize public lands politics. Hoping to get out in front of public lands issues before executive action resulted in a monument designation or legislative measures imposed wilderness areas without local input, county citizens and officials began actively meeting in the 1990s to consider solutions to public lands issues in their county. Conversations between conservation and recreation groups, off-highway vehicle (OHV) enthusiasts, tribal communities, and other individuals and groups eventually led to a major piece of federal legislation, the Emery County Public Land Management Act. Signed into law in 2019, the act created three wilderness areas, a recreation area, and an enlarged state park. The authors outline in briefer detail similar conservation successes in Washington County, Utah, and in Custer and Owyhee Counties, Idaho.

Charting Sustainable Land Management Futures by Looking to the Past: The Case of Bears Ears National Monument

This review offers an examination of the historical and sociocultural context that should have informed the creation and management of the Bears Ears National Monument (BENM) in rural Southeastern Utah, USA—an area surrounded by ranching communities and sovereign Native American tribal lands. Because of elements such as cultural significance, ancestral ties, natural resources, and recreational value, the land of Bears Ears has different cultural meanings for various groups. The BENM is indeed a complex issue that can and should be viewed from multiple perspectives. Throughout its history, the BENM has been a topic of debate and controversy amongst numerous groups, from Native American tribes to local ranchers to the federal government. Before, during, and after Bears Ears was designated as a national monument, disputes and discourse surrounding the issue have been mainly focused on land use, management, politics, and governance. We present a review of the historical background leading to claims of ancestral ties to place. We summarize the major events that led to the Bears Ears National Monument designation, reduction, and restoration. We provide a brief discussion of the current academic literature and directions for future research.

Lost between legislation and application: a critical reading of Czech post-war architectural conservation policies

ABSTRACT Responding to the reality of post-war architecture in Prague, threatened by demolition and harmful reconstruction, this paper employs critical discourse analysis to examine heritage legislations and documented administrative procedures. The Czech context is a relevant case to the international discussion on heritage definition as an example of the establishment of a rigid authorised discourse that turns conservation processes incoherent and self-referential, especially when evaluating post-war architecture. To safeguard post-war heritage, local conservationists have sought legal protection granted by the Act on State Landmark Conservation upon monument designation. However, designation proposals are being halted and declined to inconsistent criteria and evaluation processes. In response, this paper aims to add to the understanding of the Act and its application by revisiting raised arguments on the designation of five cases and detecting patterns in tendencies and attitudes to estimate the impact of communicated values and influences on the process. The analysis confirms the reported issues of the Act and its application. It also highlights the ideological issues at play that have resulted in a prejudiced judgement towards post-war architecture. Recommendations provided are expected to assist conservationists to strategically structure future proposals being aware of these issues and ultimately contribute to post-war heritage conservation.

A Digital Analysis of an Early Medieval Cultic and Ritual Change in Hampi: The Mula Virupaksha Temple in the Hemakuta Hill Sacred Space

This paper examines a 12th-century Virupaksha temple through the reconstruction and exploration of space, movement, devotee corporeal experiences, and the use of natural landscape microtopographic features in monument design. The Mula Virupaksha Temple presents a dramatic change in the previously non-imperial sacred landscape in the Hemakuta Hill area at Hampi (Bellary District, Karnataka). With its construction, Hampi transitioned from a local Shaiva pilgrimage center dedicated to the river goddess Pampa and her counterpart Bhairava to a popular Shaiva pilgrimage and cult center of the newly imported god, Virupaksha. The Mula Virupaksha Temple presents a design thoroughly novel to the area that ushered in a period of sophisticated and unprecedented architectural planning at the site which incorporated natural landscape features for the management and cultivation of devotee ritual corporeal experiences. Virupaksha, his patrons, and associated artisans brought significant cultic change and architectural innovation that took root and persisted into the imperial Vijayanagara period, from the mid-14th to late 16th centuries. The present paper relies on a digital methodology developed to identify ritual changes in early medieval South Asian sacred spaces, focusing on time-sensitive maps created through a geographic information system (GIS), and coupled with the immersive panoramic capabilities of Google Street View (GSV) for a ground-based investigation of the non-ephemeral pilgrimage landscape features.

FEATURES OF STAİNED GLASS ART İN THE DESİGN SAMPLES

The main purpose of stained glass art is to achieve a harmonious look in the interior as well as exterior design of architectural monuments. Roman style in the Middle Ages, especially in the period of the Gothic style stained glass art has gone through a period of development to the highest stage of development. It is impossible not to be amazed by the wonderful color composition of stained glass art in the architectural monuments of the Gothic period. In modern times, stained glass art can make a space more monumental as the main decorative element of any space.

Analysis of Clay Humidity Behavior for the Preservation of Historical Monuments

This paper is an investigation of the humidity behavior of clay according to the design of historical monuments related to different dynasties in Morocco and classified as a world cultural heritage by UNESCO. The first step consisted of a diagnosis of the capillarity behavior of different design wall’s dynasties’. The second step consisted of a comparison of the humidity behavior of clay according to a different kind of the wall’s design located in Rabat as c and Fez as a dry and continental climate cities built by those dynasties’ Al Mohade and Alaouite. The method X-Ray was used for the identification of the material studied and samples were produced to analyze the humidity behavior of walls, according to their design: full walls or hollowed ones. Results indicate that the hallowed walls loosed water quickly in a very short time doesn’t exceed five days, however, the full ones keep water until the tenth day. According to the results authors’ advice on the manner of preservation of historical monuments to increase their lifetime.

If these stones could speak: War memorials and contested memory

This article explores how war memorials engage with the contested nature of public sculpture and commemoration across historical, political, aesthetic and social contexts. It opens with an analysis of the Australian commemorative landscape and the proliferation of Great War Memorials constructed after 1918 and their ‘war imagining’ that positioned it as a national coming of age. The impact of foundational memorial design is explored through a number of memorials and monuments which have used traditional symbolism synonymous with the conservative ideological and aesthetic framework adopted during the inter-war years. The authors then analyse international developments over the same period, including Great War memorials in Europe, to determine the extent of their impact on Australian memorial and monument design. This analysis is juxtaposed with contemporary memorial design which gradually echoed increasing disillusionment with war and the adoption of abstract designs which moved away from a didactic presentation of information to memorials and monuments which encouraged the viewer’s interpretation. The increase of anti- or counter-war memorials is then examined in the context of voices which were often excluded in mainstream historical documentation and engage with the concept of absence. The selection of memorials also provides an important contribution in relation to the ideological and aesthetic contribution of war memorials and monuments and the extent of their relevance in contemporary society.

The Avant-Garde Monument

Abstract This article homes in on monuments designed by proponents of the historical or classic avant-gardes. After the First World War, monuments by, among others, Kurt Schwitters and Johannes Baader, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, Vladimir Tatlin and El Lissitzky, Man Ray and Salvador Dalí, began to articulate a new function for the genre of the monument: no longer was it to commemorate the past, but to memorialize the present and time to come. This new architecture of memory also led to an expansion of the genre, which in the hands of avant-gardists further came to include temporary pavilions. Paying attention to theoretical writings on the monument, among others, by László Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Giedion and Robert Smithson, the article concludes by referencing more recent experimentation in monument design by artists such as Flavin, Oldenburg and Hirschhorn, arguing that a comprehensive history of the avant-garde monument is long overdue.

A Response to 'Dismantling Monuments'

This article refutes the main arguments made in Dismantling Monuments, which recently appeared in the Florida Law Review. It shows that national monument designations have been used to protect large landscapes for more than a century, and that no legal challenge to a monument’s size has ever succeeded. It then explains why the weight of evidence suggests that Congress, in passing the Antiquities Act, intended to endow the President with the power to designate national monuments; but that Congress did not intend to vest the President with the power to dramatically reduce them. It also dispels notions that in reducing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, President Trump was reducing them to the smallest area necessary to protect sensitive resources, and that history provides a precedent for these radical reductions.

Memory, Don’t Speak! Monumental neglect and memorial sacrifice in contemporary Estonia

In this article, I discuss how memorials exist in time by conceptualising memory politics in relation to monumental neglect and a lack of maintenance work. I also study the way political discourses have material resonances by foregrounding how the Soviet memory is silenced in Estonia through the crumbling materiality of its cultural heritage – as a slow-motion sacrifice. In my research, I focused on the Maarjamäe memorial complex in Tallinn (which comprises a Soviet monumental landscape design, a cemetery of German soldiers, a Russian palace currently hosting the Estonian History Museum and the newly-built memorial of Victims of Communism), to show how part of it has been devalued by the political work of disrepair and institutional neglect, thus presenting the socialist past as something separated from the present. New developments at this site might potentially change its situation of abandonment since the construction of a novel antagonist element – the memorial of Victims of Communism – might produce a more attentive maintenance of the Soviet monumental design (adding another layer of meaning), or its final demolition in turn (thus producing a haunting afterlife). In any case, Maarjamäe makes clear that material memorials never simply speak for themselves and are, instead, multiple and contested in meaning. It also shows that if the tidiness of a memorial is the reminder of an obligation to remember, then its neglect can be but an invitation to forget, or to remember badly.

MAUSOLEUM AND MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT CEMETERY IN AGLOBI VILLAGE (TYPOLOGY, EPIGRAPHY, DECOR)

The article presents the results of a comprehensive study of the monuments of the old cemetery in the Dagestan village of Aglobi. These sites were hardly studied before. The central place in the cemetery is occupied by a large domed mausoleum with a burial inside. Unlike the vast majority of other Dagestani mausoleums, the building in Aglobi is made of bricks. In our opinion, the mausoleum was originally built in the late Middle Ages (XV-XVI centuries), and at the very beginning of the XVIII century. it was repaired, as evidenced by an inscription dated 1114 / 1702–03. The study of the epigraphy of the mausoleum made it possible to establish both the name of the person buried in it, who was a Sufi (feast), and the name of the organizer of the repair and restoration work. The latter is marked with the social term mujavir, which was first recorded in the epigraphy of Dagestan. The carried out analysis of the grave monuments indicates that the formation of the cemetery took place over several centuries. The old grave monuments of the cemetery chronologically cover the period from the Late Middle Ages to the middle of the 19th century. The study of the monuments includes an analysis of their typology (sarcophagi, rectangular-vertical steles), decorative elements. For the first time, the Arabic-language epigraphy of the Aglobi monuments is introduced into scientific circulation. It was established that the style of the epitaphs, the external appearance and decorative design of the grave monuments of the cemetery have direct analogies with the monuments of the Derbent zone, the historical regions of South Dagestan, and also Shirvan.

Застіноченське та буданівське родовища пісковику – потенційні геотуристичні об’єкти Тернопільської області

The article provides information on existing quarries for sandstone mining as promising geotourism locations within the Ternopil region (Western Ukraine). The study area is famous for its ancient mining of natural stone from Terebovlya sandstones. The object of research is located within the Eastern European platform on the territory of Zastinoche and Budanіv deposits. Since princely times, stone has been mined here for the construction of fortresses and defensive structures. Sediments of the Neogene and Devonian ages take part in the geological structure of the Zastinoche deposit. The mineral is represented by Devonian sandstone with an average thickness of 12 m, broken by horizontal and vertical cracks into boulders. Macroscopically, sandstone is represented by red-brown, brownish-red, greyish-red, reddish-grey, brownish-grey, pink-grey, greenish-grey and light grey variations. The Budaniv deposit is composed of Quaternary, Neogene, Cretaceous and Devonian rocks. The minerals here are the sandstones of the Ivanovo formation (Devonian), the sandstone stratum consists of two horizons. The average thickness of sandstones of the first horizon (red, thick-tiled) is 14.4 m, in the thickness of sandstones there are layers of argillites and siltstones. Sandstones of the second horizon are more thinly tiled, characterized by a thickness of 2.6 to 4.3 m. With depth, sandstones have a pink and pink-red colour. Both gray and pink variations of sandstones are fine-grained, quartz, feldspar-quartz, mica.. Cement is iron-clay; the clay part of it is sericite-silicon. Mining of sandstones at both deposits is carried out manually with the help of crowbars and wedges to the full depth. All processes for the extraction and manufacture of side and rubble stone are performed manually. Terebovlya sandstone is environmentally friendly, so it is used for the construction of facades as a natural heat insulator. Sandstone is frost-resistant and acid-resistant. It is widely used in modern architectural design and restoration of historical monuments in Europe; it is made of almost everything for facades. Among the architectural structures built of Terebovlya sandstone – a nine-arch railway bridge-viaduct near the village. Plebanivka, Terebovlya and Budaniv castles, Pidhoryany monastery of St. Basil the Great, a large number of churches and cathedrals. Geological and geotourism survey of Zastinoche and Budanіv sandstone quarries in the Ternopil region gives grounds to consider these locations as potential geotouristic objects.

Recurrent neural network reveals overwhelming sentiment against 2017 review of US monuments from humans and bots

AbstractIn the United States, the conservation of federal lands reflects a social history of public advocacy, public policy, and public comments. US federal agencies solicit public comments to scope for ideas, solve problems, and use the best available science for policy‐making, legislation, and management. Online comment submission has led to staggering numbers of comments that are challenging to summarize. Here, we analyze comments received by the Department of the Interior in response to the proposed executive review of 27 national monuments designated and expanded between 1996 and 2016. We used a deep recurrent neural network (AWD‐LSTM) to classify sentiment of 754,707 comments with higher precision and recall (F1‐score = 0.98) than support vector machine and Naïve Bayes approaches. Over 97% of unique comments opposed the executive review, suggesting overwhelming support for maintaining national monument designations. Using cosine similarity, we also found that duplicates or potential automated software bots comprised over two‐thirds of comments. We offer recommendations for comment submission, collection, and analysis in the current techno‐political climate.

A Scientific Basis for Designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument (NEC&SMNM) was designated by President Barack Obama in 2016, using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The Act allows a President to proclaim as national monuments “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” that are “upon the lands owned or controlled” by the United States but to reserve each designation to “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” Protection in general excludes commercial scale extraction and is in perpetuity. Analyses of physiographic and ecological data sets facilitated assessment of the conservation benefits of protections for the NEC&SMNM and syntheses of the ecological literature describe processes that operate in continental margin and deep-sea settings. Results indicate that the current monument designation is an area of high diversity and ecological connectivity across depths and along the continental margin. The monument boundaries contain hot spots (areas of high abundance and species richness) for seafloor communities (inclusive of benthic invertebrate and demersal fish) as well as marine mammals in the epipelagic. Many species are sensitive to disturbance and vulnerable to human activities (e.g., deep-sea corals, sponges) with very long recovery times and extremely low resilience. The monument contains at least nine exemplars of offshore northwest Atlantic marine wildlife communities and habitats (e.g., deep shelf invertebrates, shelf fish, deep sea corals and sponges in canyons and on seamounts, deep sea fish, chemosynthetic communities, deep sea soft sediment, shelf edge cetaceans & seabirds). The region is relatively undisturbed and can serve as a reference site to focus future research on ecological processes in an increasingly industrialized ocean and one subject to the synergies of regional climate effects. These results suggest that there is great potential for discovery and novel research in this first Atlantic Ocean Marine National Monument.

The quiet politics and gentle literary activism behind the battle for Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument

In the closing weeks of his administration, President Obama used his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate the 1.35‐million‐acre Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah, a redrock landscape sacred to many Native American tribes. With the designation, Bears Ears became the second national monument in Utah—after Grand Staircase‐Escalante National Monument, designated in 1996—where literature and the literary imagination had formed part of the arsenal of campaigners petitioning for the designation. This discussion looks to the works of writers across the American West who have spoken out in defence of Bears Ears (both pre‐ and post‐designation), to consider the place of literature in environmental activism. In particular, this discussion examines how literary activism emerges as a creative yet gently subversive performance, allowing commentators to speak back to an ethics of (ecological) care and responsibility, and to respond to injustices at Bears Ears. Across these two national monuments, and three accompanying and pivotal anthologies, this discussion unpacks and interrogates an ongoing gentle political rhetoric and dialogue surrounding the Bears Ears National Monument. But this quiet resilience has been disrupted, upended by the Trump administration’s review of more than two dozen national monument designations, which specifically targets Bears Ears, but also includes Grand Staircase‐Escalante.

SUGAMAN: describing floor plans for visually impaired by annotation learning and proximity‐based grammar

In this study, the authors propose a framework SUGAMAN (Supervised and Unified framework using Grammar and Annotation Model for Access and Navigation). SUGAMAN is a Hindi word meaning ‘easy passage from one place to another’. SUGAMAN synthesises textual description from a given floor plan image, usable by visually impaired to navigate by understanding the arrangement of rooms and furniture. It is the first framework for describing a floor plan and giving direction for obstacle-free movement within a building. The model learns five classes of room categories from 1355 room image samples under a supervised learning paradigm. These learned annotations are fed into a description synthesis framework to yield a holistic description of a floor plan image. Authors demonstrate the performance of various supervised classifiers on room learning and provided a comparative analysis of system generated and human-written descriptions. The contribution of this study includes a novel framework for description generation from document images with graphics while proposing a new feature representing the floor plans, text annotations for a publicly available data set, and an algorithm for door to door obstacle avoidance navigation. This work can be applied to areas like understanding floor plans and design of historical monuments, and retrieval.