Architectural Quality Research Articles

PROBLEMS OF VISUAL QUALITIES OF THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT IN GREEN STANDARDS

The architectural community, which is closely involved in green standards, is already aware of the need to consider the aesthetic qualities of the architectural environment in rating systems of environmental certification. The study’s relevance is related to the need to find ways to factor the impact of the aesthetic component of architecture on human health in architectural projects. The purpose of the study is to justify the need to include the aesthetic properties of architectural objects under design in rating systems for environmental certification of architecture. Rating systems for environmental certification of buildings are not universal; each has its characteristics. Analysis of the most common systems shows that they do not take into account and do not regulate the appearance of buildings from the point of view of human visual perception. At the same time, the visual and aesthetic qualities of the architectural environment affect human health and well-being, which makes them components of ecology and a matter for consideration. The author’s research focuses on some of the most common and basic standards: LEED, BREEAM, and WELL. We determined that several green standards address the visual impact of architecture as a component of human health and ecology. We also found that during certification, according to the relevant standard, in most cases, the visual impact comes down to providing a view from the window, the level of lighting inside the room, and insolation, among others. At the same time, there is no regulation of the aesthetic impact of a building on a person; there is no methodology for its evaluation. There is an obvious need to consider the aesthetic qualities of architecture. Its quantification and scoring are possible within the framework of the corresponding credits of the environmental certification rating system. For this, we propose an appropriate technique, which consists of conducting a statistical survey of some categories of respondents who answer a series of questions about visual perception and give a generalised assessment of the architectural project. The study substantiates the expediency of introducing criteria for assessing the aesthetic properties of architectural structures into the system of green standards; it analyses the requirements of green standards regarding the aesthetic properties of the architectural environment. The article also develops the principles of forming criteria for assessing the aesthetic properties of architectural structures. It argues that the aesthetic visual qualities of architectural objects affect human health and that we should consider them in the environmental certification systems of architecture. Therefore, the study is forming a unified green standard template, one of the criteria of which will allow for the awarding of points for the visual environmental friendliness of a building undergoing green certification. Keywords: green standards, BREEAM, LEED, visual ecology, visual qualities, aesthetic properties.

Wilful ignorance at Waterloo: public housing quality and political stigma in Sydney's largest estate renewal

ABSTRACT Sydney's Waterloo estate is one of Australia's largest and most concentrated areas of public housing. There has been an almost two-decade-long effort to renew the estate, with successive governments persistently making the case that the demolition and mixed-tenure redevelopment must happen. In the process, the quality of the housing on the estate has been denigrated and misrepresented. This paper combines a detailed examination of the architectural qualities of the Waterloo estate with a critical analysis of historical and contemporary policy settings and political decisions driving the redevelopment project. It identifies the phases of development at Waterloo since the first buildings were constructed in 1948, describing the key characteristics of the dwellings that were part of each phase and situating them within in the wider story of public housing in NSW. It then evaluates the qualities identified in the buildings on the estate against the government's own guidelines for new apartment development. This evaluation reveals the extent to which the state government has avoided a good-faith assessment of the architectural quality of the estate. The paper concludes by reviewing planning and policy objectives and highlighting that tenant interests and housing quality have been obscured through the stigmatzation of the estate.

Flexibility of the home and residents’ psychological wellbeing

BackgroundFlexible homes provide residents with choice and control in how they use and modify their homes to suit their changing needs, but the psychological benefits of flexibility for residents' wellbeing have been underexplored. This paper examines to what extent flexible homes support residents’ wellbeing, what architectural qualities (Architectural Flexibility) are important for wellbeing, and to what extent residents can use these qualities to make changes to home (Behavioural Flexibility) to achieve wellbeing. StudiesThree studies were conducted to examine the relationship between flexibility of the home and residents' psychological wellbeing. Study 1 (N = 187) explored the association between Flexibility and wellbeing. Study 2 (N = 212) examined the mediating nature of the Behavioural Flexibility component in the relationship between Architectural Flexibility of the home and residents' wellbeing. Study 3 (N = 300) examined this relationship further by exploring the influence of residents’ individual factors of Capability and Motivation in the Study 2 model using the COM-B model of behaviour. ResultsStudy 1 showed that residents’ perceptions of flexibility of their homes were positively associated with their hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing at home, explaining 21% and 15.3% of variance respectively. Study 2 showed that Behavioural Flexibility significantly mediated the relationship between Architectural Flexibility and hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Among the three types of Architectural Flexibility explored in Study 3, the COM-B model of Availability of spaces at home explained the most variance in hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, compared to Modifiability and Multifunctionality of spaces. In all models, COM-B components showed varying influence on wellbeing. The mediating nature of Behavioural Flexibility was confirmed in the COM-B model of Modifiability. ConclusionsFlexibility in the built home environment and residents' behaviour of making changes to it is important for their wellbeing. Individual factors like residents’ abilities and motivations to engage with flexibility may need to be considered when designing flexible homes for wellbeing.

An emergent ontology for digitally modeling existing buildings: examining Kyoto’s Nishiki market

PurposeThis project examines digital modeling strategies for existing buildings. In this context, it aims to question assumptions about the need for geometric accuracy and the efficacy of predefined ontologies. As a counterpoint to prevailing digital modeling strategies, this project proposes a digital modeling approach using a project-specific, emergent ontology.Design/methodology/approachNishiki Market, in Kyoto, Japan, is studied as a test case. The emergent-ontology modeling process is introduced with an initial minimal set of operations including basic fold and trim operations applicable to surfaces. As the model develops iteratively, new situations are encountered for which existing rules are insufficient. In response, the model maker’s subjective judgment is invoked to introduce new operations, and ontological rules are allowed to expand.FindingsThe emergent-ontology approach, when executed on the Nishiki Market test case, enables representation of specific architectural qualities, highlighting semantic distinctions between digitally modeled elements of real-world features. The modeling approach generated project-specific knowledge, informing disciplinary understanding. Ontological emergence enabled semantic relationships to be disclosed and newly constructed.Originality/valueThe project proposes a novel methodology using an emergent ontology for digitally modeling existing buildings. Instead of remaining within the limitations a predefined ontology, the model maker’s subjective decisions shape the model’s ongoing development. This interpretive approach allows project-specific knowledge generation while challenging prevailing assumptions about accuracy and consistency in digital models of existing buildings.

An “Earthly” Manifestation of Power: The Architectural and Urban Contexts of Iznik Tiles Produced under the Patronage of the Ottoman Palace

ABSTRACT Çini-making, which is an Ottoman underglaze ceramics tradition included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, was used extensively in the monumental architecture of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, including mosques built by the Ottoman sultans and their family members. Iznik tiles reveal undeciphered relationships between Ottoman patronage and monumental architecture, and unwritten architectural rules and norms concerning tile designs. To contribute to the conservation, interpretation, and presentation of the mosque spaces, it is important to understand the tangible and intangible cultural qualities of Iznik tiles. This study examines the cultural qualities of Iznik tiles by analysing the historical and architectural qualities of the five selected sultanic mosques and by integrating the literature and field surveys through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modelling and database. We aim to analyse and develop an evaluation model to investigate the cultural qualities of Iznik tiles on regional, urban, and architectural scales using GIS.

Predicting the Fracture Toughness of Human Cancellous Bone in Fractured Neck of Femur Patients Using Bone Volume and Micro-Architecture.

The current protocol used to determine if an individual is osteoporotic relies on assessment of the individual's bone mineral density (BMD), which allows clinicians to judge the condition of a patient with respect to their peers. This, in essence, evaluates a person's fracture risk, because BMD is a good surrogate measure for strength and stiffness. In recent studies, the authors were the first to produce fracture toughness (FT) data from osteoporotic (OP) and osteoarthritic (OA) patients, by using a testing technique which basically analyzes the prerequisite stress conditions for the onset of growth of a major crack through cancellous bone tissue. FT depends mainly on bone quantity (BV/TV, bone volume/tissue volume), but also on bone micro-architecture (mArch), the inner trabecular design of the bone. The working research hypothesis of the present study is that mArch offers added prediction power to BV/TV in determining FT parameters. Consequently, our aim was to investigate the use of predictive models for fracture toughness and also to investigate if there are any significant differences between the models produced from samples loaded across (AC, transverse to) the main trabecular orientation and along (AL, in parallel) the trabeculae. In multilinear regression analysis, we found that the strength of the relationships varied for a crack growing in these two orthogonal directions. Adding mArch variables in the Ac direction helped to increase the R2 to 0.798. However, in the AL direction, adding the mArch parameters did not add any predictive power to using BV/TV alone; BV/TV on its own could produce R2 = 0.730. The present results also imply that the anisotropic layout of the trabeculae makes it more difficult for a major crack to grow transversely across them. Cancellous bone models and remodels itself in a certain way to resist fracture in a specific direction, and thus, we should be mindful that architectural quality as well as bone quantity are needed to understand the resistance to fracture.

The BREEAM, the LEED and the DGNB certifications as an aspect of sustainable development

Some of the most significant problems of industrialised countries are increasing consumerism, the growing demand for more and more energy and other natural resources, and the depletion of non-renewable sources. The visible consequences are environmental pollution and global warming. To address these issues, there is growing pressure on the use of alternative energy sources, the use of natural resources and the introduction of new technologies. The use of multi-criteria building certification systems, which evaluate their performance, is becoming increasingly common in the building industry. The BREEAM, the LEED, and the DGNB are among the most popular methods for assessing sustainable architecture, and they project management tools. The main task of the article was to define and describe the impact of documents related to sustainable development certificates on contemporary design and living and working conditions, as well as to demonstrate the relationship between the quality of architecture and environmental protection. Another goal is to indicate how dynamically the number of certificates issued in Poland is increasing. The study used the necessary research methods: analysis and criticism of applicable documents and literature, as well as an intuitive method based on personal experience. The scope of the work includes a discussion of the most frequently obtained certificates: the BREEAM, the LEED, and the DGNB, the achievements of which prove the use of solutions conducive to sustainable development.

Small molecule autoencoders: architecture engineering to optimize latent space utility and sustainability

Autoencoders are frequently used to embed molecules for training of downstream deep learning models. However, evaluation of the chemical information quality in the latent spaces is lacking and the model architectures are often arbitrarily chosen. Unoptimized architectures may not only negatively affect latent space quality but also increase energy consumption during training, making the models unsustainable. We conducted systematic experiments to better understand how the autoencoder architecture affects the reconstruction and latent space quality and how it can be optimized towards the encoding task as well as energy consumption. We can show that optimizing the architecture allows us to maintain the quality of a generic architecture but using 97% less data and reducing energy consumption by around 36%. We additionally observed that representing the molecules as SELFIES reduced the reconstruction performance compared to SMILES and that training with enumerated SMILES drastically improved latent space quality. Scientific Contribution: This work provides the first comprehensive systematic analysis of how choosing the autoencoder architecture affects the reconstruction performance of small molecules, the chemical information content of the latent space as well as the energy required for training. Demonstrated on the MOSES benchmarking dataset it provides first valuable insights into how autoencoders for the embedding of small molecules can be designed to optimize their utility and simultaneously become more sustainable, both in terms of energy consumption as well as the required amount of training data. All code, data and model checkpoints are made available on Zenodo (Oestreich et al. Small molecule autoencoders: architecture engineering to optimize latent space utility and sustainability. Zenodo, 2024). Furthermore, the top models can be found on GitHub with scripts to encode custom molecules: https://github.com/MarieOestreich/small-molecule-autoencoders.Graphical

Appraisal of the historical impact of neglected, modernised small-scale architectural objects by Rudolf Frič

Abstract The context of interwar period Czechoslovakia lacks a formal on both the personality and built artefacts on the often overlooked Bratislava builder, Rudolf Frič. Small-scale architecture tends to be undervalued because of its size, utility, multiplicity, or related momentariness, and because of the automatic consideration of its banality. This paper aims to analyse their architectural qualities presented in concrete typologies and realisations. Tram shelters, gas stations, mausoleums, and small detached houses are thus researched. Their architectural values, both in construction and in form, are identified and clarified. On the other hand, it is noted that the scale and ephemerality conditioned by the utility character are the crucial reasons for their undervaluation. This is especially the case of traffic buildings, where the same dynamic that initiated their origin also resulted in their end, as they become obsolete rather soon. Some of these projects by Frič such as: Rybáček House, Polák Tram stop, the Zikmund Brothers’ gas station, as well as the Frič family tomb, are confronted with other relevant realisations, prove that small-scale architectural objects and peripheral typologies have the architectural qualities for which they would deserve the public and professional interest. Moreover, these objects reflect their variety, being situated in diverse urban situations, from the architecturally and historically intact city centre, through to newly urbanised dwelling area, urban periphery up to a provincial town. Additionally, they illustrate the asymmetric position of the Slovak situation compared to the Czech one, particularly in transport architecture. The presented works characterise the style of Frič based on the high-quality craftsmanship details rather than explicit architectural forms. This transfer of new typologies and structural forms with partial urban impacts, underscores the neglected and crucial contribution to architecture by Frič.

Efficacy of accommodating variable-resistance training on muscle architecture, peak torque, and functional performance in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: A randomized controlled trial

PurposeThis study sought to find out if a 6-week accommodating variable-resistance (AcVR) training might enhance muscle architecture, peak torque, and functional performance in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (Juv-IA). MethodsFifty-eight patients with polyarticular Juv-IA (aged 12–18 years) were involved in a randomized controlled trial. They were allocated into two groups: the AcVR group (n = 29; underwent AcVR training, and the control group (n = 29; received the usual exercise regimen). Interventions were applied three times a week over six consecutive weeks. Measurements were done at baseline and after the intervention. The primary outcome measures were muscle architecture and peak torque, with functional capacity being the secondary measure. ResultsCompared to the control group, the AcVR group showed favorable pre-to-post changes in muscle architecture [fascicle length (P = 0.0007, η2p = .18), pennation angle (P = 0.0004, η2p = .20), and muscle thickness (P = 0.001, η2p = .17)]. Further, the AcVR group revealed a greater increase in peak concentric torque of knee extensors at angular speeds of 120°/sec [right side (P = 0.0032, η2p = .08); left side (P = 0.039, η2p = .07)] and 180°/sec [right side (P = 0.01, η2p = .11); left side (P = 0.014, η2p = .10)]. Furthermore, The AcVR group achieved more conducive changes in functional performance [6-min walk test (P = 0.003, η2p = .15), timed up and down stair test (P = 0.009, η2p = .12), and 4 × 10 m shuttle run test (P = 0.036, η2p = .08)]. ConclusionA 6-week AcVR training is potentially effective for improving muscle architectural qualities, enhancing peak muscle torque, and boosting functional performance in patients with Juv-IA without experiencing any detrimental side effects.

A Systematic Review of the Design of Serious Games for Innovative Learning: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, or Mixed Reality?

The recent integration of educational technologies and emerging learning approaches into education systems has been driven largely by the pandemic. This paper conducts a systematic review and delves into the new wave of research on serious games designed for innovative learning using augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR). The review was referenced to the review protocol, PRISMA 2020. Using the Scopus Database with a time filter from 2007 to 2023 (27 July), we searched 329 articles and shortlisted 273 relevant studies. Notably, European countries contributed the most (62.9%) to this research area. Among the most frequent keywords, VR (90.9%) was commonly used in AR/VR/MR, while e-learning (95.3%) was among the popular innovative learning approaches. Further research studies are needed to employ AR and MR technologies, as well as other innovative learning approaches, to enable performance evaluation and comparison of various educational technologies and learning approaches. We conducted an in-depth analysis of the relevant studies and their basic characteristics. Additionally, we introduced 15 essential and recently published AR/VR/MR standards to ensure better reliability, quality, and safety of architectures, systems, products, services, and processes. To facilitate performance evaluation and analysis, we surveyed 15 recently published benchmark education datasets. This review suggested four future research directions, including multisensory experiences, generative artificial intelligence, personalization and customization, and real-time interaction.

Quantitative ultrasonic imaging of weave structure in textile composites

Textile composites owe their desirable mechanical properties to the intricate fabric architecture. However, manufacturing deviations can influence these attributes, significantly affecting their mechanical performance. Thus, ensuring the quality and structural integrity of fabric architectures has become pivotal, leading to the advancement of ultrasonic non-destructive testing techniques. However, existing techniques, primarily tailored for unidirectional laminates, often struggle with weave pattern extraction, given the complex features of fabric laminates. To address this gap, a pulse-echo ultrasound coupled to a 2D analytic-signal analysis is proposed. The 2D analytic-signal methodology autonomously discerns the complex ultrasound features from fabric laminates, streamlining weave pattern analysis. The study showcases ply-by-ply reconstruction of local weave patterns of fabric laminates with nominal layups of [#(0/90)]8 and [#(+45/−45)#(0/90)]5s, respectively. The efficacy of the methodology is ascertained through quantitative metrics, highlighting its innovative potential for through-depth extraction of local weave patterns in a swift and automated manner.

Facade Analysis of Traditional Buildings on 12 Eylul Street in Mudanya’s Giritli Neighborhood

Mudanya, a district situated in the province of Bursa, has held significant port city status since ancient times, retaining its importance to the present day. Within this district, Giritli Neighborhood stands as one of the earliest settlements in Mudanya. Turkish and Greek people lived together in the region for a long time. These two cultures created varieties in the region socially and physically. With Greeks residing mostly in the coastal area, Turkish people predominantly lived inland. With Greeks residing mostly in the coastal area and Turkish people predominantly living inland. Therefore, different qualities can be observed in the coastal and inland areas in terms of environmental and architectural qualities. Mudanya boasts a plethora of historical structures constructed in diverse architectural styles spanning various eras. Notably, 12 Eylül Street in Giritli Neighborhood has emerged as a prominent attraction, alluring tourists with its historical edifices and scenic streets leading to the sea. Despite the inevitable passage of time, several historical buildings along 12 Eylül Street remarkably preserve their originality, prominently exhibiting distinct architectural features on their facades. This research entails a comprehensive literature review and analysis pertaining to the aforementioned district, neighborhood, and street, followed by a meticulous facade analysis of seven structures situated on 12 Eylül Street. Notably, the facades of these historical buildings exhibit influences from Late Ottoman Architecture, as well as the Neoclassical, Rococo, and the First National Architectural Movement (Neoclassical Turkish Style) periods, each contributing unique elements to the meticulous designs of these structures. In light of this research, preserving the historical value of Giritli District and 12 Eylül Street, it is of great importance to keep it alive and pass it on to future generations.

Scalable Photonic Digital-to-Analog Converters

This work introduces a novel architecture for implementing a parallel coherent photonic digital-to-analog converter (PDAC), designed to transform parallel digital electrical signals into corresponding analog optical output, convertible to analog electrical signals using photodiodes. The proposed architecture incorporates microring resonator-based modulators (MRMs), phase shifters, and symmetric multimode interference couplers. Efficient modulation is achieved by MRMs utilizing carrier depletion-induced refractive index changes, while metal heaters facilitate tuning of the ring resonator resonance wavelength. The proposed architecture is scalable to higher bit resolutions and exhibits a dynamic range limited by MRM’s sensitivity to applied bias and noise levels. Experimental results of the fabricated chip in the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform showcase the successful realization of a 4 GSample/sec conversion rate in a 2-bit resolution operation, along with a stationary conversion of four parallel DC digital signals into 16 analog intensity levels in a 4-bit PDAC configuration. The study encompasses a proof-of-concept experimental demonstration of 8 Gbps data conversion, along with a 50 Gbps data conversion rate using the optimized design in the simulation, affirming the accuracy and quality of the PDAC architecture. These findings contribute to the advancement of PDAC technology, providing insights into performance characteristics, limitations, and potential applications.

Architectural classification of downtown riverfront buildings in Poland

Scientists from all over the world have been warning about global warming, thawing of glaciers and rising levels of ocean waters. In recent years, there have also been many floods on a large scale in Europe. Meanwhile, more and more buildings are being built on the waterfront areas. Urban development is coming closer and closer to the water, whereas the water ‘is getting closer’ to us. Many architects believe that we must prepare ourselves for the new reality, that is why the downtown riverfront architecture is gaining more and more importance. Around the world, there are a lot of plans of transforming the waterfront land development. Many architectural bureaus, such as Bjarke Ingels Group or Snohetta, create so many designs related to vast urban waterfront areas that they are beginning to specialize in this subject. Many factors contribute to the quality of good riverfront architecture. In order to notice its qualities, one should pay closer attention to the morphology of space, involving a broad analysis and classification of basic spatial forms. In the preparatory phase of the paper, the researchers came across graphic schemes, appearing in many books and publications, presenting the silhouette of the riverfront building development in cities, but only in terms of urban planning. Contemporary subject literature does not provide enough information on the classification of downtown riverfront buildings seen from an architectural angle. That is why the research problem discussed in this article is concerned with the classification and evaluation of downtown riverfront buildings. This study encompasses the classification of downtown riverfront buildings on an architectural scale – falling between urban planning and single examples of buildings usually described by means of a case-study method. The research was divided into worldwide classification and the national classification encompassing Poland. The analyses on a global scale concentrated on characteristic repeatable building bodies designed by architects all over the world. The classification of architectural objects built in Poland focused on the following aspects: location of the buildings in relation to the river, their characteristic functions or the axiom of the building solids. During the analysis of Polish riverfront buildings, the researchers noticed that many remarkable concepts are continually created, such as ‘periscopes’. These are ideas worth subjecting to further analysis in order to promote the designing of interesting buildings in the downtown riverfront areas.

Саркопения и болезнь Крона у детей

Sarcopenia is a significant health problem in developed countries as it increases the risk of fractures, impairs the ability to move independently and perform daily activities, relates to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, cognitive impairment, reduces the quality of life, and imposes a financial burden on health care systems. Sarcopenia is characterized by progressive and generalized loss of muscle mass, deterioration in the quality of muscle architecture, and a decrease in muscle functionality, which predicts an unfavorable outcome. Recently, reports have appeared in the literature about the development of sarcopenia in patients with Crohn's disease. However, the mechanism of muscle loss in this inflammatory bowel disease is not fully understood. In this review, we present the possible pathophysiological mechanisms of Crohn's disease that contribute to the development of functional muscle failure and low performance. The literature review also presents potential treatments that may alleviate the development of sarcopenia in Crohn's disease. Key words: sarcopenia, Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, muscle mass, gut-muscle axis

Developing Service Quality Strategy for Homestays in Mount Dempo Pagar Alam Regency Using IFAS and EFAS Method

The purpose of this research is to determine effective strategies for improving the tourism destination in Pagar Alam, South Sumatra through the development of homestays in the Gunung Dempo area. The research method used is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method is used to describe the appropriate strategies, while the quantitative method is used to analyze the IFAS and EFAS data in the form of numbers. Data were collected through direct observation, interviews, and the distribution of questionnaires to 95 respondents who had visited homestays in the Gunung Dempo area. The results of the SWOT analysis showed that the homestays in the Gunung Dempo area are in quadrant 1, which means that the internal and external conditions are positive and quite good. In this quadrant, homestays are very advantageous with opportunities (1.55) and strengths (1.77). The appropriate alternative strategy for homestay development is an aggressive strategy that utilizes opportunities to increase strengths. Therefore, it can be concluded that alternative strategies and priority strategies can be applied to the development of homestays in the Gunung Dempo area to improve the tourism destination. Suggestions that can be given from this research are to promote advantages in quality of service, unique architecture, and affordable accommodation prices. In addition, it is recommended to collaborate with local and central governments to increase domestic and foreign tourist visits.

Little Turkey in the Medan Maimun Area

Community service is one of the core activities of the Tri Dharma of Higher Education. This activity is carried out as an effort to apply practical scientific knowledge to comprehensively address community problems in the field by involving both the community and university lecturers collaboratively. The current community service activity focuses on urban spatial planning issues in the Jl. Mahkamah area, Medan Kota District, Medan City, North Sumatra. The theme of this project is "Little Turkey," which is related to the Al-Mashun Mosque by proposing urban space designs and building facades along Jl. Mahkamah. The implementation of this community service follows a series of stages, starting with field surveys, conducting the first and second meetings, and finally delivering the final design to the local government and community. The outcome of this community service is expected to serve as an initial step toward further developing and enhancing the architectural quality of Medan City and improving the local community’s economy.

The impact of architecturally qualified data in deep learning methods for the automatic generation of social housing layouts

The objective of this work is to explore the impact of the data in the automatic generation of social housing layouts with different deep learning models. The design of Social Housing is a subfield of architecture that necessitates, from the architect, a high degree of precision in refining layouts to effectively address both the programmatic requirements and the aspiration to attain the utmost architectural quality to guarantee inhabitants comfort. This dual challenge stands to gain significantly from the incorporation of data-driven generative processes bolstered by machine learning techniques in general and deep learning ones in particular. The most widely used dataset for data-driven layout generation with deep learning methods is RPLAN, a generic floor plan dataset available online. Although it contains a significant amount of plans, it lacks any information about the architectural quality criteria used for the selection of the data. We conducted an initial analysis of the architectural consistency and key quality features of RPLAN. Upon finding several issues that raise doubts about its suitability for training social housing generation models, we proceeded to create PUBLICPLAN, a new dataset based on proposals submitted and evaluated in public architecture competitions in Spain over the past three years. It comprises 2446 distinct layouts extracted from 1279 proposals in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. All of these layouts demonstrate high architectural standards. Then, we retrained the three most advanced existing models for generating interior plans using PUBLICPLAN and compared their performance to the same models trained with different subsets of RPLAN. Once the models were trained, we conducted several experiments comparing different models and data subsets and evaluating the impact of the quantity and quality of the data on the models' performance. Those experiments involved over two hundred architects and architecture students. We also examined the plausibility of the generated plans being synthetic with a survey asking to distinguish between human and machine generated layout plans. Our results showed that PUBLICPLAN had a significant impact compared to the alternatives with a similar number of cases. In the examination of the feasibility of human-generated plans, over 48.43% of architects and architecture students identified machine-generated plans as being of human origin. Moreover, in qualitative experiments conducted with an equivalent dataset, our qualified dataset PUBLICPLAN demonstrated a significantly superior human rating (72.13%) when evaluated by human assessors, as compared to models trained with RPLAN. This highlights the importance of using qualified datasets in deep learning for the generation of social housing layouts. We also identified challenges and priorities in the research field, both in the deep learning process and architectural design practices.

The Architectural-Urbanistic Evolution of Cahul City from the 20th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century

The 20th century meant for the city of Cahul the continuation of the urbanization process started in the 19th century. In the first two decades of that century, buildings intended for maritime transport, residential buildings, cultural institutions, edifices with an industrial profile, etc. appeared. During the interwar period, several factories and banks operated in the city, education was represented by two high schools, two gymnasiums and eight primary schools. Among the cultural institutions, there was a cinema, two dormitories of the “Prince Carol” Royal Foundation, the Cultural League, etc. Some buildings were of modernist or neoclassical inspiration, and others had qualities of constructivist architecture. After the Second World War, several architectural and urban planning works were undertaken in Cahul. In 1947, the plan sketch of the city was made (architect V. Smirnov). At the “Molghiprostroi” Institute in Chișinău, some series of urban planning documents were developed that determined the subsequent systematization of the city of Cahul. The architecture of the new buildings built during the Soviet period was tributary to socialist modernism. In 2012, the specialists of the “Urbanproiect” Institute completed the elaboration of the general urban plan of the city of Cahul (architects Iu. Povar, V. Bocacev). In recent years, interesting buildings with two or more levels have appeared in the city, both residential ones and those of public interest. Their architecture belongs to post-impressionism, minimalism, etc.