Architectural Representation Research Articles

Sapphire stories: the symbolic representation of blue motifs in Islamic architecture of Pakistan

This article focuses on analyzing and exploring the implication of blue motifs in terms of the representation of Islamic architecture in Pakistan. Architecture holds a great deal of importance within every nation's social and cultural domains. In the same way, architecture has played a significant role in dispensing Islam as a religion. The manifestation and reflection of blue motifs are present in various forms, such as formal, structural, and spatial. Moreover, these shapes carry symbolic connotations when presented in the form of ornamentation, geometrical patterns, floral displays, and arabesque. Furthermore, this study provides a valuable contribution to enhancing the awareness of the significance and representation of blue motifs in the Islamic architecture of Pakistan for the research. Secondary and primary data were collected to achieve the objectives of the study. The study concludes that mosques and shrines in Pakistan are loaded with examples in which the representation of blue motifs within the domain of Islamic architecture is quite evident.

Quantum-Enhanced Representation Learning: A Quanvolutional Autoencoder Approach against DDoS Threats

Motivated by the growing threat of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and the emergence of quantum computing, this study introduces a novel “quanvolutional autoencoder” architecture for learning representations. The architecture leverages the computational advantages of quantum mechanics to improve upon traditional machine learning techniques. Specifically, the quanvolutional autoencoder employs randomized quantum circuits to analyze time-series data from DDoS attacks, offering a robust alternative to classical convolutional neural networks. Experimental results suggest that the quanvolutional autoencoder performs similarly to classical models in visualizing and learning from DDoS hive plots and leads to faster convergence and learning stability. These findings suggest that quantum machine learning holds significant promise for advancing data analysis and visualization in cybersecurity. The study highlights the need for further research in this fast-growing field, particularly for unsupervised anomaly detection.

The post-pandemic architectural treatment in Taipei: a “postcolonial-urban” complex

ABSTRACT The relief from the COVID-19 pandemic today is globally phenomenal. However, its architectural representation still suggests dramatic variables caused by different localities. Conspicuously, the imposition of social distancing has been displayed very differently in different places upon architectural treatment. This paper argues that such a built scenario can be understood through a theorisation of a “postcolonial-urban complex” that integrates architecture’s inevitable engagement in the discourses of form and knowledge and the postcolonial values registered in spatial signification. The postcolonial-urban complex refers to a series of leads to a subject position of the post-pandemic-built environment, including a sense of counter-dualism, the dynamics of domination and the reified subjectivation. Existing scholarship of architectural and urban studies hence needs a thorough re-examination into the epistemic suitability for responding the immediate historicity. This paper argues that such a demand has become sensible from the recent situation of Asia and its architecture and urbanism – the engagement of some Asian metropolitan areas in shaping ephemeral and micro-geopolitical forms reacting to the limits caused by social distancing give evidence. To further consolidate such argumentation, this paper intends to examine semiotically and empirically the post-pandemic architectural treatment in Taipei, Taiwan, as a preliminary yet critical pilot study.

Architectural design space exploration of complex engineered systems with management constraints and preferences

During the architectural design phase, the decisions made have a crucial impact on developing complex systems. These decisions often limit the performance bounds and steer subsequent research directions. However, the multitude of architectural components and intricate interrelationships cause component combination explosion. Additionally, the diverse requirements of different stakeholders add complexity to determining the weight of indicators, posing challenges to complex system architecture generation and trade-off. This paper proposes a method for exploring the architectural design space in complex systems realisation, which aims to resolve issues related to the formal representation of architectures, selection within the architectural design space, and trade-offs. Firstly, the architectural design space is represented by formulating and mathematically describing a morphological matrix. Then, the construction of the Constraint Satisfaction Problem model aims to achieve a reduction in the scale of the design space. Moreover, through the evolutionary algorithm, the Pareto front is identified. Weight sensitivity analysis and the improved Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution method are combined to assist designers in finding a satisfactory architecture from the design space with many combinations. Finally, the proposed method is verified by the design of the launch vehicle’s primary and secondary separation system.

What about feelings? Elaboration on and consideration of the theoretical construct of emotions in practice and practice architectures

ABSTRACT Despite increased interest in the affective aspects of human interaction in education, as elsewhere, emotions have largely been neglected in the field of practice research. Moreover, they still lack an obvious place in the theories developed and used by researchers studying practices. This article strives to elaborate on the emotional aspects of practice as a theoretical construct within the theory of practice architectures. For this purpose, empirical data retrieved from a previously completed research circle with ten Swedish school leaders were categorized and reflected on. The analysis of the data, which comprised 19 pieces of documentation based on school leaders’ observations of practices of which they were part, suggests that emotions are not just social but also semantic and physical events. The findings also suggest that emotions transcend the three categories of sayings, doings, and relatings stipulated by the theory of practice architectures. Based on these findings and to stimulate further consideration of the theoretical construct of emotions and their place in the schematic representation of practice and practice architectures, a fourth category labeled ‘feelings’ was tentatively added to the framework.

The Human Settlement: Erwin Anton Gutkind's fascination with Africa and critique of modern design

ABSTRACT In the immediate aftermath of the devastation and frustration of the Second World war, several architects and planners in Europe and North America took on the task of expanding their disciplinary boundaries and providing accounts of ‘others’. As they investigated various understandings of human life and the social dimension of the built environment, the interest shifted from the paradigms of modern design to the complexity of distant cultures and the variety beyond the Western tradition. Among those who challenged narrow perspectives was Erwin Anton Gutkind, a planner, architect, and theorist of German origin. Examining his unpublished manuscript, entitled The Human Settlement, and its long chapter on Africa, this article demonstrates how Gutkind pushed the theoretical and geographical limits of the historical research on architecture of his time to develop a project that offered a strong critique of modernist attitudes, internationalist models, and nation-state narratives. The essay also reflects on both Gutkind's exposure of colonial and neocolonial strategies of modernization and westernization on the continent and his problematic representation of local and non-colonial architecture in Africa. The manuscript's merits and limits reveal the significant friction that arose between Gutkind's strategies for including underrepresented voices and his reliance on biased perspectives.

Compact HD Map Construction via Douglas-Peucker Point Transformer

High-definition (HD) map construction requires a comprehensive understanding of traffic environments, encompassing centimeter-level localization and rich semantic information. Previous works face challenges in redundant point representation or high-complexity curve modeling. In this paper, we present a flexible yet effective map element detector that synthesizes hierarchical information with a compact Douglas-Peucker (DP) point representation in a transformer architecture for robust and reliable predictions. Specifically, our proposed representation approximates class-agnostic map elements with DP points, which are sparsely located in crucial positions of structures and can get rid of redundancy and complexity. Besides, we design a position constraint with uncertainty to avoid potential ambiguities. Moreover, pairwise-point shape matching constraints are proposed to balance local structural information of different scales. Experiments on the public nuScenes dataset demonstrate that our method overwhelms current SOTAs. Extensive ablation studies validate each component of our methods. Codes will be released at https://github.com/sweety121/DPFormer.

Robin Hood Gardens and the Brutalist Image

This article contributes to cultural geography’s continued interest in exploring how images and photographic practices have shaped representations and engagements with architectural space. Using the Robin Hood Gardens Estate – a Brutalist social housing estate in East London as an example, it interrogates how visual strategies associated with the grid, the interruption and the ruin shape different narratives and representations of Brutalist architecture. At the same time, it extends discussions within cultural geography which surround Brutalism and the role that representations play in how the built landscape is mediated, politicised and encountered through different image making strategies, highlighting the importance of the ‘image’ to Brutalism as a style. It concludes by asserting the value of exploring how buildings are represented and how different photographic and image making practices continue to mediate our engagement with the built landscape and inform wider politics associated with specific architectural styles.

Ranking‐based architecture generation for surrogate‐assisted neural architecture search

AbstractArchitectures generation optimization has been received a lot of attention in neural architecture search (NAS) since its efficiency in generating architecture. By learning the architecture representation through unsupervised learning and constructing a latent space, the prediction process of predictors is simplified, leading to improved efficiency in architecture search. However, searching for architectures with top performance in complex and large NAS search spaces remains challenging. In this paper, an approach that combined a ranker and generative model is proposed to address this challenge through regularizing the latent space and identifying architectures with top rankings. We introduce the ranking error to gradually regulate the training of the generative model, making it easier to identify architecture representations in the latent space. Additionally, a surrogate‐assisted evolutionary search method that utilized neural network Bayesian optimization is proposed to efficiently explore promising architectures in the latent space. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach in optimizing architectures with top rankings, and our method outperforms state‐of‐the‐art techniques on various NAS benchmarks. The code is available at https://github.com/outofstyle/RAGS‐NAS.

On Photographic Monumentalism: Nineteenth-century Representations of Architectural and Historical Sites

Abstract This article addresses the intertwined history of photography and architectural historiography in the nineteenth century. Focusing on European photography of Egyptian antiquity and Palestine’s biblical sites, it elaborates how a commemorative form of historiography deploys photographic images of what came to be known as the “historic monument” to construct notions of patrimony, historical heritage, national identity, and imperial mission. The second part of the essay discusses photographic monumentalism in Qajar, Iran, and Ottoman Turkey as different responses to Orientalist representations of Middle Eastern architecture by Europeans.

Drawing a blank – design modelling composite timber elements

The shift towards bio-economies of architectural fabrication necessitates particular consideration of how characterizing aspects of bio-materials such as heterogeneity and anisotropy impact the designed performance of architectural elements. These aspects must be integrated into the modelling and representation of architecture and must be instrumentalised for digital design and fabrication processes. The use of timber in construction is challenging due to its complex material behaviours, and therefore robust methods for predicting and modelling these are crucial for exploiting the timber resource more effectively. In light of this, we focus on developing a holistic and integrated digital modelling approach for glue-laminated timber construction elements that connects the digital design model to the specific material resource and incorporates its material complexity into design simulation workflows. We question the role of the lamella in the glulam blank and trace its agency through a series of four disparate projects, from an initially silent and generic constituent of the blank to a key, operative actor in the design of performance-graded timber products through the added specificity of material composition and a liberation of its form. The first project develops a modelling approach that connects material specification and lamella sizing to free-form timber element geometries. It uses principles of industrial glulam production and knowledge of the anisotropic nature of timber to speculate on new forms of glulam blanks that could arise from a deeper engagement with the glue-lamination process. The second project looks further back in the timber value chain at the processing of the specific forest resource into tailored building elements, attaching a material specificity to the lamella. The third project expands the modelling and prototyping of non-standard glulam blanks into considerations of timber waste streams and aesthetics. The final project aims to further speciate the lamella by tailoring its form as well as its material composition to respond to simulated performance demands. Through these projects we outline the development of a novel digital framework that begins as a modelling approach for free-form glulam beams and grows to accommodate the mapping and allocation of specific, heterogeneous input material. As the digital framework matures, increasingly detailed and interlinked digital simulations of mechanical performance are integrated.

The architecture exhibition as a stage of mediated narratives

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the role and agency of the architecture exhibition as a mediated space of discursive spatial narratives. The presented curatorial approach draws on the exhibition entitled Past-forward: Stavros Economou Unarchived (2021) to reflect on the development of a multimedia-enabled reading of the architectural archive. Stavros Economou is one of the most important representatives of modern architecture in Cyprus, yet his work is underdiscussed and under-published. The architectural archive, unlike other collections, consists of representations (such as drawings, models, photographs) of artefacts (buildings) that communicate design processes and final un/built proposals. The curatorial practice focused on a twofold challenge: on one hand, it explored the role architectural representation can play in the production of the multiple and complex (hi)stories of modern buildings, and secondly, it considered ways in which an architecture exhibition can connect with the host city and its local population by addressing contemporary urgencies of spatial inquiry.

SG-ATT: A Sequence Graph Cross-Attention Representation Architecture for Molecular Property Prediction.

Existing formats based on the simplified molecular input line entry system (SMILES) encoding and molecular graph structure are designed to encode the complete semantic and structural information of molecules. However, the physicochemical properties of molecules are complex, and a single encoding of molecular features from SMILES sequences or molecular graph structures cannot adequately represent molecular information. Aiming to address this problem, this study proposes a sequence graph cross-attention (SG-ATT) representation architecture for a molecular property prediction model to efficiently use domain knowledge to enhance molecular graph feature encoding and combine the features of molecular SMILES sequences. The SG-ATT fuses the two-dimensional molecular features so that the current model input molecular information contains molecular structure information and semantic information. The SG-ATT was tested on nine molecular property prediction tasks. Among them, the biggest SG-ATT model performance improvement was 4.5% on the BACE dataset, and the average model performance improvement was 1.83% on the full dataset. Additionally, specific model interpretability studies were conducted to showcase the performance of the SG-ATT model on different datasets. In-depth analysis was provided through case studies of in vitro validation. Finally, network tools for molecular property prediction were developed for the use of researchers.

Architecture in Anthropological Perspective: Structural Reflection on Local Architectural Dynamics

The objective of this study is to discuss the role of an anthropological perspective in architecture as well as structural reflection on the dynamics of architecture in relation to society. An anthropological lens can be used to study architecture as a manifestation of human culture in order to better understand the complex interactions between humans, the environment, and social structures. This research takes an anthropological approach to understanding architecture and investigates the dynamics of architecture as a cultural product influenced by social, technological, economic, and political changes. An analysis of the physical structure of architecture that reflects social structure, symbolism, and representation in architecture as a reflection of society is used to explain structural reflection. Case studies encompass vernacular, religious, colonial, and sustainable architecture. Understanding architecture from an anthropological standpoint allows humans to recognize the significance of cultural identity, the preservation of traditions, and their relationship with the physical environment as an art form in development.

Built forms and underlying geometries in 20th century architecture: Muuratsalo House and Leicester Engineering Department Building

By starting from the notions of rhythm, rule, and the analogy between architecture and music, the research focuses on the analysis and the representation of architecture and, in particular, of facades by comparing two case studies: Muuratsalo House by Alvar Aalto (1952-53) and the Leicester Engineering Department Building by James Stirling and James Gowan (1959-63). The methodology is based on the comparison among some specific facade categories: texture, basic compositional signs (connection to the ground, windows, connection to the sky), and geometries. The operating methodology follows these phases: i) the analysis of project drawings and photographic documentation; ii) two-dimensional reconstruction in CAD of plans, fronts, and sections; iii) NURBS modeling. By analyzing Muuratsalo House’s facades through 2D representations and 3D models, the research highlights the proportional and compositional relationship between walls and openings as a leading principle. The study on the patio’s fronts shows how this association gets more complex because the textures, rhythm, and geometry of the materials become the main elements in the compositional grammar of the house. In the case of the Leicester Engineering Department, the model allows the understanding of the general volumetric articulation. The whole configuration is characterized by the juxtaposition of multiple volumes, which impacts the facades, whose openings direct rhythms, textures, and geometries.

Tropical Skins

This essay is concerned with how architecture was imagined to mediate tropical climate in the interest of forming productive postcolonial national subjects. It charts a transition in approach from late colonial to postcolonial modernist architecture as it was exemplified in the design of the University of Ife campus in Nigeria in the 1960s by an Israeli team led by Arieh Sharon in collaboration with the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Sharon's team formed an alternative to the postwar predominance of sun-shading devices, specifically as the British colonial architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew employed them in their design of the neighboring University College Ibadan campus. The essay considers the midcentury discourse on sun-shading devices in relation to the contemporaneous theory of “human capital” and demonstrates how this discourse drew from the eighteenth-century notion of architectural “character,” which links the productive capacities of different races with architectural representation.

On Model of Recurrent Neural Network on a Time Scale: Exponential Convergence and Stability Research.

The majority of the results on modeling recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are obtained using delayed differential equations, which imply continuous time representation. On the other hand, these models must be discrete in time, given their practical implementation in computer systems, requiring their versatile utilization across arbitrary time scales. Hence, the goal of this research is to model and investigate the architecture design of a delayed RNN using delayed differential equations on a time scale. Internal memory can be utilized to describe the calculation of the future states using discrete and distributed delays, which is a representation of the deep learning architecture for artificial RNNs. We focus on qualitative behavior and stability study of the system. Special attention is paid to taking into account the effect of the time-scale parameters on neural network dynamics. Here, we delve into the exploration of exponential stability in RNN models on a time scale that incorporates multiple discrete and distributed delays. Two approaches for constructing exponential estimates, including the Hilger and the usual exponential functions, are considered and compared. The Lyapunov-Krasovskii (L-K) functional method is employed to study stability on a time scale in both cases. The established stability criteria, resulting in an exponential-like estimate, utilizes a tuple of positive definite matrices, decay rate, and graininess of the time scale. The models of RNNs for the two-neuron network with four discrete and distributed delays, as well as the ring lattice delayed network of seven identical neurons, are numerically investigated. The results indicate how the time scale (graininess) and model characteristics (weights) influence the qualitative behavior, leading to a transition from stable focus to quasiperiodic limit cycles.

Similarity surrogate-assisted evolutionary neural architecture search with dual encoding strategy

<abstract><p>Neural architecture search (NAS), a promising method for automated neural architecture design, is often hampered by its overwhelming computational burden, especially the architecture evaluation process in evolutionary neural architecture search (ENAS). Although there are surrogate models based on regression or ranking to assist or replace the neural architecture evaluation process in ENAS to reduce the computational cost, these surrogate models are still affected by poor architectures and are not able to accurately find good architectures in a search space. To solve the above problems, we propose a novel surrogate-assisted NAS approach, which we call the similarity surrogate-assisted ENAS with dual encoding strategy (SSENAS). We propose a surrogate model based on similarity measurement to select excellent neural architectures from a large number of candidate architectures in a search space. Furthermore, we propose a dual encoding strategy for architecture generation and surrogate evaluation in ENAS to improve the exploration of well-performing neural architectures in a search space and realize sufficiently informative representations of neural architectures, respectively. We have performed experiments on NAS benchmarks to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results show that SSENAS can accurately find the best neural architecture in the NAS-Bench-201 search space after only 400 queries of the tabular benchmark. In the NAS-Bench-101 search space, it can also get results that are comparable to other algorithms. In addition, we conducted a large number of experiments and analyses on the proposed algorithm, showing that the surrogate model measured via similarity can gradually search for excellent neural architectures in a search space.</p></abstract>

A Unified and Biologically Plausible Relational Graph Representation of Vision Transformers.

Vision transformer (ViT) and its variants have achieved remarkable success in various tasks. The key characteristic of these ViT models is to adopt different aggregation strategies of spatial patch information within the artificial neural networks (ANNs). However, there is still a key lack of unified representation of different ViT architectures for systematic understanding and assessment of model representation performance. Moreover, how those well-performing ViT ANNs are similar to real biological neural networks (BNNs) is largely unexplored. To answer these fundamental questions, we, for the first time, propose a unified and biologically plausible relational graph representation of ViT models. Specifically, the proposed relational graph representation consists of two key subgraphs: an aggregation graph and an affine graph. The former considers ViT tokens as nodes and describes their spatial interaction, while the latter regards network channels as nodes and reflects the information communication between channels. Using this unified relational graph representation, we found that: 1) model performance was closely related to graph measures; 2) the proposed relational graph representation of ViT has high similarity with real BNNs; and 3) there was a further improvement in model performance when training with a superior model to constrain the aggregation graph.

ФотограФии Эжена Атже как выражение предметности архитектуры: отель БовЭ

The article compares the representation of architecture in French and Russian academic art history, on the one hand, and in Eugène Atget’s photographs, on the other. The starting point for the art historical descriptions is Jacques-François Blondel’s analysis, supported by Jean Marot’s drawings. The choice of characteristics analyzed by Blondel and later researchers reflects the schematism in the understanding of architecture, its distance from the human being, and its lack of existential characteristics. This representation finds correspondence in the illustrative material — in the preference for drawings, plans, frontal point of view, and the absence of the human being in it. Atget’s images, due to the personal characteristics of their author, as well as of photography as an art form in general, reflected those characteristics of architecture which art historians overlooked, and which are related to its fundamental immersiveness and inseparable connection with the human lifeworld. Atget achieves this effect with the help of complex angles, naturalness of visual coverage, and seriality of photographs. “Unadorned” pictures of old buildings correspond to the naturalness of their aging, to actual and potential ruin as an important characteristic of architecture. On the basis of the analysis, the conclusion is reached about the need to revise the subject of architectural studies in the direction of its greater multidimensionality, inseparability from the human being, dynamism and uncertainty.