Simple Buildings Research Articles

Sustainability of organic meat production under Swedish conditions

World meat consumption has increased considerably during recent decades at the same time as questions about the sustainability of livestock systems. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether organic meat production can be more sustainable than conventional meat production. Organic meat production is supposed to use ecological resources, such as natural grasslands and by-products with low alternative value together with fodder that is grown without artificial fertilisers and pesticides. The organic animals are given the possibility of more natural behaviour, for example, they stay outdoors all year in nature and use simple buildings. For organic meat production to expand in a sustainable way, consumers must perceive it as at least as good as conventional production regarding environmental quality and price. Therefore, possible future organic and conventional meat production are compared regarding production costs, land requirements, soil conservation, nature conservation, energy needs, and chemical requirements as well as the discharge of nitrogen and greenhouse gases. The results suggest that organic production can be more sustainable than conventional production for beef and lamb, but not for pork. Organic beef and lamb production has advantages compared with conventional pig production regarding soil conservation, nature conservation and independence of chemicals. However, the production costs and discharge of nitrogen and greenhouse gases per kilo of meat are larger than in conventional pork production. Organic production also needs more land, which limits its sustainability if land for food production and energy crops is scarce. When food is scarce, organic meat production should aim to use land and by-products that cannot be used in any other way for food production.

Performance of a Swedish deep-bedded feeder pig production system in Iowa

AbstractAt the Iowa State University Armstrong Research and Demonstration Farm in southwestern Iowa, a Swedish feeder pig production system was studied and demonstrated for 2-1/2 years. The system is based mainly on straw bedding, simple buildings, and intensive management. The system was designed to minimize pig stress and use of subtherapeutic antibiotics in the feed. Gestating and breeding sows were group-housed in a hooped structure with individual feeding stalls. Large round bales of cornstalks were used for bedding. Farrowing, lactation, and nursery phases were housed in a remodeled hog house. Cubicles with rollers and oat straw bedding were used for farrowing. Two groups of Yorkshire × Landrace sows bred to Hampshire boars produced feeder pigs in the system. Conception rates averaged 95%, and litter size averaged 11.3 live pigs/litter. Sows were allowed to select their own bedded farrowing cubicle. Prewean pig mortality, mostly from crushing, was high (29%), occurring primarily in the first 3 days. At 2 weeks of age the cubicles were removed and group lactation occurred. After group lactation the average pig weaning weight was 10.4 kg at 33.9 days of age. At weaning the sows were removed, and the pigs remained in the bedded farrowing/lactation room for 24 additional days. The pigs weighed 24.8 kg at 60 days of age, and overall nursery phase average daily weight gain was 549 g/day. Overall pig health was excellent with no major clinical diseases confirmed. The demonstration exceeded reproductive performance measures of typical small- and mid-sized Iowa farms.

Beaux-Arts meets Southern Industry: The Coca-Cola Bottling Plants of Francis Palmer Smith

Beaux-Arts meets Southern Industry: The Coca-Cola Bottling Plants of Francis Palmer Smith ROBERT M. CRAIG Francis Palmer Smith was the principal in charge ofdesign in the partnership of Pringle and Smith, a leading Atlanta architectural firm of the 1920s and early 1930s. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania under Paul Philippe Cret,1 Smith (fig. 1) began his professional career in 1909 as head of the new architecture department at Georgia Tech.2 Smith brought with him to the South the University of Pennsylvania's "BeauxArts " curriculum which became the basis for Georgia Tech's architecture curriculum for the next quarter century , establishing Georgia Tech as "a Beaux-Arts school," and the premier design school of the southeast.3 Among Fig. 1. Francis Palmer Smith as Head ofArchitecture (1909-22), Georgia School of Technology. (Courtesy, Georgia Institute of Technology) 92 ARrus Smith's earliest students was Philip Shutze whom Henry Hope Reed would later call "America's greatest living classical architect"; Smith began teaching Shutze when Shutze was 19 years old and the professor was only 23!4 The Beaux-Arts traditions, as transmitted to Smith at Penn by Paul Cret and Warren Laird, became the foundation of Smith's professional outlook as a practitioner as well as an educator. vVhen Smith retired from Georgia Tech in 1922 at the ripe age of 36, he began a partnership with Robert S. Pringle and embarked on an active architectural practice that would last half a century to about 1970.5 Francis Palmer Smith's architectural designs were typical of the eclecticism so characteristic of the early twentieth century. His work reflected the quality of his training and the developing range of his experience. It is also noteworthy for the variety of building types. Responding to suburban development in Atlanta and a high demand for residential design, Pringle and Smith participated in the domestic building boom in Atlanta and the South during the 1920s. The firm's residential projects ranged from small cottages to "Coca-Cola" mansions .6 They also built extensive commercial and office skyscraper projects including some noteworthy Art Deco buildings (c.1928-30) in Atlanta. Demand for their work extended to commissions for office towers and hotels in Miami, Sarasota, and jacksonville, Florida. Moreover, Francis Smith's reputation as a church architect brought him numerous ecclesiastical commissions throughout the southeast including St. Philip's (Episcopal) Cathedral in Atlanta. His earliest work for Georgia Tech included the design of the school's hospital, power plant, and mechanical engineering building. In addition to landmark urban buildings, prominent churches, institutional architecture, and homes for prominent businessmen and civic leaders, Francis Smith designed, over a period of nearly two decades, a dozen Coca-Cola bottling plants that were constructed throughout the southeast. Set against his other work, the bottling plants are not monumental buildings; in fact, they are the sort of building that architectural historians usually ignore. But in their small town settings they are local industrial landmarks, and, as in all of Smith's work, the quality of design reflects the Beaux-Arts tradition. These simple buildings demonstrate Smith's sure eye for proportion and scale, for balance and order, and they display a street presence that helps to elevate the structures' aesthetic qualities above the ordinary. Reflecting Coca-Cola's desire to standardize both its product and the design of its bottling plants, Smith's 1928 "model" plants were built in many towns throughout the South demonstrating, in their variations on themes of composition and planning, the practicality and flexibility of his basic scheme. The scale and character of these buildings, and the role they played in presenting a standardized image of quality representing Coca-Cola, distinguish them from ordinary industrial buildings of the Southern landscape. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Coca-Cola initiated a remarkable marketing effort to effect a standardized name recognition of Coca-Cola products. The Pringle and Smith bottling plants were part of the effort to make sure potential consumers immediately recognized the company's products, including the buildings that produced the bottled drink. Francis Smith intended the building designs for Coca-Cola to create distinctive forms on the landscape, sitting on prominent sites...

Peak gust pressures acting on the roof and wall edges of a low-rise building

Abstract Wind-induced pressures were measured simultaneously at many points on wind tunnel models, typical of simple low-rise buildings, in two kinds of turbulent boundary layers, which simulated the natural winds over typical open-country and suburban terrains. Special attention is paid to the spatial and temporal characteristics of the pressures near the roof and wall edges. This paper presents the results for (i) variation of the instantaneous pressure distribution with time, during a time period which captures the occurrence of the maximum observed suction; (ii) statistical characteristics of the pressure fluctuations; and (iii) effects of the time and spatial averaging on the magnitude of the effective minimum pressures. Based on the results, an empirical formula for estimating the minimum pressure coefficients, using a peak factor approach, has been developed. Quasi-steady theory is applied to evaluate the RMS pressure coefficients. The relation between the spatial and time averages is also discussed.

Shaking table tests on 24 simple masonry buildings

The paper presents the results of a large experimental programme carried out on models, scaled 1:2, of two-storey masonry buildings. After suffering damage, the models were repaired and strengthened and tested again. A total of 24 buildings were subjected to 119 shaking-table tests, by ISMES (Italy) and LEE (Greece) facilities. The results allow to assess the efficiency of the various strengthening techniques employed and to describe the change of dynamic properties of the systems at the increase of damage. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Shaking table tests on 24 simple masonry buildings

The paper presents the results of a large experimental programme carried out on models, scaled 1:2, of two-storey masonry buildings. After suffering damage, the models were repaired and strengthened and tested again. A total of 24 buildings were subjected to 119 shaking-table tests, by ISMES (Italy) and LEE (Greece) facilities. The results allow to assess the efficiency of the various strengthening techniques employed and to describe the change of dynamic properties of the systems at the increase of damage. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Verification of seismic resistance of confined masonry buildings

Two models of a typical confined masonry building, which conforms to the requirements of Eurocode 8 for simple buildings, have been tested on a shaking-table. Model test results indicate that prototypes of the tested type and size will be able to withstand, with moderate damage to the walls, strong earthquakes with peak ground acceleration 0·8g, and will not collapse when subjected to repeated shaking with PGA more than 1·3g. Taking into consideration the observed predominant first vibration mode shape and shear-beam-type shape of vibration, a rational method for seismic resistance verification of confined masonry structures has been proposed, modelling the confined masonry shear walls as frames. Good correlation between experimental and calculated envelopes has been obtained, indicating the validity of the proposed method. The measured response of the models has also been used to analyse the value of behaviour factor q proposed by EC 8 for confined masonry structures. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Que sont ces sculptures bruxelloises devenues ?

Immediately after Belgian independence, Brussels' new role as the capital of the kingdom required it to erect a large number of public edifices necessary for the proper running of the country. Most of these monuments were decorated with sculptures representing the arts, industry, and commerce, then rapidly expanding. This decorative aspect also spilled over onto the facades of simple buildings, which the Dutch period had purified to the point of plainness. But Belgium was not yet a hundred years old when progress in everything very quickly rendered earlier architectural choices obsolete. Artistic taste too had evolved. Demolished with few scruples to make way for more rational buildings without exterior decoration, stations, post offices, market halls and even a large number of private houses were demolished and the sculptures adorning them in most cases dispersed to parks and public spaces. Others were simply abandoned to demolition gangs and their fate remains uncertain. This article sets out to trace these sculptures, certain of them designed by artists fleeing from the glory of the 19th century. and commerce, then rapidly expanding. This decorative aspect also spilled over onto the facades of simple buildings, which the Dutch period had purified to the point of plainness. But Belgium was not yet a hundred years old when progress in everything very quickly rendered earlier architectural choices obsolete. Artistic taste too had evolved. Demolished with few scruples to make way for more rational buildings without exterior decoration, stations, post offices, market halls and even a large number of private houses were demolished and the sculptures adorning them in most cases dispersed to parks and public spaces. Others were simply abandoned to demolition gangs and their fate remains uncertain. This article sets out to trace these sculptures, certain of them designed by artists fleeing from the glory of the 19th century.

Towards reliability-based local design wind pressures for simple rectangularly-shaped buildings

Standard assessment methods for local peak wind pressures are compared with a reliability-based assessment method. The latter combines second moment reliability (SMR) principles with wind pressure data from wind tunnel experiments and with the simplified Cook-Mayne approach to calculate local peak wind pressures on buildings with a consistent safety level. In an example, local peak wind pressures on the fronts and roofs of simple rectangularly-shaped buildings were calculated with different assessment approaches, where the mean and fluctuating wind pressures were measured in wind tunnel experiments. Differences in the results (in terms of peak pressure coefficients) are quantified and discussed and — by means of the results of the SMR approach — appropriate pressure gust factors, peak factors, and safety levels of the wind loads specified in the draft of the Eurocode “Wind loads” are calculated. It is shown, that local peak wind pressures in separated flow regions may be underestimated significantly if the pressures are assessed by means of the quasi-steady approach. Finally, maximum and minimum peak pressure coefficients from own wind tunnel experiments, which are required for the application of the SMR approach for design purposes, are discussed as a function of approach flow and building dimensions.

North Carolina Architecture by Catherine W. Bishir, and: Architects and Builders in North Carolina: A History of the Practice of Building by Catherine W. Bishir et al

48 Book Reviews _[ -,-....l ·. [j i+-~--'---'--"'-"""-'------rr . ·.:. Catherine W. Bishir. North Carolina Architecture. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. xiv + 514 pp. 490 duotone photographs, 18 color plates, 65 line drawings. Catherine W. Bishir, Charlotte V. Brown, Carl R. Lounsbury, and Ernest H. Wood III. Architects and Builders in North Carolina: A History ofthe Practice ofBuilding. Chapel Hill and London: University of North · Carolina Press, 1990. xi+ pp. Illustrations, maps, and plans (not numbered). How often does a writer of architectural history, who is associated with two titles on related subjects that are published in the same year, become a winner of awards for both publications? Catherine Bishir has achieved this distinction. She wrote North Carolina Architecture although she also credits the many field researchers in the State Historic Preservation Office in North Carolina for data on thousands of individual structures from which she could select. In 1991 this book won the Author Award of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and the A.I.A. International Architecture Book Award. In Architects and Builders in North Carolina: A History ofthe Practice ofBuilding, Bishir contributed two chapters. This title won the Best Edited Book Award from Pioneer America Society in 1990. Although these two volumes were published by the University of North Carolina Press, they were printed in different formats and sizes as separate entities. Yet any reader of architecture can easily see that the books belong beside each other on the same book shelf as companions. The North Carolina Society for the Preservation of Antiquities, founded in 1939, helped by underwriting publication costs for this history of the state's architecture, one reason, perhaps, that North Carolina Architecture is such a spectacular production with the very best photography, paper, and graphic design that all writers dream of having. Although less weighty, Architects and Builders is packed with complementary information not found in its oversized complement. During the past ten years it has been fashionable to publish books on the architectural heritage of individual states in oversize formats, having plenty of illustrations and a beautiful color dust jacket, all geared to the public that is looking for a coffee table book. While North Carolina Architecture's cover will attract some buyers, the text is also a multifaceted and thorough survey of the state's historic architecture. First it is a chronological survey of architecture from its seventeenth century beginnings to 1945. It analyses every imaginable type of architecture from private houses to commercial, agricultural, industrial, ecclesiastical, civic and governmental, and from simple log buildings by unknown artisans to complex high-style steel frame and reinforced concrete structures by architects and engineers. Because of the nature of settlement in North Carolina, which is more rural than urban, the book carefully maintains a balance between buildings in the country and city, representing more small towns in the beginning while focusing on urban II centers at the end. Bishir also is concerned with the subregional developments within the state, showing its coastal beginnings and moving inwards. Despite the rapid urbanization that took place from the late nineteenth century onwards, Bishir was sensitive to include a worthwhile section on log structures at the end of the century, something I believe that some writers would have been tempted to delete since log structures were covered in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century sections. She also presents documentation showing that log structures were built during the seventeenth century, but none of these survive. Architects and Builders examines the history of builders and building construction practices in North Carolina from the late seventeenth century to the present. This theme integrates the construction practices with a history of building technology and mechanization, new industrial materials, and a history of the urbanization of the state. For example, railroad construction during the 1880s linked North Carolina to national markets, facilitating the export of raw products and the import of prefabricated houses as well as enabling urban migration and the development of new industries in cities and towns. Architects and Builders was inspired by the vast collection of interesting documents that architectural historians discover when researching buildings, such as those found in courthouse contracts...

Variability of low building wind loads due to surroundings

A myriad of surface obstructions form the basic roughness that generates the Earth's planetary boundary layer. Among these are the class of structures termed low buildings. Ironically, attempts to determine wind loads on low buildings have been hampered by the random nature of these surface elements and researchers have been forced to simplify to deal with the complex problem. As a result, almost all low building research to date has been carried out on simple rectangular block-like buildings in homogeneous surroundings. While the aerodynamic behaviour of wind on isolated low buildings has been well researched, the effect of realistic surroundings has not been examined in detail. Whether the results from these simplified tests lead to the most appropriate design values remains an open question. With the establishment of a set of rational design values for low buildings in mind, it is proposed that a series of experiments be carried out to determine the wind loads experienced by low buildings in realistic environments. The experiments will be designed to collectively represent the entire spectrum of full-scale situations, i.e. the statistical distribution of parameters associated with geometry and surroundings will be matched between model and full scale. The wind loads measured in the wind tunnel will then be statistically representative of the wind loads expected on all low buildings. These expected wind loads and their variability will form a good basis to further examine the determination of appropriate wind loads for design. The first phase of this proposed study has been to examine the effect of the surroundings on the wind loads on flat-roofed low buildings, as well as to determine the relative significance of some of the more basic wind load parameters, such as effects of simulated upstream terrains, in relation to the variation introduced by the local effects of different realistic sites.

A simplification of weather data to evaluate daily and monthly energy needs of residential buildings

Hourly, daily, monthly and annual heating and cooling requirements of a residential building located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada were estimated, employing ENERPASS as the energy simulation tool, and performing hour-by-hour energy analysis. The following weather data were employed: 1. (i) Ten years (1967–1976) of weather data. The ten-year average of the results is identified as TYA. 2. (ii) A typical meteorological year (TMY) generated using the same ten years of data. 3. (iii) Two different hourly ambient air temperature distributions ( T1 and T2) for a typical day in each month. The solar radiation on each surface was estimated using the mean monthly clearness index. The house use patterns, including heat generation and the thermostat setting, were taken the same when using TYA, TMY, T1 or T2. The analysis was carried out for the house as it is (well insulated and airtight), and for two modifications: one with larger infiltration rate and lower wall thermal resistance, and the other with larger south-facing window area and using super-windows. The results of this study show that the long-range hourly, daily, monthly and annual heating and cooling requirements of a residential building located in a cold climate can be predicted by employing mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures and the mean monthly clearness index for each month. This amounts to substantial savings in computational costs, in either using many years of weather data or generating a TMY for the site. For locations lacking detailed hourly weather data, the use of data and the procedure outlined in this study may be employed to predict the long-range thermal performance of simple residential buildings.

An improved method for the prediction of extreme values of wind effects on simple buildings and structures

Cook and Mayne have recently devised a new method for predicting wind loads on simple structures. This method utilises corrections obtained from Monte Carlo simulations. The present paper has two principal objectives. The first of these is to present a fuller statement of the physical assumptions upon which the method proposed by Cook and Mayne is based, and to demonstrate that it provides a suitable basis for the calculation of wind effects on simple structures, and can be extended to some cases which Cook and Mayne did not consider. Secondly, by invoking some results of the theory of extreme-value statistics, the writer aims to provide a rigorous theoretical background to Cook and Mayne's calculation method, which leads to an improved approach in which the need for Monte Carlo corrections is eliminated.

A Quaker's Antislavery Crusade: Anthony Benezet

A QUAKER'S ANTISLAVERY CRUSADE: ANTHONY BENEZET By Roger A. Bruns* In October 1780 Francois Jean de Chastellux wrote of the old Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet,1 "This Mr. Benezet may rather be regarded as the model than as a specimen of the sect of Quakers."2 Benezet's intense and passionate abolitionist crusade during the period of the American Revolution, asserting the humanity and intellectual equality of the black race and demanding the natural rights of freedom for the black slave, was also a call to the Society of Friends for reform and rededication to Quaker principles . Benezet's numerous books and pamphlets, his unremitting correspondence with legislators and religious leaders and, indeed, his entire antislavery propaganda effort was a forceful challenge to members of his sect to abandon the riches of the counting house. His fight for the black slave was a fight for the Quakers' ideals as he saw them. It had been long ago that Quakers had withered in prison for their beliefs. Individuals still wore the plain clothes; they still said "thee" and "thou"; they still held simple meetings in simple buildings . The fervor, however, of a George Fox or a Robert Barclay was not generally evident among the socially respectable eighteenth- *Assistant Executive Director, National Historical Publications and Records Commission. 1.Andiony Benezet's influence in the eighteenth-century abolition movement was vital. His numerous pamphlets and books established him as the most prolific propagandist against slavery in this period, and his importance was not only felt within the Society of Friends and in America but extended to the British movement to end slavery. There is still a need for a careful treatment of Benezet's antislavery work. The most recent biography of Benezet, George Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, 1937), is most notable for its excellent selection of Benezet's correspondence. A very early biography, Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the life of Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, 1817), has minimal value. 2.Francois Jean de Chastellux, Travels in North America in the years 1780, 1781, and 1782, Vol. 1 (Dublin, 1787), 276. 81 82QUAKER HISTORY century Quakers.3 Benezet remarked, "It's amazing what an Influence the Love of the World, its Esteem & Friendships, and the Desire of amasing Wealth, living themselves and Children in Delicacy and Shew, in Conformity to the World, has upon so many in our Society . . ."4 To Benezet they had become "quite unquakered,"5 and he even suggested that some were no better than thieves.6 The Society of Friends had become a very rich community. The self-disciplined honesty of the Friends and their testimony against idleness and waste had brought commercial success. The Quaker merchant, manufacturing and banking families built luxurious homes in Philadelphia. Quaker grandees invested heavily in land, apparently emulating the Whig oligarchs of contemporary England.7 Many wealthy Quakers had left the Society for the Church of England , and by the 1770's the Quakers embraced only one-seventh of the total population of Philadelphia.8 One disillusioned Friend even observed that "Sottishness and immorality" seemed to be on the increase.9 Many Quakers paid taxes for military purposes during the Revolution . Indeed, John Adams spoke of whole companies of armed uniformed Quakers in Philadelphia.10 When Patrick Henry mentioned to Benezet that many Quakers were advocating violence against the British, Benezet could only remark that they had no other claim to the Friends' principles than the fact that they were their children or grandchildren.11 3.Rufus Jones described the Quakers in this period as more concerned with preserving a system within their own circle than in relating to die external world. See The Quakers in the American Colonies (New York, 1962), introduction. Calling this a period of "Quietistic introspection," Frederick Tolles saw the eighteenth-century Quaker rebelling from his seventeendicentury image. Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York, 1960), 91-102. 4.Benezet to John Pemberton, March 29, 1784, copy, Impey MSS, Part 1/33, Friends House Library, London. 5.Benezet to Jonah Thompson, August 28, 1759, copy, Swarthmore MSS 6/116, Friends House Library, London. 6.Benezet to John Fothergill, April 28, 1773, Gibson MSS 1/27, Friends House Library, London. 7...

Measured response of a structure to an explosive-generated ground shock*

Abstract Measurements were made of ground accelerations and the resulting building accelerations at a point very near a large quarry blast. It is shown that, in the case of simple buildings, the building acceleration may be calculated with satisfactory accuracy from a knowledge of the ground acceleration. The response of the test building to the ground acceleration of a typical strong-motion earthquake was computed, and it was found that the resulting accelerations were in excess of those usually provided for in earthquake-resistant design. It is concluded that the satisfactory performance of well-designed structures during strong earthquakes may have two explanations: first, that vibration energy is dissipated by stresses in excess of the elastic limit, with the result that hidden damage may occur; and second, that ordinary buildings may have sources of strength which are not taken into account in their design.

The Epitaph of Julius Terentius

Investigation of the Agora area at Dura was begun in 1931, and continued in the following seasons of work. It is now possible to trace in some detail the history of the site, which developed from an open square only partly enclosed by simple market buildings into a complex of public and private structures. From one of the latter, a private house built in the late second century in the northwest part of the area (G5H), came the inscription which is the subject of the present paper.