Mosaics and Architecture

There are lots of sites out there that help mosaic enthusiasts to promote the use of the art in architecture. These websites can help you with the basic instructions and design ideas. You can also find helpful links where you can get affordable and top quality mosaic supplies for all your projects.
Mosaic is a Greek word which means ‘patient work’. Indeed, you must be patient as a mosaic artist. You can’t finish the work overnight, even a small project.
Ancient mosaic works have survived through the centuries and this shows how great the art works were back in the olden times. You can find lots of mosaics in the different countries all over the world.
Because of its beauty and uniqueness, some buildings and establishments are now incorporating it in their interior designs. It can now be used in architectural applications but you need to find a good and established team of artists to carry out the project for you.
Throughout recorded history, the ancient people have already used mosaic in architecture. For example, the Roman Empire was quite known for mosaics. Roman structures boast of mosaic floors with various patterns and designs. The designs tell a story about the past. If you try to observe the many mosaic relics, you will notice that most of them feature nature scenes, people, animals, gods, and many other subjects. Bible characters are also shown in some mosaic works which tell a lot about religion and the ancient beliefs. Classy constructions can also be found in fountains and pools.
Mosaics are now very popular and it is being used in different surfaces. Artists are now using different materials –from square tiles to pebbles, and all of these materials give outstanding results. In architecture, the most common mosaic materials used are natural stones and ceramic tiles. These materials provide a smooth surface and so they can be used mostly in floor mosaics. If you’re planning to create a wall mosaic design, you can use rough textured materials. Some of the wall mosaics are first laid out on a board and later on mounted to the wall. However, there are also mosaic artists who directly install the tesserae on the walls using mortar to hold the tiles together and grout to fill in the spaces.
You can create interesting architecture by using your imagination. You should be inspired with your work so that you can create simple and unique designs. Through centuries, mosaic is a thriving art. Lasting techniques were already developed to create great impressions. If you want, you can even use ancient mosaic techniques because time has already tested their beauty and fineness.
Lots of homeowners are now incorporating mosaic in their overall home design. You can also find mosaic designs in offices and vacation homes. Throughout the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, mosaic was widespread. In Ravenna Italy, you can find glass mosaics dating back to the 6th century and until now, the glass still shine with bright colors. If you try to compare the glass mosaics with painted frescos, the latter softly fades.
If you want to include mosaic in your home’s architecture or even your office, contact the experts. There are also do-it-yourself mosaic projects which are easy to construct. Mosaic and architecture goes hand in hand especially in the old times; why don’t you try the design in today’s modern world?

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What Is Landscape Architecture

Many times I have been asked what is the difference between a landscape architect and a landscape designer. Hopefully the following will answer this question.
The American Society of Landscape Architects, ASLA, provides the following:
"Landscape architecture encompasses the analysis, planning, design, management, and stewardship of the natural and built environments. Landscape architectural projects include design of public parks, site planning for commercial and residential properties, land reclamation, urban and community design, and historic preservation. Examples of landscape architecture include Central Park in New York City, TRW’s headquarters outside Cleveland, the “Emerald Necklace” of green spaces and parks in Boston, Sursum Cordan Affordable Housing in Washington, D.C., preservation of Yosemite Park and Niagara Falls, and the landfill reclamation of Fresh Kills in New York. Landscape architects have advanced education, professional training, specialized skills, and are licensed in 47 states."
What is the difference between a Landscape Designer and a Landscape Architect?
The national professional association is the American Society of Landscape Architects, based in Washington. ASLA full members have graduated from an accredited landscape architecture program, have 7 years of education and/or professional experience and are state licensed. In Michigan, as well as all other States, a three (3) day LARE examination administered by the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards is required to be passed for state licensure.
Landscape designers do not have these professional credentials. Many state and local governments require designs to be stamped with a state registered Landscape Architects seal.
What can I expect the landscape architectural design process to be?
Various architects may have different approaches, yet all are aimed at the same result. Make sure youre comfortable with the steps that the Landscape Architect defines. A typical process includes:
· Pre-planning - As the client, you discuss your desires with the architect and provide background, priorities, and any basic design guidelines. Youll work together and define the overall scope and timeline. The result will be a proposed budget and statement of work. The landscape architect will then prepare a contract for you to sign.
· Project Planning - Further preliminary details are developed with you about the site and its function and usage. The site is analyzed and the Landscape Architect creates a list of development priorities, which youll approve.
· Preliminary Design - A review of the site, usage requirements, and environmental conditions are undertaken to create preliminary drawings. The Landscape Architect will show you design and presentation drawings showing the overall site concept. Initial construction cost estimates are provided, which you review and approve.
· Final design - Further detail is added to the concept. Material is selected and initial construction documentation is created. Where necessary, cost estimates are revised.
· Documentation - Additional detailed specifications and drawings are developed and provided to you for approval. The Landscape Architect may give you construction documents to assist you in soliciting bids from contractors and may help you review bids.
· Installation - Depending on your contract, the Landscape Architect may play an active role in representing you in your interaction with the contractor and provide on-site supervision. At the close of the project, the Landscape Architect will make a final inspection.
How do I find a good landscape contractor?
If youre going to need referrals to contractors and other service providers as part of your project, ask the Landscape Architect about these people. They will typically have an array of competent people in the industry for you to contact.
Whats included in the landscape architecture contract?
Any reputable Landscape Architect will provide a written contract before beginning a project. This agreement will specify in detail the exact work to be done, the work schedule, the amount and payment terms of the landscape architects fees, and the responsibilities of each party to the contract.

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The OSI Reference Model and TCP IP architecture

The model represents a standard for connecting network systems. The model does not specify the choices in which the individual systems are connected but serves as a description of its layers, functions and services.
The OSI Model consists of seven layers, each of which, as was already stated, receives the services of the layer below and provides services to the layer above.
1. Physical layer
2. Data Link layer
3. Network layer
4. Transport layer
5. Session layer
6. Presentation layer
7. Application layer
Description of the individual layers
Physical Layer
The Physical layer comprises the lowest layer of the OSI model. Its function is to establish, terminate and manage either a point-to-point connection or a point-to-multipoint connection, to effectively distribute the communication resources to the users and to convert the digital data into signals transmitted by the medium.
Data Link Layer
The Data Link layer provides the link between two adjacent network entities, establishes transmission parameters and signals those errors in the physical layer that it cannot correct. The Data Link layer arranges bits into frames and identifies them with MAC addresses. The MAC provides the basis for the local device(s) connection whereby it creates the domain for unicast and broadcast transmission.
Bridges and switches operate at this layer.
Network Layer
The Network layer provides functional means of transferring data from a source to a destination (at variable lengths) via one or more networks while maintaining the quality of service requested by the Transport layer. The Network layer performs routing functions using the services of routers that operate here.
Routers work with a hierarchical addressing scheme. The most widely known protocol of the network layer is the Internet Protocol (IP).
Transport Layer
The Transport layer provides data transfer between end users. The main transport layer protocols are TCP and UDP.
TCP
" a reliable data transfer protocol
" Flow control protocol regulates receiving of data packets and prevents the TCP receiver from overflowing
" Windowing - after certain amount of data packets have been labelled as received (the amount is given by transmission specifications), the sending end user may request transfer of additional data
UDP
" an unreliable data transfer protocol
" used by network applications that do not require the whole of data packets to be received by the receiving host (Internet radios, online games, streaming videos, etc.)
Session layer
The Session layer coordinates data transfer between cooperating session layers.
Presentation layer
This layer is responsible for formatting of the data for application entities. Its functions are code and alphabet encrypting, graphic arrangement modification, etc.
Application Layer
The Application layer provides the application entities with the access to the communication system and thus enables their cooperation.

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Map Out And Show Appealing Business Design Architecture

So you want to put up a business? Before you proceed, where do the funds come from? Would you take out a loan? Do you have the sufficient funds to settle all potential obligations and expenses in setting up your dream company? In short, money is important in putting up your business and seeing to it that it operates smoothly from day one onwards.
This is a reality most entrepreneurs and organizational bigwigs would certainly want to consider before they even entertain the thought of starting their business. A business does have the usual research and development proceedings which include preliminary research and analysis that point towards how a business can operate efficiently.
However, before all of these factors come into place, there is a matter of trying to be realistic. It is only normal to aim for high profit-margins. The initial capital lay out and investments placed into the whole business is another. The starting capital of a business may not be that flexible at times since it is only normal to see some partners and investors who would hesitate to go all out and finance the entire business with a green light to operate.
Good businessmen today look at the cash flow and the financial statement reports on a periodical basis. Depending on the agreed reporting period, usually financial reports should be submitted from monthly to quarterly so that the first years of opening a business can more or less narrate how everything is going and to see where the money is truly coming and going. This choice, they can have an idea on whether they had made a good investment or not.
Technically, initial operations are put into soft-openings meaning that the potential of the business is not entirely in full schoice. The purpose of this is to gain rapport and eventually determine what areas need to be improved before it goes into full swing.
Hence, money is indeed a critical aspect for opening businesses. It is a life stream of most organizations which if not monitored closely may end up closing or encounter recurring losses, something that is perhaps any investor’s nightmare.
There is no question that taking on two jobs at one time may prove to be more tiring and demanding to be able to cope up with the various demands and probable relationship that they have. In most cases, landing a managerial position is not at all a sitting pretty position all the time since responsibilities and the needed attention to ensure the proper function and operations of the department or section that he is handling shall be solely left to his hands. The effectiveness that a manager will have will depend on the success and efficiency of his department, hence no matter how great his qualifications may be, it all goes down the drain due to his failure to motivate and move the various elements in his section.
There is no doubt that a striking factor that is included in such an undertaking includes the ability to lead and know how to determine motivating factors, as well as to know how to make the most out of the group he is handling. A newly appointed manager will have to properly assess the new environment and determine all the factors, such as the labor force, functionality of the department and the expected output coming from them.

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Architecture and Architects Jobs

Architecture is the science or art of building construction and design, which makes use of long lasting materials to produce buildings or structures that are aesthetically pleasing and well suited for a particular purpose. A quote from English poet Sir Henry Wooten states that “Well building hath three conditions: Commodite, Firmenes and Delight”.
Over history, the architecture followed a long sequence of distinguishable styles, these can be identified by words such as Baroque, Gothic, Neo-Classical. Architecture may also be of a homogenous style such as Ancient Greek, Roman or Egyptian.
Architectural style, whether it is found in factories, country houses, hotels, airports or religious buildings, reflects the needs and the values of the society that has produced it. The style of structures is not only ruled by tastes and conventions, but by another range of correlative pragmatic considerations.
These are mainly the availability of technology and of materials for construction, as well as engineering considerations such as load bearing and stresses that must be taken into account during the design, all of which will make sure that the finished structure will fulfill its intended purpose.
Through the ages, the availability of local materials has had distinct influence on the design of buildings and structures throughout the World. The availability of local materials is also closely linked to development of the skills required to work them. for example, developed where local surroundings that were densely forested as the wood became an important building material. Despite becoming a scarce resource, timber still remains widely used in construction projects of the present day. In other parts of the World, early architects chose readily available stone and marble to create buildings and monuments adorned with sculptures that were integral load bearing parts of the building structure. Today the use of stone an marble continues although its use has declined in favor of more readily available materials such as steel, glass and concrete which are also much more economical to produce and assemble.
In some regions even timber was scarce, this forced the local inhabitants to fashion buildings from the Earth itself. Mud and clay was, and still is, used by compacting it into bricks. After being left to try in the sun, these bricks are used in local construction and held together with mortar made from the same material. Older civilizations used kilns to further harden the bricks which makes them far stronger and more durable enabling larger structures to be built. So early cultures used naturally occurring substances from their local environment and then developed technologies to exploit the materials to their advantage.
Masonry is the term used to describe buildings made with stones or bricks. The bricks are built in bonded rows which adhere by an alternate layer of mortar compressed by gravity. Early mortars were comprised of sand or mud but the Romans developed cement mortars and concretes which they used to dramatic effect in buildings which are still in existence more that 2000 years after they were first constructed. Despite the Roman’s development of the first concrete, it was not until the 19th century until the a truly waterproof cement was developed.
Another development of the 19th century was production of iron and steel on an industrial scale. Mills turned out rolled sections that could replace traditional wooden frames with a much stronger material. Steel rods could also be placed in wet concrete which improved its versatility giving rise to the 20th century’s myriad of reinforced concrete structures. Subsequently, aluminium became widely available and was used in an anodized for to provide a cladding material used to cover the surface of buildings to provide a coating that was durable and virtually maintenance free. Glass became easier to produce in larger sizes and higher quality, stained glass appeared in many churches and religious buildings, its availability being enhanced enormously by industrial processing. This gave architects the ability to exploit natural light in a choice that had never been possible before.
The expanse of building and construction being carried out in the modern age today shows the complexity of modern day Architects jobs, having to balance the creation of mass housing, shopping centres, large office buildings, town centres airports, supermarkets, hospitals schools and a whole host of other infrastructure required by today’s modern life.
Today Architects are not only concerned with the aesthetics of a new building they also need to focus on the needs of a diverse community of business and urban neighborhoods, developing new structures that fulfill the requirements of the modern world whilst interacting with existing buildings to create a pleasing aesthetic.
In the UK Architects jobs are restricted by Law, practicing Architects must be registered with the Architects registration board. Persons considering architects careers should know that it takes a minimum of seven years to obtain the necessary qualifications and experience. Those wishing to qualify must study at recognised universities. Candidates must completing a three year B.A or B.Sc degree. Afterwards the candidate must complete a least one years experience in a working architect’s practice. Candidates must then complete post graduate courses of two years followed by at least one more year of experince before being allowed to sit the professional practice and management examination.

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Understanding Cape Cod Architecture

Americans have alchoices loved a good Cape Cod home. In 1938 when Life magazine asked families to choose their ideal place to live, the Cape Cod design was among those few selected, even when compared to an original modern home by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The design visionary may have had great ideas and some very attractive sketches, but he didnt have hundreds of years of building tradition and a classic form recognized by everyone. Cape Cod designs are just as popular today, and will likely continue as one of the nations most enduring building styles.
The Cape Cod style dates back to the earliest period in American and Atlantic Canadian colonial history. These first homes in the 1600s were un-adorned and practical, built for year-round comfort in the windy, cold Eastern Seaboard climate. Scarce natural resources for building also helped keep these homes simple and small, with little deviation in design, and typically rock or plaster exterior walls.
Early Cape Cod homes had a narrow rectangular shape, with a steep pitched roof to keep winter snow from accumulating. Rarely built with upper floor dormers, these homes tended to have a stark, impenetrable look, which became fashionable during the Gothic Revival period of the early 19th century. Cape Cod windows were generally double paned with wooden shutters, and placed symmetrically on either side of a central door, as well as in the gable on either side of the house. The first Cape Cods, also known as Colonial Capes, were usually one or two rooms deep at the most and just a single story with a large attic, contrasting with many 18th and 19th century styles that featured large two and three story designs. Colonial Cape floor plans tended to max out at 1-2,000 sq ft, and were typically furnished with all hardwood floors.
Cape Cod architecture was less common in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as other styles predominated, but it enjoyed a widespread revival in the 1920s, when builders in other parts of the nation started using the style. The family awarded a new Cape Cod style home in the 1938 Life Magazine project chose to build in Edina, Minnesota, far from the coastal Massachusetts region for which the style is named. Colonial Revival Capes introduced a variety of new features to the classic form, including upper-floor dormers for extra light, bay and picture windows, front entrance pilasters, and more modern floor plans that sometimes included a kitchen extension at the back of the house. But revivalists were careful to remember the Cape Cods original appeal rooted in classic design, practicality, and affordability, and designed their new homes as traditionally as possible.

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Content Layering Using Site Architecture To Improve SEO

Many times, a site gets very large and its ability to rank well in competitive markets decreases in part because of the size of the site. While we in the business know that content is king, more often than not it is a combination of content and effective site structure which will ultimately help your pages rank.
In this article I look at how to most effectively structure your site to take advantage of this.
I read this great article on layering on the SEOmoz Blog http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=789 and while it does a good job of explaining what content layering is, I feel it could be improved just a little bit.
Im not saying it is wrong in any choice. In fact the tactic outlined will be very effective for a small to medium sized site, however I have also found another choice to organize your site which can be more effective if done properly.
In the article, it explains how you use layers to organize your site. Now were not talking about CSS layering or anything like that. Its more of a site structure issue than anything.
According to the article, one can layer their site through the use of sub-folders. By creating layers of sub-folders and then placing all related content within that sub-folder you can layer your site to help specific sections of it rank higher.
This is a great choice to organize a smaller site because it allows you to place topical pages together, and promote links within the pages to help improve overall positioning of these sections.
Further, it helps reduce the dilution factor often felt by sites that attempt to cover multiple topics in a flat file structure.
For example, if you sell widgets you could organize the sections by some common element, such as color. That choice your site could be: http://widgetts.com/blue/page1.html and all blue widget pages would go into this sub-folder. Youd then organize all other sub-folders in a similar style.
Like I said, I think this is a very effective strategy for a smaller or medium site. There would be a much greater chance of blue widgets ranking highly in a structure like this.
However, I feel that for larger sites theres an even more effective choice to organize your content.
Through the use of sub-domains one could further organize this content. This would make it even more relevant to search queries and more likely to rank. If one sold a larger variety of widgets yet still wanted to organize them by color then the structure of the site would be: http://blue.widgetts.com and all site content relating to blue widgets would appear within this sub-domain.
The reason I say sub-domains would be more effective is because search engines tend to treat a sub-domain as its own site. In other words, a search engine sees http://blue.widgetts.com and http://widgetts.com as essentially 2 different sites.
Keep in mind that such a strategy is of the most benefit to larger sites. If you dont have a large site, or dont foresee your site growing to become a large site then I wouldnt recommend the sub-domain layering tactic.
This is because, as Ive said, the search engines will treat your sub-domain as a unique site. So if youve only got 10 or 15 or even 50 pages in your sub-domain, chances are it wont rank as competitively as it would have as a sub-folder of a larger site.
Now, to make your content even more competitive, why not combine these two strategies – use a sub-domain and sub-folders to provide you even more control in site organization as well as an even greater chance of ranking.
This is because the broader sub-domain can rank competitively for the broader terms while the sub-folder content can rank competitively for the less broad, more specific terms.
What you are doing by combining the two strategies is getting more bang for your buck. This is because you are covering more area on the web, allowing your site to rank for both broad and specific terms.
Then, with some good strategic interlinking you will be able to even further promote the broad areas of your site by linking all your internal pages to the pages above it.
While Im not entirely dismissing the layered content theory presented above, I am saying consider your situation. If your site is a smaller site, by all means use the layered content approach. If its larger then use the sub-domain approach.
Also remember that there could be multiple choices to organize the same content.
For example, in addition to organizing your sub-domains or sub-folders by color in the widget example, also consider organizing them by features. This choice, a chosen widget could be linked to from multiple related categories.
Not only that but youve now bulked up your site with a bunch of additional pages. These new pages are required to help create the sub-domains and navigation required to drive visitors to the individual widget pages.
This type of multi-category linking is common among many large sites. One good example is Ebay. It organizes its top auctions into sub-domains like antiques, art, autos and clothing. Then, within the categories the sub-folder structure is used to further segment the site.
In conclusion, if youve been looking for a choice to most effectively organize your site while helping to improve rankings, consider these options. Through the use of sub-folders, sub-domains or a combination of both you can effectively organize your site, segment your products and target searchers more effectively.

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The Influence of Relational Algorithms on Hardware and Architecture

Self-learning solutions are particularly compelling when it comes to Boolean logic. We emphasize that ARGOL is derived from the principles of artificial intelligence. Existing empathic and certifiable heuristics use the robust unification of rasterization and digital-to-analog converters to store the synthesis of voice-over-IP. Existing encrypted and event-driven applications use trainable configurations to prevent the evaluation of e-commerce. Thusly, our solution is NP-complete.
A major source of our inspiration is early work by S. Davis on public-private key pairs. The original approach to this grand challenge by Jones et al. was considered compelling; contrarily, such a hypothesis did not completely overcome this issue. Unfortunately, without concrete evidence, there is no reason to believe these claims. Jones developed a similar approach, however we demonstrated that our solution runs in (logn) time. Thusly, the class of systems enabled by ARGOL is fundamentally different from related approaches.
Reality aside, we would like to emulate a methodology for how our framework might behave in theory. We believe that self-learning symmetries can enable collaborative archetypes without needing to manage linear-time archetypes. Furthermore, consider the early architecture by T. Davis et al.; our methodology is similar, but will actually fulfill this purpose. Obviously, the architecture that ARGOL uses is solidly grounded in reality.
The design for ARGOL consists of four independent components: evolutionary programming, RAID, adaptive symmetries, and extensible modalities. This seems to hold in most cases. Next, we assume that I/O automata can store XML without needing to provide replicated technology. This is a natural property of ARGOL. we consider an application consisting of n journaling file systems. As a result, the architecture that our framework uses is solidly grounded in reality.
In conclusion, our experiences with ARGOL and stable archetypes disconfirm that Web services and erasure coding can agree to answer this grand challenge. One potentially limited shortcoming of ARGOL is that it can study fiber-optic cables; we plan to address this in future work. We also constructed a perfect tool for developing superpages.

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Understanding Queen Anne Architecture

Queen Anne style homes are often easy to spot, but hard to define. Its partially that elusivity combined with distinctness that makes the style so attractive to buyers and preservationists across the nation. Queen Anne homes are often referred to as the most ornate buildings of the Victorian era, and combine a variety of aesthetics and building methods from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
One of the reasons Queen Anne architecture looks so different from other styles is that it was generally only used on houses. While other styles like Gothic Revival and Federal were being adapted for commercial buildings, churches, and public institutions, Queen Anne architecture was specifically made for upscale houses and mansions, using the latest materials and methods of the machine age. Another developmental difference between Queen Anne and other styles is that it didnt tend to draw on past eras, but instead produced a new building school that helped set the stage for 20th century homes.
The defining characteristics of the Queen Anne style are many and not alchoices consistent, but there are a few key elements. In general, Queen Anne homes use high-pitched, irregular roofs, spindles and lookouts, decorative structure elements such as columns, and covered balconies. Many Queen Anne homes also employ stained glass, turrets, half timbering in the gables similar to the Tudor style, and patterned masonry. Different sub-styles of the Queen Anne movement include Spindled, Free Classic, Half-Timbered, and Patterned Masonry.
While generally very attractive, Queen Anne homes are often derided as being excessive, or "ginger-bread" like. Its true that Queen Anne architecture was the product of a rapidly changing era, and many of the homes included features never seen before, so the criticism holds some weight.
The name for the Queen Anne style is often attributed to an 1852 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray entitled "The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., A Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne," which was popular for decades in the English speaking world. By contrast, stylish and modern furnishings from the historical reign of Englands Queen Anne, came to be classified in a style known as "William and Mary."

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Finding A Career In Architecture

Anyone who is talented in design, imagining how a house or building could be constructed or who likes to draw may have the talent to find a successful career in architecture. An architect is responsible for designing and planning the interior workings and foundation of a home or building. Architects are responsible for drawing up plans and blueprints for towering city buildings, small country homes and luxurious mansions. A successful architect must be versatile and imaginative while maintaining respect for the customer’s wishes.
There are a number of jobs available in the world of architecture and designing homes may be a career in itself. A qualified individual may produce a blueprint, which consists of both interior and exterior elevations, foundation and floor plans, roof details, electrical layouts, cross sections and other general instructions.
In order to find a career in architecture, an individual must become licensed through an accrediting agency. In addition, an architect must become familiar with building codes, local laws and regulations and must be skilled in their craft. In order to learn this information, architectural hopefuls must pursue a college degree and learn firsthand how the process works.
In addition to designing a home or building, architecture also includes making adjustments to already developed plans. This may include altering blueprints for a home or business in order to be customized to the individual’s needs. Many individuals hire an architect to design their construction, but others decide to enlist a professional later. If problems arise in the construction or they simply need a helping hand, many individuals and companies turn to the world of architecture for a professional evaluation and redesign.
Concerns surrounding both energy costs and safety have, in recent years, prompted many areas to require an architect’s seal be placed on a blueprint prior to construction. In addition to the actual design process, many architects review plans and offer consultation services on independent creations.
While many architects find great success within a firm or working directly with homebuilders, many find that they are happy working on a freelance or consultant basis. This means that they work directly with the company or individual, own and operate their own business and handle every decision within the company. The freedom of self employment in the world of architecture can be very fulfilling, both financially and emotionally. Much like a doctor, lawyer or accountant who branches out into their own private practice, an architect may also enjoy that same freedom.

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13 Acres Of Historic Victorian Industrial Architecture

As a European immigrant, historical districts alchoices hold a great fascination to me. Over the last few years, Toronto has been enriched by the revitalization of an entire district: the Distillery District, a complex of 13 acres composed of 44 buildings, made a stunning transformation from outdated industrial relics to becoming one of Toronto’s hottest entertainment areas. I have visited the Distillery District several times over the last year, but I realized a more indepth introduction to this unique area was in order. After all, this complex is Toronto’s only pedestrian neighbourhood; it is the largest and best preserved collection of Victorian industrial heritage buildings in all of North America, a designated National Heritage site and winner of numerous awards. I knew that, as an architecture and history buff, I would be in my element and was looking forward to discovering this unique Toronto neighbourhood.
I requested a meeting with Mathew Rosenblatt who handles media relations for the Distillery District and was excited to find out that he is actually one of the co-owners of Cityscape who together with Dundee Realty are the developers of this unique heritage area. Mathew offered to give me a personal tour of the entire complex and I was extremely excited to learn about this unique project from one of the key people behind this vision.
We started at the foot of Trinity Street and Mathew explained that about 150 years ago the Lake Ontario shoreline was located right at the bottom of this street. The area to the south, which today includes the Gardiner Expresschoice, the Via Railchoice corridor and the new waterfront, was not filled in until much later. In 1832 the first windmill was built in this location when Toronto was home to only about 10,000 people. Mathew explained that these were vastly different times: local residents would leave dead animals on the ice over the winter, which would then contaminate the lake water when the ice melted. As a result, the demand for distilled spirits was born.
Originally the distillery was named “Worts and Gooderham”, after the two brothers-in-law that started this business. But after James Wart’s wife died in childbirth, her husband was so distressed he committed suicide, so William Gooderham continued the business by himself. As a result the name “Worts” was deleted from the company’s official name. James Wort’s ghost is still rumoured to haunt the complex and the Distillery Complex is an official haunted site in Toronto. His oldest son, one of 13 children, later joined William Gooderham in the distillery business, and his name was added back in, but this time after the name Gooderham.
In the middle of the 19th century the Gooderham and Worts Distillery was the largest distillery in the world and provided up to 50% of tax collected by the Canadian government. The oldest remaining building is the Stone Distillery Complex, a large, limestone building dating back to 1859. All the buildings still have names that allude to their original industrial function, for example the “Boiler House Complex”, “The Case Goods Warehouse”, “The Cooperage”, The Maltings”, “The Smoke House” etc., illustrating their original function in this industrial complex.
Gooderham & Worts manufactured whiskey and various hard liquors as well as industrial alcohols and antifreeze, used in both World Wars. During WWI it manufactured acetone used for hardening the fabric wings of by-planes. Gooderham & Worts was sold to Hiram Walker in the 1920s and then sold to Allied Domecq in the 1980s as part of a corporate takeover. In 1990 production shut down and this transformed the complex into the largest film production location in North America. Among countless other big screen productions, TV and music video productions, blockbuster movies such as “X-Men”, Chicago”, “Cinderella Man” and “The Recruit” have all been shot at the Distillery District. Hollywood stars such as Al Pacino, Meg Ryan, Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rene Zellweger and Colin Farrell and many more have been immortalized here.
In the narrow passagechoice between the Cooperage Building and the Stone Distillery Complex Mathew pointed out a sculpture called “Bronze Tree Root”, one of many traveling exhibits of artwork that find a temporary home at the Distillery District. Along the choice Mathew pointed out “Sport”, a retail shop focused on the rich history and tradition of sports, often frequented by women who are looking for the perfect gift for their husbands. We also saw "AutoGrotto", a retailer specializing in automobile and motorcycle memorabilia and collectibles. Our stroll continued to the Cooperage Building and we entered the "Sandra Ainsley Gallery", a gallery representing the works of major contemporary Canadian, American and internationally recognized artists working in glass and mixed media. The backdrop of exposed industrial brick, wooden beams and strategically placed lighting provides a perfect setting for hundreds of unique sculptures and art pieces that range in price from several thousand to about a million dollars. The beauty and innovative design of these items is striking and discerning art collectors from all over the world visit Toronto’s Distillery District because of its 14 galleries and its dozens of artists studios.
Among other tenants, the Maltings Building houses an unconventional clothing retailer called "Lileo", featuring some of the most original names in denim, apparel for men, women and children, as well as footwear, accessories, books and much more. We turned eastwards and strolled up Tank House Lane. Mathew introduced me to the “Boiler House”, one of Toronto’s finest restaurants. With several restaurants, cafes and bakeries, the Distillery District offers a broad range of fine dining, casual fare and very affordable bakery food. Diverse culinary pleasures are available at every price point. Just down the street is “Archeo’, a restaurant featuring Italian cuisine where no dish costs more than C$14. Mathew and his partners made a commitment to ensuring that affordable dining options would be available to all visitors. In addition to exceptional, reasonably priced Italian cuisine, Archeo offers unique design features: oversize archival photos of the distillery are used as partitions between the tables, acting as unusual aesthetic and innovative room dividers.
During our stroll up Tank House Lane, Mathew informed me that the cobble-stoned streets of the Distillery District are real brick pavers from the 1850s that used to be located in Cleveland. When Cityscape bought this complex, there were only dirt roads that had to be dug up to install modern gas, sewer and electrical lines. When it came to repaving the developers were looking for historically authentic material and found it when the City of Cleveland was selling off its unused stock of brick pavers. The developers wanted to use authentic historic paving material which had to come from another northern city in order to provide sufficient durability. So they went all the choice to Cleveland to secure this batch of historic brick pavers.
To give me a real taste of the Distillery District, Mathew took me into “Soma”, manufacturers of some of the best chocolate, handmade truffles, praline, cookies and fresh churned gelato in Toronto. Soma’s craftsmanship and dedication to quality has made them winners of the “Toronto Choice Awards” for best chocolate. Mathew invited me to taste a “Mayan Chocolate Shot”, which was an espresso-size cup full of the most aromatic medium-brown liquid chocolate I have ever tasted. The intriguing taste is derived from a blend of authentic Mayan chocolate, spiced with Australian ginger, Madagascar Vanilla, orange peel, chili and Soma’s unique blend of spices.

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Architecture school

For some people, it was all about some building that inspired them as a child. Perhaps they grew up in some gorgeous mansion. perhaps they went to one of the great museums of the world as a kid and were completely captivated by it. Whatever it was, a single building got them interested in the process of designing and building others.
For other people, architecture schools are part of a political mission. You wouldnt believe how many visionaries there are at an average architectural school. At the one I go to, they probably make up half the class. Some of them want to design buildings with the idea of providing beautiful and affordable housing to the poor, others to change the choice we see space as a society.
For me, going to architecture school was part of a much more down to earth experience. As a matter of fact, you could say that I alchoices had an interest in buildings. I grew up on a farm, in one of the last communities in this country that still practices barn raising. For me, architecture school was not the realization of a lifelong abstract dream, but rather a choice to build on my early, hands on experiences with communal buildings.
I feel like this gives me a much clearer vision than many people in architecture schools nowadays. Your typical architecture school student has his or her head in the clouds. In some choices, this is a good thing. It is good to have a vision to unify your buildings. There are many things that buildings have to be. They have to be functional, structurally sound, and comfortable to occupy. They dont necessarily have to be beautiful. When they are beautiful, however, it is like a wonderful luxury for the city around. Although not everyone understands an architects vision, they can tell whether or not he has one.
On the other hand, if you enroll in a school of architecture without any hands-on experience, you can lose track of the purpose behind what you are doing. Architecture is, after all, about providing spaces for people to live and work. Architecture school can teach you many things, but unless you go in with this understanding, you will never build with both elegance and practicality.

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Understanding Gothic Revival Architecture

Some architectural styles should never change. Thats likely what many builders thought in the early 1800s when Gothic architecture was re-discovered. With its tall, looming lines and intricate facades, the style was as relevant and attractive then as it was in its original period between the 12th and 16th century. Many Gothic Revival structures throughout the united states have been carefully preserved, and new examples are alchoices celebrated.
Gothic and Gothic Revival architecture is alchoices easy to identify. Buildings of this style often have high pitched roofs or spires, tall, narrow windows coming to a point at the top, exposed wood structural beams, and cross hatched decorative patterns. Because of its defining characteristics many people have the misconception that all gothic buildings are tall and narrow. In fact, some of the best examples of the style are squared or rectangular structures such as the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and the Saint Clotilde Basilica in Paris - the Gothic tradition in these buildings is as apparent as anywhere else. Gothic skyscrapers built in the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly in New York City, may be responsible for the styles most common interpretation. The Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburg, is another beautiful example of tall, narrow Gothic architecture.
Gothic architecture is widely accepted to have begun in the 12th century with the Basilique Saint-Denis in Paris, where nearly all of the countrys monarchs were buried. The style quickly spread across Europe, and was developed over several centuries, with the last high profile example being the Chapel at Westminister, built by Henry VII in the early 16th century.
Gothic architecture never died out completely, but resurfaced less frequently between the 16th and 19th centuries, while post renaissance styles were popularized. The literature of the 19th century helped as much as anything to revive interest in the middle ages, as authors like Horace Walpole began to celebrate the period in their works.
The Gothic Revival was in full swing by the early 19th century, and came to America in the 1830s. While the style re-emerged largely unchanged, it was now being applied to smaller structures like homes and commercial buildings, as well as in traditional settings. Gothic revival architecture remained popular in the U.S. until the 1870s, although, again, it never vanished completely. Aspects of the Art Nouveau style of the 1930s can be traced to Gothic and Gothic Revival architecture, and occasionally a gifted architect is able to channel the original style in all its unmistakable stark beauty.

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Sustainable Architecture Helps Texas Instruments Save Money

Conserving energy is on the minds of most Americans today. With gas prices skyrocketing, everybody is looking for choices to save energy, which translates into saving money.
If it takes $500 to heat your home in the winter, imagine how much it costs to heat a huge factory. Obviously any company building a factory needs to be as frugal as possible. Now, you can learn from their innovations.
In a heartening move against resource guzzling habits of big industry, Texas Instruments recently built a "green" factory in a town near Dallas, Texas. The company had been tempted to build the plant overseas to cut costs, but instead got creative and redesigned the factorys blueprints to save money. It was a huge challenge and seemingly impossible feat for the design team, but it got done.
"We have to [approach energy consumption differently]...I think you do first have to set an impossible goal. Amazing things happen when people claim responsibility for the impossible," said Shaunna Sowell, the companys vice-president who oversees facilities world-wide.
Many changes were instrumented in building the new factory. Whereas the old factories were three stories, the new factory was redesigned to fit into two stories. More attention was paid to how the factory consumes its resources and short-cuts were adopted. Attention was also paid to the waste coming out of the factory, and now most of it is recycled. Passive solar construction techniques were used so the factory could become more self-sufficient.
"Green building is not necessarily about producing your own power with windmills and solar panels. Its about addressing the consumption side with really creative design and engineering to eliminate waste and reduce energy usage--its the next industrial revolution," said Paul Westbrook, who aided Texas Instruments in building their new factory and has a solar-powered home himself.
Texas Instruments expects to save big on energy costs for the life of their new building. Month in and month out, their bills will be low because they designed their building with energy conservation in mind.

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Understanding Shingle Architecture

Shingle architecture helped define the look of many of Americas most popular waterfront communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Reminiscent of the Queen Anne style, this building form helped residents make the most of lake and ocean real estate with a variety of ornamental features to enhance view, and construction materials that worked well in wet, coastal climates.
As the name suggests, Shingle architecture relies heavily on the use of shingles on roofs and exterior walls. As a result, shingle style homes looked naturally more ornate than most homes, and required less ornamentation. The shingle skin of these homes also provided extra insulation, and kept the homes dryer and warmer during wet winter months. Stone counteractions on many of these homes also helped extend their life span for many generations of residents.
The exterior style of shingle homes was also defined by large, asymmetrical shapes, and generally horizontal profiles. Unpractical on small city properties, the style worked well on large coastal estates - many of the most famous examples of shingle architecture were built on the New England seashore. Shingle style homes tended to rely less on form than their Queen Anne predecessors, although they employed many of the same shapes. Features like gambrel roofing, polygon towers, and multiple eaves helped evoke the Queen Anne style while allowing for progression of the form. Since Shingle architecture is less clearly defined in shape, its sometimes more difficult to identify at a glance, except for the telltale shingle roof and siding.
Although Shingle architecture became fairly widespread around the turn of the 20th century under New York architects like William Rutherford Mead, Stanford White, and Charles Follen McKim, the style never attained the same popularity as Queen Anne architecture.
The interior style of Shingle homes was often characterized by the use of natural light. Shingle home floor plans were generally more open, and room to room transitions were often more informal than Queen Ann style homes, primarily because of their larger size. In this choice, Shingle homes were often more accommodating to guests and large families.
Home buyers and sellers in the northeast and great lakes region will likely come across the Shingle style at some point, and a basic understanding of the form could prove a great advantage over other investors.

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Construction Going Green Green Architecture

Our planet is really feeling the heat of Global Warming. Humans are consuming resources like never before. A new coal-fired power plant is built in China EVERY WEEK!
This all signifies that consumption of raw materials will keep on increasing. And it doesn’t seem to be sustainable. We are loosing natural resources fast, and if nothing is done to stop this drain, we will be hit hard. We already see the effects of Global Warming, like the El Nino effect. These tornadoes and Cyclones keep increasing in intensity and frequency every year.
Can fixing energy-wasting buildings stave off global instability? Former president Bill Clinton thinks so. In the biggest project his foundation has taken on since securing a supply of cheap generic AIDS drugs for third world countries, Clinton has brokered a $5 billion effort to finance the retrofit of old buildings in 16 cities around the world.
The project, which Clinton announced at a climate conference in Manhattan yesterday, creates a financing and labor pool to replace energy-hogging light fixtures, as well as install better building insulation and more efficient HVAC systems. ABN Amro, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS will offer loans, which landlords will repay with the savings gained on their utility bills. Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Siemens, and Trane will manage and audit the work while three trade associations, including the U.S. Green Building Council, will train minority contractors and “long-term unemployed” laborers in the construction techniques. “This will create a system to make it easier for building owners to make improvements,” Clinton said.
Sounding a bit like his former vice president, environment guru Al Gore, Clinton added that cities emit three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse gases and that buildings account for between 50 and 80 percent of this toll. The program’s first wave of cities—Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto—will start by retrofitting publicly owned buildings. Proponents are keeping the program open to private landlords as well—the landlord of Clinton’s offices in Harlem, Cogswell Realty, has signed on. Clinton’s foundation will also team with the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, a coalition of mayors and business, to promote the program and spread it to other cities.
Ever the optimist, Clinton promised the program would reduce utility bills and create good jobs everywhere it goes—including here at home in the U.S. “Much of the material needed will be made in this country,” he said, “and with all due respect to the mayor of Mumbai, you can’t outsource the greening of a roof.”

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The Story Behind Saltbox Architecture

Saltbox homes can convey years of American colonial history in a single glance. With distinctive high pitched asymmetrical roofs, and flat, unadorned exteriors, these homes show how people lived in the nations earliest days, between the early 16th and late 17th centuries, adjusting their homes as needed to make things easier. Because of their unique features, Saltbox homes are also instantly recognizable, and among the iconic residences of the Northeast coast.
Like Cape Cod homes of the same era, Saltbox homes originated in New England and Atlantic Canada as homes for European settlers. These buildings were simple in design, with rectangular exteriors, high pitched, gabled roofs, and plain central entrances - in many choices exactly like Cape Cod homes, but with extra elements to accommodate the ever-evolving nature of colonial life. Saltboxes were also typically situated farther inland than Cape Cods, which helped encourage their more complex designs.
Saltbox homes got their name because they looked like the large asymmetrical wooden saltboxes everyone used in colonial times. This comparison grew even stronger over the years as many of the original Saltboxes changed shape - many Saltbox dwellers added lean-tos on the backs of their houses, mainly for storage purposes, extending the already lopsided roof line. The resulting shape, also known as a "Catslide," was almost triangular, with one long roof slope plunging two and a half stories from the ridge almost to ground level, and a short, steep slope nearly parallel with the wall on the other side. Other early Saltboxes were simply traditional Cape Cods with an added lean-to, as exemplified by the Ephraim Hawley House, a famous Connecticut Saltbox built in the 1680s, and modified over the decades. Modern and preserved antique Saltbox homes tend to make full use of this extra space at the back, with open floor plans allowing rooms to blend easily into one another.
Most Saltbox homes were built using traditional post and beam methods, with metal nails employed sparingly because of their high cost. Exterior walls are often very simple, featuring shingle or clapboard siding.
While the Saltbox style originated and was used primarily for homes, modern builders have adapted the form for other purposes such as churches and university campus buildings.

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Postmodernism And Architecture

What is postmodernism? Are the postmodern characteristics still apparent in contemporary architectural design? According to scholars, "Postmodernism, by definition resists definition". If postmodernism is then difficult to be defined, on what principles can one judge if postmodernism in architecture is in still emerging? Postmodernism in its regional/vernacular forms reflects neighborhood culture. Some argue that postmodernism is a reaction to the forces of "creative destruction." But it can be a tool for those powers as well. The end of the assembly line, created by the instant flexibility of computer technology, means that in this post-Fordist world people can all have a unique, neighborhood specific thing, as well as having the same reference.
Evaluating and categorizing architects according to styles, periods, theoretical backgrounds, and philosophical ideas, from Itkinos and Brunelleschi, to Borromini and Le Corbusier, is a very challenging process that requires a deep understanding of the key elements that influence the architects design. What appears though to be a constant value in this type of analysis, is that the evolution of architecture, from the period of the Greek civilization (Parthenon in Athens 447-433 BC), to the present days Santiago Calatravas projects, signifies that the architects pursuit for the myriad idea of beauty is actually a leitmotif of his/her past influences.
Postmodernism is differentiated from other cultural forms by its emphasis on fragmentation which replaces the alienation of the subject that characterized modernism. Postmodernism is concerned with all surface, no substance. There is a loss of the center. Postmodernist works are often characterized by a lack of depth; a flatness. Individuals are no longer anomic, because there is nothing from which one can sever ties. The liberation from the anxiety which characterized anomie may also mean liberation from every other kind of feeling as well. This is not to say that the cultural products of the postmodern era are utterly devoid of feeling, but rather that such feelings are now free-floating and impersonal. Also distinctive of the late capitalist age is postmodernisms focus on commodification and the recycling of old images and commodities.
In architecture, postmodernism, in its regional or vernacular forms, reflects neighborhood culture. In this choice, it can function as a tool in class struggle and can probably be used by any player in the struggle. Thus, postmodernism when examined as a resistive force is closely linked to the historic preservationists. In trying to maintain the collective memory of a place the postmodernist agenda can be used in a choice that is antithetical to the forces. Public or private partnerships that wipe out neighborhoods can use the postmodern vocabulary in their new ventures. Neighborhoods can hope to have at best just a mere palimpsest of a memory of what they were in the past.
One day perhaps, neuroscience will explain why some infrastructures seem to reach far beyond their physicaldimensions. But one does not need to wait for that explanation in order to experience their postmodern orpost-postmodern effect. It turns out that bodies, buildings, streets and cities are still useful for certain things inthe global age of digital information. People are only beginning to uncover how they work.

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Enterprise Content Management And Service Oriented Architecture

Visualize the following scenario: All enterprise content (wherever generated by whatever entity) goes into a single repository and users can receive different services (that they were receiving from different applications earlier, or are completely new services) from an integrated system with a standard front end. Service Oriented Architecture, Enterprise Application Integration, and Data Warehousing work to make this scenario a reality.
Data warehouses, unlike transactional databases, are designed to facilitate querying and analysis. They are separated from transactional databases so that the latter are not burdened with query/analysis processing requests. These kinds of requests tend to use the processing resources, slowing down transaction processing response times.
Enterprise Application Integration seeks to integrate the different applications to eliminate duplication of both content and processing operations.
This article explores how Service Oriented Architecture works.
The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)This style of architecture groups functionalities into specific service groups. The services are provided to manage business processes that support an organizations business.
The enterprise-wide system is structured as a collection of standard services that different applications used by employees, suppliers, and customers need. These different applications might even be working on different platforms and coded in different programming languages. Each service is designed to work with any application that calls it, and would not know which application would call it. Its role is to provide a defined service in a standard choice to whatever application calls for it.
The pool of services can be configured to create new applications if needed. This kind of architecture adds flexibility and quicker deployment to content management systems.
Available services are listed in a service registry that can be looked up by applications for calling the service they need. The services would come with any attached security requirements appropriate to the service.
In an ideal system, one service or another would cater to every kind of information management need, and there would be a standard look and feel for the interface. Additionally, information management would be customizable to the requirements of the organizations business processes.
Internet Protocols and SOAInternet Protocols work independent of platforms and programming languages and work on the service request and delivery model. For example, a user client might request a certain document and the server complies with the request by retrieving the document and sending it to the client.
This makes the web-services approach a good Service Oriented Architectural approach. You can make your existing applications web enabled to start building a SOA system.
All services are described in XML documents that are independent of platforms, and written in Web Services Description Language (WSDL). An XML schema enables communication among the services.
A web service is not the only technology that can be used by SOA. SOA is an architecture that can be implemented using different technologies.
ConclusionService Oriented Architecture makes it possible to convert even legacy applications into services that any application can call. By configuring the services to cater to all kinds of information management needs, and tailoring the information management to the requirements of the particular business, you get to use enterprise knowledge to gain real control over business processes. This is what Enterprise Content Management systems seek to achieve.

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