Talk:Architecture

To Archinect or not to archinet

There seems to be an edit war over whether or not to include a link to http://Archinect.com/ . What to do about it? --DavidCary 20:00, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Let's at least have a few votes on whether or not to include it. (Title added by me) --stochata 17:37, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

ARCHILAB

This article has now been translated (from French), but it needs cleaning up, preferably by someone with some knowledge of archtecture (i.e. not me). Physchim62 11:51, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Gingerbread/Gothic revival

I uploaded Image:Gingerbread (architecture).jpg, thinking there would be a place for it, but if it's there, I can't find it. The architecture articles seem to be limited to monumental structures. Am I missing something?

Coastal architecture? Flood zone architecture?

One thing that surprised me about the destruction wrought by hurrican Katrina on the Gulf Coast is that despite the fact that there were supposedly million dollar plus homes, they did not survive the tidal surge. Was that just negligence on the part of the architects? Aren't there reasonable ways to design survivable homes, at least in this price range? Do we really have to stop building in these coastal areas? Perhaps a section in this article that could point architects to the resources describing how this is done would be helpful.

On the subject of New Orleans, is there a way to construct buildings and infrastructure so it is less vulnerable to the flooding when it occurs? Perhaps on pilings or with 1st floor garages so that the damage is less? --Silverback 14:53, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Re: Coastal architecture? Flood zone architecture?

Perhaps a better solution would be to live a less wasteful lifestyle? maybe consider living in a simple home, and using the rest of the resources as an emergency back up for such situations? I see architecture as well outside the reality loop when it comes to resource use. this is to some extent mirrored in society, where the rich minority of us (you have a computer? then you are one) use excessive amounts of resources, most of which we waste. --Naught101 05:18, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You underestimate the benefits of technology. For instance, computers allow me to telecommute, saving resources. Automobiles pollute far less per passenger mile than horses, etc.--Silverback 05:39, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

--futher off-topic replies moved to User Talk:Naught101 --Naught101 23:51, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Coastal architecture? Flood zone architecture?

Restored with a small amount of unfortunate duplication from User talk:Naught101

One thing that surprised me about the destruction wrought by hurrican Katrina on the Gulf Coast is that despite the fact that there were supposedly million dollar plus homes, they did not survive the tidal surge. Was that just negligence on the part of the architects? Aren't there reasonable ways to design survivable homes, at least in this price range? Do we really have to stop building in these coastal areas? Perhaps a section in this article that could point architects to the resources describing how this is done would be helpful.

On the subject of New Orleans, is there a way to construct buildings and infrastructure so it is less vulnerable to the flooding when it occurs? Perhaps on pilings or with 1st floor garages so that the damage is less? --Silverback 14:53, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Re: Coastal architecture? Flood zone architecture?

Perhaps a better solution would be to live a less wasteful lifestyle? maybe consider living in a simple home, and using the rest of the resources as an emergency back up for such situations? I see architecture as well outside the reality loop when it comes to resource use. this is to some extent mirrored in society, where the rich minority of us (you have a computer? then you are one) use excessive amounts of resources, most of which we waste. --Naught101 05:18, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You underestimate the benefits of technology. For instance, computers allow me to telecommute, saving resources. Automobiles pollute far less per passenger mile than horses, etc.--Silverback 05:39, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, that was worded oddly. I simply meant that the fact that you are using a computer right now probably means that you are part of the global minority of the rich, considering less than 1 in 1000 people have a computer. True, computers may use less resources while running than the postal service, which uses aeroplanes, but computers have an extremely high embodied energy.

Cars do not pollute less than horses. cars produce carbon dioxide, which, unless you're running hydrogen or biodiesel/gas, adds to the greenhouse effect, for decades. This has rather serious effects on climate change, and has a carry on effect to hurricanes. It's true that horses produce manure and methane, the first is a fertiliser, hardly a pollutant, the second is a greenhouse gas (but carbon neutral since it's part of the natural carbon cycle). Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. --Naught101 15:43, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There are more environmental concerns than just CO2, which some have also considered a fertilizer of sorts. Horses were considered a major environmental hazard at the time partially due to the short working life in heavy duty, and thousands of carcasses often left on the streets. The dung attracted flies and generated terrible odors, and created runoff water polution. The din of noise from iron horse shoes and the damage they caused to roads were also problems. The next two paragraphs are from this blog, but they have some credibility because they have references [1]

"Historian Stephen Davies recounts "The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894" in the current issue of The Freeman (some of contents on-line but, unfortunately, not Davies' piece). All urban non-pedestrian traffic was horsepowered and the stuff kept piling up. "In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day ... " And, "Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure.""

"Even better is Davies' reports that, "In 1898 the first international urban planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.""

Evidently, the shear volume of manure and urine polution per passenger mile, created problems that your simple lawn analogy doesn't capture. Horse and the Urban Environment | HORSE WASTES AND COMPOSTING: PATHOGENS AND WEED SEEDS

One of the implications of wealth usually is an increased ability to survive or protect against environmental insults. Are there reasonable engineering/architectural solutions to building and living in a storm surge zone. It is perhaps similar to the situation with earthquakes in the San Francisco area. The hills around there are undeveloped ostensibly due to the earthquake risk, which on the face of it, given the price of real estate and homeless problem (I would probably be homeless there despite my apparent riches), is obscene. With the wealth of their population, they SHOULD be able to develop those hills and relieve some of the housing pressure on the lower and middle classes, by letting those that can afford to, safely develope there. Are the engineering problems that intractable, that we have to leave these areas undeveloped, or is it cheaper to just simply rebuild after destruction in these areas? --Silverback 21:35, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

heh, sounds like a load of fun. though if an enterprising person happened to also be a right-thinking person, they could see a way to clean up the streets AND make a profit. collect the shit (and carcases], sell it to farmers. I'm not sure about the water pollution, it does sound pretty bad, but proper storm water collection, retention and reed-bed/mop crop filtration should ba able to sort this out. CO2 hangs around for about 100 years, and is only slowly re-converted into oxygen and carbon molecules. and this rate may be less than previosly thought. and if you are worried about hurricanes, storms, floods, heatwaves, cold snaps, firestorms, or any other climate-affected natural disaster, you should be worried about climate change, cause it's only going to get worse.

I'm pretty sure the current solution is "survival of the richest," where you buy your way out of the disaster, leave for a few months, till everyone is dead or gone, then come back and take over their property. sorry, it's hard not to be cynical in the fucked up system.--Naught101 00:08, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To show you how insignificant the UKs efforts were even if they hadn't been cancelled out, this effect is about two orders of magnitude larger so we end up with less than nothing for forgoing tens of billions of dollars of economic growth. What is strange about the coast, is that there did not seem to be any residences built to survive the surge, you'd think some owner or architect would have implemented a solution.--Silverback 02:51, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

Scottish baronial style

I've just started an article on Scottish baronial style. It has three sentence which contain the sum total of my knowledge, and I wouldn't even guarantee that that is accurate. I put it up because I want to know more and am curious what you architecture experts will now do with it. (It links from a reference at Aberdeen Grammar School.) Please visit this page and do whatever needs done. --Doric Loon 14:13, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a look and expanded a little, perhaps it need to be moved to Scottish baronial architecture, or perhaphs just a subsection of Gothic revival - any views?

Arpingstone's changes

The article definitely needed some tidying up, and Arpingstone's changes seem like as good a start as any. However, the changes include a whole paragraph erroneously attributed to Vitruvius (now corrected), and it is still seems very fragmented. I could follow Arpingstone and go for some more bold editing, but perhaps we should discuss some things first: should we merge the two introductory paragraphs, and talk about architecture rather than the architect as we do in the new Introduction section. Diving into Vitruvius is centered on Western values in architecture -- should scope and intentions be broadened? --stochata 12:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]