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Debates in ecological social theory are characterised by dualisms of nature and society. The author proposes the notion of 'ecological aporias' to account for these dualisms, focusing on three landmark examples of ecological thought over the past four decades from Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour and Jason W. Moore. He shows the persistence in this work of paradoxes and intractable contradictions revolving around the nature/society dualism. Rather than trying to dissolve these ecological aporias, he draws on recent work in eco-deconstruction to suggest that the ecological is itself an aporetic category and that this enables a new perspective for political ecology in an age of climate crisis. Rejecting Latour's identification of political ecology with the politics of dwelling, he argues that climate change demands we recognise forms of life irreducible to the ontological security on which the concept of the ecological has long been based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional home product design system mainly depends on relatively shallow learning network, relatively simple embedded technology and Internet of things technology. The traditional home design system mainly depends on the traditional self-encoder technology. When combined with the deep neural network, this technology has serious defects in the computer vision algorithm, resulting in the serious waste of the corresponding system storage and computing resources, the corresponding system learning efficiency is relatively poor and the learning ability is weak. Based on this, this paper will build a home product design system based on the deep neural network of self-encoder. By improving the sparsity of self-encoder in the process of learning and training, we can further improve the sparsity of the system and further optimize the structure of self-encoder in the design system, The performance of the deep learning model of the design system is further improved through the hierarchical features continuously learned by the self-encoder in the process of home case design. Based on the optimization of the home product design system in this paper, the system effectively improves and improves the accuracy and stability of the internal feature classifier of the system, and improves the overall performance of the furniture design system. In the specific system construction part, based on ZigBee technology and embedded technology as the design carrier, and adhering to the goal of simplicity, intelligence and convenience, this paper designs and constructs the home product design system. The experimental results show that the noise processing level of the proposed home product design system is lower than 4-5db compared with the traditional design system, and the corresponding image classification accuracy is about 4% higher than the traditional design system. Therefore, the experimental results show that the home design system proposed in this paper has obvious advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article informs on the architecture of a Barlovento residential complex located in he area of ​​Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.

The article discusses how the intellectual and artistic relationship between British artist John Ruskin and Pauline Jermyn Trevelyan influenced the design and decoration of the Trevelyans' residence of Wallington Hall, particularly its central hall. Also cited are Ruskin's trust on Tevelyan, his influence in the designs of the Oxford Museum and Oxford Union Building, as well as his books "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," "The Stones of Venice," and "Modern Painters."

From the mid‐1950s to the early 1980s the Treasury and the Bank of England successfully advocated a policy of restricting both private and public sector house‐building, as a key but covert instrument of their wider 'stop‐go' macroeconomic policy framework. While the intensity of restrictions varied over the economic cycle, private house‐building was restricted (through limiting mortgage availability) for almost all this period. This was achieved by keeping building society interest rates low relative to other interest rates and thus starving the building society movement of mortgage funds. Mortgage restriction was never publicly discussed and sometimes operated alongside ambitious housing targets and well‐publicized policy initiatives to boost housing demand. This article outlines the evolution of house‐building restriction, together with its impacts on the housing sector and the wider economy. We review the evolution of the policy framework and its consequences, compare the level and stability of British house‐building during this period—historically and relative to other countries—and undertake time‐series econometric analysis of its impacts on both house‐building and house prices. Finally, implications for debates regarding stop‐go policy, Britain's housing problem, and the distributional consequences of government macroeconomic policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic buildings are increasingly complex, saturated with services that need coherent control if design and inhabitants’ goals are to be achieved. The evidenced inappropriate use of controls linked with a performance gap suggests that effective methods for assessing the inhabitants’ relationship with control interfaces for services are needed within building performance evaluation and practice studies. The development of a bespoke domestic usability tool over two iterations is presented, demonstrating new insights into the relationship between design and inhabitant engagement with controls. Deep contextual development came from trialling the tool in four UK domestic case studies. Understanding the purpose of a control interface and the inhabitants’ role was found to be a fundamental diagnostic for inhabitant engagement. The tool became a prompt for immediate action or further information-seeking for one-quarter of households involved in its application. However, the affordances and physical issues identified could not be addressed without major physical changes, which should have been picked up at the design and construction stages. Organizational learning based on the tool findings was triggered in one of four developers involved. The challenges for developing usability studies are discussed with recommendations provided for different actors in the housing and construction industry on how to progress them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the architectural design of houses in the Cayenne city of French Guiana designed by the architect Fabien Bermes.

The graphism that Francesc Mitjans used in his drawings, especially in regard to residential buildings, and particularly the illustrations and annotations on the margin of them, bring us closer to the personality and professionalism of this architect, who managed to go beyond the speculative and capitalist pressure of the residential architecture of its time to achieve examples of buildings of outstanding quality that even today reach the rare privilege of being called “houses" instead of “residential buildings". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The locally-famous Widow Clarke home provides this research with unique insights into an early settlement residence whose multiple owners pursued a myriad of decades-long preservation options which ultimately came to fruition upon establishment of the home's alpha-status. Architectural fabric thus was found to provide necessary credence to proclaim past ephemeral history once again tangible. Direct politicallymotivated initiatives provided providence for the celebration of the birth and establishment of this Midwestern American municipality on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan, known today as the city of Chicago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the concept of universal design (UD), how to expand it into housing communities and why it is important to individuals, families and communities to design universally. Topics discussed include other terms for UD are inclusive design, lifespan design and design-for-all, UD as an approach to design, the difference between UD and accessible design, people that benefited from UD and elements that are essential for creating UD.

Based on the field survey of dwellings in Tieqiong Village of Waerma Town in Aba County, northwest Tibetan area of Sichuan Province, this paper firstly introduced main characteristics of the construction system in the structure, materials and structural system, and analyzed changes in construction practices of various dwellings from traditional to modern time. Finally, it summarized characteristics of spontaneous evolution and research value of the construction system of dwellings in the northwest Tibetan area of Sichuan Province, with rammed earth wooden dwellings in upper and middle Aba areas as representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the analysis of the fortified dwellings - Kulla, which were constructed in Kosovo since XVIII-XIX century. As a case study, one took the Kulla, which were constructed in the Plain of Dukagjin. These types of dwellings were not constructed solely in Kosovo, but also in other countries of the region, that is: Northern Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. In Kosovo, the major parts of these buildings were constructed in the Plain of Dukagjin. Usually these buildings were constructed in two and three floors. Characteristic feature of these buildings is the division of functions in vertical direction. The research is based on the literature, analysis of the buildings, the research that was done up to now, including the interviewing of the persons-owners of the Kullas. The aim was to get an understanding on the purpose of constructing the Kulla in vertical manner. Kulla was analyzed in functional, architectural, constructive and condition aspect, which it offers to its inhabitants. There are a lot of factors that influenced on the construction of these buildings, one of them being the climate. Kosovo is characterized by a harsh climate during cold season of the year, which influenced on the relatively low height of the floors. Another feature is limited lighting in the ground floor, which increases steadily going further up to the last floor, as well as through the embrasures used for fire arms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the challenges faced by children with autism and their families in the home environment and how physical elements of the home environment can be designed or modified to alleviate these challenges and create an autism-friendly home. The research employs qualitative methods to learn from the experiences of key informants involved in creating or modifying the home environment of people with autism; this involved interviews with architects and occupational therapists. To learn from the families themselves, an online survey of the families of children with autism across Canada and the United States was conducted. The study provides insight into the physical, social, and psychological challenges affecting the quality of life of children with autism and their families in their home environment and the contribution of home modifications to alleviating the challenges. The appropriateness of the three housing typologies – detached houses, attached houses, and apartments – to accommodate autism-related needs is discussed together with potential policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]