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The article evaluates the architectural design of Apartment in Triatec East in Dominican Republic by Dominican Designer Andrés Aybar.

The article evaluates the architectural designs of the Casa Club, a beach club, and beach apartment buildings in Bani, Dominican Republic designed under the tourism project Puntarena for tourism development.

Contemporary debates around affordability have largely focused on homeownership and private renting. This article considers the affordable social rented sector in England, in which reforms to social welfare assistance, reduced security of tenure, and a shift towards mid-market rents, are changing access to 'affordable' housing for those on the lowest incomes. Drawing on in-depth interviews with housing associations and stakeholders, the article highlights the increasing use of affordability assessments for prospective tenants. These assessments interact with mid-market rental products to increase the potential for exclusion from affordable housing on the grounds of ability to pay. This conditionality is applied not only at the point of tenancy access, but also at renewal of fixed-term tenancies. The research highlights that the combination of welfare and housing policies, in the context of a financialising housing association sector, has the potential to erode access to social housing for those who are perceived as a financial risk, reshaping the focus of social housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solo dwellers' housing issues have received little attention in housing studies. This article addresses their domestic spatial needs in the context of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA) where dwelling sizes have decreased rapidly. A critical stance towards the trend of constructing small one-room apartments and related norm deregulation is based on the notion that dwellings should be at least 50 m2 and contain more than one room in order to overcome the shortage of space experienced by solo dwellers (N = 1453). Emphasizing the perspective of housing design, the findings provide insights into floor plan design by focussing on apartment types and sizes in relation to kitchen types and the experienced shortage of space. All in all, the article demonstrates that solo dwellers' domestic spatial needs are more diverse than expected based on their household size and related public discussion on urban housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teotihuacan underwent an urban renewal during the Tlamimilolpa phase (AD 250–350) in which more than 2,000 apartment compounds were constructed to accommodate its estimated 100,000 residents. Although the orderly layout and canonical orientation of the city imply top-down planning, growing evidence suggests a bottom-up process of urban transformation. This study combines architectural energetics with archaeometric analysis of nonlocal construction materials (lime plaster and andesitic cut stone blocks) to examine the labor organization behind the construction of the apartment compounds. The results of the energetic analysis suggest that residents relied on labor forces external to their compounds, whereas materials analysis indicates that the procurement, transportation, and production of building material were centrally organized and thus indicative of a state labor tax. Based on these results, I argue that compounds were assembled through corporate group labor exchange or communal (neighborhood-level) labor cooperation/obligation, with differing degrees of support from the state labor tax. Apartment compound construction was not uniform but rather a diverse process in which state labor mobilization, communal labor obligations, and corporate labor exchange were articulated in various ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many factors influence the success of apartment development projects, but it is difficult to quantitatively measure them. In terms of risk control, the five most direct influence factors are sales ratio, unit sale price, financial cost, land cost, and construction cost. These factors will vary during the project, from planning to land purchase to design to sale to construction, and the levels of these factors will also affect project performance. Therefore, it is necessary to dynamically forecast, control and monitor, and manage these factors in order to successfully implement apartment development projects. This study develops a dynamic simulation model to analyze the economic feasibility of apartment development projects. It draws a causal loop diagram of the aforementioned influence factors, develops a simulation model using system dynamics, and verifies the model with a case study of a 1,794-unit apartment development project. Using this simulation model, it is possible to quickly and easily simulate the economic effects of the risk factors that change throughout the project, analyze its economic feasibility, and develop a plan to reduce economic losses, if necessary. The simulation model can also identify the optimal conditions for project feasibility and develop a risk-control model for apartment development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces new measures of productivity growth for four industries in construction: single-family residential construction; multifamily residential construction; highways, roads, and bridges construction; and industrial construction. Although previous studies found that productivity is stagnant or declining in the overall construction sector, we find that productivity growth is positive and relatively strong in three of the four industries. The present evidence is more reliable because the output price deflators are more accurate in the four industries considered. This article explains in detail how the new measures were prepared and briefly describes ongoing research that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is conducting to determine what further measures of productivity growth in construction are feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of Customization Grammar, an analytical shape grammar that describes the alterations introduced by homeowners to high-standard apartments before occupation. This is viewed as a contemporary phenomenon that reveals the incompatibility between social demands and housing units offered by the current real estate market in Recife, Brazil. It is expected that the proposed grammar could support mass customization design procedures and able to generate suitable housing units to current and future lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Victorian scholar, comparativist and feminist Sharon Marcus is presented. Topics of the interview include her personal concept of surface reading which she uses in her book "Between Women" on identifying set of assumptions and response to emerging points, the impacts of her feminist literary theories and works in gender equality for women and African Americans and her practicing method on studying architectural plans for block-long apartment buildings in 19th century.

The article discusses the Australian economic condition in 2016 and the impact of international economic events on the country's economy. Several countries influenced Australian economy which include the U.S., European countries such as Germany, Great Britain and France, and Japan. The trends noted in the country include growth in net exports, growth in the housing market, and an improvement in the unemployment rate.

To improve the energy efficiency of a large building stock, authority planners and designers need to identify which buildings consume most energy and why. For this purpose, this paper provides a data mining-based methodology for setting decision-making rules to identify patterns of energy consumption for a large data set of flats and evaluate the potential effects achievable by retrofitting actions. The calculated normalised primary energy demand ( E PDn) and the geometrical, thermo-physical and heating system attributes of 92 906 flats are analysed. Firstly, an accurate statistical description of the building stock and its main technological features is provided. Secondly, a supervised classification algorithm to rank flats as 'low', 'medium' or 'high' E PDn is developed based on the flats' attributes. To classify E PDn, reference threshold values are set between the attributes. These values will benefit authority planners and designers when setting performance objectives. Finally, the high- E PDn flats are analysed in depth through an unsupervised classification algorithm. Thus, intrinsic properties and hidden dependencies are discovered. Moreover, a manageable number of real reference flats representative of the entire high-consumption class are identified. These real reference flats can be used to study the causes of high- E PDn and propose different energy retrofit actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese housing prices rose by over 10 percent per year in real terms between 2003 and 2014 and are now between two and ten times higher than the construction cost of apartments. At the same time, Chinese developers built 100 billion square feet of residential real estate. This boom has been accompanied by a large increase in the number of vacant homes, held by both developers and households. This boom may turn out to be a housing bubble followed by a crash, yet that future is far from certain. The demand for real estate in China is so strong that current prices might be sustainable, especially given the sparse alternative investments for Chinese households, so long as the level of new supply is radically curtailed. Whether that happens depends on the policies of the Chinese government, which must weigh the benefits of price stability against the costs of restricting urban growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ventilation presents a major impact on the performances of the building, which are covered by the Energy efficiency Regulations. Good (natural) ventilation provides a good quality of indoor air which means a satisfactory level of humidity, temperature and circulation. Consequently, designer's primar goal is to harmonize this mentioned elements. This issue imposes as a problem at the facilities that represent multifamily housing, especially due to a fact that is quite complex area, not just black and white. In the article has been presented an approach both of analysing relevant elements influencing in a sustainable process of natural ventilation and sustainable concept of apartments functional organization through the layouts sketches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at placing in-line GF+1F houses and GF+1F Duplex building in the built-up area of Dumbravita, 14 Octavian Goga Street, Timis county. At the moment being, the land is under Building Yards use category, according to the Land Registry excerpt no. 412015, issued by O.C.P.I. Timis. This work involves the placement of dwelling buildings on an area of 1,388 sqm. The building comprises a total of 4 3-bedroom apartments and 2 4-room apartments. The building structure is Confined brick masonry made of ceramic bricks. In order to conduct this item of work the following phases were run: Phase 1 - building construction, Phase 2 - apartment construction. The planimetric measurement was conducted in the field with the GPS Stonex S9 equipment using the GNSS TIM1_2.3 permanent station of the class A National Geodetic Network, obtaining 1970 stereographic coordinates, the Black Sea level-related system and a total Leica TC 805 station to determine the detail points of the land, road inflections, gutters inflections and edges, aerial electrical network pillars, property limits, constructions, fences, utility networks, etc. The field data were downloaded in the computer in order to process the layout with specific software (AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009, Topo LT V7.5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on new developments in Switzerland. Topics discussed including Public-private partnership (PPP) projects for developments in the country; announcement of construction of a football stadium, apartments for social housing in September 2018; and revision of Federal Act on Public Procurement to the plenum by the FederalCouncil on 15 February 2017.