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This article presents the opinions of residents of the immediate surroundings of three Brownfield Site Urban Regeneration Projects completed in Łódź (Poland) in the years 2006–2016, i.e. Manufaktura (textile industry facilities transformed into a mall), “Lofts at Scheibler” (a former spinning plant transformed into residential buildings with accompanying services) and EC1 (adaptation of a former EC1 power plant for cultural and educational purposes), and their impact on their immediate environment. The article presents the results of questionnaire surveys conducted by the author in 2017 on 587 respondents residing within a walking distance, i.e. up to 500 m from the above-mentioned investment projects.

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Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss initial work to assess the moisture buffering performance of selected bio-insulations in lofts that suffer from excessive moisture following refurbishment. Design/methodology/approach -- These conditions were then reproduced in a physical lab-based experiment such that the comparative performance of the bio-insulations and stone wool could be measured. Findings -- It was found that the bio-insulations could remove over 60 per cent of the moisture in the loft air, and therefore reduce the risk of condensation and its severity. Research limitations/implications -- The initial work reported here is indicative of the buffering potential of bio-insulations but further work is required to better quantify this performance. There is a need to further examine lofts with moisture problems and to produce reliable testing methods and protocols to be used when retrofitting loft insulation. Practical implications -- Installers and specifiers of loft insulation should ensure that insulation is installed correctly, as with the drive to increase loft insulation levels the risks of damaging the building fabric through condensation are increasing. Social implications -- Excessive moisture can damage the building fabric and create health problems. Using insulations that perform well across a range of performance criteria tend to favour bio-insulations, which have a far less harmful impact on the environment than do typical fossil-fuel based insulations. Originality/value -- The paper presents preliminary findings that support arguments for specifying bio-insulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents extensive discussion regarding an allusion to an organ loft made by the English poet John Keats in a letter to his brother George, dated September 17-27, 1819. Details are given examining the phrase which Keats used, describing its metaphorical reference to the problems of delay and expression in distant mail correspondence. Further details are given describing specific historical events involving Keats and the placement of an organ in the Winchester Cathedral of England which he was likely also alluding to.

As part of an investigation to assess the impact threat posed to vehicles by tyre-lofted runway debris, it is important to gain a quantitative understanding of the interaction between inflated tyres and foreign objects. In this paper, experiments involving indentation of an inflated tyre to represent over-rolling of a foreign object were used to estimate the energy that could be transferred to the over-rolled object. The maximum kinetic energy that a 24-mm diameter spherical stone could potentially attain from such an indentation-related loft mechanism by a tyre inflated to 0.34 MPa (50 psi) was 20 J. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the history of the New York Musicians Organization (NYMO), an artist- run collective that rose to brief prominence at the dawn of the loft jazz era. Founded in 1972, NYMO attracted a broad membership and considerable press attention for two heavily-publicized summer festivals. In stressing themes of self-reliance, avant garde performance practice and African American agency, the group's organizers drew extensively from earlier Midwestern collectives like the AACM. Yet unlike those groups, NYMO failed to establish a strong central governing body, instead acting as a consortium of smaller, independently-managed ventures. This approach laid the groundwork for the proliferation of small-scale initiatives that characterized the loft period, and several former NYMO members went on to establish important loft venues. While the group's prominence was short-lived, it played a crucial bridge role between the collectivized strategies of the 1960s and the loosely-connected musical networks of the loft era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the existence of a Bohemian community, or a group of literary- and artistically-minded individuals living an unconventional lifestyle, in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The author describes U.S. artists' use of lofts as an ideal space for creating their paintings. The illegality of living in lofts in the city is also explained, as many artists did not hold Certificates of Occupancy (C of O). Artists' roles in the general gentrification of New York City neighborhoods are outlined at the close of the article.

Abstract: A new algorithm for reducing control points in lofted surface interpolation to rows of data points is presented in this paper. The key step of surface lofting is to obtain a set of compatible B-spline curves interpolating each row. Given a set of points and their parameterization, a necessary and sufficient condition is proposed to determine the existence of interpolating B-spline curves defined on a given knot vector. Based on this condition, we first properly construct a common knot vector that guarantees the existence of interpolating B-spline curves to each row of points. Then we calculate a set of interpolating B-spline curves defined on the common knot vector by energy minimization. Using this method, fewer control points are employed while maintaining a visually pleasing shape of the lofted surface. Several experimental results demonstrate the usability and quality of the proposed method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Feral pigeons are descendants of wild rock pigeons that have adapted to the urban habitat. They have partially conserved the foraging behaviour of their wild ancestors (flights to agricultural areas) but have also developed new habits. Previous studies on the foraging strategies of feral pigeons have given various results, e.g. maximum distances reached by the pigeons (measured in a straight line from the resting places) differed between 0.3–0.5 km and 18–25 km. This study focuses on the spatio-temporal activity of feral pigeons in the urban habitat. We equipped 80 free-living feral pigeons from Basel, Switzerland with GPS receivers. We found three different foraging strategies for pigeons in Basel: (1) in the streets, squares and parks near the home loft, (2) in agricultural areas surrounding the city, (3) on docks and railway lines in harbours. The maximum distance reached by a pigeon was 5.29 km. More than 32% of the pigeons remained within 0.3 km of the home lofts and only 7.5% flew distances of more than 2 km. Females covered significantly longer distances than males, preferring to fly to more abundant and predictable food sources. Temporal activity patterns showed to be influenced by sex, breeding state and season. In contrast to wild rock pigeons and to feral pigeons in other cities, pigeons in Basel showed a clear bimodal activity pattern for breeding birds only. The differences between our results and those of other studies seem to be partly method-dependent, as the GPS-technique allows to record the pigeons’ localisations continuously in contrast to other methods. Other differences might be due to different kinds of food supply in the various cities. Our study shows that feral pigeons have individual foraging strategies and are flexible enough to adapt to different urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its ongoing search for a global identity, the city of Sydney, Australia, has looked to other cities for inspiration and direction. Like many of these cities, Sydney's Central Business District, and the former industrial areas that surround it, are being transformed through 'apartment' (condominium) development. Many are marketed as 'New York-style lofts' via a flurry of promotions that suggest a distinctly generic and global form of cosmopolitan urbanism. The essay details how this recent spate of Manhattanization rests not only on a cache of historically embedded Manhattan imaginaries, but on localized socio-cultural moments that are part of Sydney's particular experience of SoHo Syndrome. Tracing the pathways to Sydney's version of the global phenomenon of loft living has enabled a deeper understanding of the city's evolving built and cultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the different methodological problems that exist to define the geometric structure of complex forms, with the greater possible accuracy, through analyzing the free forms surfaces of the Romchamp's chapel roof. Techniques used to study and define a process for the generation methodology of a constructed complex shape; Independent surfaces that were generated through these two groups of lines with the loft surface methodology which uses lines as leaning sections; Systems used in the second surface generation essay.

Over the past two decades, converted loft spaces have emerged as an important element of the North American inner-city landscape. Originating within the specific social and economic conditions of Manhattan's SoHo (South of Houston) District in the 1970s, lofts have come to exemplify a conjunction between culture and economy in the restructuring of the contemporary city. In the gentrification literature, however, the idea of `culture' and its role in urban change remains weakly conceptualized as `arts-related investment' and `heritage preservation'. In this paper I untangle this relationship and realign the cultural with socio-spatial practice to examine the production of a loft landscape in inner-city Montreal. This case study illustrates the weak role played by capital accumulation strategies in the production of this landscape in Montreal and highlights the importance of a North-America-wide cultural construction of the SoHo loft and its reproduction in other cities. I argue that the media serves as a site and agent in the re-coding of inner city industrial landscapes by repeatedly representing lofts as the `authentic' domain of the avant-garde. In the case of Montreal, the reconstruction of a loft landscape further depends on local cultural forms that map and translate the loft lifestyle and aesthetic in the local material environment and build relationships between local conditions and identities, and SoHo. Finally, drawing on interviews with Montreal loft tenants, I illustrate how inner-city identities are constructed through socio-spatial practices.