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The correlation between health and well-being, outdoor activity, and the natural environment in learning environments has been recognised by pioneers like Samuel Wilderspin and modern theorists like Maria Montessori, who have underscored the importance of integrating nature into school designs to foster connections between students, teachers, and the community, thereby promoting physical, social, and mental well-being. However, for schools in hot–humid climatic regions in densely populated cities of Southeast Asia, reduced time spent in nature due to adverse climatic conditions has led to an increasingly inactive lifestyle, impacting children's health and well-being. Overpopulation in major cities, such as those in Southeast Asia, further exacerbates this challenge, leading to a scarcity of land and the rise of high-rise buildings, including vertical schools. This article explores the evolving learning environment for children, emphasising the critical correlation between well-being, nature, and school settings. It evaluates case studies of best practices in learning environment design, focusing on how architecture can support pedagogical goals. The analysis identifies spaces that affect well-being, termed mediated spaces, and recommends guidelines for such spaces tailored to vertical schools in hot–humid climates. The methodology includes a literature review of learning theories, the integration of learning environments with nature, and biophilic design. This review forms the basis for developing adaptable design guidelines tailored to hot–humid climates. Additionally, case study analyses of exemplary schools are conducted to identify mediated spaces that enhance well-being and adapt these findings to vertical school designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first decade after its victory, the Iranian revolution (1979) was dominated by an uncompromising Islamist ideology, invoking the Islamic and vernacular traditions. A logical arena through which Islamism could act upon people’s daily lives was public housing, the design and construction of which is controlled by the government, and its constituents are the masses who mostly adhere to Muslim traditions and espouse forms of Islamic identity in their daily life. Referring to a selection of projects from a series of government housing competitions held in 1986, we examine the relationship between the submitted designs and architectural precedents cited as constituting “Islamic architectural heritage.” Elaborating on the heritage processes involved in articulating the past in these designs, we trace the interrelationships between these designs and other, non-Islamic, architectural discourses and design procedures deriving from a Western context. We argue for rethinking the relationship between heritage and architectural design, such that the latter is seen as the process of refashioning fragments of past traditions into heritage, in this case, a purportedly Islamic form. Concurrently, we show the gap between ideological rhetoric and the praxis of design and remarkable continuities between the periods leading up to and following the revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the symbolism of forms and spaces used in the architecture of the Chrysotriklinos, or Golden Hall, a ceremonial building in the Byzantine Great Palace, in modern day Istanbul, Turkey. Topics include a discussion of how architecture forms might have been associated with legitimacy of rule; and the syncretic interplay between secular and religious, classical and medieval, Eastern and Western, symbolic and practical, and movement and architecture.

To commence the thirtieth annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), held on Australia's Gold Coast in July 2013, ten delegates were invited, with very little warning, to take five minutes and one image and offer a provocation on the open matters of architectural history in the present moment. The term 'open' was taken as the conference theme--a device used by SAHANZ meetings not so much to define the scope of papers presented as to declare the conference flavour year by year. It was not, therefore, an open conference (anything goes) so much as a conference on open issues (where, indeed, to go). The ten interlocutors were invited after the conference to document their interventions. They are presented here as a record of the preoccupations of a specific moment and a specific institutional geography, with all the idiosyncrasies and commonalities it might reveal to a broader audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the design and plan for the urban park Melbourne Domain in Victoria. It presents an overview of the history and significance of urban parks in Australia. It describes the urban layout of the Domain during the 1850s and 1860s which was constructed as a symbolic geography, formed out of privileged views, vistas and alignments. It notes the importance of the visibility of both the Domain and of the grid city itself for the pattern of development of the city during the period. It argues that the authorship of the Domain layout of the 1850s cannot be attributed with certainty to the Government Inspector of Works and Architect Henry Ginn, but was more likely a collaboration between Clement Hodgkinson and the artist Edward La Trobe-Bateman.