This column provides background science information for elementary teachers. When the author was young he used to think that the ideal design for a concert hall would contain walls that were composed of sound-absorbing material, like foam or egg cartons or such. He noticed, though, that this was not the case. Most concert halls contain curtains…

The context of students as architects is used to examine the similarities and differences between prisms and pyramids. Leavy and Hourigan use the Van Hiele Model as a tool to support teachers to develop expectations for differentiating geometry in the classroom using practical examples.

Current debates around the concept of boundary crossing stress the importance of boundary objects in bringing people together to share understandings. We argue that the boundary object is of secondary importance, and that what is important for the transformational potential of interdisciplinary understanding is opportunities for "boundary…

The purpose of this study is to design a knowledge conversion and management digital learning system for architecture design learning, helping students to share, extract, use and create their design knowledge through web-based interactive activities based on socialization, internalization, combination and externalization process in addition to…

This paper identifies approaches, challenges, and best practices related to planning and designing today's academic library learning spaces. As part of the Project Information Literacy (PIL) Practitioner Series, qualitative data is presented from 49 interviews conducted with a sample of academic librarians, architects, and library consultants.…

The concept of labyrinth as a design idea is prevalent throughout the history of Western architecture. In the late-eighteenth century when the Western Jesuits built a labyrinth as a part of a "Western-like" garden within the Chinese imperial garden Yuanming Yuan, the labyrinth appeared exotic and enjoyable for the Chinese. This essay…

Today, the use of photographs in publications and exhibitions is commonplace, but this was not always so. This article shows how photographs of certain schools that have had lasting impact on design stand in ambiguous relationships to the buildings themselves. Photographs function as part of the design process; they record details of construction…

As a consequence of fruitful discussions about joining theory and practice both in design research and educational design programmes, this article aims to explore phenomenological parameters in the framework of an exercise for Engineer-architecture students from the University of Leuven in Belgium. Relying upon the arguments of recognised…

This study is mainly about developing an approach for fostering creativity in design education through analyzing the interactions among creative dimensions resembling spatial and organizational pattern of folding as a technique and also by the help of cognitive action of designers: workshop participants. In order to make an assessment, a case…

Internationally, Intercultural Understanding (ICU) is increasingly prevalent in the field of education. The recent evidence base includes a growing academic literature and examples of specified education policy and curricula. In regards to leveraging ICU, research suggests a multi-level and longitudinal approach is needed to ensure effective and…

This article focuses on the "Building Colleges for the Future" (BCF) initiative (2008) which saw a wave of new-build Further Education (FE) colleges spring up across England in the final years of the New Labour government. It draws on qualitative data from a research study focusing on four new-build colleges in the West Midlands of…

In addition to the familiar occupational standards that underpin National Vocational Qualifications, the UK has a parallel if less complete system of competence or practice standards that are developed and controlled by professional bodies. While there is a certain amount of overlap between the two types of standard, recent research points to a…

Much like its meteorological counterpart, "Cloud Computing" is an amorphous agglomeration of entities. It is amorphous in that the exact layout of the servers, the load balancers and their functions are neither known nor fixed. Its an agglomerate in that multiple service providers and vendors often coordinate to form a multitenant system…

During the course of the 1960s, computers and information networks made their appearance in the public imagination. To architects on the cusp of architecture's postmodern turn, information technology offered new forms, metaphors, and techniques by which modern architecture's technological and utopian basis could be reasserted. Yet by the end of…

This thesis examines the state of the art of building information systems and evaluates their architecture in the context of emerging technologies and applications for deep analysis of the built environment. We observe that modern building information systems are difficult to extend, do not provide general services for application development, do…