Conflict

Conflict is a state of discord or clash in areas of interests, or fights between individuals, groups or organizations. Leadership and control sharing across organizations and individuals in and between communities are common sources of conflict. Such conflict often leads to breakdowns in collaboration. Good teams need to go beyond basic team building to become aware of team dynamics while working in order to foster a good collaboration system.

In our project there is no obvious human conflict as we have divided our work accordingly and we have agreed to a leader to go to where he will make the final decisions when conflict arises. Conflict resolution becomes usable when resolving conflict. Successful conflict resolution not only occurs by listening to and providing opportunities to meet the needs of others, but it also addresses interests so that each one in the group is satisfied with the outcome.

Other ways of conflict resolution include:-

- try hard to understand other person/s points of view

- listen reflectively to what they are saying

- look for common grounds of vision

- acknowledge their expertise

- focus on interests rather than positions

- separate people from the problem

However there are some sorts of conflict that we experienced with using UT3 as well as the setting of our overall timeframe. I think the conflict becomes that when we stop and think about what we have done, we could have organized shortcuts in doing things. For instance we could have built the entire model in UT3 but we chose to build it in 3Dmax to import it as we initially thought it would be easier to use a program that we are familiar with rather than one that we cannot use. But it turns out that when we import the model into UT3 we had to separate all the parts which becomes a struggle. Our chosen path yet divides our work in a more equal way, having each of us doing different parts, rather than to have each of us spending time find out how UT3 works at the beginning.

REFERENCE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict

Remuneration

Remuneration defines compensation or reward that is given for a particular task or service. It usually describes monetary payment or related entitlement that is paid by employers in return for work of employees. Remuneration can be in form of sustenance, accommodation, airfare, or medical insurance service as well. For large companies like Virgin Blue, they keep themselves apprised of the latest developments, policies and trends to remuneration matters which affect the markets in which the group does business. While that non-monetary remuneration includes anything like free parking, legal advice or flexible working hours.

In architectural terms, remuneration includes any payment made under a contract for services. Protection of minimum remuneration enables the pursuit of economic efficiency and better service quality, furthermore it becomes an incentive to provide high quality services and deprives the trading counterparts of the power to request for better architectural design. Planning and remuneration connects in the sense that for a project to run smoothly, associates need to be told of their reward according to what they have done in a contractual project. Without these disputes may arise when the end reward does not equal to what was contracted. Besides having to provide remuneration incentives, there should also be equity of remuneration because unequal rewards would contribute to disputes as well. People need to feel that a knowledge marketplace is not only fulfilling the organization’s goals, it is fulfilling theirs. They need to feel that their reward from collaborating on teams and projects, which may be run from the other side of the world, is equitable and aligned with their contribution.

In this course remuneration is paid in non-monetary form and it relates to the grades and verbal advice that we get for all the work that we have done. Within the group itself remuneration is a form of team responsibility.

REFERENCE

http://www.workplaceinfo.com.au/nocookie/subjects/PayandConditions/remuneration/articles/remuneration.htm

http://www.hrinz.org.nz/Site/HR_Info/glossaries/Glossary_of_HR_terms.aspx

Planning

Le Corbusier was an architect and artist who was famous for his contributions to what now is called modernist architecture. During the international modernism movement the plan was given preference. As a pioneer of theoretical thinking, In his book “Towards a New Architecture” he boldly states that “the plan is the generator…Without plan there can be neither grandeur of aim and expression, nor rhythm, nor mass, nor coherence…A plan calls for the most active imagination. It calls for the most severe discipline also. The plan is what determines everything; it is the decisive moment”, which summed up interior design and planning quite accurately implying that planning is everything. As a designer, everything should begin with the floor plan with all its implications of rational relationships, rather than impose some sort of artistic vision on a building as priority. With influence of digital modeling software nowadays, the section becomes the new option given that it is perhaps the best drawing and representational technique for understanding form and space.
Our goal was to create an environment in UT3 that bettered the half life 2 model. In doing so we assigned specific roles to each person in the group and we run the weeks as planned in the schedule. Essentially our digital project converts a materialized model made from max into UT3 where all the lighting and landscape are done.
The spatial planning of our unbuilt building involves an atrium space at the bottom level where the character can move into a huge interiorlized courtroom and up onto the stairs onto the second and above levels. Our chosen building is rather spacious which we intended for the user to experience the space. Urban planning is not just concerned with the making of plans but also with the management of development to ensure that it accords with the objectives of the plan and is developed to the benefit of the general public. Statutory planning, or otherwise known as town planning, development control or development management, refers to this part of the planning process that is concerned with the regulation and management of changes to land use and development. Usually, a developer is required to lodge a planning application with the government body, usually a local council, for approval. That application is assessed by the statutory planner to see if it complies with the relevant planning objectives, controls, standards, policies and provisions and decided for approval or rejection. The aim of having statuary planning is to improve quality of life for residents ensuring that the land use requirements of the community for housing, employment, retail, leisure, community facilities, waste, minerals and transport are met in a sustainable way, and to conserve and enhance the best features of the natural and built environment.

REFERENCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_planning

Context

Generally architecture students have to have an ability to solve a problem in an appropriate design context. Our task is to place a computer generated model into the UT3 program which I think becomes the context to our problem having to design for internal and external architectural environments. We have to consider the space in which it will reside, the lighting, other surrounding organic or inorganic objects and the surrounding landscape. We are to construct and display knowledge and learning experience using contextual learning resources and tutorials in the 3D virtual environment. Context and experience closely relate to one another, and structures cannot be perceived as independent aesthetic entities but rather they must harmonize with their built and natural surroundings as part of the virtual building environment.

Context becomes important in the architectural field as architects are not only responsible for the buildings and structures they design, but also for the environment.

Paralleling to the relationships between building construction and architectural form and space, there should be a relationship drawn between architecture and its cultural context as well, where buildings are not isolated objects, but are anchored in and shaped by their physical and cultural contexts.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is a system that helps to simplify a design process by allowing functional role of subassemblies to be articulated in a meaningful way as to their contribution to the function of the whole. In collaborative environment both hierarchy and democracy have to be brought together to form some kind of leadership role. However the power given in a hierarchy should not be abused but rather needs to be redeemed and understood. Having power distributed equally among members in a group tend to create excessive expectation of other people’s abilities and their willingness to shoulder responsibility. Overemphasis on equality in group-work an lead to a lack of motivation for developing individual potential as members receive no greater rewards for demonstrating their abilities. Therefore it becomes essential to have a balanced hierarchy, to have a leader that would evaluate others’ commitment to the group more objectively as well as their skills and their potential leadership abilities. In every group there is always a hierarchy of ability present which needs to be recognized in order to allow people to manifest their full potential. Hierarchy not only acknowledges current abilities but it also values leadership, purpose, direction, vision, accountability and efficiency. In a working field hierarchy can offer mentoring for those who are younger or less experienced and thus can learn to become more advanced in certain areas. Simon is our leader and his role is to initiate new things that influence other people, and I think he does quite a good job appraising people for what they have done. He gives encouragement as well as listening to everyone else to develop good relations with all members of the group. Enlightened leadership is educative rather than directive by drawing out the best in others having to assume that people already have the potential wisdom and creativity within them.

Conventional building delivery is structured hierachically in terms of control and linear in time. Digital tools are providing a catalyst for rethinking the structures of project delivery, presenting opportunities for firms to expand their roles, offer new services and change the sequencing of how and when design information is developed and consumed.

In the unbuilt work that we are doing there is a strong sense of hierarchy conceived. The building is a courthouse itself which symbolizes a sense of power and hierarchy. The building’s form is very tense to highlight this aspect, i.e. the building is structured like a heavy block supported by columns on the side. When you walk into the building the public areas are on the main floor, whereas the judges’ office and private areas are on second floor and above which makes a statement saying that private uses are above and unreachable.

REFERENCE

http://www.visionarylead.org/articles/hierarchy_democracy.htm

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/simon.html

http://www.design.upenn.edu/workworkwork/files/SheldenArchitecturalDesign.v76.pdf

INTENT

Intent relates to the intended meaning of a communication. It is the attempt to get someone to share your thoughts by having intellectual arrangements of features and dimensions of design. Design intent tends to govern the relationship between features in part and parts in assemblies. This means that for a design to work as a solution there has to be intent of each component to answer the design problem.

Within a presentation we try to use body language which tends to provide clues to the meaning and intent of communication from others that we get from gesture, facial expression, posture and everything else that is non-verbal. Non-verbal communication amounts to a second source of human communication that is often more reliable or essential to understanding what is really going on than the words themselves. While verbally when we talk to someone it is essential to bare in mind that others share the same sphere of experience would understand the content of a presentation. In the architecture environment there needs to be a high-level framework that can be used to develop unified communications environments that can provide significant productivity and cost benefits. Intelligent presenters should be able to communicate with each other using an extensible, expressive language.

REFERENCE

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3123.html

KNOWLEDGE

Architectural knowledge enables architects to create humane environments that emerges from and responds to societal, cultural and environmental needs. The humane environment is all about reason, emotion and intuition where architects have to resolve with the ability and knowledge to conceptualize, coordinate, and execute the idea of building. Like any other distinctive branches of education in design, architecture requires the development of creative capabilities to produce three dimensional spaces and form that accommodates for related human activities.

Knowledge in architecture can be regarded as a prerequisite to knowledge sharing within an infrastructure that combines people, content and technology all together.

Knowledge sharing often requires people to do a proper job in the case of assig ning job content to the right people to make sure that information flows to the right departments at the right time. This can be done by assigning people authority and responsibility for specific kinds of knowledge content and knowledge delivery. This avoids departments to become territorial in a typical organization fighting over budget or over the control of sensitive processes, and ensures departments to be cooperative and ready to share knowledge. The necessary knowledge transfer between people and technology involves capturing implied knowledge from experts, storing it in knowledge base, and making it available to people for solving complex problems.

Design studios are directed to practical ends and that knowledge cannot substitute for architectural imagination yet inadequate knowledge would handicap the general level of design. The architectural design process is knowledge intensive which requires a sequence of design decisions to be made. In our team it is expected that every one of us are at the same knowledge level with computer skills so it becomes easy to communicate to one another without much explanation.

REFERENCE

www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/SalamaICHH-05.pdf

http://www.ds.arch.tue.nl/Research/publications/henri/am97ha.htm

http://turing.une.edu.au/~comp292/Lectures/HEADER_KM_2004_LEC_NOTES/node17.html

RECORD

To record is to make a permanent or official note of evidences accumulated in an investigation that are intended for future use and it can be in forms of written or electronic such as databases in Excel or Access with archived CAD files. The recording method varies according to the complexity of a project. In preservation and restoration projects for instance, they require careful documentation of their work like investigation reports and notes which are then made into a permanent file record. Either planned or unplanned architecture reports will always be of value to future researchers or owners of the building. An architectural record system tends to contain description of the original structure and changes made over time, the results of all investigations, a record of current conditions or problems, of past repairs and treatments, and recommendations for current and future action. An effective records management system is critical to managing procedures consistently across an organization, minimizing possibilities of having different rules and procedures from department to department. Many architectural firms tend to keep documents for less than 7 years except for leases which require record-keeping for building area measurements to be accomplished differently than normal architectural project-file record keeping.

To make a record we need to create and identify unique information that are then stored and retrieved with authorized access to others as a form of secondary use. It should be renewed constantly every time something new has been proposed on the project. The most frequently used form of record in our group is email. Email allows individuals and groups to communicate with one another. Once we have established contact within ourselves, we can gather and share information as well as elicit reactions to on-going proposals through email rather than face-to-face meetings or repetitive telephone calls. Unlike telephone and face-to-face conversations, email conversations provide a built-in record of what is asked for and what information is received. Via continuous emailing we could find out about someone else’s progress towards achieving the same goal, as well as setting a timeframe for each one of our tasks. Having an accurate internal system of records management would avoid our work to be overlapped.

REFERENCE

http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-preservationbrief-investigate08.htm

http://www.standards.org.au/cat.asp?catid=44&contentid=310&News=1

http://www.buildingareameasurement.com/faq.htm#q30

http://www.caldeson.com/RIMOS/barry2.html

WK 3 - DISCIPLINE

A discipline refers to a system of rules of conduct or method of practice. In the architectural field, a disciplinary design team can develop designs that satisfy the needs and demands of all concerned. It was very difficult In the past when data were not exchangeable between different systems, but as buildings became more complex like the emergence of high rise and underground structures there became a need for establishing design teams so as to relief the burden of having just one person assigned to a project. Good teamwork in collaborative design produces good quality work as well as a having to generally reduce the cost. I seems therefore a good idea for stake holders to design the concept together from the start so that they can acknowledge their specialized knowledge into a project to prevent the design from starting on the wrong foot. A basic team consists of an architect, a structural advisor, an installation advisor and a cost advisor, all of which are experienced in practice.

The fabrication of our project requires a similar collaborative system, dividing roles amongst ourselves in order to achieve the best possible outcome. We had sessions discussing our areas of expertise and we were then able to assign one another with specific tasks. These sessions were held not only in group meeting but also by other communicative mediums that we have chosen, such as MSN and email, and as far as I know we are going to set up a forum later on. Even though sometimes we are not exactly sure of what to do but we can support and back up each other’s weaknesses with our own knowledge via these communicative mediums. As everyone’s not familiar with the new software (UT3) we might organize sometime to work it out together later. I took on the role to model the building in 3DMax not that I am good at it but its probably the only software I can use for now, and it would by all means reduce time and effort in going through tutorials of other software. We have divided the task into eleven streams, with everyone having a similar workload. The diagram below shows how we have divided the tasks.

REFERENCE

http://www.wordnet-online.com/discipline.shtml

d. Social Networks

DEINITION

A social network is a web-based service for communities of people who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Within this service there are tools to interact such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging and discussion groups etc. It has assisted to revolutionize the way we communicate and share information with one another in today’s society through log-ons by millions of people on a regular basis as part of their everyday life. Popular social networks recently are My Space, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, Xanga, Mixi and Cyword.

There are two broad categories of social networking services such as internal social networking (ISN – closed or private community) and external social networking (ESN – open/public, “invite only”), both of these can raise the feeling of community among people. Users can upload a picture of themselves and can often be "friends" with other users. In most of these services users have to confirm that they are friends before they are linked, having to be approved by a friend, or otherwise there are networking properties such as “favourites” that does not require approval from another. There are often privacy control features that enables users to pick who they want to view or who they want to be viewed or contacted.

REVOLUTION OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networks has been studied for decades by sociologists as they tend to create ties between people in families, organizations and even towns or countries. The beginning of early internet enabled people to communicate and network with applications such as Usenet and bulletin board systems. With rapid technology during the mid 90s people could connect with one another in a more visually appealing and public way. First there was Classmates.com which allowed an online connection between classmates, closely followed by SixDegrees.com which offered a way to meet friends of friends. Soon after there was a dot.com bust in 2000 that eventually brought Friendster to be the leader in social networking sites. These applications all share a common feature of having“friends”of each user maintained, and having people to invite more friends via their connections. Even though there were eventually uncountable users on Friendster, the service was plaqued by various technical issues. Friendster then started to lose its popularity and people started moving over to new services such as MySpace and Xanga to which enabled not only a garnish look profile but also facilitated a customizable page of embedded music and video sharing. Facebook emerged as a rival to MySpace in the year of 2004 providing a close network for basically just college students, and later opening the site to all comers, letting people to create mini-applications or widgets for the site.

IMPACT

On a social level it has impacted the world with identity i.e. creating self profiles; e-learning; privacy and social capital with its free access. You can keep up with friends and families, share photos and videos, control privacy online, reconnect with old classmates, discuss interests and hobbies, plan parties and other events.

In the business application, social networks connect people at low costs which is then beneficial for businesses to expand their contact base, advertise via banners and text ads, as well as being a general relationship management tool for selling products and services. Global businesses can thus use social networks to communicate with contacts anywhere around the world.

With these imagined communities participants can certainly express who they are and locate themselves in a cultural level online. They are typically free to join, and once you become a member of the network you can have a homepage with funny/cool photo albums, some basic personal information and places where you can write about yourself. Message contents does not have to be real yet they serve to maintain contact or to have cheerful comment conversations that can be posted and read by other friends creating an online identity. What differentiates these social networks from other computer-mediated communication is this function to allow members to articulate and publicly display their relations to one another to traverse the network.

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COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

In terms of collaborative learning people become actively involved in the process and provide general awareness to shared knowledge of who is participating in the project or the community. This could mean knowledge of whether a certain person is available for interaction or not, and what kind of work he or she is doing at present. It also allows for informal and unplanned conversations between multiple number of people who share experiences or ideas in focused collaboration working simultaneously together on the same task. People who live far away from each other are able to do work together, or update members who were absent from group gatherings. Peers are oriented towards socialization and maintenance of personal relationships.

As a user of many of these services I find that.what Facebook and MySpace offer are ease of setup and use. Facebook's UI, it's fairly simple and straightforward to use and I think that's why I've managed to find so many more people on there than I ever did on Myspace. But sometimes these social networks can be saturating where it becomes reluctant to put time and energy to join yet one more site, create another profile and make even more “friends.” While these networks serve to connect people there’s only so many networks that each of us can join, and only so many that will become profitable businesses.

REFERENCES

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

2.http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html

danah boyd, social researcher

3.http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article000993849.cfm?x=b11,0,w.

Mike Thelwall, lecturer from University of Wolverhampton

4.http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/08/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_so_1.html

Mark Glaser: Journalist, Critic, Facilitator, New Media Expert

Week1 Task

Vail Grant Residence Silverlake, California

“Unbuilt” to my understanding relates to buildings that were not put into shape.
QUOTE “Any building will become old and dirty and be forgotten, but the unbuilt buildings will remain fresh in people's heart forever.” (Oia Coara)
The building I have chosen is an exciting yet economically built residential building by Pugh and Scarpa.

I have chosen this design because of its striking sculptural appearance that blends directly into its topography, fusing the natural with the artificial. The building is set back in height with spectacular views and its volume is created by a simple extrusion of a square that shapes into elongated boxes along its contours. The neatly sequenced planes allow the inhabitant to view from within as well as to become the object of his own observation. There's a sense of spiral movement going on beginning at a lower point closest to the street, which then travels up the hill and turns back towards the street and the lake, drawing some kind of beauty into the design. The entrance is set at 18-foot height and divides the building into its private and public domains. The private side tour begins with a space that flows from the children's room and the master room and ends with a full-height window. The transition to the public domain becomes obvious with a stand-alone guest bathroom in between.
The shape of the building itself I suppose would look fantastic in digital form and would definitely be fun to build.
Structurally it is constructed with recycled concrete insulated panels chosen for its insulating properties as well as for its sustainable factors that powers itself naturally. Built-in are solar panels, passive solar design strategies, geothermal cooling altogether improving thermal comfort, daylighting and natural
ventilation. Natural convection currents are created by its large windows allowing the sun to heat the interior concrete slabs.

REFERENCES
1.http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/archives/0504unbuilt/vailGrantRes/overview.asp
2.http://www.pugh-scarpa.com/projects/vail.grant.residence
3.http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek04/tw0102/0102pw_vail.htm