Dr Josephine Vaughan

Purpose: Urban flooding in developing countries of the Global South is growing due to extreme rainfall and sea-level rise induced by climate change, as well as the proliferation of impervious, built-up areas resulting from unplanned urbanisation and development. Continuous loss of traditional knowledge related to local water management practices, and the de-valuing of such knowledge that goes hand-in-hand with globalised aspirations, is inhibiting flood resilience efforts. This paper aims to address the need to include traditional water knowledge (TWK) in urban living and development processes in the Global South. Design/methodology/approach: This paper commences with a review of existing frameworks that focus on natural resource management, critically assessing two existing frameworks of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The assessment of the existing approaches contributes to this paper¿s development of a novel framework to promote TWK with regard to resilience and risk reduction, specifically for developing flood adaptive strategies, which is the second stage of this paper. Finally, the paper explains how the framework can contribute to the field of urban design and planning using examples from the literature to demonstrate challenges and opportunities related to the adaptation of such a framework. Findings: The framework developed in this paper reveals three proposed vertices of TWK, named as place-based landscape knowledge, water use and management and water values. This framework has the potential to produce context-specific knowledge that can contribute to flood-resilient built-environment through urban design and practices. Research limitations/implications: The framework developed in this paper reveals three proposed vertices of TWK, named place-based landscape knowledge, water use and management and water values. This framework has the potential to produce context-specific knowledge that can contribute to flood-resilient built-environment through urban design and practices. Originality/value: Within the field of TEK research, very few researchers have explored the field of developing flood resilience in an urban context. The proposed TWK framework presented in this paper will help to fill that gap.

Purpose: This study aims to address the research gap about value in the holistic discourse of creative placemaking. It identifies and synthesises the often discounted social and environmental values of creative placemaking along with typically emphasised economic values. Design/methodology/approach: This paper builds upon two research phases; first, a review and extraction of creative placemaking value indicators from relevant current urban, cultural and planning literature; and second, the identification of relevant, practice-based, value indicators through interviews with 23 placemaking experts including practitioners, urban planners, developers and place managers from the two largest cities of NSW, Australia; Sydney and Newcastle. Findings: This study identifies three broad thematics for valuing creative placemaking along with several sub-categories of qualitative and quantitative indicators. These indicators reveal the holistic value of creative placemaking for its key stakeholders, including expert placemakers, designers, building developers, government and community groups. A key conclusion of the research is the need for tools that grasp the interconnected, and at times conflicting, nature of placemaking¿s social, economic and environmental outcomes. Originality/value: While a variety of value indicators exist to understand the need for ongoing resourcing of creative placemaking, stakeholders identified the limitations of current approaches to determine, represent and appraise the value of creative placemaking. The indicators of value proposed in this research consolidate and extend current discourse about the value of creative placemaking specifically. The indicators themselves have profound practical implications for how creative placemaking is conceived, executed and evaluated. Theoretically, the study builds on the deep relationships between values and practice in creative placemaking, as well as critiquing narrow forms of evaluation that entrench economic benefits over other outcomes.

Innovation is key for productivity improvement and advancements in different sectors of the economy, including the construction sector. The criticism of the slow pace of innovation in construction industry may be unwarranted, considering the structure of the industry and nature of the construction business. The loosely coupled nature of firms, mostly Small and Medium Enterprises (SME¿s), delivering ¿projects¿ through partial engagement, together with the distinction between the project innovation and firm innovation makes it difficult to extract innovations in a meaningful way. The problem also lies in conceptualising, defining, articulating and assessing innovation in construction. The literature is replete with research into construction innovation, however, there is limited research into understanding how innovation is perceived and narrated in practice. The paper aims to explore how innovation is assessed and narrated in construction, specifically analysing theory and practice perspectives. A theoretical model was constructed from a structured literature review illustrating existing discourse and narratives of construction innovation assessment. A qualitative analysis of ¿Professional Excellence in Building¿ submission documents to the Australian Institute of Building was performed to identify the practice perspective of innovation. The findings suggest that internal organizational and process innovation account for the majority of improvements identified. Importantly a taxonomy of narrative is developed that articulates how the construction industry in Australia views industry innovation.

Historians and critics argue that a key characteristic of late twentieth century Australian regionalist architecture is the close visual connection it creates between the interior and the landscape. While various design properties are allegedly responsible for this connection, one of the most tangible of these is associated with the use of transparent and layered elements in a building's façade. Indeed, as exemplified in the work of Glenn Murcutt, the importance of façade transparency is a recurring theme in Australian architecture. But is it really that significant? In this paper, computational fractal analysis is used to measure the difference between the visual complexity of opaque and transparent depictions of façades. By comparing these two façade conditions, first in sets of elevations derived from 10 of Murcutt's houses and then in a detailed review of one of Murcutt's most iconic works, the Marie-Short House, this paper calculates the visual impact of transparency on the characteristic complexity of Murcutt's architecture.

Architects John Hejduk and Peter Eisenman were members of the "New York Five" and of the famous late modernist group, the "Whites." Early in their careers, both Hejduk and Eisenman proposed that form or shape (the aesthetics of architecture) was more important than program (the function of architecture) and they designed experimental houses to demonstrate this. The present article uses the computational fractal method to analyze 78 design drawings to develop a mathematical description of the visual complexity of five early domestic designs by each architect. These data will provide an important basis for empirical comparisons of buildings using characteristic visual dimensions. Through this process it is possible to test a variety of hypotheses about the visual and formal qualities of both architects' works. Among the article's conclusions are that the mathematical data typically supports both architect's claims about the formal properties of their designs while challenging several assumptions about scale and Deconstructivist architecture. © 2013 Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.