Miss Josephine Vaughan

© 2017 WIT Press.Maintaining or creating a visual relationship between the form of a building and its surrounding natural landscape is often cited as a crucial factor in producing designs that support psychological comfort or environmental sustainability. While multiple methods for the analysis of nature and architecture have developed over time, only a handful of past studies have ever attempted to quantitatively compare the geometric properties of nature to those of architecture. Fractal analysis provides one of the very few methods available to analyse and compare the geometry of diverse objects. The fractal dimension (D) of an object is a numerical value which reflects the volume and distribution of detail in an item. Of the many subjects analysed using this method, the forms of nature (such as coastlines, rivers and plant elements) have been successfully measured, as have built forms (such as houses, public buildings and cityscapes). However, despite the method's application to each subject area, few examples exist where fractal dimension data derived from nature are compared with equivalent architectural data. A primary reason cited for this situation is the disparity of methodological variables, in particular, representational approaches to the images used for comparison are presently disparate and uncategorised. This paper responds to the existing lack of a comparable basis by analysing and categorising methodological examples from applications of fractal analysis to both natural and architectural cases. Specifically, the type of image delineation and the level of information contained in it are compared and ranked. Through this process, the paper provides a critical overview of the past application of fractal analysis to images, and thereby provides a starting framework for how the built and natural environments might be rigorously compared in the future.

© 2016 Peter Davis, Thayaparan Gajendran, Josephine Vaughan and Toinpre Owi.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.

© 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.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.