Archaeology, as the discipline that searches to explain the development of society by means of material remains, has been avoiding the big issues involved with its research agenda. The topic of social evolution is concealed by anxiety about previous paradigmatic malpractice and the primary archaeological division of the world in culture areas still suffers from the archaic methods by which it was established. Archaeological inference of developing societies is weighed down by its choice of particularism within agency approaches and overtly reductionist due to the prevalence of statistical, classificatory and biological approaches. This book addresses these issues through a perspective on the spatial analysis of the built environment. As one of the principal properties of our dataset, as well as being the first materialisation of sociality, such spatialities are suggested to be a fundamental key for enabling an understanding of the developing social identity of places, regions and areas. In order to arrive at a truly social inference of spatial datasets, archaeology's usual analysis working from material remains towards socio-cultural interpretations needs to be inverted. The vantage point of this study consists of aprioristic social theory. It constructs its arguments through an epistemological foundation comprising a selection of essential ideas regarding the three constitutive axes of developing societies: time, human action and human space. As it recognises the inherent position of these axes combined in the discipline of human geography, a historical comparison of these two disciplines presents the angle from which plausible theoretical advancements can be made. The core of the book explores selected works of human geographers Allan Pred, Benno Werlen and Andreas Koch against the backdrop of theories like structuration or systems theory, phenomenology, action theory, and to a lesser extent Actor Network Theory and autopoiesis. From this follows its own theoretical proposal called the social positioning of spatialities. On this basis hypotheses for methodological opportunities are discussed, establishing a research agenda. Firmly placing its efforts in current paradigmatic debates in the discipline, this study offers archaeological theorists an incentive to leave the safety of materially bound science and adapt an alternative perspective. It is an attempt to put archaeology back in the forefront of the social theoretical debates it should contribute to.

Based on worldwide public health data, this report lays out the premise for building healthy places and illuminates the role of the real estate and development community in addressing public health issues. This is an essential resource for public officials, real estate developers, engineers, consultants, and students of urban planning.

People's desire to understand the environments in which they live is a natural one. People spend most of their time in spaces and structures designed, built, and managed by humans, and it is estimated that people in developed countries now spend 90 percent of their lives indoors. As people move from homes to workplaces, traveling in cars and on transit systems, microorganisms are continually with and around them. The human-associated microbes that are shed, along with the human behaviors that affect their transport and removal, make significant contributions to the diversity of the indoor microbiome. The characteristics of "healthy" indoor environments cannot yet be defined, nor do microbial, clinical, and building researchers yet understand how to modify features of indoor environmentsâ€"such as building ventilation systems and the chemistry of building materialsâ€"in ways that would have predictable impacts on microbial communities to promote health and prevent disease. The factors that affect the environments within buildings, the ways in which building characteristics influence the composition and function of indoor microbial communities, and the ways in which these microbial communities relate to human health and well-being are extraordinarily complex and can be explored only as a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem by engaging the fields of microbial biology and ecology, chemistry, building science, and human physiology. This report reviews what is known about the intersection of these disciplines, and how new tools may facilitate advances in understanding the ecosystem of built environments, indoor microbiomes, and effects on human health and well-being. It offers a research agenda to generate the information needed so that stakeholders with an interest in understanding the impacts of built environments will be able to make more informed decisions.

Built environments are complex, emergent, systemic, and require contextual analysis. They should be understood before reconsidering how professionals and researchers of the built environment are educated and trained to reduce the gap between knowledge, practice and real-world circumstances. There is an urgent need to rethink the role of policy makers, researchers, practitioners and laypeople in the construction, renovation and reuse of the built environment in order to deal with numerous environmental/ecological, economic/financial and social/ethical challenges of providing a habitat for current and future generations in a world of continual change. These challenges are too complex to be dealt with only by one discipline or profession. Combinations of different types of knowledge, knowing in praxis and tacit knowledge are needed. This book presents and illustrates recent innovative contributions with case studies focusing on five strategic domains and the interrelations between them. These transdisciplinary contributions apply concepts, methods and tools that facilitate convergence and concerted action between participants collaborating in policy definition and project implementation. The methods and tools include experiments in living-labs, prototypes on site and virtual simulations, as well as participatory approaches including citizen science, the development of alternative scenarios, and visioning plausible futures.

Rapid urbanization represents major threats and challenges to personal and public health. The World Health Organisation identifies the ‘urban health threat’ as three-fold: infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases; and violence and injury from, amongst other things, road traffic. Within this tripartite structure of health issues in the built environment, there are multiple individual issues affecting both the developed and the developing worlds and the global north and south. Reflecting on a broad set of interrelated concerns about health and the design of the places we inhabit, this book seeks to better understand the interconnectedness and potential solutions to the problems associated with health and the built environment. Divided into three key themes: home, city, and society, each section presents a number of research chapters that explore global processes, transformative praxis and emergent trends in architecture, urban design and healthy city research. Drawing together practicing architects, academics, scholars, public health professional and activists from around the world to provide perspectives on design for health, this book includes emerging research on: healthy homes, walkable cities, design for ageing, dementia and the built environment, health equality and urban poverty, community health services, neighbourhood support and wellbeing, urban sanitation and communicable disease, the role of transport infrastructures and government policy, and the cost implications of ‘unhealthy’ cities etc. To that end, this book examines alternative and radical ways of practicing architecture and the re-imagining of the profession of architecture through a lens of human health.

In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, this new book provides thought provoking commentary on the nature of the relationship between society, the prevailing economic system and professionalism in the built environment. It addresses the changing responsibilities of professionals and in particular their obligation to act in the wider public interest. It is both an introduction to and an examination of professionalism and professional bodies in the sector, including a view of the future of professionalism and the organisations serving it. Simon Foxell outlines the history of professionalism in the sector, comparing and contrasting the development of the three major historic professions working in the construction industry: civil engineering, architecture and surveying. He examines how their systems have developed over time, up to the current period dominated by large professional services firms, and looks at some options for the future, whilst asking difficult questions about ethics, training, education, public trust and expectation from within and outside the industry. The book concludes with a six-point plan to help, if not ensure, that the professions remain an effective and essential part of both society and the economy; a part that allows the system to operate smoothly and easily, but also fairly and to the benefit of all. Essential reading for built environment professionals and students doing the professional studies elements of their training or in the process of applying for chartership or registration. The issues and lessons are applicable across all building professions.

One of the nation’s chief architecture critics reveals how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to human experience Taking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes, buildings, and cityscapes, Sarah Williams Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being, their physical health, their communal and social lives, and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs. By 2050 America’s population is projected to increase by nearly seventy million people. This will necessitate a vast amount of new construction—almost all in urban areas—that will dramatically transform our existing landscapes, infrastructure, and urban areas. Going forward, we must do everything we can to prevent the construction of exhausting, overstimulating environments and enervating, understimulating ones. Buildings, landscapes, and cities must both contain and spark associations of natural light, greenery, and other ways of being in landscapes that humans have evolved to need and expect. Fancy exteriors and dramatic forms are never enough, and may not even be necessary; authentic textures and surfaces, and careful, well-executed construction details are just as important. Erudite, wise, lucidly written, and beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, Welcome to Your World is a vital, eye-opening guide to the spaces we inhabit, physically and mentally, and a clarion call to design for human experience.

This volume describes frontiers in social-behavioral modeling for contexts as diverse as national security, health, and on-line social gaming. Recent scientific and technological advances have created exciting opportunities for such improvements. However, the book also identifies crucial scientific, ethical, and cultural challenges to be met if social-behavioral modeling is to achieve its potential. Doing so will require new methods, data sources, and technology. The volume discusses these, including those needed to achieve and maintain high standards of ethics and privacy. The result should be a new generation of modeling that will advance science and, separately, aid decision-making on major social and security-related subjects despite the myriad uncertainties and complexities of social phenomena. Intended to be relatively comprehensive in scope, the volume balances theory-driven, data-driven, and hybrid approaches. The latter may be rapidly iterative, as when artificial-intelligence methods are coupled with theory-driven insights to build models that are sound, comprehensible and usable in new situations. With the intent of being a milestone document that sketches a research agenda for the next decade, the volume draws on the wisdom, ideas and suggestions of many noted researchers who draw in turn from anthropology, communications, complexity science, computer science, defense planning, economics, engineering, health systems, medicine, neuroscience, physics, political science, psychology, public policy and sociology. In brief, the volume discusses: Cutting-edge challenges and opportunities in modeling for social and behavioral science Special requirements for achieving high standards of privacy and ethics New approaches for developing theory while exploiting both empirical and computational data Issues of reproducibility, communication, explanation, and validation Special requirements for models intended to inform decision making about complex social systems

A landmark book for our generation, Architectural Excellence provides a unifying theory for architectural design with a decidedly non-western, culturally neutral perspective. This work addresses the controversial subject of what constitutes architectura

Clients have been identified as critical for building delivery but have been under-researched with only a few studies about them. This book seeks to address this gap. A deeper look into the nature of construction clients and their relation to building users exposes more fundamental questions related to the activity of building and the activity in the building. These fundamental questions include 'How do clients get what they want?', 'How do clients cope with the building process?', and 'How are clients being shaped by building(s)?'. This book on clients and users is structured around three main themes: Agency is concerned with the classical agency/structure dichotomy on actions, roles and responsibilities or, put differently, whether actors can act freely or are bound by structural constraints. Governance is related to the interplay between clients and the supply system: clients govern the supply system but are at the same time governed by the supply system through different processes and mechanisms. Innovation deals with construction innovation and what part clients and users play in this struggle between change and stability. The book includes theoretical and conceptual frameworks on what constitutes clients and users as well as case studies on R&D themes of relevance to practice.