Women in Islamic Societies
Notre Dame OpenCourseware (OCW) offers free educational resources for the course "Women in Islamic Societies" in the Program in Arabic and Middle East Studies. This course serves as a broad survey of women's and gender issues within the contexts of multiple societies in the Islamic world. The first half of the semester will concentrate on the historical position of women in Islamic societies, defined by the normative values of Islam and by cultural traditions and norms that were sometimes at odd
Dante in Translation
The course is an introduction to Dante and his cultural milieu through a critical reading of The Divine Comedy and selected minor works (Vita nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Epistle to Cangrande). An analysis of Dante's autobiography, the Vita nuova, establishes the poetic and political circumstances of the Comedy's composition. Readings of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso seek to situate Dante's work within the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages, with special attent
Discover Physics
Discover Physics is a conceptual physics textbook intended for students in a nonmathematical one-semester general-education course.
Math Objects
The paper discusses mathematical form generation as an academic methodology to develop new approaches to architectural design. The academic design studio ?Math objects? investigates the relationship between complex 3d-surfaces and mathematics in order to expand the formal repertoire of architecture. It claims that the process of form generation can be seen as an autonomous entity, which is independent from an overall strategy or any a priori meaning. Architecture has always originated from a co
Semi-manual design support for increasing railwaystation catchment & sustainable traffic routing
The shape ('configuration'), location and direction of the pattern of potential trips by foot or bicycle can help decision makers and designers:- the shape of such a pattern informs about the potential size of a traffic calming area(such as 30Km-zoning),- the location of such a pattern refers to the user-groups and specific destinations that a urban network should bring in safe reach for dictated groups,- the direction of such a pattern, together with shape and location, points to the best routi
Episode as a Unit of Analysis of Movement
Everybody who has read his Gordon Cullen or his Edmund H. Bacon knows that movement has long been recognized as a factor in environmental planning in many ways. For example, in the traditional Japanese promenade garden the importance of movement has always been appreciated. The promenader gains an intense experience of the succession, variation and rhythm of the surrounding scene. The spaces and paths lead him from one stage to another. The spatial structure of the Japanese promenade garden, as
Hacia una RV de Representaci?n Hiperrealista (Towards a VR of Hyper-realistic Representation)
The objetive of the proyect is the hiperrealistic simulation of scenarios on standard PCs. We use the same tools that are used by the entertainment industry (3d graphics engines) to get the highest level of realism possible in 3d worlds. By now, we are exploring only the audio and visual areas. The potencial of this 3d enviorments construction tools let us to create exploration enviorments for academic and professional implementation like commerce, tourism, education, communication, etc.
Dise?o Digital. Estudio Exploratorio de caso (Digital Design. Exploratory study of a case)
After the passage of the mechanical era to the digital era, the design must respond with increasing complexity of the technique, together with the plurality of expectations. Design education is sustained in conceptual instrumentation; it implies to recognize problematics that surpass the possibilities of an isolated or self-sufficient discipline; transdiscipline becomes essential for the understanding of the subjects.The porpuse is to generate new instruments for perception of space, combined wi
Simulating and assessing prospective scenariosA comparative approach in urban planning
The first part of the paper is centred on the phenomena of urban growth, in order to set the rules for a sustainable scenario of urban development. Then we enter the core of the paper that is the comparison of models. For each of the three compared models, we describe its main theoretical characteristics, the chosen parameters, and the obtained results. In section 6, heterogeneity of the produced results is discussed, and we highlight the points of interest and the lacks of the three models. Her
The Semantics of Graphical Input
This paper describes the semantics of action, an approach to describing input devices which allow the full utilization of all useful device characteristics and provides a high degree of hardware device independence. Part one discusses the semantics of graphical input device. The second shows how to create hierarchies of devices which provide a large measure of hardware independence. The third part applies these concepts to some typical problems, to demonstrate their completeness
Towards Comprehensive Space: A context for the programming/design of cybrids
Cybrids have been presented as mixed realities: spatial, architectural compositions comprised of physical and cyberspaces (Anders 1997). In order to create a rigorous approach to the design of architectural cybrids, this paper offers a model for programming their spaces. Other than accepting cyberspaces as part of architecture?s domain, this approach is not radical. Indeed, many parts of program development resemble those of conventional practice. However, the proposition that cyberspaces should
Determining the impact of cad drafting tools on the building delivery process
Computer aided design is intended to change the way design and construction are carried out. at a minimum, this implies savings realized in terms of time spent and improvement of the quality of designs produced. to test this idea, we hypothesized that computer aided drafting and design operations may be instrumental in reducing the number of change orders issued and help control cost overruns by improving the accuracy of constr
Developing a new endoscopy laboratory with digital tools.
Tampere School of Architecture had to leave its old down-town building and move to the TU Tampere university campus in Hervanta, 10 km away. In this process, the 20 years old endoscopic system "The Urban Simulator" was one of the victims. Old mechanical parts and especially the original home-built microcomputer system were too old to compete with modern computer-aided methods.
A new endoscopical system is now under construction, using all of the 20-year experience, new technical components and c
Learning Virtually: A Paradigm Shift in Design Education
We still think of architectural design education in terms of a "classroom" paradigm, that is, of an instructor teaching design skills to a class of students in a face-to-face format. However, emerging communication and collaboration technologies have created tremendous new opportunities to distribute students and faculty, while maintaining a close personal contact. This paper discusses and characterizes several aspects of the evolving paradigm of teaching design made possible by the ability to
Mixing Domains: Architecture plus Software Engineering
Software engineering is a multidisciplinary area of knowledge combining competence in computation with at least one other area of expertise, typically in the domain of the applications being created. A course offering for students of engineering, architecture and software engineering at Carnegie Mellon illustrates the challenges and opportunities of cross-domain instruction. These include ontology, problem taxonomies, and instruction strategies.
Computer animation for architectural visualisation
This thesis critically reviews the state of architectural animation, and relates this specific field to the more general motion-based representations, particularly traditional film-making techniques. It identifies key elements from traditional filmmaking and shows how these elements can improve computer-based architectural animation. The process of identification of the key elements from traditional film-making starts with a critical survey of the use of motion-based representation in local arch
Duck Development
This video segment from NOVA: "The Shape of Things" charts the development of a duck embryo, from its earliest stages just after fertilization, through cell replication and differentiation, to the final stage, emergence from the protection of the eggshell. Closed captioning included. Run time 02:43.
Theories and concepts
This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or dowloaded as a zip file
As taught in Autumn Semester 2009/10
The War on Iraq and the US and British invasion of the country in 2003 has led to huge tensions in geopolitics. At the same time, the supposed ‘threat’ of international terrorism and continuing financial turmoil in the world economy have both brought to the fore the global politics of co-operation and confrontation. Whilst it might be possible to agree on the significance of
The sounds of German
This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.
As taught in Autumn Semester 2009.
This module investigates the sounds of German and how they can be described accurately (“phonetics and phonology”). Students will learn to transcribe German using the notation of the International Phonetic Association, and we will look in particular at aspects of German pronunciation that are hard to master because they are different to English or similar to French. We will a
Quantum field theory
This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.
Last taught in Spring Semester 2006
A compilation of fourteen lectures in PDF format on the subject of quantum field theory. This module is suitable for 3rd or 4th year undergraduate and postgraduate level learners.
Suitable for year 3/4 undergraduate and postgraduate study.
Dr Kirill Krasnov, School of Mathematical Sciences
Dr Kirill Krasnov is a Lecturer at the University of Nottingham. After studying physic
