XII, 2011/2

Editorial

This year, there have been three issues of AR: the additional one will be a thematic issue dealing with 'stone'. But the present issue also offers a number of interesting reflections.

Professor Vladimir Brezar deals with the interesting theme of selecting the length of construction elements. In the article Pragmatic construction, or the 4-metre syndrome he discusses the history of architecture, which is a history of continuing efforts to bridge ever-increasing spans and, accordingly, ever-increasing spaces. More than two thousand years of such development can be found in any history of architecture treating monumental buildings made from solid and durable materials. The 4-metre syndrome is a very special phenomenon within this context.
It is worth reading.

A young colleague, Srđan Nađ, returned from the U.S. with a number of interesting items of information. He has collected his reflections in the paper Mies van der Rohe's influence on multi-dwelling architecture in Chicago, pondering on the works of the great architect. He claims that a quick sight-seeing tour of the city quickly reveals that many Chicago architects adopted the concept of the façade, or merely the visual appearance of a structure, following the model of Mies's architecture. Some even emulated the whole design of Mies's residential structure.

An issue which some of us are increasingly becoming aware of, and which has been dealt with on several occasions, is old age. Slovenia is getting old; this is a fact. Has architecture been following this development? Boštjan Kerbler presents a number of estimates and suggestions in his article Smart homes for independence and quality of life for the elderly. He claims that due to the rising costs of health and social services, the ageing population is becoming an increasing challenge for all developed societies. Therefore, achieving financial sustainability increasingly requires that these services be rationalised. One of the responses of society to these problems is the idea that services should be 'transferred' to the residences of older people, which also means changing in architecture in response to this development.

Brankica Stojnić, a PhD student, ponders the re-evaluation of boundaries between the public and the private. The article Redefining the boundary: multiple realms of the private and public in modern architecture raises the problems of some key elements blurring the distinctions between these two categories. She says that an insightful understanding of these problems is essential for addressing the problems of changing physical boundaries.

Miha Praznik and Martina Zbašnik-Senegačnik are concerned with the regulation of energy consumption in houses. The article Analysis of qualitative parameters for energy-efficient houses analyses many buildings having varying degrees of efficiency depending on their size, number of occupants, location in space, shape factor and materials.

It seems that highly energy-efficient family homes emerged in Slovenia around 2005, and were becoming more numerous in 2008. Since energy efficiencies vary, thoughtful consideration when making a choice is increasingly important.

Mateja Dovjak, a colleague from the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geodesy, and a practice expert, Dr Roman Kunič, try to shed light on an issue already discussed in AR some years ago: greening. The paper Green building elements and the urban heat-island effect broadens and updates the issue. It reports on green roofs, exterior walls and building envelopes. The authors claim that green building elements have become increasingly popular in the last few years. They are passive technologies employed to solve modern city problems and thereby contribute to the sustained development of the urban environment. The authors investigate the contribution of green building elements to solving the heat-island effect issue and huge energy consumption in buildings. Above all, this is a great architectural challenge.

This is not the last of the papers by PhD students, which dominate this issue. A young colleague, Sabina Jordan, along with her mentor Prof Martina Zbašnik-Senegačnik, presents analyses and the influence of glazing on two different yet interacting levels - the building as a whole and glazing as a building element. The authors focus on glazing as such, which in today's architecture too often constitutes a problem. The paper Analyses and influences of glazed building envelopes contains quite a lot of critical reflection. At the building level, analyses were performed on a sample of high-rise commercial buildings in Slovenia. These reflections are especially relevant when decisions about this type of building are being made.

One of the better articles is Identifying dispersed development in preparing municipal and communal spatial plans which deals with a policy about which there is much discussion but with which we are far too unfamiliar. Therefore a response from the practical field is much more important. Mojca Furman Oman writes about the absence of methods for determining dispersed housing, which thus leads to a lack of standardisation and confusing municipal and communal spatial plans, which take completely different approaches to settlements in rural areas.

The model is one of the oldest types of representation in architecture. In the course of history, it has not changed much, but the last few years have seen a turning point in its evolution: it appears as a physical model and as a virtual space that we may discover as circumstances require, verifying details which once remained concealed until the final realisation. In their article Models in the digital design process, Luka Jančič and Prof Fedja Košir discuss the use of models in the design process and highlight the changes introduced to this field by new digital modes of design and implementation.

Maša Pahor, a PhD student and researcher from the economic sector, deals with renovation. She claims that in Slovenia there is a considerable divergence between wishes and goals respectively and the actual situation regarding the renovation of multi-dwelling structures. The implementation of comprehensive renovations - due to the great share of private property share and financial incapacity of owners – is extremely difficult, a judgement with which we can fully agree.

The third issue will then be devoted to stone; in the first issue of 2012, we will also publish conference proceedings as well as research reports from 2011; these are quite numerous and concern the response to our scholarly work, which is a necessity for this area of research.