br Conclusion In Stuart Brand s Shearing layers

Conclusion In Stuart Brand׳s ‘Shearing layers of change’ diagram, what he terms stuff and identifies as furniture and personal equipment is that part of the building with the highest rate of change and obsolescence – it sigma receptor is the equipment which supports activities and events, the things one touches and interacts with on a daily basis. This usually mobile equipment is ideally suited to interact with and shape the rituals of daily life, and the primary contribution of the Maison de Verre to the future of responsive building is in demonstrating that equipment can become an integral part of a poetic work of architecture. This re-imagining of architecture as a robotic machine is also a rethinking of the building as responsive to the patterns and flows of everyday living. And, by making a conceptual and practical distinction between the responsive elements of the building at the scale of equipment and the ‘stable’ elements of the building at the scale of structure, the Maison de Verre acknowledges the ‘shearing layers’ which in Brand׳s view threaten to tear the building apart if not adequately considered in design. Speaking of this building Mohsen Mostafavi writes “… it is hard to make a distinction between the rooms and their furniture; there is continuity and fluidity between its spaces and the design of elements such as staircases, bookshelves, and bathroom fittings, which are more akin to pieces of equipment than furniture.” If we take this example as a model for future responsive buildings, the work of the architect may in the future be as much about the design of equipment and devices as it is about the sculpting of space and the crafting of materials. The fact that rates of change and obsolescence are ignored at one׳s peril is one of the primary lessons for future responsive buildings of the Institut du Monde Arabe. Seen from the building׳s courtyard, the IMA׳s wall of mechanical diaphragms is a monumental display of technology that, in light of their widespread failure, can easily be seen as a hugely expensive gesture doomed to failure by its own hubris. Speaking of the example of the Institut du Monde Arabe Frederic Kaplan has written that “The timeframe of electronic devices and that of architecture is not the same. Although the dream of a house that integrates ‘all modern technology’ continues to fascinate, it is perpetually surpassed in reality by the rapid and flexible innovation cycles of devices. In the long term, it seems ever more relevant to live with machines than to live in a machine.” There is perhaps another side to these devices: the individual panels are at a scale that relates to that of the human body, with the central oculus roughly at eye level – it appears that the diaphragms, when functioning, would have acted as a constantly changing screen or filter between inside and outside, one which related directly to the scale of the human body in its interaction with the building. Their performance as building equipment at the scale of the human body is thus more nuanced and powerful, as well as more present in the everyday experience of the building, than the exterior view usually associated with the building.
New urbanization is a new state policy and guideline of urbanization, which represents a new stage in the development of cities and towns in China. The average urbanization level across the country has exceeded the symbolic 50% in 2011.Since then, new urbanization, as a national urban development strategy, has become a concern and has been comprehensively promoted (). Once implemented, the strategy is certain to reveal a new development vision of urbanization in China and demand new requirements in urban–rural development and planning. New urbanization: a consequence of the evolution and development of the Chinese urbanization policy The Chinese government gradually placed importance on urban construction after the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, thereby encouraging the development of small towns to promote the local urbanization of villages. The government began to pay attention to building and developing economic zones (with central cities as the core) in the 1980s, establishing the mode of “developing counties driven by cities.” The Chinese government gradually abandoned the urbanization policy of “controlling the scale of large cities and developing small and medium cities,” respected the benefits of scale and the aggregation effect of urbanization, and advocated the development of central cities in both size and strength. As a result, metropolitan areas and town clusters gradually became the core barriers of rapid urbanization. In 2008, the new Urban and Rural Planning Law was promulgated, and urbanization and new rural construction were equally emphasized as two complementary aspects of the urbanization process. In 2012, the central government expressly proposed the strategy of “new urbanization” and placed it in a position as important as agricultural modernization, new industrialization, and informatization, thereby boosting the new urbanization process, as required by the “synchronized development of agricultural modernization, new industrialization, informatization, and new urbanization.”