Chris Tucker

Characteristic visual complexity: fractal dimensions in the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier

In the late 1970s Mandelbrot argued that natural systems frequently possess characteristic geometric or visual complexity over multiple scales of observation, suggesting that systems which have evolved over time may exhibit certain local visual qualities that also possess deep structural resonance. In mathematics this led to the formulation of fractal geometry and was central to the rise of the sciences of non-linearity and complexity. This concept was developed in relation to architectural design and urban planning, and architectural scholars have suggested that such approaches might be used in the analysis of historic buildings. At the heart of this approach, in both its theoretical and computational forms, is a set of rules for analysing buildings. However, the assumptions implicit in this method have never been adequately questioned. This chapter returns to the origins of the conventional “box counting” method of fractal analysis for historic buildings to reconsider the initial interpretations of the architecture of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Software Development in the City Evolutions Project

The goal of the City Evolutions Project is to establish interactive systems and games to entertain users. Because of the existing variabilities in the system and potential reuse for similar systems in this domain, the software system is designed and developed in a reuse-based way, i.e. Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE). SPLE is a reuse-based software approach with reusable software assets in order to maximise software reuse. In SPLE, it is very important to maintain the requirement traceability from software family establishment to individual product derivation. In this paper, we describe our experience of applying SPLE approach in the City Evolutions project and propose an approach to enhance the requirements traceability in SPLE.