David Beynon

A computational approach to the reconstruction of surface geometry from early temple superstructures

Recovering the control or implicit geometry underlying temple architecture requires bringing together fragments of evidence from field measurements, relating these to mathematical and geometric descriptions in canonical texts and proposing “best-fit” constructive models. While scholars in the field have traditionally used manual methods, the innovative application of niche computational techniques can help extend the study of artefact geometry. This paper demonstrates the application of a hybrid computational approach to the problem of recovering the surface geometry of early temple superstructures. The approach combines field measurements of temples, close-range architectural photogrammetry, rule-based generation and parametric modelling. The computing of surface geometry comprises a rule-based global model governing the overall form of the superstructure, several local models for individual motifs using photogrammetry and an intermediate geometry model that combines the two. To explain the technique and the different models, the paper examines an illustrative example of surface geometry reconstruction based on studies undertaken on a tenth century stone superstructure from western India. The example demonstrates that a combination of computational methods yields sophisticated models of the constructive geometry underlying temple form and that these digital artefacts can form the basis for in depth comparative analysis of temples, arising out of similar techniques, spread over geography, culture and time.

Master planned estates in point cook – the role of developers in creating the built-environment

ABSTRACT Point Cook has developed as a consolidation of many master planned estates (MPEs) by private developers within the policy framework of Wyndham City Council’s Point Cook Concept Plan (PCCP). Strategic planning and development in Point Cook has unfolded in stages and controlled by a group of individual private developers who have invested huge capital to deliver high class physical and social infrastructure along with a range of diverse housing options as MPEs. Drawing on a qualitative research, this paper begins by examining the vision statements and objectives of the private developers which underpin contemporary master-planning in the MPEs of Point Cook by reviewing some of the contents of developer’s websites thus highlighting their primary aspirations in marketing their estates. Consequently, through a survey designed for the residents of these MPEs, these visions are put to test. This survey explores the responses of residents towards their physical and social environment and the level of general satisfaction among the residents before evaluating respondents’ ideas of neighbourhood, its physical characteristics and social structure against the developers’ imagination in their vision statements and marketing testimony.

‘Slipping through the Net’: The Impact of Incremental Development on the Built Environment of the Historic Coastal Town of Queenscliff in Victoria, Australia

Abstract Studies of the impact of development on the built environment often concentrate on areas of sudden change, where new constructions of a radically different scale, purpose or style are clearly seen to dramatically alter existing places. However, change is often more gradual. The cumulative effects of a large number of individual small changes are both extensive and often unrecognized until after they have taken effect, each individual development having ‘slipped through the net’ cast by planning authorities. The problem with this incremental process is that the result is often the erosion of the spatial and experiential qualities previously valued in that locality. As an example, this paper investigates four residential planning case studies in Queenscliff, a small historic coastal town in Victoria, Australia. Through analysis of their individual and cumulative impact on the neighbourhood character of this town, the paper explores the broader implications for the built environment of other Australian coastal towns and highlights the difficulties faced by all planners and residents trying to protect the character of their towns.

Changing neighbourhood character in Melbourne: Point Cook a case study

Abstract In the past two decades, Melbourne has been subjected to diverse pressures due to its changing scale and function within the global system of cities. Among many other features of the new phase in Melbourne’s urban transformation are its new suburbs which have proliferated in large numbers at the city’s urban fringe. Characteristic of these suburbs is a new urban character which has evolved as a by-product of a pre-defined and controlled mechanism in planning, design and implementation of housing developments. The objective of this paper is to investigate the process that determines the evolution of this new character; examining the role of local planning authorities and developers in shaping the built environment. Firstly, the paper discusses the definition of neighbourhood character and its interpretation among academics, policy makers, planners, urban designers, developers and real estate agents. Then in a three-step process the nature, quality and style of neighbourhood character in Point Cook are investigated through analysis of Council policies and through review of developer statements on character building and place-making. Lastly to understand how the idea of character is constructed and enacted by local residents of Point Cook, a survey was administered for the residents.

“Tropical” Architecture in the Highlands of Southeast Asia: Tropicality, Modernity and Identity

Abstract The “tropical” condition has long been established as a Western trope that defines the “otherness” of climates perceived as hot, humid and uncomfortable compared to the “temperate” West. Both colonial adaptations and “Tropical Modernist” architectural responses to Southeast Asian locations were primarily framed in terms of their amelioration of this apparently hostile environment. That the more recent conflations of tropicality with postcolonial Asian identity and environmental sustainability remain within the same construct leads to questions not only of what architectural alternatives there might be, but also what alternative tropicalities there might be. This paper explores the possibilities suggested by contemporary buildings in Southeast Asia’s tropical highlands. Produced in the relative absence of “tropical” imperatives and the presence of long-standing traditions of autonomy and resistance to lowland state formations, this architecture offers a less homogenous reading of tropicality.

Edge of centre: Australian cities and the public architecture of recent immigrant communities

Cities have been substantially affected and many transformed by increasing cultural diversity resulting from waves of migration. The central role and dynamism of cultural diversity evident in retail and commercial streetscapes has dominated the debates on global and contemporary urban culture (Sandercock 2003). Architecture has been implicit as the background to these debates, but restaurants, residential, religious, institutional and community buildings, ethnic clubs and reception centres, constructed and adapted by migrant communities, provide evidence of the material change of the architecture of localities and neighbourhoods.Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration explores the interface between migration and architecture. Cities have been substantially affected by transnational migration but the physical manifestations of migration in architecture and its effect on streetscape, neighbourhood and city – have so far been under-studied. This contributed volume examines how migrants interact with, adapt and construct new architecture. Looking at the physical, urban and cultural impact of these changes on a variety of sites, the authors explore architecture as an identity category and investigate what buildings and places associated with migration tell us about central questions of belonging, culture, community and home in regions such as North America, Australia and the UK. This book makes an important contribution to debates on place identity and the transformation of places as a result of mobility and globalised economies in the twenty-first century.

Out of Place (Gwalia): Occasional Essays on Australian Regional Communities and Built Environments in Transition

a corbelled vault, for example – the cultural knowledge (theology, architectural theories, etc.) that gives theory and meaning to such techniques is never transferable as such. It can only be “translated”, they argue, with cautious reference to the postcolonial theory and criticism of Homi Bhabha, and translation is (always) also creative. Elsewhere, these authors have entertained less cautious and more overtly passionate and speculative propositions about the poetics of cross-cultural architectural invention, and the “calculus of ornament” by which the beguiling geometries and formalisms of these far-flung temples could also have been produced. Alas, the latter is only invoked indirectly in an endnote reference to Datta’s primary research in design computation and the mathematics of architecture, which is evidently deemed to be of only marginal relevance or interest to the particular expert readership at which the present tome is aimed. Whilst the rigour and focus with which this architectural contribution to the arthistorical field of Indian temple studies has been undertaken and delivered is to be commended, a regret therefore niggles that the authors’ own disciplinary propensities to speculate creatively – as architects – on the poetics of these intriguingly enigmatic structures were not given greater leash.