Japan Architectural Review最新文献

As urban public spaces evolve to accommodate human activities, there arises a pressing need for effective methodologies to understand public life within these environments. This pilot study assesses the accuracy of the Real-Time Kinematic Global Navigation Satellite System (RTK GNSS) in the Toyohashi South Side Station Square, aiming to validate its utility as a privacy-sensitive tool for studying public life, particularly in tracking movable chairs in urban settings. The findings indicate that RTK GNSS exhibits sufficient accuracy in recording the positions of movable chairs, thus facilitating public life studies. Given the variability of GNSS accuracy across environments, we propose the Silhouette Index as a metric for evaluating GNSS suitability across different scales. A Silhouette Index exceeding 0.9 signifies highly accurate data, suitable for comprehending the spatial arrangement and utilization of movable chairs in compact urban spaces. Conversely, an index below 0.8 indicates insufficient accuracy for this purpose. Nevertheless, RTK GNSS, akin to GPS, offers diverse applications in urban research. It can aid in analyzing pedestrian flows in city centers or expansive parks, as well as elucidating spatial behavioral patterns among distinct demographic groups in large-scale urban public spaces.

In his book Gaibu kūkan no kōsei (Exterior Space in Architecture), Yoshinobu Ashihara criticized modern architecture and urban planning and searched for ways to realize plazas suitable for humans. This study analyzes how Ashihara designed the Komazawa Park Gymnasium, a wrestling venue for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the Central Plaza. It focuses on the distinctive hyperbolic paraboloid shells of Komazawa Park Gymnasium. Concurrently, this study evaluates Ashihara's uniqueness as an architect while comparing the Komazawa Central Plaza with Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, designed by Kenzo Tange.

Takamatsu House for the newspaper Shizuoka Shimbun was to be a corporate residence consisting of family and single apartments. The premises are a stone's throw from Totoiseki. The planning for the project took place between 1955 and 1956. The Tange Laboratory was in charge of the design. However, the project was never realized due to the inability to resolve technical issues. This study will clarify the design process for Takamatsu House at that time, and while doing so, we will consider the influence of the public housing standard design, the relationship with the 1960 plan for Tokyo.

We improved a method to support more general and rational reorganization planning, demonstrating its practicality through application to Kobe municipal housing complexes. We initially developed a cost-effective algorithm using depth-first search, enabling the consideration of a larger pool of dwelling units and houses for reorganization. We then ensured the algorithm accounts for practical constraints by grouping sale sites together and considering proximity to roads, thereby deriving more viable combinations. Furthermore, we clarified the break-even point for the reorganization projects, allowing for an assessment of project feasibility from a profitability standpoint.

This study introduces an approach for probabilistic seismic performance estimation, which focuses on the probability of intensity measures exceeding a specified value based on engineering demand parameters. Conventional methods face challenges owing to the increase in computational costs associated with the uncertainties in earthquake scenarios. To address this, we use high-fidelity (HF) and low-fidelity (LF) model data to develop a multilevel hierarchy of surrogate models, which improves the simulation-based probabilistic estimation. However, designing a reliable LF model and ensuring the accuracy of the surrogate model hierarchy remains challenging. Herein, we present a multi-fidelity Monte Carlo (MFMC) predictor combined with a conventional surrogate model to improve probabilistic seismic performance estimation, thereby leveraging LF model efficiency and HF data accuracy for unbiased results. We addressed the challenge of constructing a suitable LF model by using a surrogate model trained from limited HF data. The MFMC predictor improves the accuracy of probabilistic analysis than the surrogate models trained from limited HF data. Further, the automatic relevance determination method is introduced to select the most appropriate inputs for the surrogate model. A case study featuring a special moment-resistant frame, subject to uncertainties from both ground motion and structural properties, illustrates the efficiency of the method. A LF model is developed using the Kriging method, followed by the construction of the MFMC predictor for probabilistic analysis, thereby leveraging both limited HF and numerous LF data. Comparing the exceedance probability curves obtained from the MFMC predictor with those from direct Monte Carlo simulations and conventional Kriging showed that our proposed method offers a promising tool for probabilistic seismic performance estimation under uncertainty.

In this paper, a previously proposed method for story stiffness estimation of steel residential house is extended to estimate story stiffness of wooden residential houses considering non-structural walls based on the available design information, that is, story weights, wall type, wall length, and wall opening type. Microtremor measurement data of several newly constructed buildings are used to determine unknown model parameters of stiffness estimation function, which minimize the estimation error of eigen frequency. The proposed method can simultaneously estimate the standard stiffness of wall element common to the same specification and the effects of wall opening and wall shape. The validity of the proposed method is examined by using measured actual microtremor records and drawing information of wall types and wall lengths of 19 wooden residential houses.

Safe and efficient conservation of cultural artifacts requires preventing artifacts deterioration and energy-saving environmental control. To achieve this, predicting deterioration caused by environmental conditions is necessary. Predicting the mechanical damage caused by humidity fluctuations necessitates knowledge of the mechanical properties of cultural artifacts materials. Although the mechanical properties of several artifacts have been extensively studied, no investigations have focused on the soils underlying wall paintings. This study aims to clarify some mechanical properties of the upper- and middle-coat soils serving as the substrates for Hiten wall paintings at Horyu-ji Temple. Mock-up materials were prepared, and splitting tensile and uniaxial compressive tests were performed. Simultaneously, specimens with various equilibrium humidities were tested to clarify their humidity dependency. The tensile and compressive strengths, Young's modulus, proportional limit, and Poisson's ratio of the upper-coat soil were 0.103–0.239 MPa, 1.16–2.55 MPa, 0.115–0.209 GPa, and 1.10–2.49 MPa, and 0.152, respectively. Moreover, the humidity-induced strains for the upper- and middle-coat soils were measured, and the moisture expansion coefficients were approximately 1240 and 2337 μST/−, respectively. The results of this study provide vital data for the conservation of the wall paintings and contribute to a deeper understanding of wall soil properties.

The Incorporated Church Building Society, established in 1818, was initially unable to subsidize secular-use buildings from the general fund. However, in 1858, it established the mission building fund and began to construct hamlet chapels, school churches, mission halls, and mission rooms. In the early years, there were some examples of dual-purpose buildings without a strict distinction between sacred and secular spaces, but a type of building with a church on the upper floor and secular rooms on the lower floor emerged. However, the distinction between sacred and secular spaces was insufficient, and a stage for secular use had not yet emerged.

COVID-19 outbreaks occurred in several hospitals, and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, local authorities, and universities carried out investigations into ventilation in hospitals. The results indicated that ventilation performance was insufficient to prevent aerosol infection due to poor air conditioning, equipment maintenance, and existing ventilation design guidelines. The authors investigated guidelines for ventilation measures for general patient wards with the cooperation of The Society of Air-Conditioning and Sanitary Engineers of Japan and the Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control. Based on a survey of COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals, ventilation countermeasure plans for 3 stages (a. normal conditions, b. increased risk of outbreaks, and c. infected patients treated) were compiled.

This paper aimed to discuss the areal extent and spatial structure of neighborhood, called tol, which possibly demarcate urban tissue with respect to worship of the deity and funerary acts. Bhaktapur is known as one of the historical cities of the World Heritage Site in Kathmandu Valley. The analysis firstly focuses on the dwelling distributions that have the common votary area of the guardian deities' temples/shrines and the use of the same crossing for funerary acts. Then, the authors compare those dwelling distribution with the areal extent of tols to find out how tol boundaries were formed. This result will be a precondition to conduct further examination on historical urban formation in the coming paper.