Symmetry is an important visual feature for humans and its application in architecture is completely evident. This paper aims to investigate the role of symmetry in the aesthetics judgment of residential building façades and study the pattern of eye movement based on the expertise of subjects in architecture. In order to implement this in the present paper, we have created images in two categories: symmetrical and asymmetrical façade images. The experiment design allows us to investigate the preference of subjects and their reaction time to decide about presented images as well as record their eye movements. It was inferred that the aesthetic experience of a building façade is influenced by the expertise of the subjects. There is a significant difference between experts and non-experts in all conditions, and symmetrical façades are in line with the taste of non-expert subjects. Moreover, the patterns of fixational eye movements indicate that the horizontal or vertical symmetry (mirror symmetry) has a profound influence on the observer's attention, but there is a difference in the points watched and their fixation duration. Thus, although symmetry may attract the same attention during eye movements on façade images, it does not necessarily lead to the same preference between the expert and non-expert groups.

The design of supertall buildings (300m+) involves many professionals from several disciplines. The need for coordination among numerous experts, increases complexity of the entire process, which is typically conducted under the leadership of the architect, or sometimes the contractor. Consequently, the architects designing supertall buildings must be aware of architectural and structural design considerations and their interrelations. In this paper, the main architectural design considerations and structural system details of supertall buildings are studied; these include 93 completed or under construction buildings from the 1980s onwards. This study analyses the contemporary trends in main architectural and structural design considerations and corresponding interrelations. In addition, more inclusive and consistent classifications of structural system, building form, and core planning are proposed. The comparison between design considerations over the new proposed classifications is intended to aid and direct architects in the planning and development of supertall building projects as a basic guideline.

The paper presents a method to operationalise Jan Gehl’s categorisation of dweller’s activity patterns in public space using Foursquare data. The ‘Urban Activity Wheel’ method is instrumental in showing how location based social media data is beneficial to understand the distribution and variety of contemporary activity patterns. Re-organising both location-based social media data and statistical sources, unearths emerging activity patterns across scales from local to regional city making. Urban Activity Wheel shifts focus from the traditional functional analysis of urban space towards understanding activities and, thus, the human perspective of use, practices and new agencies. A specific analysis, the Shannon-Wiener Index of the complexity implemented on urban activities, gives further hints about the experiential qualities and development opportunities of urban spaces and neighbourhoods.

Green facades are one of the most promising natural-based solutions for buildings. Notwithstanding, in regions with variating weather such as the northern hemisphere, these can be counterproductive for the structures due to humidity retention. For these reasons, this work presents the development of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to estimate the hygrothermal behavior inside a concrete wall protected by a second foliage skin. The database used for model formation was obtained through measurements made in an Accelerated Weathering Laboratory (AWL) to emulate the Nordic climatic conditions for a typical year. The ANN-hygrothermal model was trained in function of the parameters: environment relative humidity, ambient temperature, microclimate's relative humidity, microclimate's temperature, and the separation distance between the vegetation and the wall. The statistical results of the model demonstrated successful adaptability and great generalization capacity for both internal temperature (R² = 99.98% for training and R² = 99.95% for testing) and internal humidity (R² = 99.16% for training and R² = 99.17% for testing). Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was implemented, showing that the most influential variable in the estimation of both hygrothermal parameters is the ambient temperature and that the separation distance has a significant impact on the humidity produced inside the wall. Finally, the presented computational approach can be implemented in non-invasive monitoring systems or as a complementary tool in studies of concrete degradation due to humidity.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are priority environmental pollutants that cause adverse health effects. PAHs belong to endocrine signaling disruptors to which children are sensitive to. Recent evidence suggests that PAH pollution alters the abundance of environmental bacteria that is associated with health outcomes. The alteration of environmental and commensal microbiota by PAH pollution has never been connected to endocrine signaling pathways. To estimate the risk of endocrine disruption in daycare children, we measured PAHs from soil and air of eleven urban daycare centres in Finland. We analyzed daycare yards' soil and children's gut and skin bacterial communities with 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding and used Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes database to categorize endocrine signaling pathways. We also assessed the PAH hazard to children's health based on the current risk assesments. We observed associations between signaling pathways in endocrine system and gaseous PAH levels in ambient air. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor and adipocytokine signaling pathway decreased with higher chrysene concentration in the air. Soil PAH contamination was associated with altered Actinobacteria, Bacteoridetes and Proteobacteria communities on children's skin and in daycare yard soil. However, adjusted genera were not the same in soil and on skin, with the exception of Mycobacterium that was associated with higher PAH concentrations both in soil and on the skin. Even though fluoranhtene levels were above the current threshold values, total PAHs were below safety threshold values and based on current risk assessments there is a minor risk for child health. Our findings indicate that PAH concentrations that are considered safe may interfere with endocrine signaling by commensal microbiota and alter both environmental and commensal bacterial communities. The imbalance in human microbiota and the decrease in signaling pathways may contribute to emerging public health problems, including inflammatory disorders, obesity and diabetes. Therefore, the optimal risk assessments of PAHs and theoretically also other contaminants shaping commensal microbiota may need to take into account the possibility of the disruption of endocrine signaling pathways.

To better understand the role of the built environment in route choices among pedestrians and bicyclists, this study explores the built environment distribution along commute routes in two neighbourhoods in Tampere, Finland. A new grid-based method is developed to enable a more sophisticated analysis of the built environment along the route. The data consist of 73 commute routes collected with the Sports Tracker® smartphone application, of which 18 are made by foot and 55 by bicycle. To find the most relevant spatial scale, the values of each built environment variable are calculated with five buffer sizes for each cell of the grid covering the research area. Five statistics describing the distribution of the built environmental variables along each shortest and actual route are then calculated and compared. The results show that besides determining whether a significant association is found, different spatial scales for the analysis produce dissimilar findings in strength and even the direction of the correlations found. The most significant associations are found mainly with the smallest buffer (15m). Of the five built environment statistics calculated, the mean value of most built environmental variables had the most consistent correlation with route choice. Also, standard deviation and the third quartile of several built environmental variables along the routes correlate with route choice. The most significant associations with route choice are found with intersection density, institutional land use, slope, and age of buildings.

New energy efficient windows have a higher risk for outdoor air vapour condensing to their exterior surface, when compared to older windows with lower thermal resistance. This external condensation can reduce visibility through the window, decrease owner satisfaction and affect the behaviour of window buyers and sellers. The purpose of this study was to analyse the impact of window U-value and other factors on the occurrence of external condensation. A combined heat and moisture transfer model was created and used for the calculations. According to the results, the duration and amount of external condensation are projected to increase in the future due to lower window U-values and climate change. Exterior surface emissivity, external shadings and building location had a big impact on the amount of yearly condensation hours, while window orientation and solar absorption coefficient had a smaller impact. There was also an interesting power-law-type correlation between yearly condensation hours and the median effective thickness of the condensation layer. The results help window manufacturers and building designers make more accurate decisions in their future work.

Finnish collaborative housing projects are in an experimental stage. These projects are trying to push the conventional practices of housing production into a new shape in order to realize their schemes in the housing market dominated by large construction companies. This paper aims to shed light on the resident groups’ resources in a context where resident-driven projects are rare. We apply the concept of bricolage to analyse three collaborative housing projects in Finland. Our analysis highlights that the residents refused to enact limitations imposed by the dominant housing market and examines how this was made possible. The cases we studied were successful for two interconnected reasons: (1) because of the capabilities of the residents; and (2) the professional allies they had. We argue that analyses framed by bricolage can help better understand the local contexts with their real and presumed constraints, and offer a possibility for international comparison of collaborative housing.

The article follows Kevin Lynch’s renowned formulation of ‘urban elements’ to examine the mobilities, experiences and materialities on ordinary routes in the city. Utilizing route narratives and participant-produced visual data, the article focuses on various identifiable micro-temporalities and mobility rhythms on repeated walking and driving routes, building on Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘rhythmanalysis’. The article examines how a framework built around rhythm and urban elements can add to the analysis of contemporary urban sites from the perspectives of situated mobile contexts, noting sequences and polyrhythmia as central temporal characteristics in the body‒environment relations.

In complex systems, flexibility and adaptability to changes are crucial to the systems' dynamic stability and evolution. Such resilience requires that the system is able to respond to disturbances by self-organizing, which implies a certain level of entropy within the system. Dynamic states (static, cyclical/periodic, complex, and chaotic) reflect this generative capacity, and correlate with the level of entropy. For planning complex cities, we need to develop methods to guide such autonomous progress in an optimal manner. A classical apparatus, cellular automaton (CA), provides such a tool. Applications of CA help us to study temporal dynamics in self-organizing urban systems. By exploring the dynamic states of the model's dynamics resulting from different border conditions it is possible to discover favorable set(s) of rules conductive to the self-organizing dynamics and enable the system's recovery at the time of crises. Level of entropy is a relevant measurement for evaluation of these dynamic states. The 2-D urban cellular automaton model studied here is based on the microeconomic principle that similar urban activities are attracted to each other, especially in certain self-organizing areas, and that the local dynamics of these enclaves affect the dynamics of the urban region by channeling flows of information, goods and people. The results of the modeling experiment indicate that the border conditions have a major impact on the model's dynamics generating various dynamic states of the system. Most importantly, it seemed that the model could simulate a favorable, complex dynamic state with medium entropy level which may refer to the continuous self-organization of the system. The model provides a tool for exploring and understanding the effects of boundary conditions in the planning process as various scenarios are tested: resulting dynamics of the system can be explored with such "planning rules" prior to decisions, helping to identify planning guidelines that will support the future evolution of these areas.

The need for accurate documentation for the preservation of cultural heritage has prompted the use of terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) in this discipline. Its study in the heritage context has been focused on opaque surfaces with lambertian reflectance, while translucent and anisotropic materials remain a major challenge. The use of TLS for the mentioned materials is subject to significant distortion in measure due to the optical properties under the laser stimulation. The distortion makes the measurement by range not suitable for digital modelling in a wide range of cases. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and discuss the deficiencies and their resulting errors in marmorean surfaces documentation using TLS based on time-of-flight and phase-shift. Also proposed in this paper is the reduction of error in depth measurement by adjustment of the incidence laser beam. The analysis is conducted by controlled experiments.

Self-organization is a basic mechanism by which complex urban systems organize themselves. This mechanism emerges from individual agents’ local interactions, often with unpredictable consequences at the regional level. These emergent patterns cannot be controlled by traditional hierarchical methods, but they can be steered and encouraged towards desirable goals. Self-organization is often used as an allegory for all ‘unplanned’ activity in cities. It is important to study the actual mechanisms of self-organization in cities to link the theory of self-organization to planning praxis. This work builds on ongoing work exploring novel complex planning tools and methods. Here I explore the key features of open dynamic systems identified in the literature as indicators of self-organizing capacity. I study their applicability in urban spatial planning, and propose three measurable characteristics for estimating the self-organization potential of urban activities. Flow reflects generic accessibility, and is measured using space syntax. Internal order refers to autonomously organizing entities, in this case the clustering tendencies of activities. Enriching rests upon increasing complexity and is measured as changes in degrees of entropy over time. The results indicate that (1) the study area meets the criteria for self-organization, and (2) these characteristics can be applied to discover nodes of higher potential for self-organization in a city.

A remarkable share of European mass housing was built with large-panel systems during the 1960s and 1970s. In many countries, this stock is already being demolished or demolition is discussed due to vacancies or social problems. This trend may result in the creation of an unforeseeable amount of concrete waste. Simultaneously, EU has issued the Waste Framework Directive aiming at reuse instead of recycling. Unlike in situ cast concrete, reclaimed prefabricated concrete panels from mass housing carry the potential for reuse. The purpose of this study is to review the reuse potential embedded in Finland's mass housing stock from the perspective of the dimensions of the panels and spaces, i.e., their suitability for architectural (plan) design. The research material consists of architectural drawings of 276 blocks of flats that contain over 26 000 prefabricated wall panels and nearly 14 000 hollow-core slabs, the dimensions of which are compared to current norms and guidelines for dimensioning living spaces. The technical prerequisites for reuse are reviewed with the help of literature. The study results in identifying an inventory of panels typical to Finnish precast concrete construction, which, in principle, should not exist because the building plans were not standardized but were supposed to be unique. The panels are found to be still usable in architectural (plan) design of detached houses, which form one third of annual residential production in Finland.

This article presents a case of co-designed temporary learning spaces at a Finnish academic library, together with the results of a user-survey. The experimental development of the multifunctional spaces offered an opportunity for the library to collaborate with its parent organisation thus broadening the role of the library. Hence, library can be seen as a third player facilitating learning spaces. Additionally, the library's own expertise was strengthened through successful cooperation with the undergraduate students and other actors. The results support prior research, where studying in the library is target-oriented differing from other learning spaces in providing support and resources.

As observed in several previous studies, the nature of the urban structure can affect children's mode of transportation to school. In this paper, we identify and investigate, in the Finnish context, the elements of the urban structure around homes and en route to school that promote children's ability to walk or cycle to school, using the conceptual domains proposed by Mitra (2013) to frame the work.

The associations discovered can, to a large extent however, be viewed as contrasting significantly with those identified in previous research, as an increase in the variables, essentially indicating urbanity, decreased the likelihood of the children walking or cycling to school. This is due to the existence of a well-functioning public transportation network in the Helsinki region. The associations were more significantly associated with the environment en route to school than with the environment around homes. This research improves our understanding of active school transportation behaviour in an environment that is already relatively supportive of active transportation and independent mobility by offering a well-functioning public transportation system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper compares four different approaches to urban morphology: historico-geographical, process typological, space syntax, and spatial analytical. It explores in particular the use of four fundamental concepts proposed in these approaches: morphological region, typological process, spatial configuration, and cell. The four concepts are applied in a traditional gateway area of the city of Porto, Portugal. The area includes considerable variety of urban form. The main purpose is to understand how to combine and co-ordinate these approaches so as to improve the description, explanation and prescription of urban form.