The development of design seismic forces is reviewed. The earthquake engineering was shown to have developed in the last 60 years. The characteristics of ground motion and structural response were gradually understood over the last five decades. The damage statistics from recent major earthquakes indicated that the severe damage was observed in taller buildings. The ratios of buildings with ope...

In this paper, we briefly introduce different types of buildings such as spherical buildings, Euclidean buildings, twin buildings, R-buildings and describe some of their applications to many subjects: (1) differential geometry such as Mostow strong rigidity, rank rigidity of nonpositively curved manifolds, Margulis superrigidity, quasi-isometry rigidity, classification of isoparametric manifold...

This paper aims to investigate the energy saving and carbon reduction performance of cross-laminated timber residential buildings in the severe cold region of China through a computational simulation approach. The authors selected Harbin as the simulation environment, designed reference residential buildings with different storeys which were constructed using reinforced concrete (RC) and cross-...

This study supplemented the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS) by making comprehensive measurements, over a full calendar year, of odor emissions from five swine and four dairy rooms/buildings (subset of the total number of buildings monitored for the NAEMS project). The measurements made in this project included both standard human sensory measurements using dynamic forced-choice ...

BACKGROUND Accessibility implies making public places accessible to every individual, irrespective of his or her disability or special need, ensuring the integration of the wheelchair user into the society and thereby granting them the capability of participating in activities of daily living and ensuring equality in daily life. OBJECTIVE This study was carried out to assess the accessibility...

We investigate the existence of the principal-agent (PA) problem in non-government, non-mall commercial buildings in the U.S. in 2003. The analysis concentrates on space heating and cooling energy consumed by centrally installed equipment in order to verify whether a market failure caused by the PA problem might have prevented the installation of energy-efficient devices in nonowner-occupied bu...

We introduce a construction turning some Coxeter and Davis realizations of buildings into systolic complexes. Consequently groups acting geometrically on buildings of triangle types distinct from (2, 4, 4), (2, 4, 5), (2, 5, 5), and various rank 4 types are systolic.

The emergence of intelligent buildings is founded on the rapid development of microcomputer and internet technology as well as the advance of information and communication technology. With the help of these technologies, office affairs have shifted from the traditional pattern of labor intense and large volume to the flexible, diverse, efficient, user-friendly, and highly reliable operations. M...

The more technology advances, the more there seems to be a basic human yearning to return to nature. This is reflected in a growing number of designers, architects, and artists who are turning to nature’s example to model uses of new technology. San Francisco architect Charles Lee does just that. Lee is a designer, artist, and researcher with the group Bios Design Collective, a group that works...