1?


  
 Transactions on Architectural Education no. 
Matteo Zambelli, Anna Helena Janowiak and Herman Neuckermans
 Consortium
Collaboratorio
 European Association for Architectural Education
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introduction

Herman Neuckermans
 .   : The concept
Furio Barzon, Anna Janowiak, Matteo Zambelli
mace
: Connecting and Enriching Repositories for Architectural Learning
Moritz Stefaner, Vittorio Spigai, Elisa Dalla Vecchia, Massimiliano Condotta,
Stefaan Ternier, Martin Wolpers, Stefan Apelt, Marcus Specht, Till Nagel, Erik Duval
   :
Towards Effective Design Scaffolding
Mario De Grassi, Alberto Giretti, Roberta Ansuini
:
Enabling Legacy Repositories
Stefan Apelt, Christian Prause, Mathias Casaer, Ann Heylighen
 :  at La Biennale of Architecture
Interaction Design Lab and Interface Design,
University of Applied Sciences Potsdam ()
e-learning
:
Saggio Teaches Information Technology in Latin
Antonino Saggio
  :
A New Didactic Approach Towards the Orders of Columns
Susanne Schumacher
@.:
Integrating Learning Spaces and Architectural Repositories
Leandro Madrazo, Paul Riddy, Luca Botturi
  :
Architectural Information Presentation
Verdy Kwee









table of contents














    :
The Context of E-learning
Nada El-Khoury, Giovanni De Paoli
@: Keeping a Record of Learning Paths
on Digital Graphics Representation for Architecture
Adriane Borda, Neusa Felix, Luisa Dalla Vecchia, Janice Pires
 :
A Digital Repository in Architectural Education
Andy Earl, Carl O’Coill, Joss Winn
    :
Lessons from the Integration of Wikis in an Architectural History Course
Francesca Torello, Marie Norman
archives

   :
From Policy to Implementation
Patricia Alkhoven
 -       :
An Attempt to Integrate Paper-Based and Digital-Born Documents
Riccardo Domenichini
     :
Graphics Creation, Maintenance, Selection and Preservation
Elena Triunveri
 :
A Hybrid Structure for the Enhancement of Architecture Videos
Paola Ricco
  :
A Semantic Collaborative Tagging Tool
Emanuele Quintarelli, Andrea Resmini, Luca Rosati
   :
Preliminary Thoughts
Hong Zhang
  :
The Architectural Archive in the Digital Age
Bernhard Franken, Berthold Scharrer, Suemri Nina Michaela Vogel































       :
Methodological Hypothesis and Application Testing on Pre-Modern Building
Sara Scapicchio
  :
A Repository for Architectural -models
Ina Blümel, Harald Krottmaier, Raoul Wessel
websites
:
An Interactive Architecture Guide
Mieke Vullings, Naomi Schiphorst
:
The European Hub for Contemporary Architecture
Juerg Meister, Helga Kusolitsch, Stephan F. Haupt
  :
Managing Publicly Induced Data into a Scholar Environment
Francisco Agostinho
    :
Criteria for Selection and Evaluation
Stefan Boeykens, Herman Neuckermans
  :
Digital Archives for Conservation and Management
Alonzo Addison, Mario Santana Quintero, Marta Severo
images
A collection of photographs and charts from the essays
index of terms – folksonomy
colophon
table of contents















8  .   
 
.. euven
Heverlee, Belgium
http://www.asro.kuleuven.be/asro/english/home/
HN/home.htm
The author is professor and head of the research group
Building and Design Methodology at the Department
of Architecture at the K.U.Leuven. He has former
experience as a self-employed architect, but is now
full-time member of the academic staff. He teaches
several courses, including Construction of Buildings,
Design Methodology and CAAD. He is program
director for the Department and is the past president
and currently a council member of the European
Association for Architectural Education (EAAE).
 .   

9This book is one of the achievements of the EU-cofunded MACE project on Meta-
data for Architectural Contents in Europe. “Browsing Architecture. Metadata and
Beyond” is about digital collections of contents useful in the broader context of
regular education, e-learning and lifelong learning in architecture. In MACE these
contents are called learning objects. Learning objects are qualified by their metadata
i.e. data about data. Metadata are mostly hidden for the user, but they are essential
‘backstage’ in order to use, retrieve and search the data.
The MACE project sets out to transform the ways of e-learning about architecture in
Europe. It is integrating a considerable amount of contents from diverse repositories
created in several large former projects as well as from existing architectural design
communities.
MACE will provide a framework for community based services such as finding,
acquiring, using and discussing about e-learning contents that were previously only
reachable to small user groups.
The project builds on several successful projects including, but not limited to,
DYNAMO, INCOM, WINDS and ARIADNE. In addition to that, three members of the
consortium are main content partners who have access to a large number of content
providers or are themselves associations of architects and universities dealing with
architecture and design. Therefore the project reaches a critical mass of digital
content that grants a significant impact on the EU scenario concerning architecture
and cultural heritage, and will become a base for further community activity in these
domains.
The project develops and uses several types of metadata for tagging contents: tradi-
tional content metadata and ontologies, context metadata, competence metadata
and learning process metadata, usage related metadata and metadata acquired
through social interaction, e.g. recommendations by peer users or blog entries. Close
integration of universities as well as professionals ensures that demands from the
user side are recognized and fitting solutions are created. Since users are distributed
across different countries in Europe, the project addresses the multicultural and mul-
tilingual issues resulting thereof and create working solutions for sharing contents
across borders.
 
 
s



10  .   
Repositories belong to the world of meta-architecture, of what belongs to archi-
tecture but is not architecture. Architecture has always existed in and through the
discourse on architecture, repositories belong to that discourse and hence somehow
to the “beyond architecture”.
It is true to say that information technology has changed our world and our lives
and of course education is in the frontline of this process of change. The impact of
IT on architecture is even more radical because the information society challenges
the traditional, stable notions of time and place upon which our modern society and
modern architecture is based since the renaissance. Distances are shrinking, humans
are no longer bound to one place on earth, ideas travel at the speed of light, and the
specificity of cultures seems to fade away in a global world where everyone connects
to everyone instantly. The virtual is competing more and more with the real world, it
becomes our real world.
In this changing world, learning objects become available via electronic means to an
ever-growing extent. It happens in regular teaching environments as well as in learn-
ing modes during and after graduation: knowledge is out of date within five years
and grows so fast that regular teaching ‘in school’ cannot cope with this knowledge
boom in a comprehensive way. Therefore academic teaching evolves into teaching
of principles, methods and attitudes, into a state of mind allowing lifelong learning
(LLL). Subjects for LLL are produced by universities, by practice and by industry. They
are disseminated via conferences, short courses and more and more via e-learning
formulas. Today, subjects for learning – called learning objects – are prepared by
specialists, somewhere on earth, disseminated via electronic communication means
and shared amongst distant users.
E-repositories play a role of growing importance in this context and this book focuses
on the role of e-repositories in lifelong learning in architecture.
In this book major attention is paid to the presentation of some interesting reposito-
ries and the newly developed tools to search a wide variety of architectural reposi-
tories developed within the framework of MACE, aiming at federating architectural
repositories all over Europe. The newly developed MACE system for harvesting
– repositories keep their data – searching and enhancing metadata was presented at
“La Biennale di Architettura ” in a showcase .
Ultimately built architecture tells us who and what we are, where we come from and
where we are going as a society. The built environment is our ultimate repository of
ideas and dreams; it is the theatre of our daily life. It is an environment in permanent
change, alive in a permanent struggle or tension between old and new, between
tradition and modernity. All students of architecture today are modernists, but they
still have to learn from the lessons of the past. They should visit places and actively
try to understand the genius loci, and in doing so, learn from other’s experiences.
They have to be familiar with so many places, but cannot physically visit them all,
and therefore we need the help of digital representations as the best substitute for
the experience in situ. Hopefully, these virtual visits will trigger real visits later on.
We can learn so much from the authentic design efforts embedded in the built envi-
ronment surrounding us. Roger Schank has proven that humans learn from previ-
ous experiences. Personal “learning by doing” (Donald Schön) prevails over learning
from other’s experience, but again the latter is the best substitute for the former, and
so makes databases containing cases so vital for architectural education. Turning
cases into knowledge, into assimilated information is essential for creative behaviour
and it is expected from architects. For creativity is putting the elements of someone’s
experience into new combinations in the pre-conscious. MACE is contributing to that
experience.

11

The book is a result of the International conference, entitled “On-line Repositories in Architecture”,
held at the Teatro Piccolo of “La Biennale di Architettura”, Venice, on - September, .
The major goal of this conference was to disseminate ideas, ambitions and achievements of MACE
to a wider public of potential contributors and to mobilise a great number of users.
The programme of the conference was scheduled over  days in  sessions, each session having a
set of presentations followed by a roundtable workshop.
The sessions articulate the following three themes:
. Teaching architecture in the digital era: the digital world has changed our teaching and learning
schemes. Teaching is less and less bound to a physical location. The famous slide projector has
been replaced by beamers and students no longer present on paper but also beam their project in
flashy real time simulations. More and more books include demos, exercises and practice on digital
media. Contents created by one person can be shared with others and updated faster than with
printing. Students find everything on the web, produce papers heavily relying on ‘cut and paste’
and are confronted more and more with issues of intellectual property rights and quality assess-
ment. Teachers have to evaluate the authorship of documents. Education is no longer specified in
subjects but in competences.
. Digital Archives: preservation, dissemination and use. The vulgarisation of digital media has
brought many teachers to build their own teaching environment, their own contents. Since they
are by definition limited in capacity and in time, the MACE project has been conceived to open
up these collections of data in order to share them with colleagues and reversely to profit from
someone else’s work. This conference has the ambition to gather interesting initiatives and to dis-
seminate them amongst colleagues.
. Websites: a European network of architectural contents. Our search for digital contents has
shown that the web plenty of isolated repositories, not at all linked and frequently ignored or
unknown. MACE has the ambition to federate many repositories and enhance the search capabili-
ties by connecting contents.
For any further information about the International conference, go to:
www.mace-project.eu/conference
For any further information about the MACE Project, go to:
www.mace-project.eu
has
 

13 
While conceiving the format of this book, we drew inspiration from the way articles
are featured on the Internet and in newspapers. We have tried to mix together these
two diverse ways of presenting information, as nowadays switching from one means
of presentation to another has become second nature for the reader. Our book
is devised in order to enable the reader to read or the user to browse. The text is
accessible in several ways: traditional, transversal, fast and hyper-textual. With the
traditional method, the reader starts the book from the first page and continues until
the last. Following the chronological order of a book is the most conventional way to
acquire its contents in a deep and thorough manner.
Nowadays however, this traditional method of reading is not solely sufficient, as we
are gradually becoming used to the different modes of reading proposed by new
digital media. This means that when we scan a page, we subconsciously enable
techniques used in “digital reading”, which can inevitably lead to confusion between
the different media.
Gestalt theory says that we tend to see any page as a whole, meaning that first we
literally scan the overall layout of the page, spotting self-contained chunks, before
starting to reading. Each chunk is defined by a precise content or purpose. This mode
of using pages has definitely modified the way we approach reading. We tend to feel
the necessity to be drawn-in by different stimuli coming from the same page, we
desire to jump from one spot to another following the information scent, to follow
the hidden dimensions of our thoughts and searches. We want to flick through pages
before starting to peruse their contents.
Starting from these considerations we propose further ways to “browse” the book.
We find them more actual and they are directly related to the idea of browsing Inter-
net resources. Also the way we read journals and daily newspapers has defined our
approach to the organisation of this book.
The transversal way of using the book enables the reader to skim through the book’s
pages. While reading magazines or newspapers we usually read just the main
headlines, subtitles and the highlighted sentences within the text. In doing so we can
quickly get acquainted with the whole set of news. We can also easily sort out the
most interesting articles and delve into them, without loosing the general overview
or the feeling that we may have missed something interesting. Therefore, in each es-
 .
  :
 

14  .   
say we have highlighted the sentences that we have deemed to be more significant
and/or capable of summarising content. Instead of top to bottom reading, the “user”
can proceed through the text “horizontally”.
Then there is the fast way. We have all felt the souring sensation of not being able to
remember a book in the very last moments before entering an exam, or the feeling
of confusion when compelled to decided which book to pick up in a bookshop when
presented with a large amount of possibilities. We have, however, a large number of
different websites to consult daily, and yet we manage to consult them all. Since we
either have no time to re-read the whole book, or thoroughly deepen all the titles in
the bookshop, or read all the news on the website, we need tools and means to
locate information quickly, to aid our choices or to find the learning we require. Most
importantly these tools should guarantee the desired results, such as the required
topics for an exam, the most relevant book from the shelf, or not missing the most
important news item.
To tackle these goals we have provided the reader with two sets of keywords. The
first set, right below the title of each chapter, contains keywords, which were handed
to us by the authors of the essays. Thus the reader can “comprehend” any chapter
simply by consulting these words.
We have also collected all of these suggested keywords from all the essays in a table
titled “Index of keywords – Folksonomy”, which appears at the end of the book. This
collection of keywords has a very similar function to a traditional index of terms,
typical of books and essays. These keywords also resemble the “tags cloud”, which
is nowadays commonly used on websites, as it works in much the same way in our
book. The higher the number of black bullet points next to the keyword, the more
frequently the term is used in the book; a fast glimpse at the “Index of keywords” al-
lows the reader to immediately see which terms have more occurrences and deduct
which are the main topics of the book. In using this system the reader may also
discover new lines of research.
We labelled the index of keywords also as “folksonomy”, because all of the terms
suggested by the authors are not organised in any kind of taxonomy or glossary.
They have not been modified and are inserted into the index just as the authors
created them. This may cause problems to the reader because some terms are too
domain specific and others are too personal. There is also a wide range of synonyms
or closely related terms, which are not organised into general categories. For these

16  .   
architecture   
architectural heritages 
architectural history  
contemporary architecture  
modern architectures 
archival management   
archival description 
archive standards 
 - collection information system 
file naming 
identity metadata 
record management 
selection criteria   
browsing       
application profile     
browsing by images   
browsing tool  
content based queries 
search engine 
text-based queries 
user interface  
visual browsing  
copyrights  
creative commons 
open source 
rights of property 
database      
digital architectural record 
digital archive   
digital resources 
media database 
on-line database 
user generated database 
digital design    
design process  
digital modeling system 
digital models 
virtual design studios 
 models  
digitalisation      
digital data 
digitisation 
education      
constructivist pedagogy 
constructivist theory 
education theory  
multidisciplinary approach 
teacher 
tutorial discourse   
e-learning    
   
digital teaching tools  
   
eContentplus   
learning objects   
learning path 
 

20  .   

22

Education in architecture requires access to a broad range of
learning materials, so as to develop flexibility and creativity
in design. The learning material is comprised of textual
and visual media including images, videos, descriptions of
architectural concepts or projects, i.e. digital artifacts on
different aggregation levels. Until now, repositories storing
such information have not been interrelated and have not
provided unified access. Consequently, finding and retrieving
architectural learning objects is cumbersome and time
consuming. In this paper, we describe how an infrastructure of
federated architectural learning repositories will provide unique,
integrated access facilities for high quality architectural content.
The integration of various types of content, usage, social
and contextual metadata enables users to develop multiple
perspectives and navigation paths that support experience
multiplication for the user. A standards–based, service–
oriented software architecture, and flexible user interface
design solutions, based on embeddable widgets, ensure easy
integration and re-combinability of contents, metadata and
functionalities.
:
Connecting and Enriching
Repositories
for Architectural Learning
› digital libraries
› domain-specific architectures
› interoperability
› interactive data exploration
and discovery
› user interfaces

26
 
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Leuven, Belgium
www.cs.kuleuven.be
Erik Duval is a professor in the computer science
department of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in
Belgium. Erik teaches courses on Human-Computer
Interaction, Multimedia, problem solving and design
and on multitouch interfaces and sketch based
modelling. Prof. Duval is the president of the 
Foundation, chairs the   working group on
Learning Object Metadata, and is a fellow of the
, a member of , and the  computer society.

  

29
structuring a high number of Learning Objects (LO), with the aim of reaching the
maximum utility for the final user. Obviously, indexing strategies have to be suit-
able to the treated discipline; they will have to support the logic pattern of the user
navigating through this cloud of contents, and they will have to support his search
criteria.
At first, obviously, the content and the domain meta-information of the LO will drive
the choice of the user, even if this choice is very often influenced or led by usage
experiences made by others and by the comprehension of their exploration and
learning paths. In other situations, the user and content competence profile, or the
context, in which the LO is inserted or used, might be key to accessing the right kind
of information.
 –    
 
MACE sets out to integrate architectural learning contents from Learning Object
Repositories (LORs) spread around Europe and beyond, and to enrich them with
different types of metadata and classification structures in order to enable improved
access and experience multiplication for students, teachers and professionals.
Enrichment here includes both the manual and automatic provision of metadata
about the learning object itself, its contents or the context of its use (including social
metadata, competence metadata and contextual metadata).
An overview of currently integrated content repositories (adopted as contents base
in the first phase of the project, but intended to be increased) can be seen in Tab. .
The available contents range from multimedia resources about architectural projects
over technology enhanced learning courses to literature references and regulations.
Our open, standards-based infrastructure allows an integration of further content
databases in the future.
As will be detailed below, Fig.  gives an overview of the different layers in the MACE
approach. Based on a shared technical infrastructure for federated access to the
repositories, metadata harvesting and content enrichment, we provide web services
for metadata manipulation and retrieval and metadata-based content access.
These are the basis for both automatic as well as manual content enrichment. As
user interfaces, we develop compact, modular components with rich visualization
and interaction possibilities – so-called widgets. These can be used standalone,
combined in a search portal or embedded into existing applications. This framework
allows usage of our solutions in a variety of scenarios relevant to learning and work
situations in the architectural world.
Fig. : MACE technical infrastructure (p. ).
classification
winds
metadata
   
  

30  .   
Content source
WINDS
(An ensemble of several uni-
versitary courses featured by a
data model with two alterna-
tive structures – hierarchical
course and concept network –
enabled learner centred edu-
cation via more navigational
control and personalized
adaptive learning.)
ARIADNE
(The ARIADNE Foundation is
one of the early pioneers hav-
ing a “share and reuse” vision
for education and training. It
provides access to several tens
of thousands of additional
objects, several hundreds of
which are relevant for the
MACE context.)
DYNAMO
(Dynamic Architectural
Memory Online is a database
developed in order to stimu-
late and support architects’
life-long process of learning
from previous design experi-
ence.)
MONUDOC
(MONUment DOCumentation
is a fulltext database to all
questions of the restoration
of worth preserving buildings
and their interior.)
BAUFO
(Is a database that serves as
basis for finding ongoing and
completed projects from all
fields of building research?
It covers projects, which
have been realised inside the
Federal Republic of Germany
and a row of international
research projects.)
Objects
, compound objects,
, single content blocks
(text, image, multimedia)
,+ objects, of which
several hundreds can be used
for MACE
 architecture projects, 
files (text, image)
, Facts and Literature
Reference covering preserva-
tion of monuments and
historic buildings
, descriptions of building
research projects
Metadata
, index terms (text)
Technical and educational
metadata, keywords
, index terms (text)
Bibliographic description,
Index terms, classification
Index terms, classifications
Metadata level
, of , objects
enriched with content
metadata
Almost all objects have
mandatory technical and
educational metadata, some
content metadata, no context
and a few social metadata
High level of content meta-
data
All units with classification,
bibliographic data and index
terms
All units with classifications
and index terms
Tab. : Overview of MACE repositories.

35
 Related evidences: a list of evidences related to the competence.
The elements in the Competence Card Schema allow us to export/import the com-
petence information to/from the standards IMS/IEEE RDCEO or HR-XML.
Interaction with competencies is complex, as normal users do not think about
competencies as educators. Most common approaches use everyday language to
describe competencies and connect them to underlying competence structures,
such as e.g. the social web application things. For allowing users to interact with
competence profiles and competence cards, we are implementing a simple bar chart
component that allows the assignment, manipulation and the viewing of compe-
tence metadata for single learning objects and sets of learning objects.
Contextual metadata
As mentioned above, much of our content is related to objects in the real world, like
places, buildings and towns. For these real world objects, it is important to capture
and store the object context. Interested parties can later retrieve it and either search
objects by context parameters or find similar objects for a given object and context.
Contextual metadata in that sense can be position (Where is the object located?),
history (When was the object built?), surroundings (What other objects are located
nearby? How are they situated?) and geography (What is the climate around the ob-
ject? Is it prone to natural disasters?). The list is not complete and can be extended
to fit additional purposes.
As a large number of cases and examples already exist, it would not be feasible for
a small group of experts to create contextual information manually. The good thing
is that almost all of the information needed is already available online in a variety
of data sources like Wikipedia, history websites, place descriptions, location and
disaster databases and can be connected and harvested in automatic or semi-
automatic (with manual oversight) ways.
While some of the information is highly structured (e.g. like in Freebase or DBpe-
dia), a large part of the data is badly or not at all structured and needs sophisti-
cated approaches for data mining, merging and filtering out useless items.
In MACE, we have been making good progress with connecting GPS positioning
information with LO contents and displaying these contents on a map. The positions
information is collected by data mining content full texts and matching keywords
against the Geonames location database, the resulting matches are being stored in
a separate data store.
We are currently further adjusting the matching algorithm beyond syntactic match-
ing to include more data sources.
Content and domain metadata
Content and domain metadata, i.e. descriptive metadata with relevance in the
architectural domain, is harvested from the various connected architectural learning
repositories using the OAI-PMH protocol. It is enhanced with additional architec-
tural information through two mechanisms. First, the group of architecture experts
provides enhancements through tagging activities using controlled vocabularies.
Second, the community of architecture education (students, teachers, etc.) provides
their own tags and comments on the learning objects using the Adaptable Learning
Object Environment (ALOE) system [].
education
classification
community
  
real world objects


36  .   
The vocabulary is documented in the MACE classification schema. It complements
the definition of the MACE application profile and is used within the LOM classifica-
tion category. The classification schema consists of facets, each of which addresses
and describes a different feature of the architectural content A facet consists of a
number of non-exclusive categories, containing architectural concepts in a hierar-
chical order (see Table  for an overview of facets and categories and the following
paragraph for theoretical notions at the bases of this classification). Each concept
has one or more terms associated, which enables us to merge existing vocabularies
and group conceptually close index terms. The MACE classification schema is based
on existing thesauri: UniClass, ISO, the AAT Getty Vocabulary, and the Ci/
SfB. Where necessary, it has been extended based on [–] to reflect additional
information needs in architecture, which emerged in the requirements analysis pro-
cess and have not been addressed yet in established taxonomies.
Facet Categories
Identification Intervention type, Project type, Functional typology, Form
typology
Context Location, Geographic context, Urban context
Technical design Materials, Construction form, Building element, Technological
profile, Structure profile, Systems and equipments, Technical
performance, Maintenance and conservation
Constructing Construction management, Construction phase, Construction
activity, Machinery and equipments
Theories and concepts Styles, periods and trends, Theoretical concepts
Conceptual design Project cues, Project actions, Form characteristics, Perceptive
qualities, Relation with the context
Tab. : MACE content and domain metadata: facets and categories.
     
 
The architects expert group within the consortium has agreed on using
a number of architectural terms in a hierarchical controlled vocabulary
to enhance the descriptions of the learning resources.
An architectural project constitutes a great syntheses effort, where different
knowledge fields – may they be connected to the poetic-artistic side (ideas,
cultural and social message of a project) or to the technical one (functionality,
living wellness, building ease) – are called to simultaneously gather a project.
To find a coherent strategy to develop a classification schema of such a hetero-
geneous subject, the various and interconnected issues have been separated and
re-ordered on the basis of two possible end users’ point of view, which are:
 the researcher, interested in the world of architecture, aiming to deepen descriptive
aspects, documentation and technical knowledge, but without any design-applied
goal (Documentation activity);
 the designer, may he be a professional or a student, active in sectors such as archi-
architectural design
classification
facet
 
.

37
tecture, city planning or civil engineering design (Design Problem Solving activity).
The Documentation activity is a work that can be held both by students as well as
other users using MACE to obtain information about history, geographical locations,
typologies, techniques and general documentation in the world of architecture. To
allow this kind of activity, part of the classification system needs to be based on
objective fields that should cover all the objective aspects of the domain. With objec-
tive fields we mean all those aspects of architecture that refers to objective (non-
interpretational) data and for this reason aren’t influenced by architectural trends or
by theoretical and personal concerns. The main challenge in this case is to develop
a standardized and shared taxonomy, able to cover all the aspects of the discipline
featured in the architectural and engineering domain.
It is however, more complicated to identify the rules and structures to create such
schema to support the Design Problem Solving Activity. This is because architectural
design deals with complex shapes, which represent, through the architect’s person-
ality and his conceptual filters, deeper messages. Therefore, architecture and the
built environment is not only the technical production of concrete “facts” of various
dimensions (from a city to a small object), but it is also a “sign” featuring a message
conveyed through materially sensible signs (materials, colors, shapes, etc.).
Conceiving a project is therefore similar to the process of creating and communi-
cating a message. When classifying and organizing the knowledge and the artistic
production related to these kinds of mental processes it is not wise to rely only on
objective data (as in the Documentation Activity), but also on a personal and intui-
tive interpretation, which is both individual, when choosing among many ambiguity
factors, and partial, when focusing on some complexity factors.
At first glance, trying to classify non-objective data may seem to be an oxymoronic
task. But if we consider modern and contemporary artistic production, we can see
that often the oeuvre represents a true challenge sent by the author to the spectator,
who is called to participate to the work’s creation and to the research of a meaning
through the eyes of his/her own personal history and personality. Semiotics theory,
notwithstanding its slow and sometimes contradicting evolution during the last half
century, gives us the basis to help us perceive and understand messages in art.
Thanks to those studies and methodologies we can try to develop strategies to clas-
sify non-objective data. It’s not our intention to summarize here a balance of the re-
sults of semiotics studies, even if limited to the visual arts field. Among the complex
and variegated interpretative models offered by the current state of this discipline,
we decided to rely on the Hjelmslev’s interpretative model, to find the personal and
intuitive data, used as reading keys to an architectural project. This model is based
on the double opposition of contents/expression and substance/form [] and on
its following interpretation and adaptation held by A. J. Greimas [] and his young
pupils in a Paris school during the s. The model, initially evolved in urban analy-
sis research, has then been first extrapolated and enlarged to a system of categories
and levels devoted to the reading of any visual work, and then reduced and focused
on architectural works [-] (Fig. ).
Fig. : The Hjelmslev’s interpretative semiotic model, based on the double opposition of
contents/expression and substance/form, reduced and focused on architectural works
[]. We can produce hypothetical examples, referring to well-known architectures, to
clarify how the logic scheme is used to classify architectural features, principles that
will be used in the MACE knowledge organization system. Let’s imagine there is a stu-
dent who tries to find an example of a building expressing the concept of “lightness”.
He can trigger a combined search with “aerial” (in a symbolic-metaphorical meaning,
substance of contents) and “metallic structures” (substance of expression: tectonic /

39
Generally speaking, we aim at making interaction with metadata not only as easy
and natural as possible, but also open for all users. The recent success of collab-
orative tagging systems has shown that providing users with a framework to tag
publicly available resources in a ”socially translucent” [] manner can lead to rich
and user-centered information architectures. A crucial component is to make the
users aware of both self-assigned tags as well as the tags and content that others
contribute to the community: only immediate self and social feedback gives rise
to the emergent, stable, community-wide patterns in tag usage []. The resulting
multi-faceted, bottom-up organization is often referred to as folksonomy – a neolo-
gism based on the words ”folk” and ”taxonomy” [].
Concerning incentives for actively contributing, we aim at win-win situations: if
for the user, tagging contents is valuable for re-finding contents or for enriching
his online portfolio, we can encourage this by introducing a “tagging game”, with
the repositories benefiting at the same time from the enriched contents. A variety
of incentive mechanisms in online collaboration can be identified (see e.g. []). A
further, promising perspective is the “undercover” creation of metadata from joyful
activities such as gaming []. We are currently investigating, which of these tech-
niques are best suited for our content partners and user groups.
 
Services in MACE connect the presentation layer with data sources and provide
most of the business logic. They process user queries and return results, handle user
management and provide means for gathering and manipulating metadata. Some
services provide simple functions while others are more complex and can even ag-
gregate functionality.
Besides metadata manipulation and content retrieval, MACE services allow users to
annotate contents with their own metadata, track activities and generate metadata
from user actions. Examples for basic services are: “Searching” which takes in a
request, queries the appropriate metadata databases and returns the results; “User-
Handling” which provides authentication and user management functions; “Service-
Registry”, a directory for discovery and use of services; and so on.
Based on these basic services, more complex services can be realized in order to
aggregate and combine various functionalities. For example, a combination of a
timeline and a map application might query our services for buildings from the s
and plot the results on a map. In a second query step, related theoretical concepts
for these contents can be retrieved, leading to new insights and novel navigation
possibilities.
In this perspective, services in the logic layer are used to encapsulate and
hide complexity. They also greatly enhance technology reuse by providing
a uniform interface to the presentation layer, which can be used by widgets
as well as third party applications like plugins
for example Microsoft Office or AutoCAD. These applications can then connect to
MACE and make use of the technical infrastructure to search for and retrieve con-
tents and metadata.
It is possible to physically distribute MACE services over several server systems that
are connected through the Internet. Some parts like metadata stores, MACE user
accounting and a registry for distributed services are centralized to reduce complex-
ity and improve performance. Other services can run anywhere on the Internet. This

41
Composing widgets for flexible access
Based on these considerations, we developed an interface design strategy
based on the notion of “widgets”, which are compact, specialized
applications or application components. These cannot only be combined
to build more complex applications, but also be integrated into existing
portals and content management solutions on their own.
On the one hand, this provides immediate incentives for content providers and site
owners to embed and use MACE service widgets, since they can enhance their exist-
ing sites with functionality, in a focused manner and with little effort. On the other
hand, the MACE project benefits by having more contents available, generating
more metadata, thus improving the findability of relevant resources and increasing
inter-repository traffic.
Fig. : Mockup of map widget and related links widget integration into
the DYNAMO portal (p. ).
The widget paradigm has been made popular in several domains over the last
years: Apple’s dashboard widgets allow users to add mini-applications on a semi-
transparent desktop layer, which can be activated by a hotkey. Also, Yahoo widgets
or yourminis.com provide widgets for use on a personalized web desktop, the OS
desktop and embedded into other web pages. The range of available applications
reaches from simple clock or weather forecast, to dictionaries, games, content sub-
scription, to planners, search engines or messaging services. Other online services
such as del.icio.us, Technorati or Plazes provide HTML snippets to embed func-
tional components into other web pages. There is a diversity of embeddable widgets
available – displaying site statistics, allowing to search for contents, or displaying the
site owner’s latest bookmarks, music listened to or books read.
In MACE, all functionality for end users is made available in specialized widgets. For
different metadata types or service functionality, a dedicated widget can be used to
visualize metadata values, edit metadata, filter searches and navigate contents.
The following MACE widget types can be distinguished:
 Basic widgets handle basic user management and navigation tasks. Examples are
a login widget, a simple search box (triggering a search on the MACE portal) or a link
list widget;
 Content presentation widgets can be used to display content collections from the
repositories, such as related pictures for a given article, a list of search results or a
single content item;
 Metadata widgets visualize metadata values and aggregations of metadata values
(so-called metadata profiles). Additionally, they allow editing of metadata as well as
metadata based navigation, search and filtering;
 We can further differentiate widgets by their awareness and adaptation with regard
to context established by;
 The host application or web site (e.g. currently presented contents);
 The user (e.g. login status, previously viewed pages, preferences). Here, we distin-
guish user recognition (e.g. via cookie) and user login (via authentification mecha-
nism). Some personalized functionality might be available also for recognized, but
not logged-in users;
 Other widgets (e.g. selections, navigation history).
To give a concrete example from our repositories: a map widget for displaying geo-
 widget
visual browsing
6

42  .   
location could be used to display the location of a building in a DYNAMO project
(content-aware), the locations associated with the user’s browsing history (user-
aware) or related places for a selected keyword in a different widget (widget-aware).
The general goal is to make the “right” kind of information – fitting the user’s current
situation and preferences as well as the currently focussed contents – visually acces-
sible and editable directly in place.
In the following, we will describe the different use cases enabled in our widget
framework: from embeddable widgets, widgets for metadata editing and creation,
over search refinement to visual browsing of contents and classification values.
Embeddable widgets
The chosen technical and conceptual framework allows re-use and combination of
widgets in many different usage scenarios: MACE widgets can be embedded into
existing web portals, thus making MACE functionality and contents available directly
to portal owners and their users (see e.g. Fig.  for an example for embedding MACE
widgets on external pages). To allow deeper integration in third party websites and
other existing tools we are designing an extended widget API so that site owners are
able to not only embed widgets, but also interact with these components directly.
The exchange is planned to be bi-directional, i.e. the external web application is able
to pass over a resource identifier, and MACE will provide related information. A user-
case for the other way around is an asset search widget from which the user selects
appropriate images and connects these to contents of the web page. Hence, more
sophisticated communications between the embedding web page and the MACE
infrastructure will be possible. Where applicable, the chosen technologies also allow
an easy adaptation to desktop tools or browser extensions.
MACE widgets are combinable and will be available for download and integration at
the MACE portal.
Add and edit in place
MACE widgets are also used to edit metadata: Direct manipulation interfaces enable
visual, interactive access and manipulation, instead of tedious and error-prone form
filling.
Fig.  shows two examples of MACE widgets for metadata editing: A compact
version of our classification widget allows the application of over  index terms
based on auto-completion. Not only values are matched, but also field names and
hierarchical elements for structuring the values. Consequently, users can either start
typing “glass” and see immediately which index terms containing “glass“ for tagging
are available, but also type “period” and see a list of available styles and periods.
The map widget displays automatically generated content positions. Any of the
markers can be dragged to a new, more precise location, if the user is not satisfied
with the result of the automatic assignment.
Using widgets for browsing and navigation
Additionally, our embedded widget approach fosters meaningful navigation and
browsing across repositories: MACE details pages of a resource feature; a patchwork
of metadata widgets (Fig. ), which displays and makes accessible metadata for this
content. Users can not only understand the nature and relevance of the presented
resource, but also directly navigate to related items or query the MACE database
 widget

45
 An open system will be created, and incentives will be provided to actively enrich
contents and share knowledge. This opens doors to social navigation and online col-
laboration, which are both crucial constituents of an active learning experience;
 By linking complementary contents across repositories, we establish direct, valu-
able connections among conceptually interweaved notions;
 Displaying metadata values directly in place supports a better judgement of the rel-
evance and context of a single piece of information. By making each metadata value
a starting point for a potential query on the MACE portal, a rich web of contextual
information is woven around each content component;
 Faceted search in combination with our metadata widget approach represents a
flexible, intuitively accessible model for navigating multidimensional data structures
in domain specific tools. It enables directed search and browsing of contents with
respect to features relevant for architectural knowledge in a unique combination.
The underlying weighted activation model fosters understanding in how metadata
values and/or search terms relate to each other; revealing these relations can greatly
contribute to the learning experience.
Moreover, our service-oriented, distributed architecture allows reuse of both MACE
contents as well as functionality in applications developed by third parties by simply
embedding ready-made MACE widgets or by connecting proprietary interfaces and
applications to the MACE metadata service API. Using open standards and proto-
cols ensures interoperability.
 +  +  →

49

Stefaner, M., E. Dalla Vecchia, M. Condotta, M. Wolpers, M. Specht, S. Apelt, and E. Duval.
“MACE – Enriching Architectural Learning Objects for Experience Multiplication”. In Creating New
Learning Experiences on a Global Scale. Proceedings of the nd European Conference on Technology
Enhanced Learning, ECTEL C. P. (Crete, Greece, September, ), eds. Duval, E., R. Klamma,
and M. Wolpers, -. Springer LNCS, .
ISBN: ---- / ISSN: -
Spigai, V., M. Condotta, E. Dalla Vecchia, and T. Nagel. “Semiotic based facetted classification to
support browsing architectural contents in MACE”. In Proceedings. Performance and Knowledge
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M. Prins, A. Karvonen, and V. Raasakka.
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(June-September): -.
[] Karger, D., and M. Schraefel. . The Pathetic Fallacy of Rdf. In Position Paper for SWUI ’.
[] Yee, K., K. Li Swearingen, and M. Hearst. . Faceted Metadata for Image Search
and Browsing. In Chi ‘: Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
-. New York: ACM Press.
[] Huynh, D. F. , D. R. Karger, and R. C. Miller. . Exhibit: lightweight Structured Data Publish-
ing. In Www ‘: Proceedings of the th International Conference on World Wide Web, -.
New York: ACM Press.
[] Hildebrand, M., J. van Ossenbruggen, and L. Hardman. . /Facet: A Browser for
Heterogeneous Semantic Web Repositories. http://db.cwi.nl/rapporten/index.php?persnr=.
[] Schraefel, M. M. C., D. A. Smith, A. Owens, A. Russell, C. Harris, and M. Wilson. .
The Evolving mSpace Platform: Leveraging the Semantic Web on the Trail of the Memex.
In Hypertext , Proceedings of the th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia,
eds. Reich, S., and M. Tzagarakis (Salzburg, Austria, - September, ).
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[] Anderson, C. . The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.
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[] Stefaner, M., and B. Müller. . Elastic Lists for Facet Browsers. In Proceedings of DEXA
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50

Design is one of the most complex types of problem solving
tasks involving several aspects and components. Its cognitive
processes and procedures should be conveyed to the learners
through lectures and revision sessions, but the models available
must still be defined and made clearer in order to improve
both learning – be it traditional or distant learning – as well as
teaching.
This paper analyses and models design activities in order to
identify scaffolding procedures and tools that can be used
to support the communication of design competencies. This
theoretical apparatus makes up the natural development
context of research projects such as MACE, aimed at providing
innovative instruments and technologies, which support design.
In particular, the paper begins assuming a semiotic viewpoint
and discusses how and to what extent design can be conceived
as an act of significance. The paper then introduces a cognitive
design model that interprets and extends the semiotic view
to an operational dimension. It then proceeds presenting the
protocol analysis used in the research and, finally, findings and
conclusions are drawn with the inclusion of possible guidelines
and suggestions.
   :
Towards Effective
Design Scaffolding
› cognitive models
› design learning
› design meaning
› design models
› design practice
› design process
› mental images
› protocol analysis
› precedent
based design
› scaffolding procedure
› scaffolding tools
› semiotics
› signification process
› sketching
› tutorial discourse

51
  
Università Politecnica delle Marche
Ancona, Italia
www.univpm.it
Prof. Dr. Mario De Grassi is a Full Professor of
Building Technology and board member at the
Faculty of Engineering of the Università Politecnica
delle Marche. Mario has an in-depth knowledge of
both architecture design/construction issues and
information technology models. He founded and
directs the Building Technology Research Laboratory.
He was coordinator of the WINDS European research
project and is currently working on the MACE
project.
 
Università Politecnica delle Marche
Ancona, Italia
www.univpm.it
Dr. Alberto Giretti is a Researcher Scientist in
Building Construction. Alberto is an engineer and
has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence Systems. He
was scientific coordinator for the WINDS project
regarding Virtual Universities for Architecture in
Europe and is currently working on the MACE project
carrying out user requirement analysis. He is the
author of numerous articles regarding e-learning,
automation in construction and Design Studies.
 
Università Politecnica delle Marche
Ancona, Italia
www.univpm.it
Dr. Roberta Ansuini is a PhD student in Architecture,
Building Constructions and Structures. Roberta
graduated in engineering and worked in a number
of architectural design studios following her
degree. She is currently working on research
projects involving design-learning models for the
development of didactic models. At the same time
she is working on the MACE research project carrying
out user requirement analysis.

54  .   
model, which renders the meta-strategy operational through the identification of
well-defined cognitive actions. Subsequently, an example retrieved from the protocol
analysis of a design revision session will show how these frames emerge in real
design processes. Finally, we will collect our findings, draw conclusions and provide
possible guidelines and suggestions for effective design scaffolding.
     
In design activities the transmission of solution concepts and values occurs
principally via visual means. Initially, the most immediate kind of representa-
tion is the sketch. Later technical drawings, digitals or scale d models,
are used too.
Observing student/teacher revision sessions however, where the exchange
occurs through verbal language as well, it has been noted that very often the
meaning of a design solution is not shared and that the student in particular, is
not always capable of eliciting contents through visual signs. Semiotics allows
us to understand why and especially how these situations must be addressed.
Semiotics is the study of signs. A sign is anything that mediates meaning; this can
include words, images, sounds and even gestures. The semiotic framework provides
a coordinated way of talking about how meanings are expressed through signs. The
model contains three basic entities:
 the sign: something which is perceived, but which stands for something else;
 the concept (interpretant): thoughts or images conjured by the perception of the sign;
 the object: the “something else” in the world to which the sign refers.
The model is most often represented as the semiotic triangle (Fig. ), where the
sign and the concept are connected by the person’s perception, the concept and the
object are connected by the person’s experience, and the sign and the object are
connected by the conventions, or the culture, of the social group within which the
person lives. Signs are not meaningful in isolation, but only when they are inter-
preted in relation to each other. The production and interpretation of signs depends
upon the existence of codes or conventions for communication [Jakobson ].
Codes provide a framework within which signs make sense, and the meaning of a
sign depends on the code within which it is situated [Eco ]. The interpretation
is the process of understanding the relationship between a signifier (sign) and its
signified (object). Interpreting the conventional meaning of signs requires familiarity
with appropriate sets of codes, even in the case of indexical and iconic signs such
as photographs. Among the potentially infinite set of meanings a sign can assume,
semiotics distinguish between direct (denotation) and indirect (connotation) rela-
tions. Denotation is the definitional, literal, or commonsense meaning of a sign. For
example in the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary
attempts to provide. Connotation is the indirect meaning the sign recalls through
the relational structure of the codes it is interpreted with. For example the image
of a dove with an olive branch denotes the bird and the tree, and connotes peace.
Connotation and denotation are often described in terms of levels of representation
or levels of meaning [Barthes ; Hjelmslev ]. The first order of signification
is that of denotation: at this level there is a sign consisting of a signifier and a signi-
fied. Connotation is a second-order of signification, which uses the denotative sign
(signifier and signified) as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified. In this
design meaning
semiotics
signification process
sketching

56  .   
process of recall and re-elaboration of images and data coming from other design
cases. In order to arrive at new solutions and shapes the designer re-interprets
something already seen and known – the so-called “references”, or to use the techni-
cal term, the “precedent”.
In the field of education, but generally in every design activity, “references” play an
inexorable role. Numerous research activities have highlighted that learning architec-
tonic concepts through the study of precedents is a common activity [Taeyeol et Val-
erian]. In fact, projects elaborated by others lead students to the identification of the
main issues they should concentrate their attention on, help them to come to new
ideas regarding how they ought to proceed, and allow them to preview the effects of
alternative solutions for the project [Heylighen et Verstijine ].
Precedent based design is a well-known design paradigm [Oxman ,
Maher ]. Precedents are used to recommend solutions that are close
to the problem under analysis. Adapting the proposed solution to the actual
working context develops a design. This early procedural view of precedent
based design is now understood as one of the main cognitive activities of
designing. Protocol analysis of design processes show that a great percent-
age of design work, especially in the early stages, consists in the construction
of the so-called design space.
Aggregating design issues, concepts and solutions on the basis of their reciprocal rel-
evance, which in turn is derived from previous cases, makes design space construc-
tion. In the previous section, we showed that every design carries an original frame
of reference, which indirectly structures the codes belonging to different domains,
and contributes to defining its cultural dimensions. In this manner, cases provide
designers with the “soft rules” that they use to express meaning in a relevant way
with respect to their cultural environment.
It is therefore evident that there is a strong relation between the cognitive
view of design and the semiotic framework. This analogy provides us with
many useful insights concerning design as a meaningful construction process.
Multimodal perceptual representation and diagrammatic reasoning [Chan-
drasekaran ] is a cognitive model that views a “cognitive state” as an
integrated and interlinked collection of “images” in various modalities: the
perceptual ones, and the kinaesthetic and conceptual modalities. Thinking,
problem solving, reasoning, etc. are viewed as sequences of such states,
where there is no intrinsically preferred mode. So perception and imagination
are deeply related processes that make use of internal representations called
mental images.
Mental images can be aggregated to form more complex patterns and/or ab-
stracted to produce their logical interpretation. Mental images can also be reflected
on external media (e.g. sketches on paper) and reinterpreted. Mental models are
representation frames that aggregate sets of logical structures and the related
cognitive models
design models
mental images
precedent based
design

57   
mental images and characterize significant portions of the reality. Figure  shows a
rearrangement of the signs we introduced in the semiotic framework according to a
multimodal perceptual representation.
Fig. : Signs and objects of building design domain arranged according to a multimodal
perceptual representation (p. ).
The teacher’s interpretation of a student’s drawing can, for example, be conceived
according to a multimodal perceptual model as the construction of a mental model
(Fig. ). This process starts from the abstraction of the external stimuli to form men-
tal images. This usually results in a number of competing images. The emergence of
one image over the others is related to the possibility of recalling analogous mental
images from long-term memory. The recalled image brings into the working memory
the entire set of associated mental models. If the relations in the working memory
are arranged coherently, the mental model is perceived as a representation of the
external stimulus.
In semiotic terms, the mental model, made of signs and of connoted objects,
is the interpretative frame of the perceived object. So, to a certain extent,
a cognitive model can be understood as a procedural model of the semiotic
frame. The interesting factor, in terms of design, is that even the opposite
trail follows the same rules. The proposal that, in this case is through a sketch
of a new solution, passes through the instantiation of a concept at the per-
ceptive mental level (once again through the recollection of other mental ob-
jects) and hence to its representation at the external stimuli level via a sketch.
The question now is how the meaning of design can be coherently communicated,
for instance in design learning. In the next section we briefly summaris a protocol
analysis of a design review session at a university and we address problems and pos-
sible solutions in order to design the scaffolding.
Fig. : A functional schema of a multimodal perceptual model (p. ).
     
Protocol analysis is a data acquisition technique for eliciting highly detailed informa-
tion regarding a particular process and is usually applied at the sub-process level.
This method [Newell , Ericsson and Simon ] is based on the transcription
of the verbal content produced by the designer by applying the “thinking aloud”
method (already part of teacher/student revision) and on the subsequent analysis,
subdividing the cognitive actions into sequences, that generally last a few seconds,
and relating them to a precise semantic area.
Through protocol analysis applied to design revision sessions it is possible
to observe two types of processes:
 the student’s cognitive process, which provides information on how a novice
learns to design;
 the teacher’s cognitive process, which leads to the understanding
of how experts design.
In several protocol analysis experiments conducted so far, the segments relative
design process
protocol analysis
tutorial discourse
 
e

59   
Compared to the teachers, the students, fail to synthetically elaborate the stimulus
offered by the initial elaborates and they fail to read the reference cases according
to these same stimulus. They cannot focalize the problem at the conceptual level.
This results in unclear or incorrect solutions. This lack of clarity at the conceptual
level results in the students not being fully reactive to the teachers’ comments and
to the incomplete understanding of his suggestions. Once again this problem can be
initially traced back to the students’ lack of an adequate knowledge framework that
would allow him to decode the problem in a structured manner. It can also be traced
back to the students’ lack of experience determining the fact that he does not usu-
ally activate via abstraction, association and instantiation processes.
Still considering our example, Fig.  shows a comparison between the process that
the student puts into practise (“observed process”) and the ideal process, which
he should put into practise (“suggested process”). The ideal process can occur only
through the scaffolding of the students’ activity and of the trail he pursued.
Fig. : The figure shows a design problem regarding the formal definition of a building (p. ).
This is an example of the scaffolding protocol in tutorial dialogue. The teacher (who
has addressed the problem at the conceptual level) points out the fact that the stu-
dent’s design is missing coherence (bottom left) and proposes a solution schemata
(top left). However, in this manner, he does not allow the student to follow through
the conceptual level (“observed process”). In order for the ideal process to occur –
the “suggested process” in the student – the teacher should provide him with elicit-
ing questions (top right) to drive solution synthesis and instantiation (bottom right).
    
In order to define the instruments and procedures that are useful as “scaffold-
ing” for the learning of design, two different types of operations are needed:
 accompanying/guiding the student step-by-step in explicating the reason-
ing processes in order to lead him up to the conceptual level;
 help him build the vastest interpretive code possible, that is, help him ac-
quire a vast and flexible knowledge structure, so he will know how to visual-
ize via reference cases.
For carrying out scaffolding we propose the following stages to lead the student
through the process step-by-step:
. Abstraction: the teacher gives feedback on the students’ design project interpret-
ing the students’ design through a set of relevant abstract schemata.
. Internalizing: the teacher asks the students to map the abstract schemata,
requesting them to explicit the correspondences among elements of the schema and
their design instantiation. In this way the students interiorize the teacher’s concep-
tual apparatus.
. Evaluation: the teacher points out strengths and weakness of the students’ design
by criticizing the interpretation schemata. Errors and good solutions are identified at
the abstract level.
. Solution: the teacher asks the students to synthesize a solution schema either by
completely reformulating some of the interpretative schemata or partially correcting
them. This is a complex phase and often requires a recursive activation of the entire
scaffolding procedure
scaffolding tools

64

65:    

Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe (MACE) aims to connect architectural
repositories located all over Europe in order to make their contents more accessible,
enabling communities of architecture and design to use them. The MACE project
is based on successful past projects and databases such as ARIADNE, DYNAMO,
WINDS and ICONDA [Apelt et al. ].
MACE uses open formats and standards for structuring and exchanging metadata
[Stefaner et al. ]. For delivery, information has to be encoded in a schema based
on the LOM standard [IEEE ..], which has been specifically designed for
the domain of architectural education. This schema is called the MACE Application
Profile (MACE-AP). The Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
(OAI-PMH) is then used for collecting metadata from remote repositories.
This paper will show you how to enable your repository for metadata harvesting
using the OAI-PMH protocol by loosely following the instructions laid out at the
OAI website. For repositories with a clear internal metadata structure, the Open
Archives Initiative provides a number of free tools for exploring and harvesting these
metadata. We found, however, that none of these tools could help us enabling the
WINDS and DYNAMO content repository, so we had to come up with and imple-
ment tailored solutions. Using the example of WINDS and DYNAMO, we show how
to integrate these solutions into proprietary systems.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: we start by briefly introducing
WINDS and DYNAMO, which will serve as example repositories in the context of this
paper.
Subsequently, we sketch the Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting adopted by MACE. By way of example, we then zoom in on the specific
challenges this adoption posed in the context of WINDS and DYNAMO, as well as
on possible solutions to address them. The paper closes with lessons learned and
directions for future work.
   
The WINDS project has been a European Commission Fifth Framework-funded R&D
project looking at electronic means of assisting design students. It started in 
and created the pedagogic basis for a virtual online university and a large amount of
digital learning materials [Specht et al. ]. Students can subscribe to the system
and register for online courses about architecture and design. Even though the
research project ended in , the system is still online.

Fig. : WINDS in action (p. ).
During project runtime,  courses with a total of  learning objects and 
content blocks were created. Since it should be possible to reuse contents internally
for other courses or mashups, some efforts were undertaken to enrich these contents
with metadata. The WINDS system (Fig. ) features a rudimentary implementation
of the LOM standard with proprietary extensions developed to project require-
ments. Metadata are managed with an object persistence framework and stored in a
relational database in an optimised way, which makes exploration with standard da-
tabase tools a challenging task [Kravcik et al. ]. Due to this difficulty we added
harvesting at the business logic level, where full metadata records are available as
objects (Fig. ).

Fig. : WINDS technical architecture (schema) and the OAI adaptor (p. ).
 project
learning objects
 

harvesting
 application profile

metadata
   

  
repository
   
 

67:    
The following paragraphs zoom in on aspects in WINDS and DYNAMO that
caused problems when we started using the OAI-PMH protocol and on the solutions
implemented.
No internal validation of metadata records to the LOM standard: the WINDS system
allowed free text entry for some fields, which lead to a number of incorrect entries.
As an example, the field describing the language of the content object contained
the following values “de”, “german”, “German”, “deutsch” and “deu” – all meaning
the same value “German”. Other examples included mandatory fields that had been
left empty or fields containing values that are not allowed at that point. The WINDS
system was quite lenient at that point, the philosophy being to capture as much
metadata as possible even at the risk of having some incorrect values. However, a
better strategy is to enforce validation right from the beginning.
No clear and structured metadata in the database: this was the biggest issue and
the reason for our implementation of the WINDS-OAI adaptor. If one wants to put
OAI on top of a proprietary system, the creation of a mapping layer between existing
structures and OAI is almost inevitable. In WINDS, the information necessary for a
LOM record is stored in parts and different database tables all over the system for
historical reasons. The mapping layer needs to take care of collecting the informa-
tion and creating valid LOM records from it.
What objects should be enriched and in what level of detail: WINDS provides
several levels of granularity: a) whole course; b) a chapter in a course; c) a page in a
chapter; d) a part of a page; e) a single object within a part (image or block of text).
Reusability is usually greatest at the level of a single object (e), but enrichment took
place at page level (c), with parts of metadata records copied down to object level
(e). This can cause confusion for the OAI harvester, because does not know which
record the metadata was really intended for.
DYNAMO versus MACE vocabulary: the major challenge in DYNAMO relates to the
dynamic nature of its classification system. As mentioned before, DYNAMO’s projects
are characterized by a dynamic vocabulary, which is structured using a category hier-
archy, and both the vocabulary value space and the categorization can be modified
and extended by DYNAMO users.
This dynamic vocabulary is used to characterize various aspects of building projects.
DYNAMO offers its vocabulary through various perspectives or windows, each
window being a selection of the categories relevant to that perspective. The identi-
fication window contains static general information to identify each project, other
content and domain metadata are isolated in the design, theory and construction
window.
MACE organizes part of its content and domain metadata through the use of
its own classification vocabulary, which is the subject of constant debate and
re-evaluation. Therefore the MACE vocabulary periodically changes as well.
Here arises the main challenge in connecting DYNAMO’s vocabulary with the MACE
vocabulary: this kind of connection cannot be implemented statically in the OAI-PMH
framework. Each time a DYNAMO user adds a concept with relevancy for MACE, or
the MACE vocabulary is updated, new connections need to be provided through the
code. In addition, the number of vocabulary values, which have to be connected,
largely exceeds the amount of reasonably manageable items to implement.
An ongoing programming effort is not the intention of the MACE project. More-
over, this kind of effort cannot be justified for every repository that has a significant
amount of classification metadata available. Therefore, as far as sharing our clas-
sification metadata with MACE is concerned, we had to adopt a flexible approach
towards implementing OAI-PMH.
he

68  .   
Performance: a major performance problem we encountered in DYNAMO’s adapta-
tion to OAI-PMH is the fact that gathering metadata of each single learning object,
c.q. project, requires a combined query with various joins, resulting in many records
from our original database. In other words, for each LOM-record of a DYNAMO proj-
ect, many records have to be read and interpreted to assemble the result. In some
cases this is even true for individual LOM-fields. We will describe the optimisation of
this further in this paper when discussing performance and batch harvesting.
 -    
Metadata from the repositories connected to MACE are brought to the central
repository using a protocol based on the OAI-PMH standard. Out of the four meta-
data types available in MACE, three are harvested through OAI-PMH: Content and
Domain Metadata, Competence and Process Metadata, and Context Metadata.
However, only Content and Domain Metadata are implemented in WINDS, so only
this type is harvested.
The OAI-PMH protocol is based on standard HTTP. The harvester encodes its har-
vesting parameters in GET or POST requests (HTTP client). Hence, on data provider
side (HTTP server) a web application server can be used to do decoding of requests,
which alleviates most of the basic implementation work for the data provider. Differ-
ent OAI-PMH libraries for various providers’ platforms are available on the Internet.
Because metadata of DYNAMO are acquired through the use of (mysql-) queries we
could easily start here with customizing a standard OAI-PMH Java framework. The
problem we encountered with WINDS however was that it does not use a JEE-com-
pliant web server, but WebObjects, which made using standard implementations
relying on JEE servlet architecture impossible.
Because of that, we developed our own implementation of the OAI-PMH protocol.
Our framework can be used with JEE as well as WebObjects servlets. Addition-
ally, it features a set of OAI exceptions, and seven well-documented and rigid Java
interfaces that allow abstraction from legacy data schemes and guide implementers
in providing all necessary data. This increases comprehensibility of the adapter in
comparison to any of the other implementations we tried, because a deeper under-
standing of the OAI-PMH protocol is no longer needed. The adapter sources also
include an example dummy data provider.
     
To make use of the framework in WINDS, we had to implement these interfaces:
 IdentifyProvider: identifies the repository and gives a base URL for further requests,
specifices the timestamp granularity and the handling of deleted contents;
 ListMetadataFormatsProvider: specifies in which formats the repository will export
its metadata. Since MACE uses the LOM standard, this provider specifies LOM;
 ListIdentifiersProvider and ListRecordsProvider are responsible for creating a list of
all content object identifiers;
 RecordProvider: returns the metadata for a content object requested.
Of the above providers, the ListIdentifiersProvider and the RecordProvider required
the most effort – this is where the mapping from WINDS to OAI actually happens.
The ListIdentifiersProvider needs to return a list of identifiers for all contents that
should be possible to harvest. Since the WINDS system also contains courses not
suited in the context of MACE, contents from these courses need to be filtered out
first. Second, not all contents in a course are worth harvesting, for example simple

71:    

 http://www.mace-project.eu.
 http://www.ariadne-eu.org.
 http://dynamo.asro.kuleuven.be.
 http://winds.fit.fraunhofer.de.
 http://www.irbdirekt.de/iconda.
 http://mace-project.eu/xsd/mace_v.xsd.
 http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html.
 http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/./guidelines-repository.htm.
 http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/tools/tools.php.
 http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html.
 A servlet and a ASP.NET implementation of the OAI-PMH . protocol can be found here:
http://uilib-oai.sourceforge.net.
 http://developer.apple.com/tools/webobjects.
 Our OAI-PMH implementation is available for free download at http://www.mace-project.eu/
images/downloads/windsoai.zip.
 http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/english/page.htmsection.
 http://java.sun.com/jse/../docs/api.

Apelt, S., C. R. Prause, T. Nagel, M. Wolpers, M. Eisenhauer, P. N. J. Delgado, and P. Bellini,
eds. . Enriching E-Learning Contents for Architecture in the MACE Project – Activities
and Outlook. In Proceedings of the Variazioni Workshop Held in Conjunction with the AXMEDIS
Conference , -. Florence: University Press.
Dobratz, S., and B. Matthaei. . Open Archives Activities and Experiences in Europe:
An Overview by the Open Archives Forum. D-Lib Magazine .
Heylighen, A., and H. Neuckermans. . DYNAMO: Dynamic Architectural Memory On-line.
Educational Technology and Society , no. : -.
Heylighen, A., H. Neuckermans, and M. Casaer. ICT revisited – from information
& communication to integrating curricula?. ITcon : -.
Heylighen, A., H. Neuckermans., M. Casaer, and G. Dewulf. . Building Memories.
Building, Research and Information  (January-February): -.
IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata ... .
http://ltsc.ieee.org/news/-LOM.html.
Kravcik, M., M. Specht, R. Oppermann, P. D. Bra, and W. Nejdl. . Evaluation of WINDS
Authoring Environment. In Proceedings of Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems,
-. Springer.
Prause, C.R., S. Ternier, T. de Jong, S. Apelt, M. Scholten, M. Wolpers, M. Eisenhauer, B.
Vandeputte, M. Specht, and E. Duval. . Unifying Learning Object Repositories in MACE.
In Proceedings of the th International Workshop on Learning Object Discovery and Exchange –
LODE (Sissi, Lassithi – Crete Greece,  September, ), eds. Massart, D., J.N. Colin, and F. Van
Assche. . http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-.
Sompel, H. V. D., M. Nelson, C. Lagoze, and S. Warner. . Resource Harvesting within the OAI-
PMH Framework. D-Lib Magazine .
Specht, M., M. Kravcik, R. Klemke, L. Pesin, and R. Hüttenhain. . Adaptive Learning Environ-
ment for Teaching and Learning in WINDS. In Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based
Systems. Proceedings of the th International Conference, AH  (Malaga, Spain, May -,
), Lecture Notes in Computer Science  (), -. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.
Stefaner, M., E. Dalla Vecchia, M. Condotta, M. Wolpers, M. Specht, S. Apelt, and E. Duval. .
MACE – Enriching Architectural Learning Objects for Experience Multiplication. In Proceedins
of the th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, ECTEL (Crete, Greece,
- September, ), Lecture Notes in Computer Science  (), -. Berlin/Heidel-
berg: Springer.

 77 
Fig. : Setup of the installation at the Artiglierie location.
Fig. : Mock-up of the table visualization screen.

78  .   
The complete tracking procedure of the cards on the table surface is realized by us-
ing the reacTIVision framework, which has been released as an open source project
by the Music Technology Group of the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain)
in . Its main use is to provide the core functionality for object based, collabora-
tive audio interfaces. The organic appearance of the barcode allows a very precise
recognition of position and rotation changes in comparison to common one-dimen-
sional barcode or tracking systems.

At the heart of the installation is the table projection, which is an exclusively
developed Processing based Java application. Processing is a simplified program-
ming toolkit that focuses on a sketch-workflow and allows artists and designers to
prototype and to create visual orientated applications in a short amount of time. The
Processing community has contributed software parts that have been implemented
into the system, from managing the communication with the wall projections, to
hardware-accelerated drawing by dint of OpenGL.
The application attached to the tracking framework reacts to user interactions via
the OSC protocol and provides an intuitive way of exploring the projects of the
cards and their metadata related neighbours that are displayed in the visualisation.
User input, like positioning and rotating cards on the surface, is processed and trans-
lated into a visual representation of the links created by the MACE database.
On the backside of each card a “fiducial” mark is printed which reflects an
infrared light and is recognized by a high definition camera inside the table.
Through these marks it is possible to recognize which card is placed on the
table, its position and orientation.
interface
    
These abstract associations are displayed as a bundle of several spline
curves, which pulsate with slow animations and by the use of typographic
elements hint to the content (Fig. ).
Complex card layout situations on the table and the amount of resulting virtual,
descriptive content produce a mesh of intersecting curves. To improve the usability
characteristics of the visualisation, one of the two crossing splines descents into the
background while the other stays at the top.
Each card on the table is surrounded by a particle system represented by a swarm
of graphical elements floating around it. If the distance between two cards is low
enough the particles jump from system A to system B and vi versa. The dynamic
of the aura is related to the intensity that users’ interactions generates. Cards that
haven’t been moved for a while have a much weaker particle system than cards that
are currently in use.

Our goal was not only to provide a unique, playful interactive experience, but also
to broach the role of interaction with networked information in architecture and to
promote a participatory culture of dialogue and knowledge sharing.
interactive data explo
ration and discovery
    
interaction design
    
ce

81 
-
Education:
Teaching Architecture
in the Digital Age
To a larger and larger extent learning objects become available via
electronic means, in regular teaching environments as well as in learning
modes, even and after graduation. Knowledge is often out of date in only
five years and grows so fast that regular teaching in schools cannot cope
with this knowledge boom in a comprehensive way. Therefore academic
teaching evolves into teaching of principles, methods and attitudes, into
a state of mind allowing lifelong learning (). Universities, practices and
industry all produce subjects for . They are disseminated via conferences,
short courses and more and more via e-learning formulas, as has been the
case in a lot of universities for many years.
Today materials for e-learning - called learning objects - are prepared
by specialists, somewhere on earth, disseminated via a means of electronic
communication and shared amongst distant users. E-repositories play a role
of growing importance in this context and this session of the conference
focuses on the role of e-repositories in  in architecture.
This book offers the opportunity to discuss experiences and research
many topics including the following:
› Teaching and learning architecture using e-learning tools
and/or digital resources
› Teaching and learning attitudes triggered by digital environments
› E-repositories for e-learning and life long learning purposes:
how to structure their contents
› Tools for navigating e-repositories
› Tools for e-learning purposes
› User cases within the e-learning architectural environment

87 
 
During the sixth section, students are introduced to the final work of the
course. Each year I try to find a theme capable of gathering the widest in-
terests of the students. It has to be stimulating (or better still exciting for the
students), it has to produce a specific contribution to the cultural debate on
Information Technology for architecture, and it has to present some possible
operative repercussions for the students, for the Faculty and so on.
The theme of  was focused on the creation of a big virtual exhibition on the river
Tiber. The concept came from a visit I had to the Swiss Expo , that was a crucial
point for research in the field of Information Technology applied on architecture (I
am referring especially to Ada Pavillion Blur, designed by Diller & Scofidio). So my
idea was: “Good, since I don’t have a billion Swiss francs as Swiss Expo does, why
can’t we have a similar Expo, but virtually?” The idea was also happily accepted by
my collaborators, who were Francesco De Luca (curator of tutorials) and Italia Rossi
(project manager of the final work in that year). To proceed we needed a site and an
urban plan for the site. At that point it was really difficult to produce significant urban
planning within the course, so I decided to work again on the site that several years
before was studied in detail by Ilaria Benassi for her excellent graduation thesis. We
also had a physical model of the urban site, which was clear and effective in showing
the guidelines of the project.
The site was the Ostiense, a classic post-industrial area in Rome. It was perfectly
suitable for our Expo, because the Ostiense was undergoing a deep transformation
from an industrial setting that characterised the last decades, to a new vital and
mixed-use modern city of information. The site of the project was located along the
Tiber River spanning from the landmark of the Gasometer to the Marconi Bridge.
Ilaria Benassi’s master plan redesigned both banks of the river with some new plat-
forms (each one with its own shape) hosting different functions and activities. Taking
into account this master plan, we defined twenty-five specific areas, with particular
urban designs and vocations. One area was around the Gasometer, another one
connected the two opposite banks of Tiber with a new bridge, and another area was
situated along a part of the riverbank and so on. We also defined some specifications
concerning layouts and volumes, these rules stemmed directly from the master plan.
Each group of students had to negotiate with the brief and identify the area best
suited for their shared project. Then we started the design process.
Here is the description of the project as it appeared in the official document
of the course: “ proposes a large virtual exhibition on the banks of
the Tiber River, in the Ostiense area, between the Gasometer to the north
and Marconi Bridge to the south.
The idea of TEXPO came about as a reply to the Swiss Expo  and it is based on
this assumption: if the Swiss exhibition represented a moment of high acceleration
in these last years in the relation between information and architectural research, is
it possible that also Italy can give a contribution toward this direction? One possible
solution arrives in this work.

89 

Thanks to Texpo, my course was invited to participate in a wonderful exhibi-
tion of architecture held in December . The name of the exhibition was
“Spot on Schools”. From the point of view of the curators it presented the
best practices in the international scenario of digital research in architecture.
On that occasion we set out an important installation to show and made accessible
what we did during the course. My idea was to make a traditional installation, using
only physical supports and avoiding any digital tools, even though the course was on
Information Technology.
I thought this was the best way to let the visitor feel the complexity and richness of
the work.
Here follows the description of the exhibition: “BEYOND MEDIA/OLTRE I MEDIA
 edition, organised by Marco Brizzi and the University of Florence, is hosting for
the very first time a significant exhibition devoted to some of the most distinguished
schools of architecture in the world. The exhibit SPOT ON SCHOOLS – edited by
Paola Giaconia – offers an initial survey of courses that have explored the topic of
communication in architecture and, in particular the influence that the new media
play in this field.
Within this context, course Caad  run by Prof. Antonino Saggio (Faculty of
Architecture “L. Quaroni”, La Sapienza, Rome) presented “Texpo ”, a virtual ex-
hibition on the banks of the Tiber River at Ostiense in Rome. With a detailed master
plan and twenty-five projects/installations that investigate the relations between
digital technologies and architectural projects.
Texpo that was presented at the festival Beyond Media (“Intimacy” was the
main topic and name for that edition) presents a collaborative installation,
just as the course at the university was collaborative.
In the corridor along the small balcony on the first floor at Leopolda Station in Flor-
ence were four big waving panels showing images of the Expo site on the Tiber, sum-
marising purposes and giving web addresses where one could see the projects. In the
middle of the installation, facing a void of three stories, there was a web of coloured
fabric designed by Italia Rossi, with Alessandra Proietti and Claudio Ampolo.
Pinned on the fabric was a set of postcards that depicted the projects and that were
actually sent out by the students. On the front they had an image of one of the 
projects and on the back there were the students and designers’ web addresses.
Besides these, the visitor could also find postcards connected with the experiences
of the students who attended the courses between  and . These postcards
featured digital self-portraits, substances, the word-project, “L” shape houses, semi-
cubes and much more.
From an organisational point of view, the installation had two parts: one being a
specialised task force that conceived and designed the collaborative exhibition, the
other being all the students that were requested to participate by sending through
snail-mail postcards of their projects, and thus taking part and contributing to the
installation.
collaborative work
space


90  .   
 
I have used the  course as an example for this essay. However, we held a
 course following a similar approach as for the methodology, but dealing
with a completely different topic. The topic was “Terragni futuro (Future Ter-
ragni)”, because we wanted to remember Terragni’s centenary and because
we were able to count on the support of the National Committee for the
Celebration, of which I was part.
The course was organised around the same eight cycles of lessons, although in
parallel I gave several long lessons on Terragni’s architecture. Each lesson was
based upon several keywords, which enabled students to look at his oeuvre under a
diagonal and problematic light. Following the titles: .Word, Text, Hypertext, .River,
Stream, Life, .Saints, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, .The motif of the three, .The
history of the loom. An ongoing liberation, .The tower. A masterpiece: the kinder-
garten, .All about Terragni.
Each final assignment investigated Terragni’s architecture, deepening one specific
project by the architect from Como, in a very critical way, while at the same time
transposing the work from the past into the future and affronting the work with the
reality of Information Technology research issues, such as interactivity, morphing,
critical animations, hierarchical structures and databases. What comes from these
studies is a spatial action whose main purpose is to give meaning to the whole op-
eration: today’s young people are able to study architecture by any famous architect,
they can inquire into its historic relevance, and at the same time examine it through
the lenses of the conceptual frame that the new technologies suggest. When this
recipe works, we face a synthesis as simple as it is emotionally and intellectually
unpredictable.
The work with Terragni’s architecture was also showed in Florence in  by
means of an exhibition, which involved all the students. It was described as:
“The exhibition at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence, in part presenting again
and in part reinventing the spaces and contents of the “Terragni Futuro” exhi-
bition, which was held at La Casa dell’Architettura in Rome in order
to celebrate Giuseppe Terragni’s centenary – Meda  – Como .
A large map was hung from the balcony of the first floor of the old railway station of
Florence. The large map summarised the general design of the exhibition, the loca-
tions and the  installations’ websites. The exhibition space was characterised by a
board,  meters high and  meters large, and by a second ambit where the film, that
features students’ assignments and a brief overview on Terragni, was projected on
curtains visible from all over the station.
The exhibition space was characterised by  strips of drawings hung on wires and
several critical models by the students and teaching staff. As visitors made their way
through these drawings and models they were directly plunged into the world of
architecture.

91 
 
The  course was dedicated to the theme “the tool” and was titled “Non
neutral relationships among knowledge, artistic creation and tools”. Students
who proposed the best results took part in the elaboration of proposals and
ideas for the Zeche Zollversein (a large industrial area in Ruhr) in collaboration
with Urban Drift, which is a cultural association with its headquarters in Berlin.
Students’ proposals investigated new ways of using the ex industrial German facility
by means of nine diverse designs for the exhibition spaces devised for the factory
space. Each project searched for the knowledge of a tool rooted in the productive
events of the large factory (a gear wheel, a conveyor belt, a drill, the railway, etc.),
but its history was disarticulated in order to transport visitors from the traces of an
industrial memory to the promises of the information age.
The course was characterised by a series of ten conferences with one musician, one
chemist, two engineers, one designer, two architects, one astronomer, two artists
and one curator of exhibitions who spoke about their experiences starting from the
tool, from slide-rule to notebook, things which define the job of any lecturer.
The  and  courses were organised in parallel with a session of the Athens
International Meeting devoted to the same topic: “Modernity, Crisis, Information
Technology”. These two last courses did not offer any general topic (Texpo, Terragni
Futuro, or the Tool), but students were set free to identify the fields, in design, archi-
tectural and urban design domains, where Information Technology is not a gadget
for affluent peoples’ houses, but a field of actions and technologies capable of
tackling, on the one hand, an objective situation of difficulty and, on the other hand,
a research aimed at the necessity of a new aesthetics.
The title of the course, “Modernity, Crisis, Information Technology”, echoes
the idea according to which modernity transforms the crisis into value, a con-
tradictory moral, and engenders aesthetics of rupture (Zevi, Baudrillard).
During the final conference projects were presented in order to tackle the follow-
ing issues: urban noise by means of protective and spatial systems; the separation
of the two Tiber’s riverbanks with mobile devices filled with useful social events;
the Umberto I Polyclinic’s internal and external connections, which were treated
as a neuronal net that creeps into the hospital fabric; an active strategy for several
socially and ecologically innovative playgrounds; finally, new possibilities for inter-
modal places nowadays debased and poorly designed.
During the final presentations of the  course devoted to the same issue, projects
were presented on the following topics: the abandonment of San Lorenzo’s overpass
and the proposal to modify the nearby buildings into houses for cinema lovers; new
relationships between spaces and activities for the new faculty of via Gianturco; an
interactive and “environmental” game capable of awakening the feeling of social co-
hesion in a reality such as Aprilia. New aesthetics can provide places with “life”, fill-
ing these residual locations with new spaces for living, spaces that are mutable and
not classifiable. One project looks at the areas around Rome’s metro and transforms
them from city wounds into areas capable of enriching urban experiences. Another
assignment deals with the abandonment of small towns. For Cellano a proposal for
arts and shows was chosen in order to bring life to the old place again. Finally, there
is a study on the “Muraglioni” along the Tiber River.

92  .   
The effort of each assignment, in both  and , was to detect an objective
and evident situation of crisis and tackle the situation coupling the right designing
action with an innovative and creative use of Information Technology. A search for
technologies effective for each project that support the design.
 
Obviously it is not easy to comment on this work, above all for the author. Some
consequences should be already evident to the reader, but as a type of summary I
will briefly elaborate a few concepts.
Density and pressure. Electroshock
When I teach it’s fundamental for me to try to create the right intellectual pressure
toward students. Only this charge will autonomously trigger them to challenge
themselves and, finally, to learn.
Thus it is possible to learn because there is a deep need, a real necessity.
Learning how to use the web (or create a D model or use morphing) is not an
exercise, it’s a necessity – and that’s the point! A fundamental base of this pressure
is provided by means of my lessons. There is no technology capable of substituting a
professors’ word or gesture.
Collaboration and flat-fat net
Working in a public fashion (from web pages to Web ., blog and You Tube) is
aimed at creating nets and links among people and at obtaining collaborative work-
ing environments.
The exchanges of complex operations and common actions, as occurs in our exhibi-
tions and presentations, would have otherwise been impossible. At the same time
e-mails trigger a personal and direct relationship between professors and students.
Students are not used to this, but they really appreciate it: “Teacher replies to
e-mails!”
Four Cylinders. An engine in action
A key feature of the work developed during this course is that part of the actual
architectural research is considered in relation with the IT evolution. This happens
at different levels. From those more superficial, which are related to “the vision of
the world”, to those more structural, which are focused on the concepts of “model”,
“mental landscape”, and “reification”. All these issues have been set out in the afore-
mentioned paragraphs.
Hypothesis – Verification
The approach of each student is deductive. Students hypothesize a field of possible
designing actions and verify them by means of a set of information and discussions
with my assistant and me. If their hypothesis is interesting and viable we go on, oth-
erwise we start again. Obviously I continuously propose and suggest creative cues
for the evolution these projects. I play four or five different roles at the same time.
Self-learning and technical lessons
The base of the work of teaching in the field of information technology is founded on
self-learning. This is true in every field, also in theoretical ones, and this is even more
true when you are learning how to use software. Therefore, a really important task
as far as teaching is concerned is to provide the major motivations (pressure has to
push the student to understand the personal necessity of learning) and, in the case
of software, the general settings and main operative keys. This is done within the
teacher
cognitive models
    
education theory


93 
framework given during my lessons and also provided by finalised tutorials that have
been held by my assistant Francesco De Luca for many years. The tutorials have an
instructive, but also psychological purpose, as being part of a group and having a
guide to start a process of learning is really important.
Black holes
Naturally, I talk about a lot of things with my students and I often politely refer to
things as “black holes”. If  years old (and sometimes older) has never heard about
Cezanne (whom I talk about for twenty minutes during one lesson), then it’s a black
hole. You don’t need to tell anyone you don’t know about Cezanne, but my good-
ness, with the Internet it is so easy to inform yourself. The black holes have to be
filled – always!
Publication, advertisement, authorship
One of the leitmotivs of the course is the respect of the sources, at every level.
Sources deserve the same respect and completeness whether information derives
from a colleague or from a super cited expert. On the one hand the respect of the
source is a symptom of professionalism, on the other it’s a solid base on which to
construct future buildings.
Also the ability to talk in public is particularly stimulated during the course and
checked on at least four occasions.
IT Revolution
Obviously, this way of teaching the presence of informatics in the architectural do-
main is like the way the IT Revolution book series (Birkhäuser since , Edilstampa
since ) is outlined. There is a devaluation of the very technological, aimed at
favouring a focus towards moments of conceptualisation and design. This approach
comes from, on the one hand my choice, and on the other hand the situation. In fact,
the University of La Sapienza doesn’t have any well-equipped laboratories as many
other university do.
Since I have taught with this approach also abroad, I can confirm that this way of
considering the subject works very well and is appreciated even in a hyper-techno-
logical context, where the harvesting of ideas, conceptualization, design and further
key aspects, promoted by this didactic, enable a collection of energies and ideas,
which contribute to the development of the students’ and the Schools’ research.

94
› e-learning
› indices
› matrix of terms
› media-database
› orders of columns
› visual browsing
   :a New Didactic Approach
Towards the Orders of Columns
The “Index-Browser” is a digital tool that supports a visual
access to a thematic collection of images in a database.
Its strong didactic potential can be demonstrated for instance
by its practical application in the E-Learning Project “Orders
of Columns”. In this context the Index-Browser helps to gather,
share, order and understand images related to the topic of the
orders of the columns. Supported by a five parted index that
covers five perspectives on a thematic field, the Index-Browser
enables a novel approach to the collection of image material:
Firstly, it makes digitally stored images visible for quick and
direct access. Secondly, it generates unexpected connections
between images with respect to the content through visual
browsing. Thirdly, it offers the procedure of concept formation
in detail, because it creates a comparison between the abstract
meaning of a term and its visual expression.
The Index-Browser is part of the media-database developed
at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). The e-learning
project “Orders of Columns” is located at the University
of Zurich (UZh) in the Institute of Art History.

99  
The role of the Index-Browser in the Column-Project
To precisely explain the title of the paper I’m now going to describe the method of
the application of the Index-Browser in the thematic field of the e-learning project
“Orders of Columns”.
The “Column-Index” and the “Column-Browser” are the core tools in the
phase of gathering, sharing, ordering and understanding the visual collection
on the topic of the orders of columns.
First, we will look at the Browsing-Tool based on the Column-Index; let us call it
“Column-Browser”. Then we will investigate the matrix of terms in this field, in anal-
ogy the “Column-Matrix”.
The Column-Browser
The Column-Browser is the visual expression of the concept introduced at the
beginning of this paper. This browsing tool offers, in relation to the five categories,
five bands of images, which are linked to the topic of columns. The first selection of
images is randomly generated. With the mouse pointer one can scroll these image-
bands to the left and to the right in order to discover more image options. To start
the browsing process the user selects one of the thumbnail images with a mouse-
click. This action activates a new set of images that fills the bands. The selected
image is displayed in each of the five bands at the same position as a reference for
all other images.
Fig. : Column-Browser, starting situation with randomly filled image-bands.
In other words, after the browsing process has started with the first “query by image”
the pictures in each band are sorted according to their contents. For example, with a
mouse-click we can activate the thumbnail of Sebastiano Serlio’s plate from “Regola
generali di architettura” (, book IV) leading to four possibilities of positioning
a column in relation to a wall (freestanding or connected with a wall by different
usages of a pilaster). As Serlio used the Dorica to show its systematic considerations,
in the first line (“Order”) other illustrations of the Dorica are displayed. The examples
are exclusively related to the topic Dorica; ranging from a colored reconstruction of
the entablature of the Parthenon on the acropolis in Athens, to a photo of the palaz-
zo Chiericati by Palladio in Vicenza, also encompassing other renaissance treatises
discussing the construction of the Doric order, so within this band of images one can
also see different formulations of the very old concept of the doric style. The second
band presents examples related to “Epochs of Art History”. As Serlio’s treatise is a
Renaissance book, all the other presented examples of built architecture, theoreti-
cal concepts, paintings or etchings in this line are also considered to belong to this
epoch, so the user can broaden his or her view to find out how the orders of columns
were formulated. In the next category (“Elements”) connections related to details are
displayed. Here, elements like column, half column, pilaster and engaged pier are
shown in a substantial range of pictures. This image band offers a wide selection of
examples when looking for material to compare diffrent possible solutions in these
architectural details. As previously mentioned, the fourth row is labelled “context”.
Because Serlio’s plate belongs to the context of the theory of the architectural orders
the other listed examples are mainly taken out of renaissance treatises. Finally, in the
fifth image band (“Medium”) many other woodcut illustrations are presented, this
browsing


100  .   
fifth category allows an uncomplicated investigation into the illustration facilities
of this technique.This detailed explanation makes the functionality of the Column-
Browser clear.
Fig. : Column-Browser: browsing situation: a reference image and related examples
to the left and to the right.
Based on the aforementioned principles the browsing-tool only reveals
its full potential in the continued process of selecting a reference image with
a mouse-click and the subsequent investigation of the new set of images.
With this function the Column-Browser is conceived for endless browsing
through the compilation of material for the e-learning project. This process
of browsing is certainly not aimless nor finds its conclusion within itself.
For the members of the e-learning project, this creates great stimulus in two
main areas: the content and the workflow.
The content: browsing architecture!
The inspiring combination of thumbnail-images in a line under the headline of one
or more predefined terms has already been emphasized. This generates more than
simply unexpected neighbourhoods of images; it also forces an active examination
of the visual expression of a term. I will call this process “visual concept formation”
and underline it as one of the additional benefits of the Index-Browser.
Visual concept formation is an active confrontation of one term and several dedi-
cated images. In order to precisely represent the term one may need to add or delete
images, or one may prefer to find another term that better represents a particular
compilation of images. This is a highly conceptual procedure that requires deep
knowledge of the topic terminology as well as the visual material.
To aid visual concept formation a tool called “basket” is provided to rearrange and to
re-index images by drag and drop.
The workflow
A second facet of the Index-Browser is its a novel way of handling the content of the
database. First of all there is the visual access to images. While in common databas-
es the user has to start the query by typing specific words in a mask, the activated
query in this database is a directed search where the user already knows what he or
she is looking for. The result of this query is as appropriate and as accurate as the
metadata in the database. In addition to this, the index-browser offers a visual, and
thus more associative and more inspiring access to images. Consequently, the pro-
cess of browsing is an undirected search that makes the content of image collections
visible and supports the user with correlating images. The previously mentioned
basket helps to collect, group and share images.
Fig. : The metadata field opened out of the Index-Browser. Showing on the bottom
of the screen a “basket” to collect and group images by drag and drop.
facet
  