In parallel with the observed greater frequency of natural disasters worldwide, there has been an ever-increasing interest in urban resilience and its assessment. Experience obtained in recent extreme events (in particular, earthquakes and floods) has revealed that both the level of preparedness and the response of affected cities were insufficiently high, whereas the recovery process was long and expensive. For this reason improved pre-disaster mitigation actions, as well as smart and strategic urban planning in threatened areas (e.g. in earthquake-prone regions), is essential. For this purpose, a comprehensive review of the existing literature has been performed in relation to the holistic assessment of urban system resilience to natural disasters, with an emphasis on the effect of earthquakes. The main goal of the review was to try to determine how to best assess the resilience of urban systems as a whole, taking into account all of their components, i.e. both the physical components (i.e. of buildings, infrastructure, and open spaces) and the social components (i.e. of the community), as well as the dynamic interactions between them. Besides considering the commonly measured indicators (e.g. determination of the scope of actual structural damage caused by an earthquake), the paper tries to extend the discussion to some indicators which are not so commonly taken into account, by applying a quantitative resilience assessment approach. Based on the results of the described...
COBISS.SI-ID: 3615364
Spatial character is an intangible, but significant part of our cultural heritage. The amalgamation of objects, buildings and landscapes, their use and reshaping over the centuries, and unique appearance at specific points in time endow places spatial identity and uniqueness. This paper focuses on vernacular, everyday objects and street furniture. They are often overlooked in our urban spaces and rarely considered of relevance in the debate on cultural heritage. Whilst being increasingly generic and globalised in their design, they also express local character and act as carriers of cultural and spatial identity. Seeing a silhouetted group of such elements might achieve instant recognition of the cities they belong to, such as London and Paris, but also for less renowned cities, such as Ljubljana, Granada and Szczecin. This paper seeks to identify everyday street artefacts, explain their role in spatial character building and, through examples, expose three instances of recognisability where such objects can be considered as carriers of spatial identity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3495300
With the introduction of mechanization in agriculture, the area of terraced slopes has increased. However, in most cases, the planning of terracing in practice remains experience-based, which is no longer effective from an agricultural, geological, and hydrological point of view. The usual method of building terraces, especially terraces with earth risers, is therefore outdated, and a new method must be found for planning and building terraced areas. In addition to geographical information system (GIS) tools, parametric design tools for planning terraced landscapes are now available. Based on the design approaches for a selected plot in the Gorizia Hills in Slovenia, where we used a trial-and-error method, we improved previous results by defining a model using a computer algorithm that generates a terraced landscape on a selected slope depending on various input parameters such as the height of the terrace slope, the inclination of the terrace slope, the width of the terrace platform, and the number of terraces. For the definition of the algorithm we used the visual program tool Grasshopper. By changing the values of the input data parameters, the algorithm was able to present combinatorial simulations through a variety of different solutions with all the corresponding statistics. With such results it is much easier to make a conscious decision on which combination of parameters is optimal to prevent landslides, plan adequate drainage, and control soil movements when building terraces. The controlled slope intervention is further optimized by the introduction of a usage index (Tx), defined as the quotient of the sum of all flat areas (terrace platforms) and the total area of the plot
COBISS.SI-ID: 3873924
The paper discusses the complexity of interpretation of Plečnik's architecture. It adds religious and classical aspects to interpretational starting points so far applied. The first highlights the value framework of Plečnik's architectural creativity, dominated by Surplus, and the second identification of classical architectural language, which effectively enables expression of infinite in finite. The sketched analysis of the architectural expression of the religiosity as anchorage in sacral architecture of Jože Plečnik reveals Christocentricity, rituality and semantic wealth. Classicity in Plečnik's architecture, however, appears most explicitly in its timelessness, monumentality and, wholeness. The horizons of meaning revealed by the anchorage in question are illustrated in a chosen example, funeral complex – the Garden of All Saints in Ljubljana Žale, and invite the reader to take still untrodden paths to Plečnik's architecture.
COBISS.SI-ID: 7999578
For a city to perform successfully, and its citizens to feel safe and comfortable, the health of basic urban components and the overall resilience of the urban system is crucial. As the importance of the resilient urban system has been recognized in the scientific literature, many studies have been done on this topic. Therefore, to find out the gaps in the existing literature and the opportunities for further research, a new systematic literature review has been performed in three stages. Different bibliographic techniques (co-occurrence and co-citation analysis) have been applied and, in the final stage of the analysis, an in-depth study of the content of the selected papers addressing open space in relation to urban seismic resilience has been carried out. The obtained results and trends have shown a lack of research on the potential of open space for enhancing urban seismic resilience, as well as a challenge for its quantitative assessment. The ability of the affected resilient system is to achieve at least a pre-disaster performance level in an acceptable time, which can be gained, among others, by using the restorative potential of open space. Based on the synthesis of these findings the authors’ draft model of an urban system integrating the potential of open space is presented in terms of a complex network theory.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3806596