Proefschrift--Leyden. / Text in French; preliminary note, "Samenvatting" and "Stellingen" in Dutch. "Bibliographie": p. [109]-121.

This thesis proposes five new dwellings be constructed within Maggia, a medieval village in Italian-speaking Ticino, Switzerland. The modern scheme placed within Maggia's old town outlines an attempt to revitalize the village's life by providing places for individuals, families, groups of families, and the whole village community. The act acknowledges a process of evolution which integrates old and new to continually generate livable places. Building a new element into the fabric of an old village requires an understanding of the existing place and the forces which contributed to its making. An architect designing within such a context should question the physical characteristics of the built environment and also examine natural and historical factors which may have influenced previous building. The historical, natural, and built environment contributes to forming the spirit, or experience, of the place. By attempting to define and name the elements which have created this spirit, the architect may begin to develop a design uniquely specific to its locale which contributes to the built community. A study of Maggia's existing structure reveals a widening gap between the town's old and new architecture. The proposed design attempts to mediate this separation between medieval and modern design. The project acts as a bridge, both physically and metaphorically, between the central town and newer surrounding development. While the project recognizes the medieval village as the essential monument which guides and informs new design, it simultaneously integrates modern concerns which influence the inhabitants' quality of life. / Master of Architecture

This study retraces the steps of the 17th century architect and engineer Salomon de Caus through his written and built works, in an attempt to understand the relationship between what he made and the model by which his world was comprehended. The central questions examined with regard to his works are: what correspondence do they reveal between language as a means of conveying knowledge, the world as the source of knowledge, and God the divine creator; and whether "meaning" resides within or without this relation. The interpretation of De Caus' works reveals an epistemological model of a world balancing on the threshold of the modern era of scientific discovery and technological progress. His texts and constructions appear as a means of conveying knowledge with the aim of making the Divine appear as mystery in the human world. De Caus is known to operate two principal layers of meaning in his works. One "mathematical" which addresses the intrinsic meaning of the order of the cosmos and the Divine; the other "narrative", "melodie" or "ornamental", addressing the mediation of situational meaning through matter. Human experience and action was a third factor in the process of mediation. Through the intense experience of the moment of performance, whether architectural, theatrical or musical, man could embody the immaterial knowledge of God. The human artefact was a "poetic instrument" guiding man through life. Today, when living in a world where the dominating paradigm reduces understanding to symbolic logic and God has long since been declared dead, De Caus' poetic model remains highly significant.

No description available.

A study of Salomon de Caus' manuscript commentary on the first book of Jean Martin's French translation of Vitruvius (c. 1622--1624) which takes the form of a dialogue between an Architect, an Engineer and a Mathematician. The removal of music and natural philosophy from the Vitruvion program of education; the need for the updating of Vitruvius' classical theory of founding cities and building their fortified walls; the emphasis on convenience in the planning of buildings and the separation of engineering and architecture within the Vitruvion corpus all point to a reduction in the role of architecture as cosmic analogy. A comparison with de Caus' treatises on perspective, mechanics, musical harmony, solar clocks and mensuration reveal that for de Caus, it is the engineer whose making can reconcile human and divine through a form of technical know-how that although it cannot be considered true knowledge, reveals the wonder of God to the senses.

No description available.

Recent interest has emerged in microsensor platforms that are capable of supporting reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition operations. These devices typically consist of one or more sensors, signal conditioning and processing subsystems, a radio link and a power source. Sensors employed can range from acoustic, to seismic, to magnetic, to visible/infrared imagers. A notable shortcoming of these systems is the fact that they are battery powered. The use of a finite power source places an upper limit on the lifespan of such a system. Thus, a major thrust in the development and usage of these microsensor platforms lies in the conservation of their limited energy resources. In attempt to reduce power consumption and hence extend the system's lifespan, communication bandwidths are often limited. In order to reduce the required bandwidth, much of the signal processing necessary to achieve a desired functionality must be performed within the microsensor platform itself. This thesis effort provides this crucial bandwidth reduction by implementing in hardware an algorithm developed by the University of Maryland, which limits transmissions to the best view Regions-of-Interest (ROI) data, on the CAuS platform by BAE Systems. The hardware implementation was verified with a Matlab script that compared its results with those of the original algorithm. It was shown that these implementations were consistent for all of the data sets tested. Moreover, a subjective analysis, in which the detected ROIs were visually inspected, was performed to corroborate the former quantitative results. / Master of Science