In this work agricultural workwear garments will be deconstructed with the goal of challenging agricultural workwear expression and creating clothes that can be worn in multiple ways allowing for wider expression and ways of wearing in a smaller set of clothes. By opening up clothes from a farmer’s wardrobe to new ways of wearing and new garment types, placing them in new contexts, stereotypes and preconceived notions of farmers and rural culture will be challenged. The method used to deconstruct the garments will be based on working with ready made clothes and replicas and cutting them up, displacing the garments parts by allowing the wearer to enter the garment in new ways through alternative openings inspired by the unconventional zipper openings found on many vintage space- suits. Then making necessary adjustments to the construction to best allow the garment to allow for multiple ways of wearing. Colors and textures will be challenged as-well drawing inspiration from space suits and space travel. The relevance of the work is both personal and emotive through its reference points in agricultural workwear and space travel. Traditional shapes found in workwear will be challenged, trying to find new shape and silhouette with the application of deconstructionist methodology from Martin Margiela. The work also holds relevance from a sustainable perspective by prolonging the lifecycle of garments and discourage overconsumption with garments that fill up a wider purpose that otherwise would be served by multiple garments.

Yes / Steel is a highly versatile and 100% recyclable material but is also carbon and energy intensive in production. Steel framed structures are inherently adaptable and potentially demountable. Reuse instead of the common practice of recycling steel by melting, makes good environmental sense, saving both on resources and carbon emissions. Reuse is commercially and technically viable, as demonstrated by isolated projects. Although steel reuse has been identified as an effective method to reduce the carbon and energy impact of construction, it is in effect only marginally used in practice. We found that although there is a sufficient spread between the price of steel scrap and new steel, this difference cannot be captured by the demolition contractors. In steel multi-storey high-rise building structures, composite construction is the most efficient and economic forms of construction. Composite beams incorporate composite floors with profiled steel sheeting are the most common structural system used in multi-storey high-rise buildings and is seen as one of the most important ways of expanding the use of steel buildings in Europe, i.e. increasing market share. However, in terms of reuse, current composite construction systems require extensive cutting on-site during the demolition process making reuse not viable. This paper presents an innovative composite system that is designed for deconstruction and reuse, its structural behaviour and failure modes were observed and analysed through a series of experimental studies and numerical simulation. The results showed that the structural behaviour of this new form of composite system not only allows for deconstruction and reuse, it has a similar structural performance to the traditional composite system with welded shear connectors.

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This dissertation answers three questions relating to Jacques Derrida’s writings: why is Derrida concerned with human/animal difference? How should his deconstruction of this distinction be understood in the context of his broader philosophical project? Finally, do the answers to these questions complicate the belief that Derrida’s thought promotes a post-human ethics? Whereas Derrida’s sensitivity to the suffering of non-human creatures partially explains his interest in “the animal,” there are complex reasons for why he frequently returns to interrogate this theme–reasons that can only be understood by first clarifying core features of his philosophy. I maintain that what obsesses Derrida in virtually all of his writings is how a longstanding, “metaphysical” view of human consciousness proves deconstructable. Following Derrida, I term this view “living presence”–the belief that experience happens presently to beings who are present to themselves. In undermining this view, Derrida reimagines experience as what I term “survival,” where the very things traditionally thought to be foreign to human subjective life are required for experience to carry on happening. Importantly, the fact that philosophers repeatedly describe human consciousness in terms of presence is not simply an error. It is rather an effort to preserve the living present against the threat that everything opposed to presence plays in its very possibility. This explains why human/animal difference is so strenuously affirmed throughout the history of Western thought on Derrida’s view. Animals are not simply inferior kinds of beings compared to humans; there is rather thought to be an essential difference between the two. Whereas humans encounter themselves and their world presently, animal are utterly instinctual, reactional, and non-present to themselves. However, by deconstructing the human/animal distinction, Derrida reveals that those features traditionally associated with animals are necessary for any life, human or otherwise, to exist. For this reason, “the animal” is a “pharmakon”: it both sustains and upsets a long-held understanding of what we uniquely are. In my final analysis, I examine whether my reading of Derrida’s thought is compatible with a non-human ethics. I do so in two steps: first, I examine a prominent reading of Derrida’s thought that contends that it is. For a large number of thinkers in “animal studies,” Derrida’s thought is aligned with the philosophy Emmanuel Levinas in important respects: whereas Derrida rejects Levinas’ anthropocentrism, he retains the core of Levinas’ ethics. However, I argue that the conditions that Derrida believes make life possible undermine this reading of his work. In the end, I argue that if deconstruction is an ethics, it is so only because it promotes “life” understood in the sense developed in this dissertation. Yet we must be mindful of what deconstruction does not provide in the way of an ethics: on the one hand, any standard of ethical belief is deconstructible. On the other hand, deconstruction does not necessarily promote a more inclusive and compassionate future. Whereas it can do so, it might also inaugurate a future that is less inclusive and more savage. This is, I argue, precisely what cannot be known. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study uses autobiographical reflection to investigate the negative impact of essentialist masculine gender socialization on men's lives. In particular, I use personal recollective accounts both from my early childhood socialization-in the traditional Greek-Cypriot culture of the 1970s and 80s-and from my own introspections and analytical conceptualizations concerning intimate relationships in general. I analyze these accounts by using a feminist postmodern ideology of gender deconstruction and reconstruction. Men oftentimes fall victims of patriarchal masculine scripting by suppressing their needs for intimacy, connectedness, and self-disclosure, qualities traditionally devalued as feminine traits. Suppressing such needs exacerbates inadequacies in male intimacy with possible manifestations in the form of generalized non-clinical male sexual anxiety. Implications are also discussed in terms of the by-products of male sexual anxiety, such as non-clinical sexual addiction and male victimization. / Ph. D.

The amount of CCA treated wood being removed from spent residential decks is increasing at a tremendous rate. While most spent CCA treated wood is being disposed in landfills, further useful and environmentally beneficial alternatives have to be met. This research estimated the percentage of recoverable lumber from spent CCA decks that can be recycled into other usable products. Six residential decks were removed from service, by either demolition or deconstruction procedures. It was found that 86% of the CCA treated wood from the residential decks could be recovered as reusable CCA treated lumber. It was also found that deconstruction of a residential deck, rather than demolition, was not a factor in the volume of CCA treated wood recovered. Chemical and mechanical properties of the removed CCA treated wood were also analyzed. The chemical retention of the deck material proved that most of the spent CCA treated wood could be used in above ground applications. The stiffness of spent CCA treated wood from residential decks was approximately equal to that of recently treated CCA wood. The strength properties were slightly lower than recently treated CCA wood probably due mainly to physical and climatic degradation. Products were then produced that could be successfully utilized by recycling centers or community and government organizations. Products manufactured included, pallets, picnic tables, outdoor furniture, residential decks, and landscaping components. Waste management, recycling, and government organizations were interviewed to determine what markets and barriers exist for recycled CCA treated products. Most landfill and recycling facilities do not currently sort or recycle CCA treated wood, citing the main reason as a lack of a viable market. Potential users were interested in the material but citied they did not know where to locate the material. A communication barrier exists between the waste management industry, recyclers, and users; which is preventing the successful recycling of CCA treated wood from spent residential decks. / Master of Science

Yes / This paper presents an experimental investigation of a new dry connection for reinforced concrete slab elements. Seven full-scale slabs were tested; one slab was monolithic as control specimens, while the other six were assembled using top and bottom steel plates joined by high tensile steel bolts. Two scenarios were proposed for the connection, a simple bolted connection, and a connection with a shear key. The parameters studied were the use of stirrups at the connection section, the step size of the shear key as well as the bolt diameter and number. The test results showed that using a shear key at the assembled section in demountable slabs is more efficient than the simple bolted connection, providing higher flexural stiffness, load capacity, and less deflection. However, increasing the shear key step size improved the flexural performance of the demountable slabs. In addition, adding stirrups to the assembled section enhanced the flexural stiffness and the total load capacity of the demountable slabs. Furthermore, the predictions for the moment capacity and deflection demountable slabs have reasonably good agreement with the experimental results but require additional calibrated data from experiments to be generalized. / Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

This work aims to upcycle old jeans by enhancing both the surface and material as well as generating alternative forms. The work further investigates circumstances, such as gender stereotypes and one garment’s “single” usage. — At its foundation, It initiates by investigating jeans.

A travers l’analyse de huit pièces de théâtre se déroulant dans des no man’s lands urbains et que nous réunissons sous ce que Jean-Pierre Sarrazac appelle « la dramaturgie du no man’s land », nous tentons de montrer comment le drame moderne et contemporain continue à se réinventer par l’adoption d’autres modèles dramaturgiques. Notre recherche s’applique surtout à l’un de ses modèles, celui de la performance. Comme le dit Jacques Derrida à propos de la déconstruction, pour les auteurs de ces pièces, il s’agit aussi par la représentation du no man’s land urbain de «penser à partir de ce passage, à la limite, à un ailleurs-ici »1. Ce non-lieu hétérotopique leur permet à la fois de penser la violence du monde tout en continuant à expérimenter de nouvelles formes du drame.En se situant sur cette ligne, sur cette frontière, « dans un ailleurs de certitudes »2, ces auteurs donnent cours à un drame qui, succédant à la catastrophe de la deuxième guerre mondiale, à la chute des utopies de gauche et à l’accroissement affolé du capital, ne cherche pas à donner de réponses à la manière du théâtre brechtien, mais à soulever des questions. Par cette déconstruction et par l’adoption des éléments performatifs dans le traitement du temps, de l’espace et de la présence de l’auteur et du personnage, ces auteurs, Harold Pinter, Botho Strauss, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Edward Bond, Rodrigo Garcia, Tim Etchells, Victor Viviescas et Carolina Vivas, mettent le spectateur en relation directe avec la scène de cette cruauté annoncée par Artaud qui ne se limite pas à une imitation mais est aussi une expérience au présent : celle du vide. / By analyzing eight plays taking place in urban no-man’s-lands, which we have grouped under the heading of what Jean-Pierre Sarrazac calls “no-man’s-land dramaturgy,” we attempt to show how modern and contemporary drama continues to reinvent itself through the adoption of other dramaturgic models. Our research is applied especially to one of these models – performance art. As Jacques Derrida says in regards to deconstruction, the authors of these plays, too, «think about this passage onward, about a limit, about an elsewhere-here-and-now»3 by the representation of an urban no-man’s-land. This heterotopian non-place allows them to reflect on the violence of the world even as they experiment with new forms of drama.By going out on that edge, that border, out to «an elsewhere of certitudes»4 these authors set in motion a drama which, coming as it does after the catastrophe of the second world war, after the fall of leftist utopias, on the heels of madly spiraling capital, seeks to pose questions rather than provide answers in a Brechtian sense. Through this deconstruction and by the now adoption of performative elements in the treatment of time, space and presence of the author and of the character, authors Harold Pinter, Botho Strauss, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Edward Bond, Rodrigo Garcia, Tim Etchells, Victor Viviescas and Carolina Vivas put the audience directly in touch with the cruelty foretold by Artaud, which isn’t limited to imitation but is also an experience of the present – that of the void.