Dissertation thesis deals with the design of street furniture sitting element (bench) merging two views of related disciplines - industrial design and architecture. Creative output solves the problems of the street furniture in urban space. They were initially targeted as a realizable design with production ambitions. The thesis contains several validation steps to confirm the feasibility of the designed solutions. Design of innovative sitting element based on an unconventional form and integration of a supplemental bicycle stand function is the first result. Designed element solves the problem of unwanted street furniture usage in urban space. The author named as "antiergonomic principles" restrictive set of the principles of unwanted usage, which is a specific problem of street furniture used anonymously in the public space. Universally applicable street furniture anchoring element is the second result. It completes a complex approach to the topic. The designed solution, prefabricated element, eliminates the disadvantages of the commonly used methods of anchoring to the pavement or monolithic concrete bases. Prefabricated element is designed as a part of the gravel placed under the pavement.

Living in a small town, Urban architectural study of developing of housing in the city Uhersky Ostroh. Following student's previous school works dealing generally with problematics of development of city Uherský Ostroh, in diploma thesis will be student focused closely and specifically on housing issues. Analyze potencial opportunities of housing development in the city urbaned structures like not used residental and industrial objects or undeveloped plots inside the city, but with potencial to be suitable for housing function with respect to the ideas of compact city, local values and traditions, but also limited developement potential.

Dans le contexte de développement durable et de transition énergétique, le secteur du bâtiment représente en France une véritable mine pour mettre en œuvre les ambitions de maîtrise de la demande en énergie. Réglementations nationales et locales ont été progressivement et substantiellement modifiées, et le processus de conception des bâtiments a dû évoluer pour les respecter. La conception a ainsi été questionnée par d'ambitieuses prescriptions visant la performance énergétique.Nous nous interrogeons sur les réajustements opérés par les concepteurs de bâtiments suite à cette série de prescriptions. Nous montrons que les prescriptions énergétiques des collectivités locales passent en majeure partie par des outils relevant de l'urbanisme opérationnel. De plus, après une période d'apprentissage en raison d'une nouvelle définition de la performance énergétique, le secteur de la conception se caractérise par une certaine stabilité, caractérisée par le retour de routines, la recherche de conventions partagées entre la maîtrise d'ouvrage et la maîtrise d’œuvre et le maintien d'un désintérêt tacite pour la prise en compte des usages. Nous étudions alors comme une innovation (la performance énergétique globale) s'est développée pour être ensuite intégrée au régime de la construction.Nous mobilisons la sociologie pragmatique, et plus particulièrement le courant des économies de la grandeur développé par L. Boltanski et L. Thévenot, ainsi que les travaux du courant conventionnaliste pour analyser trois opérations immobilières en logement collectif, de taille variée mais caractérisées par la recherche de la performance énergétique : la Tour Elithis Danube (Strasbourg, 67), l'éco-quartier des Passerelles (Cran-Gevrier, 74) et Les Jardins de Mûres (Mûres, 74). / In a context of sustainable development and energy transition, the French building sector represents a lever to carry out and achieve energy demand management ambitions. National and local rules regarding construction were progressively and substantially modified, and the building design process had to evolve to abide by these rules. Building design has been called into question by requirements aimed at energy performance.We question the readjustments implemented by building designers to follow these requirements. We show that local authorities mostly use operational urban planning to carry their energy requirements. Besides, after a learning period due to the implementation of a new definition of energy performance, the building sector has known stabilisation, characterized by the return of routines and the seek for shared conventions between the project owner and the project manager team. We study how an innovation (the global energy performance) developped and has been adopted by the socio-technical regime of construction.We mobilize the pragmatic sociology; particularly the French branch of sociological economy developed by L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot, and also researches on conventionalism, in order to study three estate operations. These operations belong to multi-unit housing, are of various sizes and are all characterized by a search of energy performance. They are located in different places: in the city of Strasbourg (Alsace) and in the area of Haute-Savoie.

The diploma thesis deals with sacral architecture in the urban structure of the Prague districts of the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim is to answer the question whether these two centuries prolong the tradition in which the urban structure responded to sanctuaries, which were often the basic starting point for new urban foundations or, on the contrary, only respond to the given urban situation. The main ambition of the work is to create a set of material from Prague urbanism to illustrate the development of relationship between sacral structures and urban space during the 19th and 20th centuries. Based on available sources, documents, catalogs, and maps, the work tries to compare new church builders with a catholic tradition without excluding the issue of minor christian churches and synagogues from the scope of the work. Keywords urbanism, sacral architecture, 19th and 20th century, Prague

The subject of this diploma thesis is the issue of courtyards. Courtyard as a specific place in the city, which has lost its original function. It can serve different types of usage, among other things, it enables meeting of different groups of the city's inhabitants and their interaction nowadays. Unlike the public space, other terms of usage can be seen in the courtyards. Various social relationships can be observed in dependece of its usage. I deal with the process of negotiation of city dweller groups at two selected courtyards, the rules of their functioning and how the role of the decision- makers forms these places. I have deliberately decided to use courtyards with different visitor functions. Conflict between different views on their usage and disagreements can be seen in these courtyards. Key words: courtyard, semi-public space, negotiation proces, urbanism

This study proposes the existence of lieux de mémoire in the photographs of Eugene Atget (1857-1927). My framework is based on historian Pierre Nora's definition: a lieu de mémoire is an object or idea which has become a symbolic stand-in for a community's memorial heritage. I suggest that Atget's photographs of the streets of old Paris, in concert with an empty-street aesthetic function as lieux de mémoire for their primary audience, antiquarians and professional archivists who specialized in old Paris. According to Nora's structure, identification of a lieu de mémoire requires first the establishment of a historical tradition. In the first chapter, I characterize a particular mode of photography, what I term a preservation aesthetic. I examine photographs by Louis J.M. Daguerre, Édouard Baldus, Henri Le Secq, and Charles Marville, all produced between 1839 and 1868. I propose interpretations of and reasons for photographs showing vacant Parisian streets, even after technological advancement allowed for representation by other means. My second chapter is concerned with a disruption of the established tradition, Nora's second requirement for lieu de mémoire. The focus of this chapter is twofold: since I propose that it is the preservation aesthetic partnered with the subject matter of old Paris that forms a lieu de mémoire, considering alterations in both perception of the old city and in photographic practice are necessary. First, I discuss the nostalgic views of old Paris that manifested while Baron Haussmann was remaking Paris between 1853 and 1870. The latter half of the chapter is devoted to the events of 1870-71, the Prussian siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. I argue that barricade photographs from the Commune represent a significant change in photographic practice defined by working-class individuals who made up the Commune. Finally, I examine Atget's practice and work in context of both a medieval historicist revival in the early Third Republic of France and of a popular belief that architecture could be a literal and metaphoric container for nationalist memories. I conclude with a reconsideration of Atget's preservationist and modernist audiences to support my thesis that his photographs are lieux de mémoire.

The dissertation investigates the formative influence of hydrology in shaping the spatiality and socio-economic production processes of the urban environment. It acknowledges the surging pattern of human development, the unprecedented growth of cities and the reality of climate change to propose an intervention which aims to introduce the concept of Regenerative Architecture to a South African context. The intervention manifests as an Integrated Biotectural System for the Production and Reclamation of Water, a new architectural typology which is adapted to suit local conditions and to provide innovative possibilities for socio-economic production. The site of the intervention is located behind the G Berth in the Duncan Dock of the Port of Cape Town, extending up the Heerengracht Axis, the most prominent remnant of the formative influence of hydrology on the City of Cape Town. The intervention proposes to form part of a larger Continuous Productive Urban Landscape defined by water, which connects Robben Island – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – from Duncan Dock, through the Heerengracht, Adderley Street, the Company’s Gardens, Orange Street and De Waal Park through to Table Mountain. The intervention acts as a productive landscape that regenerates the connection between the city, the hidden and inaccessible shorelines and the socio-economic production processes those shorelines inherently represent. It harvests the heritage and cultural resources of a historically productive City of Cape Town to present the socio-economic production possibilities of the future: the generation of water and food and the regeneration of land within the urban environment. Copyright / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / Unrestricted

The founding premise of this paper is simple; that urban density has positive externalities and that these are unaccounted for in the developers’ density choice. This paper looks at the incentive structure of individual developers though a theoretical perspective and shows that the density choice is a suboptimal product of a prisoner’s dilemma game. Two mechanisms are proposed to achieve the optimal level of density. The first is an Inverse Density Tax which fixes the incentive structure at the agent level by internalizing the positive externalities of density. The second is the Supply Buffer which solves the regulation problem. The disconnect between what is good for a city and what policies are actually practiced by planners is addressed by suggesting a new approach to urbanism called the Surplus Cities approach which suggests a more positive approach to urbanism instead of the multitude of normative approaches that encompass the existing urban planning profession. The significance of the model in the paper is that it shows that the optimum density a developer should build is not the commonly accepted quantity where marginal revenue equals marginal cost, but greater due to positive externalities of density. In addition this paper presents the tools to a) achieve the optimal level of density and b) introduce a separation of powers in municipal government between planning the city and controlling real estate supply which restrains the growth of cities; as has been a prominent subject of contemporary urban economics discourse.

Ett staket är en produkt som används för att avgränsa och definiera det offentliga rummet. Staket är en fysisk gräns som i det tysta utför sin uppgift där få reflekterar över dess existens. Staket är viktiga i stadsmiljön och styr undan brukare från områden de inte ska beträda. Det kan vara för att hindra dem från att beträda privat mark eller för att skydda dem från fara. Staket är statiska, både i funktion och formgivning. Med mitt arbete ämnar jag undersöka om det kan ändras. Ambitionen har varit att formge ett staket som utmanar och breddar staketets roll och knyter an till ett samhälleligt behov. Med strategisk urbanism som en inspiration i designprocessen har ett unikt staketssystem formgivet för social interaktion tagits fram. Staketsystemet Hänga är en social gräns formgiven för sociala möten och utökade sittplatser i stadsbilden. / A typical fence is a product used for restricting and defining the public space. It is a physical border that quietly performs it´s task with few reflecting over its existence. Fences are important for the public space as it keeps users away from areas they should not enter. It can be to restrict them from entering private properties or to keep them away from danger. Fences are static, both in function and design. With this work I explore if this can be changed. The ambition has been to design a fence that challenges and broadens the role of a fence and connects it to a societal need.  With strategic urbanism as an inspiration to the design process the end result is a unique fence system designed for human interaction. The fencing system Hänga is a social border designed for social gatherings and added seating to the cityscape.

of Diploma Thesis "Le Corbusier's architectural and urban visions in a semiological perspective The subject of this thesis is a semiological analysis of Le Corbusier's text Towards a New Architecture. It methodologically follows semiological conceptions of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes. The main methodological source is a work of French theoretician of architecture and urbanism François Choay, The Rule and the Model (1997), in which she has stated three paradigms, which according to her, influenced forming of modern urbanism as an autonomous science: genre of architectural treatise, utopia and scientific discourse. For each of these discursive forms she has identified characteristic signs. Le Corbusier is considered as a symbol of modern movement of architecture and urbanism, who broke away from an old tradition and brought to realm of architecture and urbanism a new insight. The fundamental question of this thesis is, whether this innovative approach could be found also in his texts, in the manner how Le Corbusier wrote about architecture and urbanism, or whether Le Corbusier followed an old tradition. This question should be answered in the course of searching for the signs of mentioned paradigms postulated by F. Choay.