In architecture, the relationship between form and structure often constitutes a central interpretative node for understanding the meaning of a work. In particular, in Italian Rationalist architecture produced between the two World Wars, this relationship assumes an ideological value of complementarity: form becomes a symbolic expression of power and tradition, supported by a structure –sometimes displayed, sometimes hidden– that acts as a cultural medium in shaping the spaces of propaganda. This interdependent relationship is evident in the narrative-ideological trajectories of exhibition complexes.
A prominent example is the Mostra d’Oltremare complex in Naples, with particular attention to the pavilions of the Geographic Sector –most of which have been lost– where the interaction between structure and form creates a rhetorical device aimed at sustaining an image of order and power. This image refers to the rich repertoire of overseas imitation models and classical references, often not immediately recognizable and interpretable only through a careful reading of the underlying formal codes.
From this perspective, design assumes a hermeneutic function, aimed at rendering intelligible the original configurative matrices.
These are reconstructed through a process of surveying and analyzing historiographical sources and translated into a digital model capable of revealing and reflecting on the relationship between form, constructive logic, spatial organization, and symbolic-functional matrices.
Sketching in 3D space enables expressive reasoning about shape, structure, and spatial relationships, yet generating 3D sketches through natural language remains a major challenge. In this work, we introduce 3DrawAgent, a training-free, language-driven framework for 3D sketch generation that leverages large language models (LLMs) to sequentially draw 3D Bezier curves under geometric feedback. Unlike prior 2D sketch agents, our method introduces a relative experience optimization strategy that adapts the recently proposed Group Reward Policy Optimization (GRPO) paradigm. Instead of relying on explicit ground-truth supervision, we construct pairwise comparisons among generated sketches, with each pair consisting of a relatively better and a worse result based on CLIP-based perceptual rewards and LLM-based fine-grained qualitative assessment. These experiences are then used to iteratively refine the prior knowledge of 3D drawing, enabling black-box reinforcement of the model's 3D awareness. This design allows our model to self-improve its spatial understanding and drawing quality without parameter updates. Experiments show that 3DrawAgent can generate complex and coherent 3D Bezier sketches from diverse textual prompts, exhibit emergent geometric reasoning, and generalize to novel shapes, establishing a new paradigm for advancing the field of training-free 3D sketch intelligence.
We show how the computer algebra system OSCAR can be used to obtain topologically correct or visually pleasing drawings of real plane algebraic curves.
Abstract Early allograft dysfunction (EAD) significantly affects liver transplantation prognosis. This study evaluated the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted methods in accurately diagnosing EAD and identifying its causes. The primary metric for assessing the accuracy was the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated and analyzed to compare the performance of the AI models with each other and with radiologists. EAD classification followed the criteria established by Olthoff et al. A total of 582 liver transplant patients who underwent transplantation between December 2012 and June 2021 were selected. Among these, 117 patients (mean age 33.5 ± 26.5 years, 80 men) were evaluated. The ultrasound parameters, images, and clinical information of patients were extracted from the database to train the AI model. The AUC for the ultrasound-spectrogram fusion network constructed from four ultrasound images and medical data was 0.968 (95%CI: 0.940, 0.991), outperforming radiologists by 30% for all metrics. AI assistance significantly improved diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity (P < 0.050) for both experienced and less-experienced physicians. EAD lacks efficient diagnosis and causation analysis methods. The integration of AI and ultrasound enhances diagnostic accuracy and causation analysis. By modeling only images and data related to blood flow, the AI model effectively analyzed patients with EAD caused by abnormal blood supply. Our model can assist radiologists in reducing judgment discrepancies, potentially benefitting patients with EAD in underdeveloped regions. Furthermore, it enables targeted treatment for those with abnormal blood supply.
Drawing. Design. Illustration, Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
Public spaces include various design elements that shape a city’s identity, such as buildings, urban furniture, and information panels. However, some components of the urban fabric, like manhole covers, are often overlooked. Though typically infrastructural, manhole covers can serve as culturally and aesthetically meaningful design elements that enrich urban identity. To explore this potential, the study employs qualitative research methods, specifically case study and content analysis approaches. It first reviews artistic works, creative applications, and research on manhole cover designs worldwide. It then presents outcomes of an interdisciplinary workshop integrating design students’ skills with their urban environment. The workshop engaged students from Industrial Design, Cartoon and Animation, and Painting departments within the Faculty of Fine Arts. Participants designed manhole covers for Türbeönü, Konya- a historic area undergoing urban transformation. The workshop unfolded in three stages: project introduction, field research, and jury evaluation with an exhibition of student designs. The resulting designs were categorized based on common themes and analyzed through content analysis. Discussions and presentations occurred at The City Workshop, organized by Konya Metropolitan Municipality. The study evaluates the workshop’s process, highlighting its role in raising awareness of urban aesthetics and demonstrating how small-scale design interventions can shape city identity.
Melissa Roemmele, John Joon Young Chung, Taewook Kim
et al.
Generative AI has established the opportunity to readily transform content from one medium to another. This capability is especially powerful for storytelling, where visual illustrations can illuminate a story originally expressed in text. In this paper, we focus on the task of narrative scene illustration, which involves automatically generating an image depicting a scene in a story. Motivated by recent progress on text-to-image models, we consider a pipeline that uses LLMs as an interface for prompting text-to-image models to generate scene illustrations given raw story text. We apply variations of this pipeline to a prominent story corpus in order to synthesize illustrations for scenes in these stories. We conduct a human annotation task to obtain pairwise quality judgments for these illustrations. The outcome of this process is the SceneIllustrations dataset, which we release as a new resource for future work on cross-modal narrative transformation. Through our analysis of this dataset and experiments modeling illustration quality, we demonstrate that LLMs can effectively verbalize scene knowledge implicitly evoked by story text. Moreover, this capability is impactful for generating and evaluating illustrations.
Мета статті – проаналізувати термінологію у різновидах дизайну за допомогою загальних і спеціальних методів дослідження в історичній динаміці відповідно до заявленої теми. Актуальність теми полягає в осмисленні теоретичного стану дизайну для подальшого ефективного розвитку дизайн-освіти на всіх рівнях, а також для підвищення позитивних ціннісних орієнтацій у суспільстві та естетичного рівня дизайн-концепцій. Методологія. Інтегративний характер дизайн-діяльності детермінує мультимодальний підхід як основний і відповідні наукові методи дослідження: системно-структурний, функціональний, соціокультурний, аксіологічний, історико-мистецтвознавчий, синергетичний, семіотичний, праксеологічний, метод теоретичного узагальнення тощо. Результати. Дизайнерський дискурс представлено як тип комунікативної діяльності, що відбувається в культурному світовому просторі, активно формує візуальні смислові конструкції та конкретизує фахову термінологію. Стисло розглянуто етапи розвитку дизайну: допроєктний (канонічний, протодизайн) і власне проєктний. Визначаючи професіоналізм дизайнера з урахуванням вимог сучасного ринку, виокремлено три важливі компоненти: суто фахову (проєктну) підготовку, соціокультурний та маркетинговий складники. Наукова новизна полягає в проведенні компаративного аналізу наявних визначень у галузі дизайну на базі українських і зарубіжних джерел, а також висвітленні загальних перспектив подальшого розвитку напрямів дизайну з урахуванням комп’ютерних технологій, новітніх підходів і матеріалів. Практична значущість. Конкретизація термінології дозволить здобувачам вищої освіти більш чітко та усвідомлено використовувати її під час написання тез студентських конференцій, наукових статей та випускних кваліфікаційних робіт. Як вагомий внесок у теорію дизайну запропоновано ілюстрований онлайн-глосарій як необхідний сучасний лексикографічний ресурс для дизайн-освіти.
This article draws on research produced with DIY bike trail and dirt jump builders to unpack the forms of repair and care that they employ in maintaining their spaces. I begin by describing the mundane practices involved in keeping bike trails running, such as shoveling, watering, and compacting, and conceptualize these activities as repairing the ‘ruins’ of the often squatted spaces that they occupy. Second, I draw from literature in feminist science and technology studies (STS) and commons to argue for a thickening of care, finding that these spaces alert me to the ways that ‘neglect’, and exclusion from participation-in, and research-on, are often a requirement of their subsistence. In conclusion, I find that in these spaces forms of repair and maintenance are multiple and layered―from mundane practices to their forms of governance—and in recent years, have involved practices to ‘repair’ the pervasive and dominating macho, heteronormative cultures of these social worlds.
David Eppstein, Michael T. Goodrich, Abraham M. Illickan
We study algorithms for drawing planar graphs and 1-planar graphs using cubic Bézier curves with bounded curvature. We show that any n-vertex 1-planar graph has a 1-planar RAC drawing using a single cubic Bézier curve per edge, and this drawing can be computed in $O(n)$ time given a combinatorial 1-planar drawing. We also show that any n-vertex planar graph G can be drawn in $O(n)$ time with a single cubic Bézier curve per edge, in an $O(n)\times O(n)$ bounding box, such that the edges have $Θ(1/degree(v))$ angular resolution, for each $v \in G$, and $O(\sqrt{n})$ curvature.
Deep neural networks are widely deployed in many fields. Due to the in-situ computation (known as processing in memory) capacity of the Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) crossbar, ReRAM-based accelerator shows potential in accelerating DNN with low power and high performance. However, despite power advantage, such kind of accelerators suffer from the high power consumption of peripheral circuits, especially Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), which account for over 60 percent of total power consumption. This problem hinders the ReRAM-based accelerator to achieve higher efficiency. Some redundant Analog-to-Digital conversion operations have no contribution to maintaining inference accuracy, and such operations can be eliminated by modifying the ADC searching logic. Based on such observations, we propose an algorithm-hardware co-design method and explore the co-design approach in both hardware design and quantization algorithms. Firstly, we focus on the distribution output along the crossbar's bit-lines and identify the fine-grained redundant ADC sampling bits. % of weight and To further compress ADC bits, we propose a hardware-friendly quantization method and coding scheme, in which different quantization strategy was applied to the partial results in different intervals. To support the two features above, we propose a lightweight architectural design based on SAR-ADC\@. It's worth mentioning that our method is not only more energy efficient but also retains the flexibility of the algorithm. Experiments demonstrate that our method can reduce about $1.6 \sim 2.3 \times$ ADC power reduction.
As fifth-generation (5G) and upcoming sixth-generation (6G) communications exhibit tremendous demands in providing high data throughput with a relatively low latency, millimeter-wave (mmWave) technologies manifest themselves as the key enabling components to achieve the envisioned performance and tasks. In this context, mmWave integrated circuits (IC) have attracted significant research interests over the past few decades, ranging from individual block design to complex system design. However, the highly nonlinear properties and intricate trade-offs involved render the design of analog or RF circuits a complicated process. The rapid evolution of fabrication technology also results in an increasingly long time allocated in the design process due to more stringent requirements. In this thesis, 28-GHz transceiver circuits are first investigated with detailed schematics and associated performance metrics. In this case, two target systems comprising heterogeneous individual blocks are selected and demonstrated on both the transmitter and receiver sides. Subsequently, some conventional and large-scale machine learning (ML) approaches are integrated into the design pipeline of the chosen systems to predict circuit parameters based on desired specifications, thereby circumventing the typical time-consuming iterations found in traditional methods. Finally, some potential research directions are discussed from the perspectives of circuit design and ML algorithms.
Aquest número reuneix articles acadèmics de recerca artística i en disseny així com projectes experimentals que tenen en compte, es deixen travessar per, investiguen o sorgeixen des de cosmologies i ontologies que desborden aquelles en què s'inscriu tradicionalment el pensament acadèmic occidental.
S'inclouen tres articles a la nostra secció d'Articles originals, un a la secció de Projectes i una ressenya de llibre.
Jin Woo Lee, Shanna R. Daly, Varghese Vadakumcherry
et al.
Developing effective design solutions requires successful idea generation, development and selection. Studies have demonstrated that engineering students face challenges in these idea phases and may struggle to implement recommended practices, hindering the potential for an innovative outcome. The first part of the study investigated student practices in idea generation, development and selection through think-aloud experimental sessions and post-session interviews. Data analysis from mechanical engineering students’ sessions, with think-aloud and interview data, revealed that students focused on existing ideas, assumed requirements that constrained their divergence, limited their development of ideas and did not engage much in idea selection. Then, in the second phase of the study, we implemented a learning intervention that leveraged research-based education practices to examine student adoption of recommended practices. After engaging with the learning blocks, students generated unconventional ideas, abstained from requirement assumptions early in ideation, generated a larger quantity of ideas, developed ideas intentionally and used more rigorous idea selection methods. These outcomes demonstrated that a relatively short and targeted intervention can support students in leveraging recommended approaches to idea generation, development and selection.
Gennaro Raimo, Michele Buonanno, Massimiliano Conson
et al.
The events of the past 2 years related to the pandemic have shown that it is increasingly important to find new tools to help mental health experts in diagnosing mood disorders. Leaving aside the longcovid cognitive (e.g., difficulty in concentration) and bodily (e.g., loss of smell) effects, the short-term covid effects on mental health were a significant increase in anxiety and depressive symptoms. The aim of this study is to use a new tool, the online handwriting and drawing analysis, to discriminate between healthy individuals and depressed patients. To this aim, patients with clinical depression (n = 14), individuals with high sub-clinical (diagnosed by a test rather than a doctor) depressive traits (n = 15) and healthy individuals (n = 20) were recruited and asked to perform four online drawing /handwriting tasks using a digitizing tablet and a special writing device. From the raw collected online data, seventeen drawing/writing features (categorized into five categories) were extracted, and compared among the three groups of the involved participants, through ANOVA repeated measures analyses. Results shows that Time features are more effective in discriminating between healthy and participants with sub-clinical depressive characteristics. On the other hand, Ductus and Pressure features are more effective in discriminating between clinical depressed and healthy participants.
Presentamos el primer monográfico dedicado al arte de calle, producido, curado y gestionado desde los espacios urbanos. Se trata, sin lugar a dudas, de un hito, en el sentido de generar un fructífero diálogo entre la urbe y la academia. Con diversas temáticas enhebradas en torno a este particular objeto de estudio, ofrecemos este interesantísimo monográfico dedicado íntegramente a complejizar la calle y a su producción creativa. Pensar, marcar, rayar y correr es un espacio para la reflexión local e internacional, que presenta una serie de seis artículos académico provenientes de México, España y Ecuador. Estos trabajos de escritura reflejan las actuales preocupaciones sobre el arte de calle, y su relación con el espacio museo, con el activismo, con los procesos pedagógicos y, asimismo, con la necesidad de un trabajo de campo riguroso que encuentre metodologías y sistematizaciones claras. Ensayos, crónicas y testimonios para pensar, rayar, marcar y correr. Las reflexiones multidimensionales sobre el arte de calle, que el lector podrá disfrutar a continuación, constituye una publicación única, y una parada obligada para quienes han encontrado en el asfalto su lugar de enunciación. Siempre efímeros, nunca sin memoria.
Drawing. Design. Illustration, Communication. Mass media
December of 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of Naoko Takeuchi’s Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon) manga (1991-1997), and March of 2022 will mark the 30th anniversary of Toei Animation’s Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon anime (1992-1997). The series follows Sailor Moon as she defends Tokyo and the galaxy against alien enemies. While there seems to be controversy over whether Sailor Moon can be read as a feminist text, Sailor Moon still maintains its status as a feminist and queer magical girl series. Although there has been some scholarship on the magical girl genre and gender roles in manga and anime, there has not been much written about Sailor Moon specifically. As an influential series that is still relevant in pop culture, further analysis of this text is necessary to identify its feminist and queer nature. Despite being three decades old, Sailor Moon still maintains its status as a feminist and queer magical girl series. My argument is that on the surface, the Sailor Moon franchise appears to be a heteronormative and an (arguably) antifeminist series with traditional heterosexual relationships and gender stereotypes, but upon closer examination, the manga and anime series subvert patriarchal and gender stereotypes in both obvious and discrete ways.
Language and Literature, Drawing. Design. Illustration
Ana sem título é um documentário híbrido que investiga a trajetória da protagonista, uma jovem artista negra brasileira, por alguns países da América Latina (Cuba, México, Chile e Argentina) nas duras décadas de sessenta e setenta. Com uma equipe de filmagem, a diretora Lucia Murat questiona o estado da arte da época, começando com um painel de mulheres empenhadas em expressar seu novo papel no mundo.
Drawing. Design. Illustration, Communication. Mass media
Michael A. Bekos, Martin Gronemann, Fabrizio Montecchiani
et al.
We continue the study of the area requirement of convex straight-line grid drawings of 3-connected plane graphs, which has been intensively investigated in the last decades. Motivated by applications, such as graph editors, we additionally require the obtained drawings to have bounded edge-vertex resolution, that is, the closest distance between a vertex and any non-incident edge is lower bounded by a constant that does not depend on the size of the graph. We present a drawing algorithm that takes as input a 3-connected plane graph with n vertices and f internal faces and computes a convex straight-line drawing with edge-vertex resolution at least 1/2 on an integer grid of size (n-2+a)x(n-2+a), where a=min{n-3,f}. Our result improves the previously best-known area bound of (3n-7)x(3n-7)/2 by Chrobak, Goodrich and Tamassia.