Silvio Carta

Silvio Carta
University of Hertfordshire | UH · School of Creative Arts

PhD

About

45
Publications
6,280
Reads
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129
Citations

Publications

Publications (45)
Article
Full-text available
We present a novel workflow where non-rectangular floor plans (NRFPs), namely plans with at least one concave corner, are self-generated using a model that directly encodes key optimisation factors on spatial quality and energy consumption, with non-rectangular building envelopes. The modelling considers a number of key factors including architectu...
Preprint
Full-text available
The use of assistive robots in domestic environments can raise significant ethical concerns, from the risk of individual ethical harm to wider societal ethical impacts including culture flattening and compromise of human dignity. It is therefore essential to ensure that technological development of these robots is informed by robust and inclusive t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The use of assistive robots in domestic environments can raise significant ethical concerns, from the risk of individual ethical harm to wider societal ethical impacts including culture flattening and compromise of human dignity. It is therefore essential to ensure that technological development of these robots is informed by robust and inclusive t...
Article
Full-text available
INTRODUCTION This paper discusses several key findings that speak to the conference theme of Community, Heritage and Identity: Intangible Cultural Heritage and the forces of Globalization. The effects of globalization is data-driven but data has another dimension shaped by dynamic form. 1 that mysterious quality in the built environment that now ap...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents findings on the use of computational design techniques to analyse and develop a building environment based on a set of defined design principles. In this study, we explored and established the design principles of a building environment for female victims of sex trafficking that contribute to the overall recovery and reintegrati...
Chapter
Full-text available
In order for society to fully realise the potential benefits offered by assistive robots, a number of ethical challenges must firstly be addressed. Crucially, it is important to enhance public understanding of the ways in which societal ethics can be used to formulate and guide the preferred behaviours of these robots, particularly in scenarios whi...
Chapter
This study tackles one important but frequently ignored aspect of the housing crisis in the UK. We propose a computational method to encode the socio-cultural values and aspirations of residents in future housing developments. In this work, we address the question: how resident aspirations, values and living qualities of local communities can be en...
Article
We present initial findings of our project RECOMM: an analytical tool that evaluates the resilience of urban areas. The tool utilises Deep Neural Networks to identify characteristics of resilience and assigns a resilience score to different urban areas based on the proximity to certain features such as green spaces, buildings, natural elements and...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Large-scale Text-to-image Generative Models (LTGMs) are a cutting-edge class of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms specifically designed to generate images from natural language descriptions (prompts). These models have demonstrated impressive capabilities in creating high-quality images from a wide range of inputs, making them powerful tools...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Public-facing autonomous systems present society with significant ethical challenges, not least of which is the need for stakeholder understanding and discussion of how these systems balance competing ethical principles. In this paper we present EETAS: a structured, gamified process for obtaining stakeholder input into the ethical balances and trad...
Chapter
In this chapter, the authors explore an optimisation approach applied to spatial layouts in care home building design. They introduce a method for increasing the floor plan efficiency using a self‐organising genetic algorithm (GA). In order to find an optimal spatial configuration, the authors elaborate and test a number of design criteria based on...
Book
The idea of luxury has secured a place in contemporary western culture, and the term is now part of common parlance in both established and emerging economies. This book explores the many issues and debates surrounding the idea of luxury. This new research addresses contentious issues surrounding perceptions of luxury, its relationship to contemp...
Chapter
This research paper presents Turing: an innovative tool that approaches mass-housing design and demonstrates how cloud computing and generative design can be conjointly used via an accessible web-based application to achieve a high level of user input and co-design integration. The technologies implemented are a Grasshopper cloud application with R...
Article
Full-text available
Numerous local authorities are committed to constructing buildings to net-zero carbon emissions performance, and have declared carbon emergency, striving to reach carbon neutrality well before 2050. However, buildings in the UK are currently being designed and constructed to current building regulations which do not require net-zero performance, an...
Article
Full-text available
This study presents a novel workflow to define how resilient communities can be analysed and improved through the optimisation of sustainable design principles through quantitative methods. Our model analyses successful sustainable communities extracting information about daily routines (commuting, working, use of buildings etc.). From these routin...
Article
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Article
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This article introduces BioZero, a nature-inspired near-zero building proposed for Quay St, Brooklyn, New York. The building is designed for the maximum use of daylight and natural ventilation. This is the result of its shallow plan depth and the inner light wells/ventilation stacks, which also serve the inner circulation space. The light wells/ven...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents a theoretical framework that helps identify visual sustainability in urban projects and evaluates its relevance for the use, design and making of public space. It is aimed at showing how the process of urban regeneration is far more nuanced and sophisticated than much of today’s building industry allows for. The first part of th...
Article
The use of computers in design is substantially different today from what it was only 30 years ago, and light-years ahead of how things were designed before computers entered the scene 60 years ago. This article discusses the use of computers, more specifically computational design, as a useful tool for designers. Herein, computational design refer...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents and discusses an optimisation approach applied to spatial layouts in care home building design. With this study, we introduce a method for increasing the floor plan efficiency using a self-organising genetic algorithm, thus reducing energy consumption, improving the wellbeing of residents and having an implicit impact on the cos...
Preprint
Full-text available
Visual meaning plays such an important role in our daily lives that as an epistemological concept, visual sustainability is curiously absent from pedagogical and modern-day sustainability. Methods: A theoretical framework firstly unpacks how and why we 'latch on' to visual elements. Secondly, the construct of a high street is used to help understan...
Article
This article focuses on the notion of space of luxury. It explores the passage of time; in how showrooms and flagship stores, embedded in the tradition of symbolism and paradigms of symbolic elements, intersect with cutting-edge digital technologies. Also analysed is the resulting customer experience, evident at this meeting between old and new tec...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In opposition to the perception that smart cities are synonymous with computer generated standardisation, where people are considered a generic sampled category, this study claims that extensive use of smart and sensing technologies in the urban environment will result in an elevated future role for the individual over the public. The assumption th...
Article
This article explores the study trip as an interconnected activity of work and play, constituting an extended means of teaching design studio in spatial design related disciplines. This study analyses the case of a cohort of about 200 students involved in a joint project in three cities, Athens, Tokyo and London, where groups were challenged with a...
Article
This article discusses how ubiquitous computing, big data and the Internet of Things are changing the form of personal space. The study presented is substantiated by a series of tests conducted in the public space of the Plaza de Los Palos Grandes in Caracas. This square consists of a public library, a square and annexed services. The aim of this w...
Article
Although in several forms and in different terms, the notion of generosity in architecture has recently received increased attention in contemporary debates, definitions of generosity and its cognates remain sparse and perfunctory, and their connotations generally unclear and in most cases subjective, hinged in the emotional sphere and thus resista...
Article
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The discussion about the legitimacy of architecture being an autonomous discipline or a part of an interrelated system of areas of knowledge has been extensively discussed during the Postmodern period as a tendency of searching for meaning outside of the conventional disciplinary boundaries (Hillier & Leaman 1976; Lefaivre & Tzonis 1984; Hays 1998;...
Article
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Background In recent years, Dutch architect Maurice Nio has built an array of projects in the Netherlands, which have generally been considered within the spectrum of the Superdutch phenomenon, and more broadly, within Iconic Architecture. Seemingly, to his Dutch colleagues, Nio's work is on the track of liberating architecture from the burden of c...
Article
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This article offers a retrospective of the Shanghai World Expo 2010, placing it within an historical framework and hence comparing it to the other major World Expos from 1851 on. The study analyzes various national contributions through an architectural lens with regard to their relationship with the Chinese mega-event and finds that the single ima...

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