The growing use of resilience as a goal of architectural practice presents a new challenge in architects’ responsibility for health, safety, welfare and poetic expression of human-building interaction. With roots in disaster response, resilience in the building industry emphasizes the preservation and rapid restoration of the physical environment’s normal function in the face of shocks and disturbances of limited duration. The focus on maintaining function, and/or rapidly returning to the status quo ante necessarily affords a narrow understanding of architecture and a limited view of the concept of resilience. While useful at certain scales of time and inquiry, this so-called engineering resilience approach is only one among many within the broad discourse across diverse disciplines such as psychology, economics, and ecology.  Drawing on the academic and professional literature of resilience outside the discipline, this paper explores the multiple competing frameworks represented; considers their influences and implications for architecture and the built environment at multiple scales; and examines the overlaps with existing discourse on change, architecture and time. The analysis of alternative concepts enables a critical perspective to move beyond the circumscribed, functionalist approach afforded by engineering resilience currently guiding architecture practice, towards a framework of social- ecological resilience that can fully embrace the richness of architecture, and results in a necessary and clear theoretical basis for the resilience of architecture over time in a climate of increasing uncertainty.

When computer simulations were performed in the grand canonical ensemble, adsorption isotherms for benzene, toluene, and p-xylene in Heulandite zeolite were constructed. Nitrogen adsorption was simulated to test a feasible computational strategy. Simulations were performed at three temperatures (200, 298, and 473 K), at pressures ranging from 0 to 200 kPa, and at water contents ranging from 0% to 4%. It was found that the adsorption of the organic species was not significantly affected by increasing the pressure over 10 kPa. Also, increasing the water content of the zeolite reduced the adsorption of these aromatics significantly. On the other hand, as the temperature was increased the amount of adsorbed material was only slightly affected. To access adsorption selectivity information, various mixtures of the aromatics were studied. Results from the simulations show that adsorption of benzene was higher than that of toluene, and toluene adsorption was higher than that of p-xylene. A relation between the electronic environment of the molecular species and the amount of adsorbed material was established. The results obtained are compared with experimental data available on other synthetic and natural zeolites.

Architecture constantly negotiates the ideal and the real. These two conditions, being a reflection of cultural values and practices, change over time. I suggest that what remains constant to architecture are the lasting spatial and formal qualities that engage in constructing the physical and cultural landscape: how it channels natural light and air, how its permanent structures organize space, frame and supports life, shelter, protect and comfort. There are the qualities that make architecture endure and adapt to a changing cultural and natural environment. The placement of architecture in the real world often seems contaminated by a multiplicity of socioeconomic structures and processes, but its situation in the world is also what provides an opportunity to engage in the making of a landscape where over time architecture finds a critical autonomy and relevance. The role of architecture in making or responding to the landscape is one of the critical questions in current debates about autonomy and contingency. In this paper, I expand on the work I presented at the ACSA conference at Syracuse University in the Fall of 2015, where I explored how the discipline of architecture has absorbed the landscape as a conceptual space, to "theorize critical means of engagement with the formal, spatial and performance qualities of its territory, to define critical contingencies that are meaningful through space and time, and to refuse those that can keep it tied to the trivialities of a temporary situation." More specifically, my work examines how the notion of the ecological permeates the architecture discipline from the field of landscape, providing a framework for architectural discourse to theorize the relationship of the idealized and the real, to create new singular form within a situation of multiplicity.

Resilience in architectural research, discourse, and practice tends to focus on physical aspects of the built environment. Much of the discussion within this technological domain of resilience resolves around singular, unique, and high value facilities: ignoring the vast fabric of buildings where most people live. However, studies in socioecological resilience suggests that resilience in the built environment must address people and systems, not merely property. Transitioning to this focus will both require and result in broadening architecture’s interest and influence beyond the normal physical boundaries of the built environment. To effectively engage this broader scope, new tools must enable new modes of public outreach, information sharing, data analysis, decision support, and ultimately create new knowledge. This paper describes the motivation, development, and preliminary findings of one such tool, the Resilient Home Online Design Aide (RHOnDA). This results suggest a cycle of participatory architectural research to advance socioecological resilience.

This Forum piece describes a collaborative project between engineering and architecture to visualize some of the most influential results from industrial ecology using human-scale, photorealistic images that are quantitatively accurate. Our goal was to apply visualization theories and practices from art and architecture to address a major communication problem in our field: though inspirational in concept, in practice much industrial ecology research is difficult to comprehend for the average person. Models are large and complex, metrics are esoteric, and results are often reported on a scale that is devoid of personal meaning. Our strategy was to place hidden flows and embodied emissions in plain sight, creating images that show the environmental implications of consumption as absurd insertions into scenes of daily life, at a scale that is relatable and personally meaningful. We also compare with and discuss other artistic efforts around the world in the oeuvre of "Consumption Art," providing historical context. Industrial ecology envisions a world where production systems can incorporate social and environmental implications in real-time, where policy is informed by our best understanding of trade-offs and inequities, and where the public has an appreciation for what actions are meaningful, all with the goals of improving quality of life for all while safeguarding the environment and human health. Effective communication of our research is vital to build consensus for policy and action toward this vision, and one under-appreciated aspect of communication in our field is the sympathetic power of Art.