Media House Project

In much recent theory, the media are described as ephemeral, ubiquitous, and de-localized. Yet the activity of modern media can be traced to spatial centers that are tangible enough - some even monumental. This book offers multidisciplinary and historical perspectives on the buildings of some of the world's major media institutions. Paradoxically, as material and aesthetic manifestations of «mediated centers» of power, they provide sites to the siteless and solidity to the immaterial. The authors analyse the ways that architectural form and organization reflect different eras, media technologies, ideologies, and relations with the public in media houses from New York and Silicon Valley to London, Moscow, and Beijing.

In August 2008, Heads of State of the Southern African Development Community adopted the ground-breaking SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. This followed a concerted campaign by NGOs under the umbrella of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance. By the 2013 Heads of State summit, 13 countries had signed and 12 countries had ratified the SADC Gender Protocol. The Protocol is now in force. With two years to go, time is ticking to 2015, when governments need to have achieved 28 targets for the attainment of gender equality. In keeping with the Alliance slogan: "Yes we must", this 2013 Barometer provides a wealth of updated data against which progress will be measured by all those who cherish democracy in the region. The SADC Gender and Development Index (SGDI), introduced in 2011, complements the Citizen Score Card (CSC) that has been running for five years to benchmark progress.

In August 2008, Heads of State of the Southern African Development Community adopted the ground-breaking SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. This followed a concerted campaign by NGOs under the umbrella of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance. By the 2013 Heads of State summit, 13 countries had signed and 12 countries had ratified the SADC Gender Protocol. The Protocol is now in force. With one year to go, time is ticking to 2015, when governments need to have achieved 28 targets for the attainment of gender equality. In keeping with the Alliance slogan: Yes we must! this 2014 Barometer provides a wealth of updated data against which progress will be measure by all those who cherish democracy in the region. The world, and SADC, is also looking to the future with the post 2015 agenda. Now is the time to strengthen resolve, reconsider, reposition, and re-strategise for 2030.

Effective communication is the most powerful tool a manager can use. This is especially true for project managers who are tasked with coordinating the efforts of every project member as well as maintaining an open dialog with senior executives. Helping professionals achieve a high-level of communications expertise is the goal of this second edition book and CD-ROM package. The book explains how to energize projects, create momentum, and achieve success by talking and listening to staff members. Moreover, it teaches how to effectively communicate project status and requirements to executive management. The valuable CD-ROM supplies the “tools” to do the job right… ready-to-use documents, forms, reports, and project templates that help ensure effective, clear, and consistent communication. This second edition also includes new changes from A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Fifth Edition, as well as new material on evolving tools such as social media. As new technology has found its way to the marketplace, simple approaches from years gone by are modified for cloud-sharing tools, social media, and other considerations.

During the last 30 years, Advanced Architecture has consolidated an interactive and informational logic that differs from that of Modernity and Postmodernity. This logic is threefold; it is modulated through three coexisting protocols -modes of action- whose peaks of intensity occur in three different decades: Conformative Protocols (1990-2000), Distributive Protocols (2000-2010) and Expansive Protocols (2010-2020). This work proposes a threefold cultural narrative whose interactive and informational logic differs from that of modernity and postmodernity. It positions three different ethos by critically approaching the architectural side of a cultural mutation that has been affecting the Western experimental areas of knowledge and practice since the end of the last century. A transformative process constituted by a constellation of transdisciplinary manifestations, accelerations, turns, shortcuts and clusterizations that by no means can be read under one single epistemological umbrella. In this sense, rather than approaching the practice of architecture focusing on its disciplinary inner specificity, this book approaches the research of experimental architecture focusing on its extra-disciplinary entanglements. It argues that a vast multiplicity of fields of knowledge participates in a cultural endeavour modulated through three protocols -forms of action- that singularize three decades: Conformative Protocols (1990-2000), Distributive Protocols (2000-2010) and Expansive Protocols (2010-2020). These three periods shouldn’t be read as three hermetic and concatenated monades, but as three different modulations of the same narrative, that is, as three overlapping and coexisting systems whose peaks of intensity occur in three different decades. However, the main purpose of this book is not limited to unveiling the ethos of these three conjugations. It also aims at using this framework as a “time-field”, a narrative map that moves from the classificatory to the cartographical in order to vectorize the last 30 years of experimental architecture. In this sense, this book argues that this threefold set of protocols represents the progressive attempt to constitute critical interiorities “looking for” and “produced through” interactions that are increasingly more intimate and whose agents are increasingly more diverse. A tendency oriented towards the consolidation of an “intimacy between strangers” that highly resonates with the cultural and technological landscape in which experimental architecture operates.

Pretty Good House provides a framework and set of guidelines for building or renovating a high-performance home that focus on its inhabitants and the environment--but keeps in mind that few people have pockets deep enough to achieve a "perfect" solution. The essential idea is for homeowners to work within their financial and practical constraints both to meet their own needs and do as much for the planet as possible. A Pretty Good House is: * A house that's as small as possible * Simple and durable, but also well designed * Insulated and air-sealed * Above all, it is affordable, healthy, responsible, and resilient.