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Transition from communism to capitalism has massively affected Romanian society in its every aspect. Opening up the free market and thus to the western consumerist way of life, unleashed a frenzy of large commercial construction developments (more than 60 shopping malls built during the last 14 years). Current studies are mainly focused on matters of marketing and social issues, whereas few of them try to investigate how these shifts translate into architecture. The case study that we conducted on Iulius Mall Timi...

The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.” (John Paul II). Kosice, city in eastern Slovakia doesn´t require the installation of green roofs on new commercial, institutional, and multifamily residential developments across the city. There is no bylaw requiring covering existing buildings roof tops with vegetation. This article focuses on leadership on green roofs. This article...

The need for the local government authorities' attitude shift from administration towards management through a more entrepreneurial behaviour is the subject of many academic and professional research studies. However, the means of achieving this objective and connecting to their †urban customers' have not been fully discussed. Local governments worldwide have increasingly become closed bureaucratic institutions, loosing track of their objectives - fulfilling the needs of the people - and have developed a view of...

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is,...

Within the historical and regional context of the Czechoslovak Modern Movement, the paper examines the garden and landscape architectural concepts of the Interwar Modernism in Slovak territory. The research maps the local examples, expressed in various scales and typological forms, from gardens of family houses and villas, through design of outer spaces of school, sanatoria, administration and commercial buildings, up to urban concepts of garden cities and public open spaces at urban scale. The characteristic feat...

The phenomenon of cave inspires to various interpretations in art and architecture. Grotto, this "curious architectural object", is characteristic for garden art of different historical periods and styles, creates a typical feature of historic gardens and parks. The paper presents the evolution of the use of grotto as an architectural garden element in the context of development of garden art in the territory of today's Slovakia. The examples of artificial caves in the setting of historic parks and gardens in the ...

This study aims to highlight how the historical background of furniture design affect the present approaches in “newly” developed designs in Turkey. With this purpose, the historical background of furniture design has been briefly reviewed in order to shed light to the further studies, and to make an analysis on the current trends in terms of consistency in design. Within this context, some recent furniture designs (called “avant-garde” in the market) were taken into consideration to identify the most comm...

Paper analyses the empirical approaches of Slovak construction companies to cost management in construction and architectural projects. Authors conducted own research on sample of Slovak construction companies aimed to identify the important issues in cost management and cost controlling. Author examined wide range of cost management and cost controlling concepts, methods and IT tools, its barriers and benefits in construction and architectural practice. The analyses showed that companies in general are aware of e...

The problem of the efficient management of energy is very important, not only to individual real estate owners, but also to city authorities. Building blocks, districts or the entire organism of a city require the development of various planning documents - cultural value analyses, integrated urban planning and even energy optimization plans for each district within a city. It is possible to achieve varying economic and aesthetic effects that generate different costs, at the same time having a differing impact on ...

The paper addresses some of the general issues concerning industrial heritage and its values in a contemporary society via unique situation occurring in the Slovak capital of Bratislava, with an intention to emphasize the importance to conserve the remains of the industrial past as an integral part of our culture; not only according to the established architectural and heritage values, but equally addressing wider sociocultural aspects. The methodological approach applied in the research consists of an analysis of...

From the 1990s we have been dealing with a shift of paradigms in architecture. This occurs in a number of directions - but their common denominator is the abandonment of the classical Vitruvius triad – moving form stability to temporariness, from statics to variability, from function objects to scenarios played in time. One of the results of these changes became strengthening of a new species of architecture - architecture of low costs - so called low-tech. It was created as a result of the growing need for fina...

Throughout the history cities have accumulated, controlled, regenerated and dispensed things/concepts which have been carried by flows; nevertheless, with the switch from analog communication to digital communication, they have become more receptive to every thing/concept than ever. In this sense, it can be expressed that, with this switch, Istanbul has also entered into a new period in which the flows have accelerated and intensified. Moving from this acknowledgement this study creates a conceptual ground by defi...

The article presents a conceptual model of eco-innovative product design and development built on life cycle approach. A proposed model is based on literature review, observations of the design process and interviews carried out among representatives of teams developing eco-innovations. Particular attention was paid to knowledge management related to reduction of the environmental impact of eco-innovation throughout its life cycle. Specific methods, techniques and tools dedicated to the analysis and assessment of ...

The world in which we live in is constantly being transformed as a consequence of our actions, sometimes in accordance with them and sometimes against them. Behavior models in the fields of economy, culture, social life and aesthetics are subjected to shifts. These shifts are accompanied by changes in the way that architectural form and function are being shaped. The problems associated with the placement of new buildings and the reconstruction of existing ones in relation to existing historical structures are not...

With concrete being the most widely used material on earth, with over two tonnes per person being used annually, and most forms of thermal insulation sourced or prepared by fossil fuels, the building construction market provides significant potential for reducing consumption with cost-effective and sustainable measures. Naturally all building criteria regarding structural integrity, thermal technical requirements and hygiene should be met for the solution to be attractive. Considering the changes in many construct...

The current UN and EU policy highlights building a society for all ages and avoiding of segregation of various generations in local environment. In my paper I would like to present how the material shape of urban architecture influences relations between generations. The article is based on the case study I conducted in some chosen places of Warsaw, using the theoretical prospect of the sociology of architecture. I analyzed public spaces and quasi-public buildings in the context of their both communicative and phy...

Advanced design methods using the building information model can be applied also in the process of building renovation. Three-dimensional scanning of the existing site situation by 3D scanner significantly streamlines data collection work. The problem is automated digitization of large amounts of data, and their representation. Automated transcription of the collected data cloud into the elements such as wall, floor, ceiling or window still requires consuming manual composition. Article examines possible solutions...

The present papers are principally concerned with such social research problem as the 21-st century modern organization of active recreation zones, and, particularly, investigate the ways of given them a new creative urge. This problem is globally spread and is common for most countries. Objects of this research are Aqua Parks, treated as a special landscape recreation zone where architectural-landscape planning, water architecture and creative design meet. The authors have performed the analysis from different po...

Along with modernism †space', one of the main interests of architecture, started to be handled as an empty, abstract and measurable notion. This approach also brought about many criticisms that mainly centered on the issues such as loss of meaning in space, dedifferentiation of space and estrangement from people-oriented space design. At the same time a series of studies which aimed to re-fill in space -with meaning- introduced architectural literature with a new notion: †Place'. †Place', which was put forwa...

Fuenterrabia, one of the most outstanding strongholds of the Basque Country, has historically been a strategic checkpoint on the land crossing between France and the Iberian Peninsula. Due to its military interest, it was many times besieged between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries for its possession and territorial control. The siege of Fuenterrabia of 1638 is framed within the Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659) fought parallel to the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). It had essentially a Religious character but it...

The mood for the imagination and inventiveness in Brazil recreates every moment many other "Brazils" that retakes and reinvent traditions, weaving an amalgamated diversity with festivity and affection among transitions, courage and hope tempered with grace and spontaneity that at the same time reaffirms our identity on every small step of citizenship in the streets, homes and institutions. This "brazilianness" that renews and enriches our culture is highlighted here in this text that focus on the inspiration on cu...

A small initiative \#Istanbulstarted public workshops that aims to raise public awareness on the urban environment, the use of space and the current debates on public spaces. By catalyzing temporary and participatory spatial interventions as a method on defining/redefining urban environment. The aim is to support the development of a new form of critical platform by raising awareness on site through the reactions or actions of the society. With the support of public participation and detailed analysis, the volunta...

Modern stage of the development of Information society is characterized by changes in the nature of information delivery. The growth of importance of visual communications in contrast to the verbal ones is marked by many researchers. Visual information becomes an important factor of social practices construction, such as social communication between groups, elites and active-passive majority, social mimesis, etc. Graphic design becomes one of the instruments that form our cultural identity, and graphic designer of...

Globalization of the cities is the result of the globalization of the entire human society. It is a phenomenon of our age, which has historical roots and context. If more advanced is the society, then more intensively is the globalization manifesting itself in various areas of human existence. Most of the cities in well developed countries are characterized by unprecedented dynamics of internal restructuring, which is significantly formed by globalization. New understanding of urban space brings new typological ty...

The article reveals the main stages of development of the national church architecture in the context of Russian history. Called iconographic sources, methods and techniques of ancient motifs and styling elements of Byzantine architecture. Showing the art features of the neorussian style in contrast to the previous stages of the formation of architecture of orthodox churches. Are examples of the neorussian style churches, including constructed relatively recently.

On January 10th 1710, Prospero Jorge de Verboom was appointed Quartermaster General and General Engineer of all the Spanish armies. Felipe V wanted to establish an organizational system based on the French model of Louis XIV, who had granted all responsibility of French fortifications to Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban. Verboom had received an exquisite war training and experience, participating in war campaigns with Van Coehoorn and Vauban in the Netherlands. From the experience and skills of Verboom some high qua...

As a result of development of information and communication technology, the amounts of available data rapidly glow. In this situation called “Information explosion”, a bunch of researches have been conducted and designed. And I researched some user interface too. Through these researches I developed an ambient user interface making use of slight changes of graphics. The purpose of its interface is providing information so as not to attract user's attention. In this paper, I discuss a new information design for...

This paper examines the role of architects in the society of socialist Croatia between 1955 and 1965, a time marked by a major housing shortage, when the demands of the society represented within the new state housing strategies often meant that the architects had to abandon certain autonomous tools and values of their profession. In that particular period, the dictate of implementing rationalization principles into housing construction dictated architectural discourse to change, and its social position to redefin...

This study deals with issues of creating a vivid and pedestrian oriented street network. It is an emerging and vital question in a domain of urban sustainability and place-making for most cities. This research seeks to explore an increasing number of diverse studies regarding the public realm and streetscape. The aim is to set a background for spatial analysis of case studies. This paper uses case studies analysis as the main method through which it develops the systematization for a further study of this theme. S...

In my article I show how – based on existing architecture and some kind of urban nostalgia – a new definition of a social value and a new idea of architecture have been created. The paper grounds on qualitative research I conducted in Warsaw, Poland, in 2013 (IDIs in Polish with key opinion leaders, social activists, NGOs, writers, etc. approaching an increasing phenomenon of a wide interest in modernist architecture). I reflect on both: ways of creating the new perception and its results.

This paper discusses principles of creation of visual identity systems, problem of brand/trademark recognizability, several cases of using randomness in visual identity design and suggests SD3-framework for implementing visual identity systems that are based on applying random variations to the visual identity system that increases memorability. SD3 allows designer to create set of guidelines for visual identity system that retain recognizability of brand/trademark after applying randomness by using random generat...

In work classification and the main characteristics of information and intellectual technologies perspective are given in design. The principles bases of heuristic and bases of the patterns defining specifics of similar system are formulated. Systems and the technologies based on self- training and modeling are considered.

The paper presents the basic principles of innovative jewelry designs. The essence of each principle, and examples. Simultaneous use of several principles leads to a synergistic effect. The main principles are fractal, semiotic modeling, application transformers, op-art, etc.

This paper focuses on the three areas focused on the regional economy. These areas mutually interact with and also impact each other. The first area is tourism, which includes the organisation of cultural events, in this paper, with a regional impact. The second area, which is linked to cultural events, the economic impacts that arise in organising such events. As these impacts are broken down into four basic parts are the effects on production, gross value added, employment and compensation of employees, only sel...

In modern conditions, tourism is a complex sector of the economy, as the production of tourism products affects the economy of various industries. Tourism development causes not only positive effects but also negative ones. Therefore, there is a need to address the problems brought by these effects according to the concept of sustainable tourism. However, in Russia this concept is not currently being realized despite all the officially taken measures, in particular, the fact that the concept of the Russian Federat...

Solvent, repeatedly buying customers guarantee a long-term stability and prosperity of companies in a turbulent market environment. A characteristic feature of the present relationships between business partners is therefore an effort to build and strengthen mutual relationships. They can be strengthened by any aspect of the offer and mutual contacts that increases the customer-perceived value. It is therefore extremely valuable for the supplier to know which supply parameters and other factors are important to cu...

The purpose of our research is to analyze the choice of indicators and methods, respectively groups of indicators to predict bankruptcy assumptions in the automotive industry in time period 2002-2011. Predictive models applied in many studies have been unsuccessful. Enterprises of the automotive industry in the application of prediction models can't keep the recommended values of the forecasting methods, incurred in a very different economic environment and a different time. Predictive models are outdated and obso...

Economists and investors avidly follow the data from different channels which would give them more information or indications for making their investment decisions more successful. The data is generally released with a lag and gives no good answers for the present. The purpose of the article is to analyze whether using Google Trends as one of the most widely used online search methods, would it have been possible to forecast the beginning of the ongoing financial crisis. In other words: would it have been possible...

Government decisions may result in the overall downturn in the country's excessive protectionism. Government uses the economic advantage of the domestic industry to foreign investors, thereby creating two groups with an interest in the project in the system. Protectionism has many reasons, one of which is to protect the country before the entry of foreign partners in key industries such reason protection of national security and an independent foreign policy. Political risk is for the most part perceived as the op...

The paper investigates the financial variables which make the municipalities more prone to fiscal distress. I argue that the diagnosis of municipalities in fiscal distress requires not only the analysis of revenues but the expenditures as well. I assume that usage of debt and the intergovernmental transfers increases the fiscal distress risk. I hypothesize that the fiscal autonomy (increasing level of local taxes as percent of the total amount of tax revenues, especially the property tax) allows to decrease the fi...

The deepening of global imbalance and especially the growth of so-called twin deficits cause the changes of conditions in trade with goods and services as well as in the area of flow of funds. This process ultimately affects the development of foreign exchange reserves´ structure with an impact on the stability of international monetary system. The aim of this paper is to assess the extent of recycling of the major currencies in the world economy. We will focus on two economies – USA and Euro Area - during the ...

In the conditions of a changing environment for business, auditors face lots of challenges in finding new methods for improving organizations' operational efficiency. Stakeholders got higher expectations and internal audit function needs to adapt on these new requirements. Therefore, we have tried to underline projections on the internal audit evolution and its impact to the internal control system in the Romanian organizations. Meanwhile, we analyzed organizational culture influence over the internal audit from t...

The Slovak banking system experienced period of restructuralization (late nineties), period of significant mergers and acquisitions (beginning of the millennium), accession to the European Union (2004), the adoption of euro (2009) and the impact of a worldwide financial crisis which lasts up to this moment. Such a unique experience makes the Slovak banking sector a small empirical laboratory; a fact that enables us to investigate impact of various structural changes on the domestic banking system. Using the panel ...

Recent growth of the service sector and of the information technology- related business, along with the dramatic increase in the number and size of mergers and acquisitions, has made accounting for intangible assets very significant, especially in the field of reporting of goodwill. Comparative analysis is focused on the differences between IFRS, US GAAP accounting procedures and Czech accounting legislation. Main areas of analysis and synthesis are the identification of methods for goodwill recognition and report...

The research question the paper aims to investigate is whether increasing awareness and implication of civil society's representatives into the financial markets field will determine financial institutions to adjust their products, services and practices to a more socially and environmentally responsible way. In our scientific approach we have started from the finding of a low stage of civil society intervention in the financial world and the need for a more obvious manifestation of civism in this thematic area. R...

Manufacturing companies form a major share of the private sector. These companies have a significant influence on the output of the open export economy of the Czech Republic. Performance measurement and management of these manufacturing companies become a prerequisite for the successful long-term operations of these companies. Because of the complexity of performance measurement, a system approach is applied. The traditional and most commonly used methods include financial analysis with an analytical and systemati...

Alternative forms of financing are products allowing small and medium-sized enterprises or newly established companies to get financial resources under specific terms and conditions. They play an important role in corporate financing as they supplement services provided by bank sector. Their history in the Czech Republic dates back to the emerging and expanding economic environment at the beginning of the nineties in the 20th century. Since then these alternative forms of financing have beendeveloping on an ongoin...

The corporate M&A activity is affected by many factors where - based on the prior research - capital gains tax is one of them. The aim of this paper is to examine an existence of a negative relationship between corporate M&As and the lock-in effect in EU-countries. Our assumption will be verified by using a panel regression analysis with the number of M&As as a dependent variable and the capital gains taxes and other selected determinants as independent variables. Our research result could confirm that the negativ...

The success and scales of distribution of Islamic finance in the world are explained, on the one hand, by demand from Muslims and the Islamic companies which don't have opportunities to use traditional financial products. On the other hand, these tools are attractive from the point of view of diversification of investments and opportunities of attraction of financial resources from the Arab companies and the Muslim population of this country. Russian legislation does not provide opportunities for the application o...

The World financial and economic crisis affected the construction of major infrastructure projects, since implementation requires significant resources. In the present study different possible sources of funding for the projects of the road infrastructure are examined. Alternatives are presented, such as their own sources (from infrastructure charges in road transport), sources of borrowed funds, the financial instruments of the European Union and concession, as a tool for public-private partnership in the buildin...