Gmach Gdańskiej Biblioteki Miejskiej przy ulicy Wałowej

Following Germany’s unification in 1871, Gdansk was a major municipal centre and a port on the Empire’s map, however it was well past its heyday. In the Gründerzeit, it could not reach as quick a pace of development as other cities of the Reich, and by the late 19th century it did not boast any university. The attempt to catch up on the substantial delay in creating modern public architecture in Gdansk was only made after the fortifications had been dismantled (1895–97). A triangular plot close to St James’s Gate was reserved for the purpose of education and science. It was there that a seat of the city archive and the building of the Secondary School of SS Peter and Paul (Oberrealschule St. Petri und Pauli) were raised. The third edifice was planned as the new home for the Gdansk Library. The precious book collection, whose core was formed by the collection bequeathed by Joannes Bernardinus Bonifacius d’Oria of Naples in 1596, was kept in a former Franciscan monastery, and later in St James’s Church. Attempts to raise a new building to house the collection in the 1820s as designed by Carl Samuel Held failed. Neither was the plan to erect the new library building as an extension of the Dungeon and Prison Gate Complex implemented. It was only Karl Kleefeld’s design from 1901–1902 planning to raise an impressive Gothic Revival complex that finally came to life. Completed in January 1905, the Library welcomed the first readers already on 16 February. Kleefeld designed the building’s mass on the L -plan layout with a truncated corner and wings. The main reading room boasted elegant, sumptuous, and coherent wooden furnishing, and the gallery’s centrepiece was a ledge decorated with 14 panels featuring bas -relief cartouches with the emblems of the cities of West Prussia. Differing in size, the edifices, were given red -brick elevations with plastered details and glazed green filling, with a sgraffito frieze on the reading room elevation between the ground and first floors. It was the Gdansk Renaissance that dominated in public buildings’ architecture of the city in the last quarter of the 19th century. The resumed popularity of Gothic Revival in its local forms in Gdansk public buildings’ architecture, such as those in the afore - -described Kleefeld’s designs, resulted undoubtedly from a rapid growth of research into historic structures, yet on the other hand it reflected the return to the local tradition (Heimatschutz), which could be observed in the architecture of the German Reich at the time. Judged in the context of an extremely modest programme of public projects in Gdansk of the period, the creation of the Bildungsdreick with the edifices of the archive, library, and secondary school is to be regarded as a major event in the history of creating public architecture of the city. As seen against other projects of the time in other Reich cities, the Gdansk City Library stood out neither with its scale, nor innovatory character of the layout solutions. What, however, makes it a special facility are architectural forms that reveal its contribution to the search for the expression of the local tradition. This kind of an archaeological approach to the past and a compilatory additive method of juxtaposing quotes from various buildings, which may have also arisen from the lack of talent of the architect, were undoubtedly in decline in the early 20th century.

Demystifying performance difference between local and foreign contractors through organisational culture

PurposeThis research aimed to investigate the extent to which organisational culture is practised in local and foreign contractors in grade one and two categories and how it affects their performance.Design/methodology/approachThe approach for this research was positivist in nature adopting a mono-method of data collection through a survey using self-administered questionnaires. A total of 138 questionnaires were distributed among public clients and large-scale contractors registered in the stated grades, and 112 questionnaires were returned for analysis representing an overall response rate of 81% for contractors and clients.FindingsFindings revealed that in organisational culture, significant differences were found for management style and dominant characteristics of the organisation between local and foreign contractors. Differences were not found for leadership styles, measures of success and organisational glue. Results suggest that for local contractors to perform better, significant changes are needed to their management style and dominant characteristics of their organisations.Originality/valueForeign contractors in the Zambian construction industry are reportedly outperforming local contractors making them preferred contractors on larger public projects accounting for 85% of construction projects by value of works. This study presents the differences in organisational culture between foreign and local firms. It further demonstrates that organisational culture plays a key role in determining performance of a contracting firm. The study presents areas that local contractors can improve in organisational culture in order to remain competitive.

A comparison of three public projects that included community participation to determine the total value add

Some of the most pressing and challenging problems facing South Africa are unemployment, poverty, urban redress, infrastructural decay, under-education, and the transformation of the landscape left by apartheid. In an effort to address these problems, the successive democratic governments embarked on a number of initiatives that were aimed at providing relief through building and construction projects, which require the participation by, and employment of local community members. To facilitate the desired redress, various programmes were launched and a number of projects undertaken. Some of these projects were flagship projects that were lauded by the architectural profession and attracted wide publicity. The socio-economic benefits to the community and local area, the extent of skills transfer to the community participants, and the long-term benefits they brought to the community participants are less obvious. This article revisits three such projects as case studies, with the aim of determining the extent to which they helped address the aforementioned problems and the extent of the benefits they brought to their physical and social contexts. This is done through a literature review supported by semi-structured interviews of relevant role players and an observational visit to each, in order to make recommendations suggesting how future projects could be configured to maximise the long-term benefit they could bring to their physical and social environments while addressing the national challenges. It is recommended that infrastructural development programmes such as the Extended Public Works Programme must prioritise the socio-economic upliftment and sustainable empowerment of people and configure projects with this as their main aim.

On the crisis of criticism and public art

At the turn of the millennia, the politically unbiased analytical thought of the world describes the total humanitarian entropy, which has unsafely plunged the theory and practice of art into a deep crisis. Accordingly, academic scientists, and primarily philosophers and culturologists, as well as art historians who have not lost their independent critical thinking ability, are consolidating into an ever-increasing front of those analysts who resist the current situation, because they tend to see behind the superficial statistics of a sharply increasing number of glossy magazines, exhibition reviews and other printed materials, including circulations of ordinary booklets that massively accompany any art projects of all kinds of galleries or public art actions, which go to significant investment funds from private foundations and centers — the premature death of art criticism, which, in the figurative expression of James Elkins, has become “like a trackless thicket, tangled with with unanswered questions”. Artistic practitioners, accustomed to servile survival in the conditions of the global art market, which imposes the rules for the production of a creative product solely in their own interests, are in a state of crisis no less severe than criticism. Manipulative interpretations of the concept of publicity, as well as the orientation of public art towards the function of socio-political and socio-educational regulatory action, like a mediator between society and power, legitimizes and strongly supports the phenomenology of things. Without a transcendental goal, the reification of the community’sthinking leads to a slide of creative consciousness and formal vocabulary of art expression to the level of kitsch, which was sharply criticized back in 1939 by Clement Greenberg. The fetishization of an art object as a commodity contributes to the steady cultivation of an instrumentalized consciousness by artists. Public visual practices, formally inheriting the idea of dissolving in the stream of everyday life, first proclaimed by the historical avant-garde, actually dissolve in consumerism, turning art objects into objectified political and sociocultural invectives, or, according to D. Lukacs’ terminology, such invectives that have undergone the process of reification. Meanwhile, visual public projects also actively use conceptualized clichés in the form of neutral abstract design objects, where the dominant criterion of conformity to the spirit of the times as quasi-modernity is the uncommonness of an innovative solution to lexical expression. The phenomenology of a thing legitimizes any experimentation, but it is not able to overcome the deepening crisis of theory and practice, drawing the cultural and artistic existence of society into a prolonged state of hysteresis. Analysts see the only way out of this situation in the return to the culture of the theory and practice of the traditions of Kantian-Hegelian philosophy, and in particular the postulates of transcendental aesthetics.

Improving Performance in Construction Projects: A Case Study of Malaysian Public Projects

Studies have worked out measures to curb the poor performance problems. However, it is hard to investigate the actual reasons because of the diverse construction culture of different countries. This research aims to develop a framework for mitigating the problems triggering the poor performance via a novel classification. An empirical analysis of mean and relative importance index (RII) was performed in SPSS of collected data from 56 public projects in Malaysia from 2003 to 2014. Qualitative and quantitative data was analysed from Audit General’s Reports, interviews, a pilot survey, and a full-scale experts’ survey. Findings from research investigated that the most influential factors affecting poor performance are not genuinely linked with those investigated from Audit General’s Report except a few. Furthermore, the study findings conclude that related financial problems and construction stage from project life cycle contribute to poor performance. The potential mitigation measures are worked out and validated via focused group discussions with experts. Finally, a framework was developed that emphasised Competent, Commitment, Communication, Comfort and Collaboration (5Cs) to mitigate the poor performance issues. The study is limited to identifying factors contributing to poor performance; however, relevant responsible stakeholders should also need to be identified in the future.

Lessons learned from the impact of COVID-19 on the global construction industry

Purpose The construction industry represents most of every country’s finances and vital to continued economic growth and activities, especially in developing countries. The impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-2 disease (COVID19) on the government’s income resulted in the expectation of many public projects being cancelled or delayed providing little opportunity for the emergence of new public projects. This study collated a global qualitative perspective (survey interviews) on the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and the positive and negative impacts for future-proofing the construction sector. Design/methodology/approach In total, 76 respondents from five continents excluding South America responded to the online open-ended structured questionnaire. Data collected were analysed through artificial inteligence analytics tool – Zoho analytics. Findings The themes indicating the positive impact obtained from the interview were overhead cost reduction, remote working environment, focus on health and safety, improved productivity and sustainability goals while the themes signifying the negative impact were low business turnover, delays in construction payment and output, difficulties working from home and job losses. Supply chain management, construction project management improvement, concentration on health and safety and effective virtual working environment were collated as themes on lessons learned. Social implications The major findings of this study emphasise on the need to improve the occupational health and safety and onsite safety measures for future proofing of the construction industry. Originality/value The findings from the analyses made clear the imperativeness of the built environment research, with a focus on novel framework and strategies for future proofing the construction industry.