On Architectural Decay Prediction and Detection in Real-Time Software Systems

As the number of software applications including the widespread of real-time and em- bedded systems are constantly increasing and tend to grow in complexity, the architecture tends to decay over the years, leading to the occurrence of a spectrum of defects and bad smells (i.e., instances of architectural decay) that are manifested and sustained over time in a software system’s life cycle. Thus, the implemented system is not compliant to the specified architecture and such architectural decay becomes an increasing challenge for the developers. We propose a set of constructive architecture views at different levels of granularity, which monitor and ensure that the modifications made by developers at the implementation level are in compliance with those of the different architectural timed-event elements of real-time systems. Thus, we investigated a set of orthogonal architectural de- cay paradigms timed-event component decay, timed-event interface decay, timed-event connector decay and timed-event port decay. All of this has led to predicting, forecasting, and detecting architectural decay with a greater degree of structure, abstraction techniques, architecture reconstruction; and hence offered a series of potential effectiveness and enhancement in gaining a deeper understanding of implementation-level bad smells in real-time systems. Furthermore, to support this research towards an effective architectural decay prediction and detection geared towards real-time and embedded systems, we investigated and evaluated the effect of our approach through a real-time Internet of Things (IoT) case study.

Tracing working-class cultural historical heritage through one building's story: 'La Grande Brasserie du Levant'

This research looks at an abandoned beer brewery that is set for a new real-estate-led redevelopment project in Beirut between past, present and future. While the building proudly represented a moment of Lebanese modernity and identity formed around industry, it also speaks of the eventual failure of the promise of modernity associated with Lebanon's first republic. The building's story is also closely woven with Mar Mikhail and the history and geography of drinking-culture and leisure-spaces in Beirut. In one sense, Mar Mikhail represents, through its recent street-based, informal re-claiming of public-space, lower prices, minimal overhaul of built infrastructure and attachment to an 'authentic' traditional working-class neighbourhood, a resistance to exclusive urban spaces of neo-liberal consumption. The enquiry highlights neo-liberal capital's tendency to exploit vulnerabilities ‐ for example, that of urban and architectural decay, wherein the re-discovery of 'heritage' makes it appear as revolutionary but in reality it is further incorporation into the capitalist system. The research also reveals the nexus of these shifts with gentrification and social, economic and cultural stratifications of the city. I, thus, analyse the new architectural vision for the brewery site and how it re-inscribes capitalism's hegemony over architecture in advancing gentrification processes in cities: commodification of heritage blatantly visible in architectural terms.

The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature

When we think of ruins and literature, we usually think of Romanticism. The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature dislodges this critical commonplace by locating European literature’s fascination with architectural decay in the aesthetic culture from Petrarch to Spenser. The Renaissance was the Ruin-naissance, the birth of the ruin as category of discourse, one that inspired voluminous poetic production. The ruin thus became the material sign—the broken cipher—that marked the rupture between the world of the humanists and their idealized classical past. In the first full-length book to document this cultural phenomenon, Hui explains how the invention of the ruin propelled poets into creating works that were self-aware of their absorption of the past as well as their own survival in the future. To make this case, Hui embraces a philological method, a venerable tradition that has recently undergone a resurgence of interest. Philology is particularly appropriate to the study of ruins, since philology and ruins are both fundamentally about imagining the whole through its parts. Specifically, the book traces three words in three authors as semantic case studies: vestigia in Petrarch, cendre in Du Bellay, and moniment in Spenser. By starting from the smallest unit of linguistic speech—the word—and enlarging our view to its larger cultural context, The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature not only revises some of our most basic ideas about early modern texts and how they came to be, but also offers a new way for understanding the fundamental theme of survival in the classical tradition at large.

Living Projects

This chapter focuses on Hausprojekte, or “living projects.” Hausprojekte are the most prolific category of counterpreservation, in terms of number of examples. They embrace and deploy architectural decay for sociopolitical goals related to affordable housing, diversity, and personal experimentation. In this chapter, Hausprojekte are examined through the focused discussion of two case studies: the KA 86 and Tuntenhaus (both in the same building), and the Køpi. It considers both Hausprojekte in the plural—as a broad social movement that illuminates important aspects of counterpreservation—and the singularity of each case study. The chapter also aims to highlight the roles these case studies play in shaping urban spaces and debates.