In the aftermath of the Second World War, the progressive dismantling of previous power-nations and the independence of many countries have contributed to new political, economic, and technical processes and highly mobile flows of people and ideas. Yet, research has overlooked knowledge channels outside of mainstream geopolitical frameworks. In particular, the role and power of international aid organizations, their development assistance programs, and the impact of the emergent new actor of this phenomenon—the consultant—in housing and planning narratives deserve to be examined. This article proposes to do so by exploring the historical contribution of Otto Koenigsberger (1908–1999) as part of the first generation of CIAM-UN experts. His view of “housing as a problem of numbers” engaged him on a lifelong pedagogical and transnational political project of decolonizing architectural education and the redefinition of both the profession and the professional. By emphasizing the importance of (a new) training, it raises questions on what sort of knowledge housing may require, by whom knowledge competencies may be conveyed, and how that knowledge should be instrumentalized. The article draws on extensive archival research, findings on the protagonists and institutions involved, and the author’s interviews with key players that shed light on evolving conceptualizations of “development,” built environment, educational programs, and knowledge production. Ultimately, examining the terminology underlying the expertise delivered through consultancy reports vis à vis the education and skills needs contributes to a better understanding of the foundations of housing as a problematized field of architectural education.

In the early days of the United Nations, the main form of aid in the field of housing took the shape of technical assistance. Although the pool of specialists was almost coincident with those from colonial networks, the ambitions and limitations of international, non-governmental and neutral cooperation implied a reconceptualisation of the world division inherited from the colonial period and its replacement by a new paradigm of 'development'. This manifested itself right from the start in the redefinition of the modus operandi of the expert and in the production of a particular form of knowledge that challenged the previous expertise, influencing narratives on the built environment around the world. This paper examines the 1954 United Nations Housing Mission to the Gold Coast and its outcomes, along with the formative example of the previous 1950 mission to prepare the UN Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance. The case study provides an insight into the relationship between the idealization of international cooperation and that of the expert in the field of housing. At the same time, the emphasis on research and education, and the subsequent foundation of a new school, offers a starting point for a critical analysis of its counterpart, the 'inpert'.

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the main pathogens of importance in health care. Distributed worldwide, it has considerable impact on community and nosocomial infections. This bacteria has the tst and lukS-F PV genes that code for the TSST-1 toxin and leucocidin. These pathogenic microorganisms have the ability to survive for long periods on inert surfaces such as mobile phone screens. Senior dentistry students work in clinics and use their cell phones often, which could potentially spread this pathogen. We looked for the tst and lukS-F PV genes in S. aureus isolated from mobile phone screens of final year dentistry students. This was a descriptive cross-sectional observational study using 92 samples from the mobile phone screens of dental students, among which 16 were positive for S. aureus. They were identified by means of culture methods and detection of the nuc, nucA and femB genes. The DNA was extracted using the alkaline lysis method; PCR was used in the molecular identification of the tst and lukS- F PV genes. Nine of the 16 S. aureus isolates had the tst gene, and 1/16 the lukS-F PV gene. This study shows the high frequency of virulent S. aureus on the mobile phone screens of dental students, which may contribute to the spread of this important pathogen.

In this paper, the metal-insulator transition is studied in polyaniline (PANI) as the doping increases. The study incorporates a polymerization process that produces a cross-linking of the PANI chains, yielding an extended disordered branched lattice. The presence of the phenazine structure is fundamental and allows the polymer to acquire extra dimensions, which permits a transition to the metallic phase when doping is increased as the Fermi level goes through the mobility edge into a region of extended states. This PANI system is described assuming that the polymerization process gives rise to a structure that could be represented by a Bethe lattice. It is observed, as indicated by the experiments, that the conductivity increases as a function of the pH of the acid solution when agents like bipolarons are introduced.

Themetal-insulator transition taking place in Polyaniline (PAN) is investigated in a one-dimensional configuration when impurities are introduced by doping. The electronic transport is numerically analyzed, representing the system by a Huckel tight-binding Hamiltonian and using the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism to obtain the conductance of the system under the presence of polaron and bipolaron doping. In a detailed analysis, we highlight the importance of studying extensive N sites chains, evaluating the conductance as a function of the de-coherence parameter., decreasing it to the limit of 0(+).; this procedure allows us to study the existence of delocalized states in this system. It was possible to verify that although the bipolaron/polaron doping produces a displacement of the Fermi energy into a region of states outside the gap of the pure polymer, the conductance in the limit of zero inelastic scattering is zero, showing the existence of localized states at the Fermi level, due to disorder. This result indicates that the description of PAN as a linear one-dimensional object analyzed in a extensive N sites disordered chain does notmanifest correlated disorder as proposed by the Random Dimer Model (RDM), where transport could occur because N of the electronic states are extended. The lack of charge diffusion at the Fermi level in this one-dimensional description of the system shows that it is not an adequate model to study the metal-insulator transition when the polymer is doped. The incorporation of the nature of the polymerization process, introducing higher dimensional effects in its early stages, is possibly an essential ingredient to derive an appropriate model to describe the conducting behavior of the PAN system.

Architecture has always established interactions with its history. However, as a discipline, it was only recognized as such in the 19 th century, almost two hundred years after the emergence of the academic teaching system. In fact, the opening of the Académie Royale d’Architecture in 1671 has boosted many research projects that revealed an increasingly interest in a rigorous knowledge of the past. Nevertheless, it was only within the context of the Polytechnique, and paradoxically in a course for future engineers, that the relation between history and practice has it was understood, was definitely challenged. The theme acquires enormous importance in the architectural discourse, and a target of critical reasoning until very recently, being ostracized in most schools where the use of history in a technocratic and reductionist way is translated into inconsequential analyses and organigrammes. This paper intends reflect upon the generative potential of historic precedents from a one week workshop developed in Salerno with 2 nd year students. The title Re-play (modernism) aimed, simultaneously, question the que é uma escola na postmodern condition and to test the ways in which they can be used in creative ways from the process of representation, calling for new pedagogies within the design studio.

. Much research has focused on the transformation of public space and its traditional role as the locus of political life, and in the significant trends towards privatization as threats to social cohesion in society. However, as we shall argue, this change was precisely shaped by moral and governance concerns, that find its roots in the 19th century and its desire to build an image of public virtue. In fact, few studies regarded the process of housing reconfiguration, which started to take place at the time as an implementation of management programs for the reconstruction of social life, as a major critical point. The present paper attempts to address the consequences of new spacializations, illustrated by Henri Roberts’ Model Houses, that sought to absorb society, and all that was socially and morally reprehensible, from public to private places, claiming its correlation as the leading cause for the replacement of empty presences, formerly public spaces, by empty absences.