Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

During the British occupation of Egypt in the beginning of the 20th century, several suburban developments were established on the periphery of the city of Cairo. These initially attracted the small British community and later foreigners and Egyptians, mainly from the elite community. These suburban developments, including Ma‘ādī, Zamālik, Heliopolis, Qubbah-Gardens, and Garden City, became the fashionable residential quarters of Cairo. Until now, some of these areas still represent the distinguishable residential settlements of the city. Ma‘ādī, Zamālik, and Heliopolis specifically are nostalgically appropriated in the design of recent suburban developments around Greater Cairo. Some of the 20th century suburban developments around Cairo are labeled or described as “garden cities.” During the early 20th century, two thriving British town planning movements emerged, namely, the garden city movement and the garden suburb movement. This study investigates the hypothesis that these suburban developments, are indeed “garden suburbs” like the British movement, despite that few are labeled or described as “garden cities,”. Although several studies have examined the historical development of such settlements, their relation, however, to the British planning movements and their transfer process received little attention from planning historians. Few studies also analyze the urban design aspects that made these suburban developments distinguishable since their foundation and until today. To guide the validity of this study’s hypothesis, a set of research questions are formulated: (1) What is the difference between the garden city and the garden suburb movements? (2) How were the British planning movements transferred to Egypt? (3) What are the urban design aspects that makes these suburban developments distinguishable as garden suburbs? To answer these research questions, a historical morphological urban analysis is conducted through case studies. The study first studies the difference between the garden city and the garden suburb movements, mainly in Britain, through the analysis of publications on the promoter of both movements: for the garden city, E. Howards’ book “The Garden City of Tomorrow,” published in 1902, and for the garden suburb, R. Unwin’s books “Town Planning in Practice,” published in 1909, and “Nothing Gained from Overcrowding,” published in 1912. Then a morphological urban analysis of Letchworth Garden City and Brentham Garden Suburb, considered the first examples of each movement, is conducted. In order to analyze the transfer process, the study adopts M. Volait and J. Nasr’s theory on transporting planning, through investigating the authority in power responsible for the establishment of these suburban developments. This is followed by the morphological urban analysis of three suburban developments around Cairo, namely, Zamālik, Ma‘ādī, and Heliopolis. The morphological analysis focuses on the background of their establishment, authority in power responsible for the development, design principles, urban context, street typology, residential block typology, social infrastructure, and social target group. Finally, the study compares between Brentham, Letchworth, Zamālik, Ma‘ādī, and Heliopolis. The comparative analysis aims to highlight the differences between the studied cases of Cairo and how they are different from or alike the British movements. This study concludes that the suburban developments around Cairo during the British occupation, are in fact garden suburbs, despite that some are being described or labeled as garden city. This movement was exported via urban land development companies with foreign European capital, rather than via colonial dominance. It finally highlights a set of urban design aspects that distinguish them as garden suburbs of Cairo. This study hopes to support future conservation plan of these areas and the design of future suburban developments.

Diese Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit Kunstwerken, die das alltägliche Ding in den Blick nehmen. Nährboden dieser Kunstform sind die soziokulturellen Entwicklungen des 20. Jahrhunderts, mit denen wesentliche Veränderungen hinsichtlich des Verhältnisses von Mensch und Ding einhergingen. Daraus resultierte eine allgemeine künstlerische Zuwendung zu den Dingen und eine einzigartige Kulmination aus verschiedenartigen Auseinandersetzungen mit ihnen als kunstfähige Gegenstände, über die sich die neue Dingwelt erschlossen wurde und deren Kunstwerke einen Spiegel dieser Entwicklungen darstellen. Die Dissertation stellt ebenfalls die Dinge selbst in den Fokus. Vier Aspekte von Dingen (Materialität, Funktionalität, Repräsentationalität und Relationalität) werden gesondert ins Auge gefasst und in den theoretischen Diskurs des 20. Jahrhunderts eingeordnet, um sie als Teil der gelebten Realität besser zu verstehen, von der sich der ästhetische Blick nicht trennen lässt. Anhand der künstlerischen Positionen von Robert Rauschenberg, Christo und Jeanne-Claude, Daniel Spoerri und Arman sowie Claes Oldenburg werden die verschiedenen Aspekte der Dinge näher betrachtet und analysiert, wie diese speziell in den Kunstwerken thematisiert werden und welche Relevanz sie für deren Rezeptionserfahrung haben. Die Korrelation dieser beiden Ebenen - die Dinge als konstitutiver Bestandteil im sozialen Raum und die Dinge als Elemente in Kunstwerken -, die im Fokus der vorliegenden Untersuchung steht, ermöglicht es, die künstlerische Zuwendung zu den Dingen in den 1960er-Jahren neu einzuordnen. Darüber hinaus wird dadurch ein differenziertes Bild von der Kunst dieser Zeit sowie den Dingen in der Kunst im Allgemeinen gezeichnet.

Rechargeable lithium ion batteries (LIBs) play a very significant role in power supply and storage. In recent decades, LIBs have caught tremendous attention in mobile communication, portable electronics, and electric vehicles. Furthermore, global warming has become a worldwide issue due to the ongoing production of greenhouse gases. It motivates solutions such as renewable sources of energy. Solar and wind energies are the most important ones in renewable energy sources. By technology progress, they will definitely require batteries to store the produced power to make a balance between power generation and consumption. Nowadays,rechargeable batteries such as LIBs are considered as one of the best solutions. They provide high specific energy and high rate performance while their rate of self-discharge is low. Performance of LIBs can be improved through the modification of battery characteristics. The size of solid particles in electrodes can impact the specific energy and the cyclability of batteries. It can improve the amount of lithium content in the electrode which is a vital parameter in capacity and capability of a battery. There exist diferent sources of heat generation in LIBs such as heat produced during electrochemical reactions, internal resistance in battery. The size of electrode's electroactive particles can directly affect the produced heat in battery. It will be shown that the smaller size of solid particle enhance the thermal characteristics of LIBs. Thermal issues such as overheating, temperature maldistribution in the battery, and thermal runaway have confined applications of LIBs. Such thermal challenges reduce the Life cycle of LIBs. As well, they may lead to dangerous conditions such as fire or even explosion in batteries. However, recent advances in fabrication of advanced materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes with extraordinary thermal conductivity and electrical properties propose new opportunities to enhance their performance. Since experimental works are expensive, our objective is to use computational methods to investigate the thermal issues in LIBS. Dissipation of the heat produced in the battery can improve the cyclability and specific capacity of LIBs. In real applications, packs of LIB consist several battery cells that are used as the power source. Therefore, it is worth to investigate thermal characteristic of battery packs under their cycles of charging/discharging operations at different applied current rates. To remove the produced heat in batteries, they can be surrounded by materials with high thermal conductivity. Parafin wax absorbs high energy since it has a high latent heat. Absorption high amounts of energy occurs at constant temperature without phase change. As well, thermal conductivity of parafin can be magnified with nano-materials such as graphene, CNT, and fullerene to form a nano-composite medium. Improving the thermal conductivity of LIBs increase the heat dissipation from batteries which is a vital issue in systems of battery thermal management. The application of two-dimensional (2D) materials has been on the rise since exfoliation the graphene from bulk graphite. 2D materials are single-layered in an order of nanosizes which show superior thermal, mechanical, and optoelectronic properties. They are potential candidates for energy storage and supply, particularly in lithium ion batteries as electrode material. The high thermal conductivity of graphene and graphene-like materials can play a significant role in thermal management of batteries. However, defects always exist in nano-materials since there is no ideal fabrication process. One of the most important defects in materials are nano-crack which can dramatically weaken the mechanical properties of the materials. Newly synthesized crystalline carbon nitride with the stoichiometry of C3N have attracted many attentions due to its extraordinary mechanical and thermal properties. The other nano-material is phagraphene which shows anisotropic mechanical characteristics which is ideal in production of nanocomposite. It shows ductile fracture behavior when subjected under uniaxial loadings. It is worth to investigate their thermo-mechanical properties in its pristine and defective states. We hope that the findings of our work not only be useful for both experimental and theoretical researches but also help to design advanced electrodes for LIBs.

This thesis explores how cultural heritage plays a role in the development of urban identity by engaging both actively and passively with memory, i.e. remembering and forgetting. I argue that architectural heritage is a medium where specific cultural and social decisions form its way of presentation, and it reflects the values and interests of the period. By the process of remembering and forgetting, the meanings between inhabitant and object in urban environment are practiced, and the meanings are created. To enable the research in narrative observation, cultural tourism management is chosen as the main research object, which reflects the alteration of interaction between the architectural heritage and urban identity. Identifying the role of heritage management, the definition of social resilience and the prospects of cultural heritage as a means of social resilience are addressed. Case region of the research is East Ger- many, thereby, the study examines the distinct approaches and objectives regarding heritage management under the different political systems along the German reunification process. The framework is based on various theoretical paradigms to investigate the broad research questions: 1) What is the role of historic urban quarters in the revitalisation of East German towns? 2) How was the transition processed by cultural heritage management? 3) How did policy affect residents’ lives? The case study is applied to macro level (city level: Gotha and Eisenach) and micro level study (object level: specific heritage sites), to analyse the performance of selective remembering and making tourist destination through giving significance to specific heritage. By means of site observations, archival research, qualitative inter- views, photographs, and discourse analysis on printed tourism materials, the study demonstrates that certain sites and characteristics of the city enable creating and focusing messages, which aids the social resilience. Combining theory and empirical studies this thesis attempts to widen the academic discussion regarding the practice of remembering and forgetting driven by cultural heritage. The thesis argues for cultural heritage tourism as an element of social resilience and one that embraces the historic and cultural identity of the inhabitants.

Die kommunale Energiewende stellt die beteiligten Akteure vor große Herausforderungen: Auf Grundlage strukturierter Daten sollen Maßnahmen
 für eine nachhaltige Infrastruktur geplant und umgesetzt werden. Oft fehlt
 den Beteiligten jedoch das nötige Wissen über die lokalen Potentiale und Rahmenbedingungen—und an geeigneten Methoden der Informationsvermittlung. Gegenstand dieser Arbeit ist die Analyse der Planungsstrukturen und der Entwurf eines visuellen Informationssystems. Mit der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird gezeigt, wie mit Hilfe von Befragungen, partizipativen Visualisierungen, fiktionalen Szenarien und der systematischen Anwendung visueller Variablen eine fundierte Grundlage geschaffen werden kann für eine nutzerorientierte Gestaltung.