Böcker utgivna av De Gruyter

While timber construction is already established in the field of architecture, there is an increasing focus on alternative construction materials such as clay, straw, cork or bamboo, along with their application features. In full alignment with sustainable construction, they make it possible to plan energy-optimised, recyclable and climate-friendly buildings for the future. The book shows how this can be achieved based on 30 projects of all sizes.

Holz ist ein äußerst vielseitiger Baustoff. Durch den gekonnten Einsatz verschiedener Holzarten in geeigneten Bauweisen lassen sich nahezu alle Bauaufgaben realisieren. Insbesondere beim Bauen im Bestand kann Holz punkten. Es ist vergleichsweise leicht und gut vorzufertigen und bietet eine positive Ökobilanz. Das Buch Holzbau im Bestand liefert das nötige Fachwissen, um alle Herausforderungen bei der nächsten Sanierungsaufgabe umzusetzen.

Architects face the demand to exploit unused potential and find ways to use plants as tools for design. This is both the case in the development of spaces as well as urban environments, but particularly on buildings themselves. "Green Facades" provides architects with the necessary specialist knowledge to competently deal with the living architecture on the building envelope.

The eleven chapters in this international volume draw on a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to focus our attention on medieval and early modern things (ca. 700¿1600). The range of things includes actual objects (the Altenburg Crucifixion, a copy of Hieronymus Brunschwig¿s Liber de arte distillandi, a pilgrim¿s letter), imagined objects (a prayed cloak for the Virgin Mary), and narrative objects in texts (the Alliterative Morte Arthure, the Ordene de Chevalerie, Hartmann von Aue¿s Erec, Heinrich of Neustadt¿s Apollonius of Tyre, Luís de Camões¿s Os Lusíadas, and the vita of Saint Guthlac). Each in its own way, the papers consider how things do what they do in texts and art, often foregrounding the intersection between the material and the immaterial by exploring such questions as how things act, how they express power, and how texts and images represent them. Medieval and early modern things are repeatedly shown to be more than symbolic or passive, they are agentive and determinative in both their intra- and extradiegetic worlds. The things that are addressed in this volume are varied and are embedded, or entangled, in different contexts and societies, and yet they share a concerted engagement in human life.

This volume is distinctive for its extraordinarily interdisciplinary investigations into a little discussed topic, the spatial imagination. It probes the exercise of the spatial imagination in pre-modern China across five general areas: pictorial representation, literary description, cartographic mappings, and the intertwining of heavenly and earthly space. It recommends that the spatial imagination in the pre-modern world cannot adequately be captured using a linear, militarily framed conceptualization. The scope and varying perspectives on the spatial imagination analyzed in the volume¿s essays reveal a complex range of aspects that informs how space was designed and utilized. Due to the complexity and advanced scholarly level of the papers, the primary readership will be other scholars and advanced graduate students in history, history of science, geography, art history, religious studies, literature, and, broadly, sinology.

Conciliation in the Qur¿an addresses an existing imbalanced focus in Islamic Studies on conflict in the Qur¿an, and moves beyond a restrictive approach to ¿ul¿ (reconciliation) as a mediation process in fragmented social contexts. The book offers a critical analysis of conciliation as a holistic concept in the Qur¿an, providing linguistic and structural insight based on the renowned pre-modern Arabic exegesis of Al-R¿z¿ (d. 1209) and the under-studied contemporary Urdu exegesis of I¿l¿¿¿ (d. 1997). This ambitious thematic study of the entire Qur¿an includes an innovative examination of the central ethical notion of i¿s¿n (gracious conduct), and a challenging discussion of notorious passages relating to conflict. The author offers solutions to unresolved issues such as the significance of the notion of i¿l¿¿ (order), the relationship between conciliation and justice, and the structural and thematic significance of Q.48 (S¿rat Al-Fat¿) and Q.49 (S¿rat Al-¿ujur¿t). Conciliation in the Qur¿an offers a compelling argument for the prevalence of conciliation in the Islamic scripture, and will be an essential read for practitioners in Islamic studies, community integration, conflict-resolution, interfaith dialogue and social justice.

One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike.

The technological innovations that have made "learning" computers possible are being met with utopian hopes as well as apocalyptic apprehensions. Will AI research eventually lead to software systems that have consciousness and are capable of autonomous decision making? The essays challenge "strong AI" from the perspective of human agency and moral judgment, explain the categorical difference between vulnerable humans and AI devices, and discuss diverse forms of applied AI, such as prograns of natural language processing, computional creativity, neuroenhancement, and the use of AI in international healthcare. These theoretical issues are illustrated in essays that focus on the encounter with artificial beings in film, literature and theater. Examining science fiction that blurs the borderline between humans and deep-learning androids, the essays explore, and challenge, ways of questioning human exceptionalism, for instance by visualizing non-conscious cognition and sentience. The book suggests a sober distinction between well-argued achievements of digital technology and excessive, unfounded expectations.

A critical reading of both literary and non-literary German texts published between 1490 and 1540 exposes a populist backlash against perceived social and political disruptions, the dramatic expansion of spatial and epistemological horizons, and the growth of global trade networks. These texts opposed the twin phenomena of pluralization and secularization, which promoted a Humanist tolerance for ambiguity, boosted globalization and spatial expansion around 1500, and promoted new ways of imagining the world. Part I considers threats to the political order and the protestations against them, above all a vigorous defense of the common good. Part II traces the intellectual and epistemological upheaval triggered by the spatial discoveries and the new methods of visual and verbal representation of space. Part III examines the nationalistic backlash triggered by the rising global trade and related abusive trading practices and by perceived undue foreign influences. It is the basic premise of this book that the texts examined here protested the observed disruptions of the status quo and sought to reestablish a stable imperial order in the face of political and social upheaval and of the felt cultural decline of the German nation.

Focusing on the future of tourism, Sustainable Tourism Dialogues in Africa is inclusive of experienced and emerging researchers, as well as incorporating local stakeholders in the tourism industry: architects, tourism operators, sustainable tourism lobbyists, policy makers, archaeologists, and geographers. The editors are frontline sustainable tourism advocates in Africa, and the book¿s thematic content is derived from 30 inter-university seminars on sustainable tourism hosted by Sustainable Travel & Tourism Agenda Kenya from 2017 to November 2019. These seminars involved the participation of 17 universities in Kenya, tourism operators, conservationists, developmentalists, investors, policy makers, and students.Every chapter is a voice projecting aspirations for the responsible management of tourism in Africa and promoting the ideals of sustainable tourism that young people in Africa advocate for the industry¿s future. In so doing, the authors pinpoint the necessary actions for bringing about transformations in sustainable development of tourism. The book thus seeks to encourage debate, while facilitating the development of both theoretical and practical foundations for managing tourism sustainably in Africa.

Das Werk der Nobelpreisträgerin Elfriede Jelinek hat die Möglichkeiten literarischer Ästhetik in den letzten fünf Jahrzehnten entscheidend erweitert ¿ fast durchgängig durch die polemische Infragestellung und Aberkennung geltender Doxa.Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes beleuchten an ausgewählten Beispielen aus unterschiedlichen Werkphasen die ästhetischen Provokationskräfte der Jelinekschen Werke und rücken sie damit in den Kontext der künstlerischen Avantgarde, deren Destruktionen im literarischen Feld immer auch zu produktiven Revisionen geführt haben. In einer solchen Optik wird sichtbar, in welchem hohen Ausmaß die spezifisch ästhetische Kampfansage der Texte vornehmlich der Kunst selbst gilt und zentrale Bereiche der Poetologie, Werkpolitik, Autorschaft, Intertextualität und Intermedialität umfasst. Die Provokationen der Kunst, so erweist sich, gehen einher mit einer neuen Auffassung von Literatur, die sich nicht zuletzt in der ästhetischen Figuration der Texte selbst zeigt.

Kaum ein Egodokument ist heute verbreiteter und selbstverständlicher als der Lebenslauf. Unter welchen Bedingungen aber ist diese Form der Selbstbuchhaltung entstanden? Ihre Geschichte reicht, wie diese Studie zeigt, bis ins Preußen des 18. Jahrhunderts zurück. In der preußischen Verwaltung macht der Lebenslauf nicht nur vergangene Lebensereignisse schreib- und lesbar; fortan bahnt er als ¿Bewerbungsunterlage" auch Karrieren an und erweist sich damit als elementares Werkzeug im Wettstreit um soziale Ränge.

How do scholarship and practices of remembrance regarding Nazi Germany benefit from digital tools and approaches? What challenges arise from "doing history digitally" in this field ¿ and how should they best be dealt with? ¿The eight chapters of this book explore these and related questions. They discuss the digital initiatives of various archives and source databases, highlight¿findings of research undertaken with digital tools, and examine how such tools can be used to present history in education, exhibitions and memorials. All contributions focus on recent or, in some cases, ongoing digital projects related to the history of National Socialism, World War II, and the Holocaust.