A 1627 painting by the Spanish artist Juan Van der Hamen y León (1596–1631), known today as “Offering to Flora,” contains an overlooked visual joke. In its foreground, a depiction of a heliotropic sunflower appears in close proximity to a representation of iridescent shot fabric. Both were known in the period as tornasol, and both were associated variously with constancy and change. This article argues that by juxtaposing these homonyms, Van der Hamen’s painting prompted aristocratic viewers in Madrid to contemplate contradictory behavioral strategies for securing favor at court that were forged by debates about the values of mutability itself.

The contemporary role of libraries has evolved from mere information storage to facilitating engaging access to knowledge resources. Despite this shift, book reading and library usage statistics in Iran remain low. This study aims to explore the relationship between physical and spatial library features, user behaviour, and perceived meanings. The goal of this investigation is to consider the impact of spatial features within libraries on the behaviours of users and the meaning that they receive. Employing an environmental psychology approach, exploratory analyses were conducted through field research, incorporating observational techniques (behavioural attributes mapping and lists) and questionnaire-based methods (semantic differential). Three Shiraz public libraries were selected for observation, and user behaviours were documented. Questionnaire data were analysed using SPSS23 software. Findings indicate that superior physical and spatial attributes foster user attachment to libraries. The meanings of ‘ordered’, ‘pleasant’, ‘interesting’, ‘legible’, ‘open’, and ‘quiet’, along with the physical factors of ‘interior appearance’, ‘type of windows’, ‘outside view’, ‘special decorating’, ‘type of materials’, ‘inviting entrance’, ‘ceiling height’, and ‘furniture’, are influential determinants of user attachment to public libraries.

Following the October Revolution of 1917, VKhUTEMAS – the state art and technical school active in Moscow from 1920 to 1927 – implemented a pioneering educational model conceived to serve the needs of Soviet society. From its inception, the school was organised into eight art and production departments: Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, Graphics, Textiles, Ceramics, Wood, and Metalworking. Their collaboration was further strengthened in 1923 with the introduction of a two-year Basic division, which comprised four courses: Graphics, Colour, Volume, and Space – the last being the most experimental. For the past forty years, the Soviet scholar Selim O. Khan-Magomedov has served as the principal source of historical knowledge about VKhUTEMAS. More recently, researchers such as Natalia Adaskina, Anna Bokov, Anatole Senkevitch, Luka Skansi, and Alla Vronskaya have expanded our understanding of the school’s operations. However, the broader implications of the Space course as a whole and its relationship with contemporary pedagogy remain relatively unexplored. Drawing on extensive research in public and private archives worldwide, this paper investigates the methods and sequence of avant-garde teaching employed for the Space course between 1923 and 1927. More than a century after its founding, VKhUTEMAS is exceptionally relevant to contemporary architectural education.