When, in 1619, Frederick V of the Palatinate accepted the crown of Bohemia, he justified his action, which challenged the authority of Emperor Ferdinand II and precipitated the Thirty Years’ War, by the need to uphold the public order, rights, and responsibilities connected to the estates of the empire. English engagements with the German vocabulary of estates drew upon the concept of reason of state—those amoral political calculations needed to maintain a group's estate, or standing. The article examines the significance of these differences in a vocabulary of estates and state.

Christopher Alexander famously maintained that traditional architecture is inherently more ‘whole’ – and consequently more beautiful and alive – than modern architecture because the former is the product of organic processes, while the latter is the product of mechanistic processes. The central concept in Alexander’s theory – that architecture can be more or less whole – has only rarely been quantitatively examined. Furthermore, his claims about the superior wholeness of organic architecture have similarly remained untested. In response, this paper critically re-examines Alexander’s definition of wholeness in the context of A Pattern Language, along with previous attempts to quantify its properties. From this basis, the paper proposes a new pattern-based quantitative method for examining and measuring wholeness. This method is then tested through the analysis of seven ‘organic’ houses by Frank Lloyd Wright and seven ‘mechanistic’ villas by Le Corbusier. Through this process, the paper demonstrates a method for measuring wholeness, and quantitatively tests Alexander’s assertion that organic environments are more whole than mechanistic ones.

In a highly urban environment like Hong Kong, young architects progressively lose their physical connection with materials and manual construction skills and rely mostly on computer-aided design software to conceptualise their architectural design projects. This extreme condition exists within a global phenomenon that increasingly confines architecture to its mere scenographic character. This article presents and discusses the use of bamboo as a building material by second-year architecture students from Hong Kong engaged in an international design and build competition with peers from Southeast Asia. Over three consecutive academic years, students were exposed to the rediscovery of an artisanship tradition and the physical properties of bamboo as a construction material. The exercise allowed students to explore tectonics and reposition architecture as a culturally grounded act and art of construction. The experience achieved onsite is significant for the realisation of context-responsive, environmentally sensitive, and culturally orientated forms of architecture. In Southeast Asia, the use of bamboo enables the architectural project to arise from the roots of a long-standing vernacular tradition and as a result it can become a medium through which the essence of architecture can be discussed. This article investigates the extraordinary pedagogical value provided by student competitions, such as the one organised by the Nansha Wetland Bird Park and the South China University of Technology, which requires the use of local natural materials and the construction to be carried out by the designers.

In 1492, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, the future author of “De Orbe Novo,” sent a letter to Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, the primate of Spain, describing the state of Spanish education as Martyr took up a post as court tutor. This study argues that Martyr's letter was a satire that relied upon a close intertextual relationship with Juvenal's “Satires.” This framework allowed Martyr to offer layered analyses of Spanish Latinity, the dynamics between Spanish and Italian humanists, patronage, and the role of arms and letters in noble life. Martyr's letter revealed a complex, and sometimes contradictory, assessment of court education, as well as an active reception of Juvenal.