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In the age of the information society, the prominence of internet communication and social media has meant that the role of face-to-face encounters in public life has been diminished. This trend has been exacerbated by public health concerns in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. The social role of architecture and its contribution to the sustainability of interpersonal relationships has become a significant issue for architects. As a place to accommodate sporting activities and social space in the community, sports centers play an important role in promoting social cohesion and interaction. This is the focal topic of the present thesis. The principal tasks of this thesis are as follows: (1) This thesis collects and studies relevant literature on sports centers as social spaces. A special emphasis is placed on discussions of social spaces. The intention is to articulate design characteristics of community sports centers that merit further exploration. (2) This thesis selects three representative sports facilities as case studies and considers how they promote the formation of social bonds and interactions. The thesis offers a review of design ideas, planning strategies and specific methods of implementation. (3) This thesis takes the design project for a sports center in New District A in Macau as an example, and puts forward a design strategy of ""vertical intensification + shared application"". This strategy aims to promote the integration of the sports center with the urban environment, while creating a flexible public space that can adapt to the needs of spontaneous and social activities. The intention is to make the sports center a place that promotes community interaction and connectivity. Overall, this thesis argues that community sports centers can become important places to promote social interaction through well-designed architectural space. Specific design factors and strategies explored in this thesis provide useful points of reference for architects. Through on-going processes of optimization and innovation, sports centers can better serve the community of Macau

As technology evolves swiftly and consumers call for more customization, the study of interactive fashion design is increasingly emerging as a key topic within the fashion industry. The goal of this research is to investigate merging intelligent technology with apparel design, realizing functional enlargements and enriching the user experience by employing interactive design. Initially, this document examines key theories and ongoing studies in interaction design, intelligent textiles, and wearable tech, pinpointing the current research voids and difficulties. This section then presents a range of methodologies used in the study, encompassing literature review, case analysis, and interviews with experts, to thoroughly analyze and assess all facets of interactive apparel design. This document suggests a methodical design of interactive clothing, outlining the entire process from initial design to the creation of prototypes. The practicality and efficiency of the design methodology are proven by creating prototypes and conducting trials. Findings from the experiments indicate that interactive attire offers substantial benefits in terms of functionality, comfort, and user experience. The research offers both theoretical backing and pragmatic advice for designing interactive attire, while also highlighting paths for upcoming advancements in fashion technology. In conclusion, the document examines the shortcomings of the existing research and potential research paths, aiming to offer valuable guidance for advancing the development of clothing styling and wearable tech

In the present world, many cities have historical and culturally rich districts, but protectionism or economic reasons have slowed their development. Therefore, how to generate more value for these areas is crucial for a city with a deep and complex history. Using immersive virtual reality technology can help solve this problem, and this paper takes Macau's famous historical district as an entry point and starts from the perspective of the general public to explore and design some of the existing buildings and public areas in the district. The focus of this study is to explore the future development possibilities of historical and cultural districts in cities and experience the current situation of the district. Specifically, by studying the historical background and human investigation of ST. LAZARUS CHURCH PEDESTRIAN STREET (Chinese official name: 疯堂斜巷), the study uses immersive virtual reality technology to first create a scene of the existing building group in the district as a stage of protection for historical buildings. Then, it creates and presents a future building group scene in the district, which includes completed buildings and public area facilities after renovation and sustainable design. This renovation does not destroy the protected historical buildings at all, but is a protective exploration. The researchers used 3D computer graphics software (Blender) and virtual tour software (Kuula) to create the design, and users can freely explore the scene by ""walking"" virtually. The design includes two groups of architectural scenes of the ST. LAZARUS CHURCH PEDESTRIAN STREET in the present and the future. After entering the scene, users can freely switch between the present and the future time points to experience the different architectural scene atmospheres. Users can enter some buildings and public areas, and interact with objects in the scene to generate visual or auditory introductions to the target. Users can see the rough outline of the future historical and cultural district after the protective development in the free exploration of the virtual reality environment, which can inspire further public thinking about the development of historical and cultural street areas in the city. Users can explore and experience the project using professional virtual reality equipment or directly on the web. By using immersive virtual reality technology, the public can have a more intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the future development of historical and cultural street areas, and urban planners, professional architects, and clients of architectural design can all benefit from this technology, especially in the initial conceptual design and prototype design of buildings

The primary research focus of this dissertation revolves around the concept of a "plugin" program. It raises a fundamental question about whether a building can attain long-term usability through metabolic flexibility (plugin units and their reconfigurable space), promoting adaptability (accommodating various program transfers), and meeting sustainable future criteria. Specifically, this dissertation inquires whether this "plugin" building design, with its reconfigurable units and metabolic system, can adapt to different spatial programs and become sustainable architecture

Macao is a city of culture, and history and culture are the wealth of Macao. Over the centuries, the exchange and transmutation of Chinese and Western cultures have given Macao a unique cultural charm, and have also formed and preserved a considerable amount of cultural heritage. Cultural heritage has received increasing attention from all sectors of the community in the tourism industry in Macao, the promotion of the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage through tourism development has become a new issue in the tourism sector. As an independent art form in the urban public space, tile painting has both practical and aesthetic functions, and is a special vehicle for the convergence of multiple cultures in the urban cultural ecology. It is also a medium through which the city's cultural message can be fully disseminated. The paper presents a detailed analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of the development of Macao's cultural heritage tile murals, based on an introduction to the existing status of Macao's cultural heritage tile murals, using the SWOT analysis method, which provides a reference for Macao's cultural heritage tourism

This research paper analyses the marketing efforts and important attributes of Macau tea restaurants that have been open for more than 20 years, especially the digital methods that tea restaurants have used to sustain their business and meet customers' needs in the era of digital transition after the onset of the 2019 Covid 19 pandemic year. Using online marketing channels nowadays become an important tool for communicating with customers today. Despite the old Tea Restaurants in Macau did not put much efforts on digital channels for communication yet, to find out how tea restaurants survive in the rival restaurant industry in Macau, qualitative and quantitative methods were used to see how they meet the needs of their customers. For the quantitative method, an online survey questionnaire in bilingual English and Traditional Chinese was conducted with 280 respondents on customer purchase habits, importance of restaurants’ attributes and social media insights on tea restaurants, and the data was analysis by SPSS for the relationship and significance. For the qualitative method, 7 interviews were conducted with the business owners of the old tea restaurants which that have been opened for more than 20 years, including marketing efforts and their attitudes towards digitalization. To find out the marketing strategy of Macau’s old tea restaurants in the digital transformation era, it was found that “place” and “product” are the most important marketing mix for customers. Tea restaurant owners focus on product quality, and generate “word-of-mouth” which is customer-generated marketing, and is an effective way to influence customers for local tea restaurants. Meanwhile business owners will consider digitalize in the near future as well to match the new young customers’ online habits and the need for “place” such as online delivery platform

This dissertation examines consumers' perceptions of food influencer content on Instagram and the relationship between exposure to food influencer reviews and consumers' intention to visit restaurants in Macau. A mixed-method research design was employed, combining quantitative survey data from 301 responses with qualitative insights from one focus group session involving six participants. The findings suggest that consumers find food influencer content entertaining and inspiring for dining out and exploring new culinary experiences, but they express concerns over its credibility. While food influencer content has a good exposure to consumers, it has a moderate impact on consumers’ restaurant choices, with various factors affecting the relationship. The results highlight the importance of perceived trustworthiness and enjoyability of food influencer content, the visual appeal of food and restaurant environments in photos, and personal relationships in shaping Macau consumers' visit intention to restaurants. The findings can serve as a basis for future research on credibility perceptions of food influencers, the enjoyability of influencer content, and the visual appeal of food and restaurant environments on Instagram. Practically, food influencers should prioritize transparency, authenticity, appealing photos, engaging captions, and leverage the role of personal relationships to increase their impact on consumers' restaurant choices

This dissertation aims to research the need and viability of creating a digital platform that assists the creative processes naturally linked to Visual Merchandising. Through the proposal of a digital platform that works as a co-creative tool for display archives and a co-creative tool for display set-ups through mood boards, we will aim at improving the teamwork in retail and provide a unique, fast-forward platform for information sharing and input under the direction of Visual Departments. Building on rich source materials such as bibliography, scientific papers, news, and articles, and interviewing Visual Merchandisers actively working in the field, we will show the importance of creativity in Luxury Retail and what are the most common challenges in the field that we will propose a solution to. We will focus on the study of concepts, reviewing digital application tools being used by professionals and their best features and improvement opportunities. By gathering this information, we hope to provide accurate insights and information that proves the viability of this proposal and understand what features could serve best the target audience. Finally, we will present a conceptual idea in the form of sketches with functions of this digital application tool to be fully developed in the future and hopefully build a consistent well, designed commercial web-based application

For many people, an art museum is a place to display artifacts, artworks, and the temporaryhistory of a community or country. It also advocates for an artist’s viewpoints on art. In fact,museum design is closely related to politics. The purpose for building a museum in a city is toexhibit information about the development of the local culture. Moreover, high culturalvalue land is usually built with museums displaying their heritage nearby, so that people canexplore and learn more about the local historical background and artifacts of the place.The abandoned Iec Long Firecracker Factory in Taipa Center, Macau has been on hold formany years and has also been used as a war game venue that resulted in scratches on thewalls of the dilapidated old heritage buildings. Recently, the Macau government has finalizedits plans for the revitalization of this local heritage site. Due to its dispersed layout andsurrounding landscape, there are some design constraints around the preservation of thisimportant heritage site. The design for high cultural value land should not only consider thepreservation and renovation of old buildings but also consider more ways to effectively usethe site as an important public venue for the city.For developing the methodologies of this project, several concepts and case studies wereanalyzed to extract ideas that can be referenced and to unveil strategies for designing apossible solution to this problem. This dissertation intends to create a model for developingand integrating architectural design into this heritage site and will study the spacearrangements for both the indoor space and the outdoor space within the concept of afragmented space integration. Fragmented space, means that a place is designed using adecentralized layout. This conceptualization of a design can preserves the original appearance of the cultural value of land and at the same time, the space can be used moreefficiently to create a circulation for the public to visit and enjoy the location

Vertical housing is essential for modern cities because of its efficiency in using space (Wang, J. Murakami, A. 2019). The architecture of vertical housing is often determined by developers and designers. Therefore, the architecture of the building is fixed, and the end users are not involved nor can they influence its final appearance. For residential buildings, the unit sizes are based on market demand at a given point in time, which does not reflect the dynamic needs of the population as they evolve and may result in a mismatch between the supply and the demand for housing. The design of housing towers that have demographic characteristics and family size is dependent on housing size and can be very uncharacteristic and repetitive. The research question identified and addressed in this study is: How can residential buildings meet the evolving demand for housing units? Based on this question, this research paper develops a prototype for residential to resolve the dilemma between the supply and the demand in terms of the apartment size and layout. This research is a project-oriented project that focuses on residential that reflects the different family sizes required to be housed in the building and is combined with the open building method to maximize building performance. Ultimately, this research represents a meaningful innovation for market-driven architecture and defines architectural design based on the changing needs of the population using the open construction method. It also provides an opportunity to improve the design efficiency and develop a method for future growth, upgrades, and user needs. It may also be able to reflect the current housing ratio of the residential building. This work can be further explored to verify its effectiveness for other housing types and community living spaces

How can we provide more sports areas in a high-density urban environment? Nowadays, most cities in Asia are experiencing high-speed development (Satterthwaite, 2023). There is an intensely increasing demand for land that is confronted with an insufficient supply of space, resulting in a shortfall of suitable construction space to meet the rising demand. Over the past few decades, different countries and cities have created various solutions for this issue. This shortage of space has been resolved in various ways, for example: through land reclamation, renovation, and architectural design (Grydehoj, 2015). This dissertation seeks to analyse and discuss how architects have used design to expand spaces within the limited available areas for public spaces like sports facilities (Carmona, 2021). Understanding how sports modalities influence architecture and space utilisation for sports activities will also be covered. Additionally, it will examine case studies on how to better implement the program in a limited urban area with regards to the typology connections of sports facilities and their interaction with users. Finally, this dissertation is practice-based and oriented, the case study and project development will focus on a sports facility in the high-density populated Taipa Centre (Macau). This specific project solution will address the real problem for the city, and research will conclude by analysing the constraints of sports architecture in high-density areas, providing design solutions for these situations, and thereby contributing to the improvement of public spaces in a city