Myrsini Mamoli | Georgia Institute of Technology (original) (raw)

Papers by Myrsini Mamoli

eCAADe proceedings

In this paper, we suggest a generic city description model suited for purposes like semi-automati... more In this paper, we suggest a generic city description model suited for purposes like semi-automatic city modeling and urban layout evaluation. The generic city model refers to basic vital functions of a (computable) city. Feature patterns are used to extend the generic city model with global and local characteristics. The Hellenistic cities serve as a platform for a first implementation to test a semi-automatic city model generation. As a result four cities are reconstructed as a first example of our ongoing work, Miletus, Knidos, Priene and Olynthus. Future work will deal with the application of the generic city model to the performance simulation of contemporary urban layouts.

eCAADe proceedings

This paper presents a shape grammar that formalizes the architectural form of ancient Greek and R... more This paper presents a shape grammar that formalizes the architectural form of ancient Greek and Roman libraries and encodes it into shape rules for the reconstruction, evaluation and prediction of ancient Greek and Roman libraries.The grammar is briefly presented and the different contributions of the computation to archaeological research are discussed.

Georgia Institute of Technology, Dec 11, 2013

Savvopoulos, who devoted their time to share with me the results of their research on the specifi... more Savvopoulos, who devoted their time to share with me the results of their research on the specific monuments they are working on, as well as their thoughts on ancient libraries. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv LIST OF TABLES xiii LIST OF FIGURES xv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xxix SUMMARY xxxii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. Prelude 1 1.2. Corpus of ancient libraries 3 1.3. Formal methods in archaeological reconstruction 6 1.4. Contributions of the dissertation 8 1.5. Outline of the dissertation CHAPTER 2: HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN LIBRARIES: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2.1. Introduction 2.1.1. Ancient testimonia on libraries 2.1.2. Ancient testimonia on libraries as book collections 2.1.3. Ancient testimonia on the design of libraries 2.1.4. Modern scholarship 2.2. The problem of origins 2.2.1. The mouseion 2.2.2. The gymnasium 2.2.3. The prytaneion and metroon 2.2.4 The stoa 2.3. The problem of program 2.3.1 Managing the collection 2.3.2. Storage of books vi 2.3.3 Protection from dampness 2.3.4. Natural lighting 2.3.5. Staff of the library 2.3.6. Users 2.3.7. Conclusions 2.4. The problem of design 2.4.1. The formal components of the Greek and the Hellenistic library 2.4.2. The Roman library 2.4.3. Elements of the architectural form of Roman libraries 2.5. Conclusions CHAPTER 3: THE CORPUS OF LIBRARIES 3.1. Libraries known from ancient testimonia and identified with building remains 3.1.1. Library in the Serapeum at Alexandria Rome 5.6. Grammatical derivations of hypothetical (and/or unexcavated) libraries 5.7. Discussion CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS 6.1. The architectural form of ancient libraries 6.2. The library grammar 6.2.1. Conclusions on the type definition of the ancient library 6.2.2. Conclusions on the corpus of known libraries 6.2.3. Conclusions on the corpus of possible libraries 6.2.4. Conclusions on hypothetical libraries 6.3. Shape grammars and archaeological research 6.4. Future directions 6.4.

Morphological differences between street patterns have been described and documented using measur... more Morphological differences between street patterns have been described and documented using measures which capture the spatial connectivity and density of each type. Dill (2003) described the most common measures, which include intersection density as well as the distance between those intersections, block density as well as the average block size, and street density. The usefulness of the measures has been demonstrated by applying them to limited samples of urban areas to show how they capture intuitively evident morphological differences, for example between the grid street patterns and the cul-de-sac (Jacobs 1993). Other studies have used these measures to demonstrate correlations between form and different aspects of function – pedestrian usage (Hess 1997), car usage (Crane and Crepeau 1998), or patterns of land subdivision (Southworth and Owens 1993) just to name a few. More recently two new measures have been proposed. “Metric reach” captures the sum of street length reached fr...

Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, 2020

This paper presents in detail a parametric shape grammar for the generation of ancient Greek and ... more This paper presents in detail a parametric shape grammar for the generation of ancient Greek and Roman library plans. Ancient Libraries showcase a significant variability of scale, monumentality, and design with the use of different architectural components, and researchers cannot identify them as easily as other building types. The grammar is in 2D and captures all the variability of libraries from the simpler forms of the Hellenistic period to the more monumental of the Roman period, creating a vast range of designs. The paper presents the grammar-generated plans of the known libraries based on the evidence in the archaeological record. A frequency analysis of the occurrence of the rules in the derivations ranks the different characteristics of libraries and the architectural forms with which they occur in the corpus, to determine the probability of specific rules and to interpret them as mandatory or optional. The contribution of this work is that the shape grammar summarizes the...

This paper evaluates shape grammars as a methodology to decode the cultural DNA of a set of fragm... more This paper evaluates shape grammars as a methodology to decode the cultural DNA of a set of fragmentary archaeological artifacts for parallel and precedent analysis and the definition of typologies of artifacts and buildings. Three historical grammars – one symbolic and two shape grammars –and a recent shape grammar of a whole building type are reviewed. The paper draws conclusions on the contribution of shape grammars for archaeological. typologies as well as the challenges and limitations of shape grammars in archaeological research.

Design Computing and Cognition '18, 2019

This paper discusses a shape grammar for the reconstruction of archaeological building remains of... more This paper discusses a shape grammar for the reconstruction of archaeological building remains of ancient Greek and Roman libraries with metadata pointing to the evidence on which each rule is based.

Reconstruction of fragmentary archaeological remains includes a high degree of uncertainty. It is... more Reconstruction of fragmentary archaeological remains includes a high degree of uncertainty. It is the goal of virtual archaeology to experiment with possible variable reconstructions, to visualize and verify hypotheses ( Reilly 1991 ). Grammars of archaeological artifacts are also a systematic tool of reconstruction, allowing for ambiguity and multiple readings, variant reconstructions and interpretations ( Hodder and Hutson 2003 ). As archaeological research and excavation progresses and new material evidence comes to light, grammars can be modified to account for the new designs, or the new material can verify hypothesized designs generated by the grammars. This work suggests shape grammars for the analysis and reconstruction of archaeological artifacts. Shape Grammars ( Stiny 1976 ; Stiny 2006 ) is a formal method of computation that addresses the shape and geometric form of artifacts, and is valuable as a descriptive, interpretive, generative and evaluative tool in analysis and ...

AIEDAM Special Issue, 2020

Martens, B, Wurzer, G, Grasl T, Lorenz, WE and Schaffranek, R (eds.), Real Time - Proceedings of the 33rd eCAADe Conference, 2015

Archaeology in the digital era: papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 2013

Reconstruction of fragmentary archaeological remains includes a high degree of uncertainty. Digit... more Reconstruction of fragmentary archaeological remains includes a high degree of uncertainty. Digital models are increasingly used to describe and test hypotheses about the reconstruction of these remains. Among them parametric and generative models are the most promising ones: Parametric models allow for variation based on an underlying structure and generative models allow for variation based on rules. Shape grammars and parametric shape grammars are suggested here as the best approach of generative models because they are based on visual rules allowing for ambiguity, multiple readings, and variant reconstructions and interpretations. The case study of classical libraries is used to exemplify how shape grammars can be used in archaeological analysis and reconstruction.

Computation: The New Realm of Architectural Design [27th eCAADe Conference Proceedings], Sep 2009

Proceedings of the 11th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Graphics, Nov 2007

A computational environment for the description and interpretation of three existing architectura... more A computational environment for the description and interpretation of three existing architectural reconstructions of the Library of Nysa is presented, and several new interpretations based on the original language are suggested as outcomes in the computation.

Museology International Scientific Electronic Journal, 2006

Στόχος της συγκεκριµένης έρευνας αποτέλεσε η αξιολόγηση της υφιστάµενης κατάστασης όσον αφορά στη... more Στόχος της συγκεκριµένης έρευνας αποτέλεσε η αξιολόγηση της υφιστάµενης κατάστασης όσον αφορά στη χρήση των σύγχρονων τεχνολογιών από τα Ελληνικά Μουσεία και Συλλογές, µε τη µέθοδο των ερωτηµατολογίων σε τυχαίο δείγµα. Πιο συγκεκριµένα, ο στόχος ήταν ο προσδιορισµός του ποσοστού χρήσης των σύγχρονων τεχνολογιών από τα ελληνικά µουσεία στους τοµείς της ασφάλειας, διαχείρισης, συντήρησης, ανάδειξης και προβολής των συλλογών τους. Το σηµαντικότερο συµπέρασµα της έρευνας είναι πως υπάρχει µακρύς και δύσκολος δρόµος για να ενταχθούν οι σύγχρονες τεχνολογίες στα ελληνικά µουσεία, κυρίως λόγω της έλλειψης εξειδικευµένου προσωπικού και των απαραίτητων κονδυλίων.

Books by Myrsini Mamoli

The library was one of the most important institutions in the Hellenistic and Roman city, as evid... more The library was one of the most important institutions in the Hellenistic and Roman city, as evidenced in the writings of ancient authors, and the building remains of libraries found throughout the Greco-Roman world, from Asia Minor to France and from Africa to Northern Greece. Yet, the library remains one of the least easily identifiable building forms and one of the most difficult to reconstruct, because unlike architectural types such as the temple, stoa, or theater, the library exhibits significant variety in design, scale and monumentality and the use of different component elements.
In reconstructing libraries, scholars often rely on a prescribed set of assumptions about components and their arrangement that limit our ability to identify libraries and understand their diversity of arrangement. This dissertation proposes shape grammars as an effective computational methodology to identify, understand, and reconstruct ancient libraries of diverse and variant scale, design and monumentality. The work presents a comprehensive documentation of known and identified libraries, reviews the design principles of the architectural form of ancient libraries, and on the basis of this historical analysis proposes a shape grammar for the formal specification of ancient Greek and Roman libraries.
The library grammar encodes the design principles of ancient libraries in ninety-one rules that are grouped in two major parts: the first generates the main hall of the library and its interior design, and the second generates the complete layout of the library including additional porticoes, peristyles, exedras, gardens and propylon. The application of the rules generates libraries of diverse scales and monumentality: libraries known in the corpus and as well as hypothetical libraries.
The dissertation presents grammatical derivations for the seventeen known and identified libraries. These derivations, depending on the degree of preservation of the building remains of libraries, function as an evaluative tool for the validity of the grammar or for the reconstructions proposed by traditional research. In many cases, they point to different possibilities in the identification of the building remains related to libraries among remains of different phases or remains belonging to neighboring buildings, and suggest variant scenarios of reconstruction that might not stand out using traditional techniques of reconstruction.
The metadata of the rules in the grammar and the derivations are used in a frequency analysis that provides a probabilistic model as an effective and systematic guide in identifying, evaluating and predicting the architectural form of libraries: the main hall and the threshold are identified as mandatory architectural components, the niches and focal point as most likely, and the podium with a colonnade as less likely to occur in a library. Less frequently, the library is a whole complex with exedras, a monumental entry and additional rooms that function as auditoria, banquet halls or offices.
Moreover, the work presents the derivations of possible libraries and evaluates the rules applied to generate them based on the frequency analysis. In the end, the work concludes whether these buildings are libraries, non-libraries or exceptional libraries.
Lastly, this dissertation assesses the opportunities and challenges that emerge in using shape grammars to identify and reconstruct libraries and also the value and impact of using formal computational methods in the systematic exploration of variations in reconstruction of the archaeological record.

Conference Presentations by Myrsini Mamoli

Cultural DNA workshop: computational studies on the cultural variation and heredity, KAIST, 25 June 2019, South Korea, 2019

eCAADe proceedings

Georgia Institute of Technology, Dec 11, 2013

Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, 2020

Design Computing and Cognition '18, 2019

AIEDAM Special Issue, 2020

Martens, B, Wurzer, G, Grasl T, Lorenz, WE and Schaffranek, R (eds.), Real Time - Proceedings of the 33rd eCAADe Conference, 2015

Archaeology in the digital era: papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 2013

Computation: The New Realm of Architectural Design [27th eCAADe Conference Proceedings], Sep 2009

Proceedings of the 11th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Graphics, Nov 2007

Museology International Scientific Electronic Journal, 2006

Cultural DNA workshop: computational studies on the cultural variation and heredity, KAIST, 25 June 2019, South Korea, 2019