The article is dedicated to philosophical and religious aspects of the work of Russian writer and thinker Mary (Skobcowa). The aim is to investigate the key concepts that shaped her writings such as the problem of creativity, asceticism, the problem of the person. Particular attention was paid to the religious roots of her works. Her ideas are examined in the context of the theological thought of the twentieth century. Mother Mary synthesized the Sergiei Bulgakhov’s ‘philosophical system’ and the existentialist analysis of Nikolai Berdiayev. Special attention was paid to a critical rethinking of nineteenth-century Russian monastic tradition as well as polemic in the academic tradition of the early twentieth century.

The author, as a former pupil of the title figure of this paper, and as a leading his cooperator in numerous creative works, recalls memoires and presents an analysis of the personality of late professor of architectute, J. Tadeusz Gawłowski. The paper represents both – objective and official features of chronicle, hence also introduces readers into more personal secrets of the outstanding architect: creator, scholar and academic teacher – being simultaneously a picturesque and friendly person. He was connected mainly with Kraków University of Technology, but sharing also his activity in order to fulfill needs of three other, important academic schools.

Professor architect Juliusz Żórawski was for the author of this paper, a leading personality, during his period of studiea and assistantship. Author on the wider background of events of his life, draws a portrait of his mentor according to: creative Modern projecting, thinking, talking and writing about architecture – especially on the field of form. The teacher and his pupil had similar passions, e.g. expressing oneself by free hand sketching, sensibility towards a landscape, e.g. Tatra Mountains. This is why in spite that Żórawski was rather radical Modernist, the fan of abstraction, the author of this paper owes him his own views closer to the contextualism, and a creative, more “hot”expression, and at the first – his passion towards architecture and its creation.

In order to explore creativity in design, a computational model based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) (an approach to employing old experiences to solve new problems) and other soft computing techniques from machine learning, is proposed in this paper. The new model is able to address the four challenging issues: generation of a design prototype from incomplete requirements, judgment and improvement of system performance given a sparse initial case base library, extraction of critical features from a given feature space, adaptation of retrieved previous solutions to similar problems for deriving a solution to a given design task. The core principle within this model is that different knowledge from various level cases can be explicitly explored and integrated into a practical design process. In order to demonstrate the practical significance of our presented computational model, a case-based design system for EM devices, which is capable of deriving a new design prototype from a real-world device case base with high dimensionality, has been developed.

This study builds on an existing structural model developed to examine the influence of

leadership and organizational culture on innovation and satisfaction of engineers in Australian

public sectors (APS). The objective of this study is to increase the understanding of

innovation process with a focus on causal relationships among critical factors. To achieve this

objective, the study develops an assessment approach to help predict creativity and work

meaningfulness of engineers in the APS. Three quantitative analysis methods were sequentially

conducted in this study including correlation analysis, path analysis, and Bayesian

networks. A correlation analysis was conducted to pinpoint the strong association between

key factors studied. Subsequently, path analysis was employed to identify critical pathways

which were accordingly used as a structure to develop Bayesian networks. The findings of

the study revealed practical strategies for promoting (1) transformational leadership and (2)

innovative culture in public sector organizations since these two factors were found to be key

drivers for individual creativity and work meaningfulness of their engineers. This integrated

approach may be used as a decision support tool for managing the innovation process for

engineers in the public sectors.

The article contains new approach to creating future of cities and urban regions based on the concept of creative cities. The core of this approach is to treat the genetic code of development as a tool for creating future of the territorial units. The combination and synergy of development genes that were considered as creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship allows the use of the fundamental elements of strategic analysis. On one hand, these elements are future challenges of cities and urban regions that they face in the perspective of global trends; on the other hand, they are strategic capabilities of sectors inseparably linked with creativity – sectors of culture, science and business, the integration of which is based on cultural heritage of cities and urban regions. The next issue of the article is the description of the way genes of urban development are manifested in the four sectors. It allows to present the genetic code of development function as a generator of strategic capabilities of creative sectors in cities and urban regions. Finally, the ideas of cross-sectoral undertakings for Polish big cities and urban agglomerations that enable facing intellectual and strategic global challenges were presented. This takes place through the use of strategic capabilities based on the genes of creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship; in this way, the genetic code of the development of large cities and urban agglomerations served as the new prospective approach to creating their future.

The paper presents the concept of vital cities in the context of mechanisms of sustainable development, networking and creativity. The vital city was presented as:

- a city belonging to the inhabitants – a city managed and developed with advanced processes of participation,

- a city of reasonable management – a city that uses and at the same time protects its key potentials,

- a city of creation – a city of creating and implementing new ideas,

- a city of opportunities – a city that creates the conditions for the use of energy and creativity residents,

- a city in the surround – a city with a strong position in the environment.

This paper reviews parametric audio coders and discusses novel technologies introduced in a low-complexity, low-power consumption audio decoder and music synthesizer platform developed by the authors. The decoder uses parametric coding scheme based on the MPEG-4 Parametric Audio standard. In order to keep the complexity low, most of the processing is performed in the parametric domain. This parametric processing includes pitch and tempo shifting, volume adjustment, selection of psychoacoustically relevant components for synthesis and stereo image creation. The decoder allows for good quality 44.1 kHz stereo audio streaming at 24 kbps. The synthesizer matches the audio quality of industry-standard sample-based synthesizers while using a twenty times smaller memory footprint soundbank. The presented decoder/synthesizer is designed for low-power mobile platforms and supports music streaming, ringtone synthesis, gaming and remixing applications.

Both the landscape shaped and recognized as valuable, as well as the internally incoherent, low-value landscape are the basis on which the development and transformation of culture, social ties and ties with the place take place. Shaping the landscape is associated with among others, on identity, creativity and responsibility for the place. The social eff ects of building a valuable, attractive landscape, including the urban landscape, are determined by many activities, not only those related to building and functioning of the built environment. Communal revitalization programs emphasize the importance of the aesthetics of public places and undertake the eff ort to involve the local community in increasing the aesthetics of the neighborhood and semi-public spaces. However, landscape themes appear sporadically at the occasion of discussing the attractiveness of a place of residence and are intuitively intertwined with the issues of the quality of public spaces and green areas. The shaping of the urban landscape is signifi cantly associated with innovation [Bach-Głowińska 2014]. As a result of research into the relationship between space, the sense of belonging and innovation, there are some initial recommendations for providing elements that stimulate the user’s creativity while shaping the urban landscape. In the developed methodology of the smartest place, the determination of stakeholders takes place, among others thanks to the use of an online survey, then meetings are held with those involved in the co-creation session, which aim to definitively determine the form of landscape that best suits their needs and at the same time have the chance to stimulate their creativity

For a long time creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship have been at the heart of studies on economic growth of regions and cities. In the paper the three notions are scrutinised together to propose conceptual approach to establishing research and development pathways, based upon three-stage identification of: research problems, project patterns and relational mechanisms. The paper is concluded with a 63 Box – the approach helping to navigate throughout project preparation phase.

The Corpus Ignatianum, usually included in the works of the Apostolic Fathers, is made up of seven letters in koiné Greek, probably written by Saint Ignatius of Antioch. These texts, which have a complicated literary history, are very interesting and original from a linguistic and stylistic point of view. A lexical analysis of the Corpus Ignatianum, in particular, allows identifying first of all a noteworthy lexical creativity. There are indeed some hapax, unusual words and neologisms, which are often compound words. Moreover, in these texts some words already used in classical Greek are first attested in Christian literature. There are also some latinisms. Another noteworthy lexical characteristic of the Corpus Ignatianum is the presence of words and metaphors which are typical of Hellenistic philosophy, especially of Stoicism, and which are present also in Christian literature.

In the early 21st century, the concepts and theories which constitute the theoretical and methodological foundation of the traditional 20th century resocialization pedagogy (divided into three basic groups characterized by different theoretical and methodological approaches) got largely outdated. Therefore, contemporary resocialization pedagogy searches for new inspirations. What can become one of the new theoretical- methodological concepts is creative resocialization. The presented study concerns the assumptions of both the traditional resocialization pedagogy and its new varieties, with special focus on traditional and current theoretical and methodological contexts.

Recent works of the authors, concerning the future of urban regions, are synthesised in the paper. Three methodological paths – focused on exploring and creating the future of urban regions – are the backbone of the presented work. Within the fi rst path, creation of regional future by applying the concept of intellectual and strategic challenges is recommended. Second path introduces a new perspective for the future, based upon vehicles. A new philosophy of urban and regional growth emerges here. Third path is a new approach towards creation of regional specialisations in a contemporary notion of technological and creative economy.