The rheology, morphology and properties of the composite systems of LCP, Vectra ATM 950 and Nylon 66 were investigated. The viscocity ratio of LCP and matrix has strong influence on their morphology. For LCP blends, the viscosity ratio of LCP is a critical factor in determining the blend morphology. The optical micrographs show that the good fibrillation can be achieved when the viscocity of the dispersed LCP phase is less than that of the Nylon 66 matrix at 310°C. The dispersed LCP domains tend to be spherical or cluster‐like when the viscosity ratio of the disperesed LCP phase and the Nylon 66 matrix is more than 1 at 280°C. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical micrograph observations show that Nylon 66 is immiscible with LCP, and there are two distinct phases in the blends. The morphology of LCP phase changes with the composition. LCP exhibits a fine fibril dispersed phase in the Nylon 66 matrix in the low LCP concentration. With an increase in LCP concentration, the morphology of LCP phase is changed form a fine fibril dispersed phase to a perfectly aligned continuous fiber reinforced phase in the rich LCP concentration. The tensile moduli increase with LCP concentration, especially in the rich LCP concentration. The tensile strengths increase with LCP concentration only when LCP concentration is above 40 wt%. Compared to the pure Nylon 66 fiber, the 40 wt% LCP composite sample shows a 982.1% increase in tensile modulus and a 123.3% increase in tensile strength. The mechanical properties of composite fibers are below the rule of mixtures if the LCP concentration is low, but above the rule of mixtures if the LCP concentration is high.

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This paper is a survey of the Government Land Sales (GLS) programme in Singapore as a mechanism through which design aspects of private developments are regulated by the state. By comparing specifications in tender documents with what was eventually built, and tracing how much design weighed in the awarding of tenders, the survey shows how design regulations moved from an experimental phase in the 1960s when controls were sparse and discretionary, to being institutionalised by the 1980s, when controls became comprehensive, precise, and technical. Still, this did not translate planning visions directly into reality, as developers and architects successfully made counterproposals during and after the tender process. By examining the Integrated Resort development at Marina Bay against shifts in political culture and economic conditions in the 1990s, this paper concludes by arguing that the state deployed the GLS programme to procure`iconic' buildings while excluding public involvement from actual design-review processes.

This paper examines the crucial years between 2002 and 2012 when land enclosures, reclamation works, and architectural production transformed the urban landscape of Macau. Building on the literature on urban informality, I first analyze how planning as institutionalized informality unmapped the city of Macau through a complex medium of neoliberal ethos, technical rationality, and geopolitical calculations. Then, I show how the casino concessionaires remapped the city in a highly competitive milieu by tracing how they maneuvered to secure relative locational advantage. This analysis shows the importance of framing mapping and unmapping as a simultaneous dialectical process so as to render the creative-destructive dynamic of capitalist urban transformation. It also suggests how we can further the analysis of urban planning as an informalized practice and institution.

This article examines how ‘urban experience’ is objectified and transformed into something that is legible to the state and its experts. It conceptualizes design guidelines as a political technology where bodies of expert knowledge, emplaced in a planning bureaucracy, shape the way the built environment is produced and experienced. Using Singapore as an example of a centralized planning bureaucracy, I analyze how lighting, public art and advertisement signs are targeted to produce a total environment with normative narratives. This article makes two contributions. First, it unpacks the processes that translate different modes of legibility in an attempt to make ‘experience’ legible for planners. The political efficacy of guidelines and pre‐established bureaucratic boundaries means that planners can only intervene through a series of combinations, mediations and approximations. Thus, legibility proceeds in a way that is akin to ‘feeling around’. Second, it foregrounds the ‘middle layer of urban governance’ that is often ignored in the discipline. Guidelines represent one coordinate in a system of political technologies that is concerned with producing the norm, that substrate of urban production mechanized through a series of repetitions, gradations and classifications.