Tuesday, March 16. 2010Design Approaches for the 21st Century Cityby admin At The Mobile City, we are currently researching the design processes that shape the cities of the 21st century, and bumped into an interesting paradox (also pointed out by others): The experience of our present day city in every day life is increasingly a hybrid one – meaning that it is made up of both physical and mediated experiences that mutually influence, extend or contradict each other. At the same time, the design of our cities is for the most part still a rather stratified process where different disciplines shape the different ‘layers’ of the urban experience. Planners and architects are still mostly interested in the physical, spatial design of cities. Whereas it is artists, telecom-operators, activists, and dotcom-start-ups that shape the software and interface layers through which the experience of a physical place is optimized, extended, reframed, negated, denied, contested or contradicted. What is more, these different disciplines all have their own traditions of understanding what a city is or should do. Often they don’t even understand each other’s language. This is of course not necessarily a bad thing. Cities have always been heterogeneous or hybrid spaces where different logics are at work – and in competition with each other. Urban culture has always been a negotiation between the spatial embodied ideals of architects and the messy practices of everyday life. At the same time we think that this time around this negotiation is becoming more complicated. It is not just the architect or planner that sets the stage for our urban experiences. Digital media, software and embedded technologies – varying from location based services to ‘smart’ sensors – play a co-constituting role in setting and sorting the stage as well as in both enabling and regulating public interaction. While trying to get a grasp on the different ways that digital media technologies are shaping our cities and could be incorporated in the design process, we came up with a number of possible ‘design approaches’. They form a somewhat ad lib constituted list of categories, each made up of different elements that together set the boundaries for the design process. These design approaches combine certain design tools, a methodology, a particular way of understanding what a city is (often embedded in one or another discipline) and/ or particular urban ideals. A design approach thus consists of a particular way of understanding the world, and / or a particular methodology, tools and objectives to intervene in that world. These design approaches are not neatly comparable variables: in one approach the tools might be decisive, another departs from social processes, a third from technologies and a fourth stresses a particular urban ideal. Some operate at the scale of urban planning, others mostly focus at hyperlocal interventions. Some of these approaches are overlapping, others might be combined. This list is also not exhaustive – please feel free to add any approaches that we might have overlooked. Yet we do think that it gives a sense of all the different concurrent and sometimes competing approaches at work in the 21st century hybrid city. · The Wiki-City – Designing with new media – How can the design process itself be restructured through the use of (social) digital media? How can one allow for more participation, bottom-up input, and engagement in a productive way? How does this change the relation between client, architects and other performers, and the audience? · The Real Time City – Data-aggregation in the Design Process With the rise of digital and mobile media and gps receivers, urbanites have started leaving numerous digital traces behind that when aggregated reveal their usage patterns of the city. What exactly do we learn from these datasets, and how can they be incorporated in the design process? · The Living City – Urban experience, narratives and design Digital media can be used to annotate urban spaces with people’s everyday stories and lived experiences. How does this temporal inscription of place change they way we see and interact with the urban environment? · The Multimedia City – The design of urban screens and media facades Architecture is increasingly using multimedia components as part of their elementary set of building blocks. How can you incorporate these into urban design? · The Augmented City – The design of informational services in a physical context In augmented reality, additional layers of information are projected on or over physical environments. Thus the domain of digital information is embedded in the physical domain. What is the potential for urban design? · The Sentient City – Designing Responsive Architecture Various sensors can register real-time information about the environment, and movements, (social) processes and identities of people and objects. Technical systems may also respond to changing conditions. How can this be employed to adapt the shape, function, usage of or access to buildings and infrastructures? · The Smart City – Using artificial intelligence to design urban systems that respond or anticipate what is happening Can AI be integrated in urban design to anticipate and respond to urban patterns? · The Hybrid City – Designing for hybrid practices. Digital and mobile media have led to changing urban behaviors and the rise of new cultural practices. For instance, the advent of WiFi has increased ‘mobile work’ from (semi-)public spaces. How can these changes in cultural practices be translated back into design, either by physically accommodating them or by design interventions that discourage them? · The Layered City – Integrated design of the parallel experiences of physical places and mediascapes If the experience of the city is shaped by both the shape of the physical city as well as through exchanges in the media landscape, can we design both layers (or ‘channels’) of an urban project in concordance with each other? · The Plugin City – using digital media to optimize, personalize or extend the experience of the city Can digital media be designed as ‘plug ins’ to the existing city, make the usage of existing urban structures more efficient and personalized or extend and deepen their experience? · The Tactical City – using digital media to design alternative usage of the city Can digital media be designed to open up the design of physical spaces to other users or practices than initially intended? · The Critical City – using design to foreground and discuss the dominant discours on urban culture Can design be employed as a means to a debate on urban culture, rather than shaping urban culture itself? · The Interface City – designing urban ‘interfaces’. Some urban theories understand the city itself as an information platform where goods, opinions and ideas are constantly exchanged. Can new services be designed that optimize or extend this function of the city as a platform of exchange into the digital domain? · The Informational City – The design of information spaces In our understanding of the media world spatial metaphors play an important role. Some architects have made the leap from designing physical structures to using their spatial expertise in ‘information architecture’. ----- Via The Mobile City Personal comment: To follow the previous post, a list of mashup terms linking digital media and architecture/urbanism. The list seems quite complete and interesting, even so I believe it should hybrid itself with less media centered approaches (i.e. the previous post...).
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Interaction design, Territory
at
10:20
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, digital, interaction design, localized, media, mediated, mobile, monitoring, territory, ubiquitous, urbanism
Monday, March 08. 2010Nicolas MoulinWednesday, March 03. 2010Dan Hill - New Soft CityDan Hill-Keynote: New Soft City from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo. The way the street feels may soon be defined by the invisible and inaudible. Cities are being laced with sensors, which in turn generate urban informatics experiences, imbuing physical space with real-time behavioural data. The urban fabric itself can become reflexive and responsive to some extent, and there are numerous implications for the design and experience of cities as a result. Multi-sensory interaction design merges with architecture, planning and an urbanism informed by the gentle ambient drizzle of everyday data. Drawing from projects in Sydney, Masdar, Helsinki, Seoul and elsewhere, I’ll explore the opportunities implicit in this new soft city – how we might once again enable a city alive to the touch of its citizens – and what this means for an urban interaction design.
Biography Dan Hill is a designer and urbanist. He’s been working at the forefront of interaction design since the early ‘90s and is responsible for shaping many innovative, popular and critically acclaimed products and services. He is currently a senior consultant at Arup in Sydney. As Head of Interactive Technology & Design at the BBC in London, he led design across their award-winning websites as well as conducting significant strategic work, re-thinking the organisation for the on-demand age. He co-founded the global media product Monocle, and is one of the organisers of the acclaimed architecture and urbanism event Postopolis!, running in New York and Los Angeles. He also writes City of Sound, generally thought of as one of the leading architecture and urbanism websites. For Arup, Dan is exploring the possibilities of urban informatics from a creative, design-led perspective, re-thinking how real-time information networks change streets and cities, neighbourhoods and organisations, mobility and work, play and public space. He works on major urban development projects worldwide. ----- Related Links:Personal comment:
We met last year with Dan Hill during Postopolis!L.A. and just collaborated on a "IBA Smart House" competition, along with Philippe Rahm who was in chare of the main design.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Interaction design
at
15:24
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, data, information, interaction design, interface, interferences, ubiquitous, urbanism
Tuesday, March 02. 2010The World in a ShellOf all the shipping containers that will pass through For five years, Hans Kalliwoda and Delft The World in a Shell will premiere in Rotterdam, thereby starting its journey. Since art, technology and architecture come together In the container, the Netherlands Architecture Institute and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media are joining forces to organize a number of activities in and around the container. There will be workshops and a seminar on sustainability in art, architecture and science on April 1 at V2_. Follow Hans Kalliwoda's journey at http://www.worldinashell.net, or drop by The World in a Shell!
Because, technology and architecture coincide in The World in a Shell, the NAi and V2_ are joining forces to organize a number of activities in and around the container: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Official Opening: The World in a Shell March 27 | 17:00 | NAi Museumpark, Rotterdam
Seminar: Art, Architecture-Science Collaboration in Sustainability With Ute Meta Bauer, Robert Zwijnenberg and Hans Kalliwoda April 1 | 19:30 | Admission: € 7,50 | V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam | Reservation required
Workshop: The Power of Logic Versus the Logic of Power With Ion Sorvin (N55) and Anne Romme April 2 | 10:00–18:00 | Admission: € 20,00 | Reservation required
Urban Adventure: A Walk in the Invisible City With Petr Kazl and Wilfried Houjebek April 9 | 16:00–18:00 | Reservation required ----- Via V2_
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Sustainability
at
16:16
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artists, conferences, exhibitions, mobility, sustainability
Mercedes-Benz Tornadoby noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
While we're still on the subject of artificial weather, the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, designed by UNStudio, can repurpose its internal ventilation system to form an artificial tornado.
[Image: The Mercedes-Benz Tornado; photographer unknown]. "The twister takes around seven minutes to materialize," Autoblog explains, "and is generated by 144 jets and 28 tons of air. The low pressure area at the center of the tornado works to create a jet stream that draws smoke out of the building's corridors and funnels it upwards and out an exhaust vent on the roof." It is also more than 100 feet tall—making it the official world-record holder for the World's Largest Artificial Tornado. Watch the video of how it forms: A reader, Daan Koch, pointed this internal atmospheric feature out to me—the tornado as ornament—adding that this "dramatic way of ventilating an atrium... could be nice for the Guggenheim in New York, as well." I couldn't agree more. Or perhaps horizontal tornadoes could roll through the New York subway system every night from 2-5am, cleaning out the underworld of its dust and potato chip bags. Perhaps even inside this New Haven parking garage, shown below, with its "fabulous concrete circulation drum" as recently photographed by Charles Holland. Complicatedly angled fans and vacuums suck new wind systems into existence near Yale. [Image: New Haven parking garage as Tornadodrome; photographed by Fantastic Journal]. Or your new house in the Chicago suburbs seems absolutely perfect for you and your family—till the first hot day of the year sets in and you turn on the A/C. Some sinister combination of ill-conceived vents and over-tall foyer begins to rope together winds—pulling in air from the living room, from the basement, from the kids' bedrooms—and within a mere twenty minutes a tornado-strength twister takes visible form. It then spins for days, suffocating the residents in their sleep by robbing them of oxygen, and lifting their limp bodies into the air, where they turn in lazy circles like pirates drowned at sea. Their bodies dance aloft, as if caught in an aero-spirograph, eerily lit by dim suburban lamplight and visible through the front door windows—a vision of the vortex—accidentally killed by HVAC. [Images: Two views inside UNStudio's Mercedes-Benz Museum; photographer unknown]. (Thanks, Daan, for the tip!) ----- Via BLDGBLOG
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture
at
11:04
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artificial reality, automation, climate, landscape, weather
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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