Month: February 2022

A dense city has been and is still the vision of architects as a suggestion to solve a lot of modern problems within city development. I can’t think of a place packet with more interactions than a dense city, my logic dictates that of course should there be interaction designers specifically focused on developing the city.

As I’ve seen in my research so far there are lots of micro districts where notions of the city development of the future takes place. Starting with the small projects will be more manageable, iterative, consequential and considerable towards its people. As with the futuristic city of Telalosa(as mentioned earlier) it can grow a stronger sense of community and shared responsibility within.

Going from a world built around “starchitects” as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer e.g. I hope we’re going in a more democratic and inclusive way of thinking about city development. Moving away from old ways someone have to design the processes of inclusive design. In a top-down world someone have to advocate the inhabitants of areas of development. More information than ever is at our hands, someone have to shed a light on inequality and also make the information accessible. Reading one of thousand definitions of interaction design, I would argue this someone can be a interaction designer.

interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. Beyond the digital aspect, interaction design is also useful when creating physical (non-digital) products, exploring how a user might interact with it.

Definition from Wikipedia

 Marianthi Tatari is a Senior Architect at UNStudio a knowledge-driven architecture and design practice that prides itself on its human-centered approaches. Her approaches to design are holistic and system oriented. One of her approaches for developing city areas is using testzones to spark progression and invite for communication about the projects.

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Jane Jacobs

With all the projects of cities comes interactions. They might be planned or developed organically. How nature changes it’s infrastructure and it’s inhabitants adapt to it. Except this time we’re facilitating and planning the change. My vision for designing future cities after doing this research is a participatory designed society where a flat structure of decisions, information, accessibility takes place. Designed for everybody by everybody because everybody is designing their own interactions to some extent.

The “smart city”, where do these ideas come from? is the question raised by Adam Greenfield, in his talk with reSITE, a forum for city development. As smart cities are frequently mentioned in the context of discussing the future of cities I want to highlight some of the negatives associated with it.

One definition of smart cities is that they are, “imbedded networked informatics in every surface, object and relation of the city.” (Meaning everything should be smart). Sounds a bit dystopic doesn’t it?

By this definition smart cities lean towards providing a lifestyle of convenience, consumption and security (for a few). By saying the few, I’m talking about the ones that access the “smartness” of the city they live in. From a lot of cases, e.g. IBM’s smart city, it’s apparent that only top-positioned decision makers can access the data that the population of the city generates. Until now smart cities are largely controlled by large scale actors with their own capitalistic agenda.

Synchronized and analyzed efforts among sectors and agencies as they happen, giving decision makers consolidated information that helps them anticipate problems and manage growth and development

IBM – defining their smart city efforts

The goal of such a city is to optimally regulate and control resources by means of autonomous IT systems

Siemens – about smart cities

A complete picture of building state, usage and operations continually maintained, allowing constant optimization of energy, resources, enviroment, and occupant support and convenience systems.

Living PlanIT

These visions painted by some of the biggest actors behind our smart cities include words like “manage growth”, “optimally regulate and control resources”, “continually maintained, allowing constant optimization”. As Greenfield argues in his reSite talk, these words are purely focused towards the convenience of managing actors completely separated by the people generating the data. Said in an dramatic pictorially manner, “Reflecting lights of our faces to see what engagement we have with what’s around us. But preserving it from the ones that are generating it.”

Referring back to the utopian cities such as Brasilia these smart cities definitions have similarities. As the utopian cities had tendencies of shredding old cities into clean slates to rebuild perfect societies, these smart cities builds a rigid system of managing people of the cities. In the end using politics and strict goals for the cities as means for changing people’s behavior to reach those goals.

“Order is built over time by an infinity of small acts.”

Jane Jacobs

This quote by the famous urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs goes to say that we ought to be careful how we implement change as it’s slowly defining order over time.

A side-effect of such acts are “gentrification”, which means investing in a middle-class district in order to improve it’s quality, often leading to chasing away current inhabitants and replacing them with wealthier people, often in central areas.

The smart city industry is a Trojan horse for technology companies. They come in under the guise of environmentalism and improving the quality of life, but they’re here for money.

Bianca Wylie, The Washington Post

https://www.resite.org/talks/adam-greenfield-on-the-dangers-of-smart-cities?gclid=Cj0KCQiA9OiPBhCOARIsAI0y71AsrFkk7H8OLm9PTZuHQK_yWZlmQ4p8trrfqBwfoTg4mGt_4Es5mh0aAp5-EALw_wcB

https://www.ft.com/content/f866dfc8-a4b3-11e9-974c-ad1c6ab5efd1

https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

In a lecture on the topic of cities of tomorrow Winy Maas opens by saying, “Dreams will be there to be developed by students. How we paint our cities is how they will look like and be interpreted.” Those are words of the world famous architect which tells how he is visioning the cities of tomorrow, but they are not just words. MVRDV as his architecture company is names have numerous projects around the world backing these words.

In Rotterdam MVRDV constructed a bridge reaching towards the sky. As a symbol of an elevated future which is accessible for everyone. The staircase is a steel and glass construction, but as it was adopted by the inhabitants and by-passers of Rotterdam it became much more. Activating events such as fashion shows, weddings, tourism e.g. the bridge became a activator of people.

The skybridge of Rotterdam is a example of Winy Maas’s vision of changing cities. Sights, areas and infrastructure as activators of people creates sparks and identity of cities. “Courage in the cities can activate a chain of activities in an area.” he says. change by change, spark by spark he wished to transform cities by organic change.

It’s a city out of connections, not blocks and towers

Winy Maas

“Connections will stich the cities together. Don’t think in blocks and buildings, think in connections.” is how Winy Maas goes about doing architecture. He want to develop cities district by district, slowly sparking change. Using cheaper affordable accommodations for the middle class, transforming them into buildings interacting with their audience by e.g. skybridges is a vision they have in MVRDV. The believe that a mix of analog and technological interactions is where we are going.

Seoul, in South Korea, is another area where they prove their concepts in their doing. It previously was a grey city, until the mayor made a huge lawn in front of his house, accessible to everyone later leading to the project “sky garden” which was won by MVRDV in a competition. With small iterative steps they developed a system of buildings with varying plants surrounding and inhabiting them. Cafes, toilets, shops e.g. in a collection of building sized flower pots now creates a green sphere in districts of Seoul. Each “oasis” attracted heaps of locals and tourists further kickstarting the project by mere attention and interactivity. Now Seoul already is and envisions itself as a greener city making ripple effects of democratization.

“Could it be more dense, and more green”

Winy Maas

More dense, more green, that’s where Maas wants cities development to head. With clear similarities to the mindsets of new urbanists and visionaries previous to him. His approach is change in one neighborhood at a time, affecting all it’s connections each time. Dreaming about the future possibilities will create sparks in fellow architects, designers and politicians as well as inhabitants in his opinion. Meaning putting action behind dreams small increments at a time will push us where we want to be in an organically manner.

https://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/208/seoullo-7017-skygarden

In this article we will look at other types of installations and projections to see what other settings we can use as designers for immersive experiences.

Projection Mapping

Projection mapping is a 3D video projection technique using physical environments and objects as the surface for a projection, instead of a screen. Light, colors and oftentimes sound is used to outdraw a story with the edges of a building being the only boundaries for the scenery. Architectural elements, such as facades, are filled with life through precise lighting of the projection surface. The structure dissolves and the illusions take over. Houses bend or fall apart, 3D objects move in the direction of the audience.

AV Installations

Worth mentioning are Audio-Video Installations using giant or more smaller screens, showing videos or animations. They are often used in exhibitions and public places and are most times not interactive. But in the lobby of the Terrell Place in Washington DC there is an installation with motion-activated screens responding to the people going by.

Immersive Sensory Rooms

CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) is a virtual reality environment consisting of a cube-shaped VR room you can enter. The walls, floors and ceilings are projection screens and with a VR headset, that is synchronized with the projectors, the user can walk around an image to study it from all angles. Sensors within the room track the viewer’s position to align the perspective correctly.

References:

Projection mapping https://www.barco.com/en/solutions/projection-mapping

Videomapping Projection https://www.visualimpression.de/en/3d-visualisierung/videomapping-projection/

Amazing Screen Installation http://www.fubiz.net/en/2016/07/30/amazing-screen-installation/

CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/CAVE-Cave-Automatic-Virtual-Environment