interacting with the city

SG_CI_interactingwithcity

Interacting with the city

No Frames

Worlds’ cities and communities are generating a vast amount of data on various digital, mobile, and social platforms. Activities, movements, interactions, ideas and sentiments about cities, places, roads, buildings and street blocks can be harvested from these public feeds and analysed to inform our design processes.

This cluster aims to create tangible models of the city ‘in action’, using historical or real-time data. Using Web 2.0 technology, Processing, tangible interactions, projections, and digital modeling and fabrication, physical and digital models will be set up to enable visualisation and tangible interaction with the data. The use of data from Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, and various data sources from cities and public websites will be investigated. The goal of the cluster is to explore a new kind of design collaboration informed by real world data.

The cluster will create a generic visual environment for interactive and collaborative design in which tangible and gestural interactions play an important role. The use of tangible tables, Microsoft Kinect sensor and projections in the workshop environment and out at the city streets will be explored. Outcomes may include graphical, digital and physical representations of data, models on tangible tables, 3D model of a building in a city informed by public data, and interactive installations. Applicants are encouraged to include a vision for an installation in their proposal.

Basic programming skills will be an advantage as the official modelling platform will be Processing. CAD modelling software such as GC, Grasshopper and others will be used on day 3 and 4.

UbiMash code library will also be utilized to plug into online data sources and manage data transfer between the interactive installations and 3D modelling. UbiMash, developed by the cluster leaders, was introduced in SmartGeometry 2010. It can be found at http://ubimash.com

Participants will work in three or four groups, each working on a particular project of one city. We will identify data sources from Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, and potentially other cities and use them in the cluster.

cluster champions

PrzemekJaworski

Przemek Jaworski is a freelance Computational Designer and a tutor at TU Wrocław, Poland. He was a member of Specialist Modelling Group at Foster+Partners from 2006 to 2010. He graduated from Bartlett, UCL (Adaptive Architecture and Computation Course), and Wroclaw University of Technology (MSc in Architecture and Urban Planning). In the past he was involved in demoscene movement (1995-2000) as a coder and graphic designer, programming 3d real-time effects in C++/ OpenGL. His interests include semi-intelligent and self-organizing systems, real-time simulations and physical computing. In SmartGeometry 2010, he co-led the “Parametrics and Physical Interactions” cluster. His experience encompasses GC, Microstation VBA, Processing, Arduino and Open Frameworks.

FloraSalim Flora Salim is a Research Fellow at Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University and an Honorary Research Fellow in Distributed Systems and Software Engineering, Monash University, where she received her PhD in Computer Science. Prior to PhD, she was a Senior Application Developer in a software company. Early 2010, she initiated the development of UbiMash, an open source code library to connect the physical environment with digital tools and models. In SmartGeometry 2010, she co-led the “Parametrics and Physical Interactions” cluster. Her research and development interests include context-aware computing, sensing and adaptive systems, intelligent transportation, and responsive architecture.

MartinKaftan Martin Kaftan is an architect. He received his MSc. degree in Adaptive Architecture and Computation at the Bartlett School of Architecture and B.Arch. at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He was a member of Specialist Modelling Group at Foster + Partners from 2007 to 2009. In 2009 he co-founded in Prague an architectural design practice ECHOROST, which work is a resonance of architecture, design, computation and ecology. He is also a Phd. researcher in artificial intelligence and advanced fabrication techniques at the Czech Technical University in Prague and university assistant at the Institute of Architecture and Media of Graz University of Technology.