An exhibition critically exploring the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture, and urban space. Curated by Mark Shepard and organized by the Architectural League of New York
As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets, and public spaces of the world around us, we increasingly find information processing capacity embedded within and distributed throughout the material fabric of everday urban space. Artifacts and systems we interact with on a daily basis collect, store, and process information about us, or are activated by our movements and transactions. Ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban infrastructure capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this near-future “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring its environment and our behavior within it, becoming an active agent in the organization of everyday life in urban public space.
Toward the Sentient City explores alternate trajectories for the design and inhabitation of this near-future urban environment. Organized around five newly commissioned projects distributed throughout the city, the exhibition features: Natural Fuse by Usman Haque, creative director, Nitipak ‘Dot’ Samsen, designer, Ai Hasegawa, designer, Cesar Harada, designer. Barbara Jasinowicz, producer
Too Smart City by JooYoun Paek, David Jimison | Engineers: Daniel Bauen, Aaron Gilbert, Bill Washabaugh Amphibious Architecture by The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (Directors David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang) and xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University (Director Natalie Jeremijenko) Trash Track by SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT | Carlo Ratti: Director, Assaf Biderman: Associate Director, Rex Britter: Advisor, Stephen Miles: Advisor, Kristian Kloeckl Project Leader, Musstanser Tinauli, E Roon Kang, Alan Anderson, Avid Boustani, Natalia Duque Ciceri, Lorenzo Davolli, Samantha Earl, Lewis Girod, Sarabjit Kaur, Armin Linke, Eugenio Morello, Sarah Neilson, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Jill Passano, Renato Rinaldi, Francisca Rojas, Louis Sirota, Malima Wolf Breakout! by Anthony Townsend (Institute for the Future), Georgia Borden, Amanda Kross, Jung Hoon Kim, Antonina Simeti (DEGW), Dana Spiegel (NYCwireless), Laura Forlano (Parsons The New School for Design), Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Sean Savage (PariSoMa), Elysse Preposi (Sarah Lawrence College)
Also see the “Open Archive“, a collection of video documentation of existing projects related to the themes of the exhibition. The Archive is designed to grow over the course of the exhibition based on suggestions and contributions received through an open submission process.
By far one of the most interesting urban screens project I’ve seen to date, Chris O’Shea’s describes his public art “Hand From Above” as encouraging “us to question our normal routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another.”
“Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain? Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity.” Hands from Above was built using openFrameworks & openCV.
Made up of 700 meters of aluminium, 6750 LED’s and 5060 m of cables Lab[au]’s Framework f5×5x5 is an interactive kinetic light sculpture, extending the bi-dimensional screen space, by transposition of its pixel resolution to the physical space. Conceived as a modular infrastructure, f5×5x5 is a communication and computation system, propagating in form of light and sound the events it inhabits. Presence and motion create and alter the transmitted data, and propagation of this data becomes a space-time parameter.
The term framework refers to informatics’ modular workspace, called a framework. Here, f5×5x5’s ‘frames’ constitute the framework, a space built up by five modules of 2×2m, divided in 5×5 squared elements, establishing a matrix of 5×5x5 = 125 modules. On one side diffusing the light (white), on the other absorbing the light (black), the modules constitute a binary language (0,1) and a space of 125 pixels, allowing to transcribe captured data from the physical environment in a kinetic and luminous play _ in between opening and closing, in between transparency and reflection, in between light and dark.
Currently being realised in Singapore, Crystal Mesh is a new media facade which is the result of a collaboration between WOHA architects, Singapore and media architecture specialists realities:united, Berlin.
“Crystal Mesh consists of a tessellated pattern made of 3,000 modules of deep-drawn polycarbonate covering a façade area of more than 5,000 m2. About 1,900 of these modules contain a regular matrix of compact fluorescent light tubes forming “active patches” within the façade. At night the light matrix superimposes the idiosyncratic physical structure of the white, crystalline daytime façade. But the irregular arrangement of these patches – dividing the façade into areas with different resolutions – does not create a large, homogeneous screen in front of the building, but instead forms a more general impression of the building’s “medianess” as an addition to and an essential ingredient of its architecture.”
realities:united are probably best known for the BIX facade the created for Kunsthaus Graz (Austria) in 2003, and since then have built up a great body of work exploring an expanding world of ornamental media architecture. Whilst I still have a soft spot for the BIX project, one of the things that I really like about Crystal Mesh is the way that realities:united have created a sculptural facade where each pixel is in fact not one pixel at all, but an animatable cluster of them. The result is a kind of sub-resolution, where each crystal in the mesh can act as one object, or it’s subpixels can be individually controlled to create a really unique movement of light across the surface of the facade.
In the crystal mesh project realities:united once again shy away from jumping on the LED bandwagon like (most of) the rest of the world, and stick with good old fluorescent lamps. The facade covers a total area of 5180m2 of which 2550m2 are equipped as a media installation. The installation is made up of 6069 individually controllable 36W fluorescent bulbs. Whilst that’s a hefty 234kW power consumption (theoretical maximum with all lamps on), in normal operation the actual brightness for grey scale images is limited by software to approx. 70% brightness resulting in a max. power consumption of 127kW. The estimated power consumption in typical operation mode is approx. 85kW equaling 0.03kW/m2 (29 Watts/m2).
The full opening of the completed façade installation and the start of the projected artistic program on Crystal Mesh is scheduled for 12/2009.
Project credits
Client:
Jack Investment Pte. Ltd. (Singapore)
Architecture:
WOHA Architects, Singapore
Crystal Mesh (Media) Façade Design:
realities:united, studio for art and architecture (Berlin) in collaboration with WOHA Architects, Singapore
Current (starting 15.8.2009) Video Art Piece
autokolor (Berlin)
Media Façade Software Development:
thismedia (Berlin)
Realization / Technology
Million Lighting Co Pte Ltd (Singapore) with:
Kurihara Kogyo Co., LTD. (Singapore Branch)
Fritz Borsi Gmbh & Co. KG (Germany)
SE Lightmanagement AG (Switzerland)
Digital Hinterlands features a diverse range of work by some of the best recent architecture graduates from London’s Architectural Association, Bartlett, Royal College of Art, and University of Westminster. Organised by Ruairi Glynn and curated in consultation with Arup, this exhibition reveals how the latest computational design and rapid manufacturing processes are providing new ways of understanding and designing space. From built models, 1:1 fragments, material experiments and installations, to interactive devices, virtual worlds and robotics, this exhibition presents the ideas of a wave of young designers, operating on the speculative hinterlands of architectural design.
The Private View of the Digital Hinterlands Exhibition is on the 21st September to coincide with the Digital Architecture London Conference, as part of London Digital Week
The Bartlett School of Architecture has the most comprehensive digital fabrication suite dedicated to education and research out of all UK Built Environment Departments and Faculties. The suite includes a £500,000 3D printing and laser sintering facility and advanced 3D digital fabrication machinery for wood, plastic and metal.
The Bartlett is offering places on this cutting edge course for up to 50 qualified applicants. Students will learn how to export handmade models into a digital format, and how to construct digital models for 3D printing or prototyping in nylon, wood and metal.
Students are expected to bring a design proposal to the course that can be used to explore different modes of 3D digital representation and fabrication. The design proposal can be in the form of a physical model, 2D digital drawings or 3D digital representations. Possible design proposals include a building, a fragment of a building, a component, a piece of furniture, a piece of jewellery, a sculpture or a decorative item.
The course lasts for 4 weeks, is full time, where the majority of learning is project based and developed in tutorials. The first 4-week course includes free attendance to the Digital Architecture Conference 2009.
Interactive Architecture covers emerging architectural and artistic practices where digital technologies & virtual spaces merge with tangible and physical spatial experiences. An active architecture, sensing, observing, feeling, listening, thinking, reacting, proposing, adapting, learning, even sometimes interacting. It is an architecture in constant flux best suited to prototyping and semi-perminant installations.
