UrbanTick

Book - Yes is More or the iPad is the Medium

2012-01-30T07:16:00.002Z

A publication is no longer just a publication. It can be many things and what we see is only the beginning. A book can be a magazine, an ebook a website or a comic. Different medias are being mixed to play with ways of presentation. New technology plays here are good part and enables some very new concepts to be tested.

The eReader platforms and especially the iPad promise new ways of publishing. Only last week Apple has announced, as part of the app ibooks 2, the publication of text books. Here they put the emphasis more than before on the integration of additional media like video for tutorials and explanations, interactive graphics (like the newly released E. O. Wilson's Life on Earth) and of course web links and so on. The animated and augmented book is only catching on a the moment.

Image taken from earchitect / Yes is More on the iPad.

The architectural monagraphy is a rather unlikely candidate to put forward such an interactive publication. One would expect it to be a heavy piece with nicely photoshopped images and and a thick cover. This is however a way of presentation for the old garde and if BIG represents the new generation of architects such an interactive option of presentation is the way to go. BIG has always been very much about telling a good story and producing a good show. The show of course is very subjective and this subject is two fold its the facts about the design and Bjarke Ingels the head of the Bjarke Ingels Group (This is what BIG stands for).

Their Yes is More: An archicomic on architectural evolution was originally published back in 2009 by Taschen and as such already wasn't the architectural monograph one might buy if it was Norman Foster or Richard Meier. BIG presented their work in a sort of comic they branded archicomic. It was however mostly well received even though few probably understood what Bjarke actually meant by Yes is more.

The one architectural monography ambitious architecture practices have to top if they really want to set a mark and the book that has dominated the style of architecture book for the last decades is S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhass's OMA and AMO's Bruce Mau. It was published in 1995 by Monacelli Press.

BIG had a go at this with the comic. It was well received, but not quite enough to land in the hall of fame. It certainly did stir things a little and it fitted well with the self image Bjarke is building around his practice and the delivered projects. The advancing technology however meant new opportunities are opening up. BIG has been working more and more with new media, testing animation, 3d as well as augmented reality.

Now in 2011 the original book Yes is More has been transformed into an app for the iPad. It is published by Taschen again and available on itunes. It is not exactly an ebook since it is as a comic mainly imagery based and now also integrated animations and movies. The comic comes to live with clips that play within the grid of images or in full screen mode. It's clear from the start that this format fits the stile. The publication really thrives with the media in this case.

Image taken from the app / Page spread 218-219 in landscape mode and page 219 in portrait mode. Both show at the bottom the navigation bar.

The app works both in portrait and in landscape mode. With the swipe of a finger one browses through the sequence of images learning about reasons and effects, but also a lot about Bjarke. Where he lives and what the view of his balcony looks like. Details can be zoomed in on, just like you are getting used to on your touch screen. A youtube like triangle symbolises clips and a click opens these additional medias in a small window or plays them at full screen at rather good resolution. Quality is ver good through out even if zoomed in on details.

Navigation is organised in a bar at the bottom that appears with a tab. To choose or jump to a new topic one can either use a slider of miniature pages or a selector roll. Of course individual pages can also be found by page number. However, the layout does not show any page numbers. They have been removed. In this sense the app is not at all a pure digital version of the paper based publication.

The app also offers a search box for key word search or a separate listing of all the clips if only moving images are of interest. The app offers the option to put bookmarks. There is no note option though, something a lot of ebook users probably have come to like from other platforms.

The experience the app offers is very good even though they have chosen not to the mimicked turn the page effect. It runs smooth the displayed material is qualitative very good with nice colours and sharp contours. Its what you get from other ebooks.

THe feel of the app has very little to do with a book any longer. The turn the page effect is missing, which to be fair, is a stupid thing, an purely visual imitation, but it comes the closest to turning a page and with it imitating the book. Then also the page numbers are missing, a very distinct design element of a paper based publication. This is not so much about the actual number but about orientation and progress. How far have I read and how many pages ago did the lead character last smile? Here we have no page numbers unless we choose to look at it in the bottom bar by tapping to activate it every time. There is however, a tiny bar appearing with each swipe of the page at the bottom indicating the position in the book, assuming the whole length of the screen is the entire book. This is very neat and practical. It would be nice if this little feature could also be draged and enable a sort of quick flip.

Currently there is no way to quickly flip through the book. the swipe response is quite slow and three quick swipes result in only one page shift. Similar the page numbers don't move you through the pages that quickly. If now this little bar could do such a thing, maybe even in combination with the thumbnail page preview it would make for a great navigation.

The sequence of pages are presented in linear fashion. There are for example no links within the book. The last chapter BIG City provides an overview of the BIG project grouping similar projects together to city districts. It would be nice if clickable and acting as hyperlinks to jump to the details. Or maybe select one of the groups and look at all these projects together. It being programmed as an independent app such options would be possible enabling more browser like handling with back and forth or even history options, where the linearity of the paper based publication would be unlocked. With out this and it feels a bit like a slide presentation and in terms of the linearity would represent a power point against a prezi.

Image taken from klatmagazine / Yes is More on the iPad.

To sum it up, navigation and experience are working fine. Every function you would need is there. Its just that most things have the feel of a computer based click with your mouse here sort of solution. At the same time the app designer have not really let go of the book and present it in a purely linear fashion. It remins a hybrid, and is as sort of ebook with its own app not quite defining a new category of interactive, reader driven, content platforms.

As it being an independent app there are is the downside that it does not link up with other publications. The thing about ebooks is that they still, at least in the term, link up and the same software is playing for all of them. Notes are taken across books, so are markings. This publication is a standalone thing and plays at most with the collection of apps, but not necessarily the books or ebooks in this case. This is more from a collectors perspective a point, but then if you are into architecture you want a whole bunch of similar publications to cover your entire field of interest. One single item doesn't really satisfy this and remains the odd one out. Bjarke doesn't mind to be the odd one out as long as he's being talked about.

Nevertheless its an interesting publication and an impressive one. Its not just a few swipes long, something you have swiped through in under five minutes. This is your proper comic you can read on the tube and the bus for an entire week of commuting. It comes along happily on you iPad and pops upen where you left it. It is currently priced at £6.99 which is nearly the price of the actual print, on amazon for £11.66 (on the Taschen website it is priced at £ 17.99, here the app a bit less than half). You can buy the app from HERE on itunes and the book from Taschen or amazon.

Image taken from the Yes is More app / Spread showing the project with the very poignant title Swept under the carpet. It is not a particularly famous BIG project, but it is one that summarises a lot about the approach. (click image to read the details) The introduction of the publication shows Bjarke with his feet on the table proclaiming his architecture paradigme is to say YES to everything. He claims that architecture can incorporate everything and still be progressive. In this very particular project, Swept under the carpet, he literally sweeps the pollution, this very project is built on a piece of land with polluted soil and the competition asked for solutions to deal with this fact, under the carpet with the argument: "Instead of cleaning up the mess we just cover it. We can spend the money required for cleaning the soil on my project and cover up." He in fact says NO, in this case to the environment and a longterm solution. Much rather, he lets the polluted soil continue to contamine the water around the community and sailing centre and lets the kids swim in the dirty waters, but everything is nicely covered up. Even though BIG claims for their working attitude to be about process the reflection stage is missing in their project. No critical questions are asked, there is often little attitude or actual opinion on things. Even though BIG is subjectivated and purely focused on the person of Bjarke Ingels it is a brand and not a person.

The comic style fits well with the experiment of a ebook hybrid. There isn't much to loose by putting it in an rather experimental form and it thrives on it. However the comic style dose not add anything to the content. It is however playful option to publish a book base don figure notes. Yes is More is a graphic novel taking the communication of architecture in visual terms to the extreme by not even attempting to talk about architecture in text form. The comic here is interpreted as annotated pictures and this fits perfectly with the way BIG explain projects, in simple steps explaining what is happening as if it were a DiY manual.

For BIG it's all about the presentation. They way the projects are presented makes the projects directly ind simply accessible, see video below. The media used are engaging, playful and fitting. The explanations are very simple making every move easily understandable even for a layperson. Interesting however is more how arguments are made and here BIG's background shines through. Everything is very much the famous and with this publication very much targeted form follows function. Following this paradigma the entire project is presented, throwing in here and there a few clever references and options, but essentially argumentation is very much founded on functionality.

Ingels, B., 2010. Yes is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution, iPad App., Cologne: Taschen GmbH.

Temporal Aspects of the City

2012-01-26T10:18:00.000Z

I am giving a presentation to the MRes course at CASA, UCL today. There are two part to this lecture. The first part is covering the PhD research with a focus on the city and an overview of the methods of investigation that have been used. It is organised along the main topics of Time, Space, Morphology and Networks, but also covers Ethics and Mental Maps or Identity as aspects.

The second part really is a tutorial explaining the production of the New City Landscape maps. It covers pretty much all the steps from the preparation of the raw CSV file to the export of the map from Illustrator. A large aspect is the data handling in ArcGIS and how to perform the analysis as well as the exporting and inter compatibility with other software. Arc just doesn't produce any pretty results so it is essential to extend the workflow to other software packages. Softwares used: TextEdit, ArcGIS, Illustrator, Google Earth, Cartographica.

Andy Hudson-Smith over at DigitalUrban will pick up with a third part and a second part to this tutorial talking through how he developed a 3D model of the landscape map and visualised it in Lumion. The result of this workflow is embedded below.

Cruise Liners and the Sinking of a Dream

2012-01-23T07:12:00.001Z

The dramatic events involving a sinking cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea has all of a sudden brought the topic of large cruise ships back to the front pages of News Channels from around the world. Recently only the size could possibly get the ships into the news, but a disaster is always a good selling point.

The story that unfolded over the past days however, is more than only a sunken ship, but a real crazy entangling of very unfortunate events and, as it currently seems, poor judgement of the captain. The ship passed the coast of Giglio way too close and was not at all even meant to be there, but manually steered into the disaster.

It seems almost unbelievable that a nearly 300 meter luxury cruise liner can sink just like that. Even more so as it effectively happens only 100 meter from shore. On any News coverage, alway there is the save land not just on the horizon, but right next to the ship. It is only a 100 meter or so to shore. Even so the tragic events have claimed several lives with about 19 people still being missing at the time of writing.

Image taken from DigitalGlobe-Imagery / Aerial view of the Costa Concordia sunken of the coast of Giglio. The wreck has been mapped on OSM.

Large cruise ships don't just sink they go down with a dramatic story and this is another one of these events that bring about the mistic and special atmosphere surrounding the large passenger ships sailing the seas of the world. There are numerous stories and practices entangled in this picture of such large vessels, including the glamour and wealth on board all the way to the understood but not written down practice of 'women and children first' and the captain leaving the shop last. Examined in detail by the BBC.

Definitely the most famous Ocean Liner disaster is the Titanic disaster where the branded as unsinkable ship sinks after a collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean during its maiden travel from England to America in 1912. Between then and now there are a few accidents recorded involving large cruise ships, but the industry was able to build up a very clean and save image for travels on large ocean liners.

Image taken from Maritimequest / The famous Titanic.

Size matters, especially in this business. Steadily the companies are building larger units, with Oasis of the Seas currently being e largest ship being in operation. It offers space for 6296 passengers and 2165 crew. Under construction are at the moment Project Sunshine 1 and 2 expected to have a total capacity of 5700. It is size and luxury in the form of entertainment and facilities offered as selling points to attract the passengers.

Modern liners offer a lot more than only the swimming pool and the tennis court. There are water slides, wave board pools, ice rinks, rock climbing, basketball court and so on. Guest can browse through boutiques and shops, visit several restaurants and bars, entertainments show or casinos and cinemas. There is around the clock entertainment from yoga classes to guided running sessions and wine tasting on offer. Plus of course the captains dinner is still the climax of every cruise.

Cruise liner are in heir nature self contained and built to carry all necessary support systems beside the entertainment facilities. In fact these large ocean liners are more like small cities in themselves capable of catering for as many as 8000 people over periods of more than a week, with many systems being able to run for at lest a week without calling at a port.

Image taken from khulsey / A line drawing using Illustrator for the ships documentation.

The key difference between the types of ships is between cruise ships an ocean liners. As the name indicates the two categories serve very different purpose. The liner is built for a linear connection ferrying passengers between ports traditionally between the old and new world from Plymouth to New York. Cruisers on the other hand traditionally have circular routs manly for pleasure travels returning to the port of departure. There are also technical differences setting the two categories apart. Liners are built for rougher seas running deeper making smaller ports inaccessible. Cruisers are built with more passenger space, focused entertainment and specially designed for higher numbers of outside cabines and fewer inside cabins.

By now however, the only dedicated ocean liner really is the prestigious Queen Marry 2. Since 2010 is she the last remaining ocean liner representative running between Southamton and New York. However even QM2 is equipped with specialised entertainment, and runs on cruise tours every now and then.

Image taken from iglucruise / The Queen Mary 2 upon leavning New York.

Cruise liners carry a special aura with them and were especially popular in the first half of the 20 century with especially the modernist movement. Famously the architect Le Corbusier stylised the ocean liner to become the ultimate triumph of technology and symbolised the ideal city as a self contained organism. Especially in his book 'Toward an Architecture' (). It's also the aspect of mobility / traveling that implies the freedom connected to the cruise tours. An perception of independence and sovereignty is what attracted and still continues to do so.

There are a number of famous floating city project dreamed of by architects since the modernist movement. The Triton City by Buckminster Fuller or the freedomship project. But of course cruise ships have also entered the virtual world and SS Galaxy is one of the really bog projects in Second Live with a handfull of people full-time playing the crew on a virtual deck.c

Image by Wayne Mazzotta taken from maritimematters / Red Dashboard: ’59 Cadillac and SS Conte Grande.

Technology is still today a major aspect of cruise line travels from the ship design, the build, the infrastructure and the built in technology. Machines are very powerful but at the same time capable of very fine manoeuvring amid, buy the size of the latest ships dwarf ports. Navigation is built on the latest technology covered by several backup and parallel systems. Even though the atmosphere is relaxed and definitely majestic, the equipment is built on very high safety standards, covering a whole range of applications and devices. The bridge of a cruise liner is a high technology command centre covering the complexity of the entire ship.

Besides all these aspects however, the spirit of innovation and conquering of nature using technological power has faded. For cruise ships are marketed not any longer to experience the power and genius of man, but to celebrate one self. Where in the days of the ocean liner passengers would be amazed by the sheer idea of traveling on such a ship across the Atlantic, admiring its power, today guests are demanding services and entertainment. The challenges for the ship and the crew is no longer the sea, but the parties on board, it's a matter of keeping alive a sensation.Unfortunately the tragical Accident involving the Costa Concordia and claiming several lives is most likely owed to such a

Image by Uaohk taken from maritimematters GNU Free Documentation License / The Costa Concordia as it lays on one side. COSTA CONCORDIA wreck off Isola del Giglio.

The floating city has become an fantasy entertainment park and is no longer pushing the boundaries of innovation nor is it representing progress. It has become the opposite and pretty surely the modernists would no longer see the floating amusement parks with "balcony-laden floating condominiums", as they are described in a Wikipedia article as a representation of their fascination.

Moody Snow Timelapse

2012-01-16T08:18:00.000Z

A few days in the Swiss Alps around Saas Fee and on is completely drawn into a world of rough mountains and beautiful snow scenes. Its this time of the year again, its freezing cold and condensation collects at the windows through the night. Your breath is visible as you step outside, the air is thin and views are clear. Winter is finally here.

Video by Patryk Kizny showing amazing views of boiling clouds from the highest mountain peaks, landscapes of the glacier of SaasFee and other locations develop into much more abstract audio-visual form along with the weather changes. The film is also a tribute to free of light pollution places featuring fantastic views of the MilkyWay.

The short timelapse film “Altissimo” has been shot entirely in motion-controlled timelapse technique. The team shot over 45 000 single frames (over 700 GB of RAW data) using a few cameras in various locations of Switzerland during a one-week stay in Switzerland in May, 20111.

Book - Four to Start into the New Year

2012-01-05T06:37:00.001Z

From sustainability to the new beauty in the following four books are put forward to start into 2012. The topics all address some of the concerns raised about cities in the past year or so and all contribute to the current discussion around changes in social and spatial organisation at large. With globalisation and technology social structures are changing requiring urban environments to be adapted. This will not happen tomorrow, nor is it a case of restarting in building it new from scratch. The only option is to keep transforming and by testing and engaging with the presented new thoughts and aspects we might take a step into this direction.

Not all cities are mega cities. In fact most of the cities are small to mid sized. According to the work Mike Batty had done together with Martin Austwick and Oliver O'Brian on Rank Clocks plotting city sizes in the US, only about 10% of the cities are mega or large. The rest of the cities are under 1 million in population size.

In terms of sustainability potential these large numbers of smaller cities could actually play a major role and this is what Catherine Tumber put forward in her publication Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World published by MIT Press.

There are so many problems the smaller cities face. From long terms decline due to the faltering of industries, massive transport infrastructures slicing them into non workable urban islands and social struggles related to working poor and general poverty reminiscent of postcolonial squalor. The biggest struggle however is the fact that they are excluded from the general debate of urban planning and theoretical thinking. They all practice urban planning and development, but with only little recognition and background.

Tumber argues that due to the smaller sized, shorter distances and proximity to farmland and recreation these smaller cities have a lot of potential to implement sustainable concepts and start integrating those in everyday urban practice. Tumber especially points to renewable energies, such a wind, food production and local agriculture as well as manufacturing skills. Its all about producing and consuming locally.

These ideas are not new and sort of resonate with early garden cities ideas, especially in the praise of size and population density. This is not at all a negative association, but more a practical application. Since here it is not about setting up a new place to live, which can in itself not be sustainable, but about reprogramming an existing one sustainability is given an additional dimension.

Image taken from archpaper / Small, Gritty, and Green, book cover, part.

Does a city posses its very own spirit and identity? Daniel A. Bell and Avner de-Shalit argue in their new book The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age published by Princeton University Press that actually they do. The authors draw on the ancient Greek concept of city spirit and argue for the rediscovery of the local urban spirits around the world especially in connection to todays globalisation.

Earlier publications have picked up on this topic and characterised cities in such a manner as to work out distinct identities. Saskia Sassen in Cities in a World Economy and more recently Martina Löw in Soziologie der Städte
(sociology of cities). THe concept of the citiy spirit is, as Löw points out, closely entangled with the city marketing that has been very popular in the past fifteen years as a tool to distinguish, present and attract.

Bell and de-Shalit look specifically at nine modern cities: Jerusalem (religion), Montreal (language), Singapore (nation building), Hong Kong (materialism), Beijing (political power), Oxford (learning), Berlin (tolerance and intolerance), Paris (romance) and New York (ambition). Of course soe of them sound like external concepts. Especially Paris and the age old topic of romance, hey but never mind it shapes the place in a certain way and this identity hold the potential to develop something specific and relevant.

Each city is portrait in a lot of detail making good use of story telling as well as combining theoretical aspects with practical experience. A good read for travellers of thought.

Image taken from the Atlantic / The Spirit of Cities, book cover.

"We have to find our way back to beauty!" Lars Spuybroek argues in his new book The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design, published by V2_publishing, for a revised approach to design culture moving away from the technological practice of modernism towards a more romantic notion of art in the sense that beauty always combines variations, imperfection and fragility. Spuybroek bases his arguments on John Ruskin's aesthetics. Overall the book is a project to wrest these topics out of the Victorian era into the present. This is achieved by combining the five central themes of Ruskin: the Gothic and work, ornament and matter, sympathy and abstraction, the picturesque and time and ecology and design in combination with more recent thoughts on aesthetics by philosophers such as William James and Bruno Latour.

It becomes a projection of a world of feeling and beauty in such a way as it completely does a way with the fundamentalism and absolutism of modernist conception of design.

Image taken from il giornale dell architettura / The Sympathy of Things, book cover.

Graphical representation of information are in every case an abstract representation. Often to represent a point of view or a standpoint is required and depending on this the representation is biased. In Picturing the Uncertain World: How to Understand, Communicate, and Control Uncertainty through Graphical Display published by Princeton University Press, Howard Wainer is looking at the phenomenon of information display of statistical data and the possible complications.

The book is less about graphics than numbers, although graphics do play an important role. Similar to Dona M. Wong's Guide to Information Graphics and also like Tufte's Books The Visual Display of Information and Envisioning Information the correct representation is at the heart of the text. However, Wainer focuses more on the conditions and the explanations than the design.

Wainer is a longtime expert in statistical graphics who works as a research scientist for the National Board of Medical Examiners and as an adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The examples are discussed in detail in order to really get the reader to understand the points Wainer is to make. This has the advantage that for a number of the examples the reader also comes to finally understand the actual meaning of the graph probably well known to him. The book draws from a great range of examples including Charls Joseph Minard's plot of Napoleons Russian Campaign, Florence Nightingale's Diagram of Mortality and William Playfair's Wheat Prices graph to name a few.

The book is written in a very accessble language and takes time to explain the details as well as linking it with current facts and events that enlighten the presented problem further. Definitely a great read for data enthusiasts.

Image taken from Borders / Picturing the Uncertain World, book cover.

Wainer, H., 2009. Picturing the Uncertain World: How to Understand, Communicate, and Control Uncertainty through Graphical Display, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Bell, D.A. & de-Shalit, A., 2011. The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Spuybroek, L., 2011. The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design, Rotterdam: V2_Publishing.

Tumber, C., 2011. Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Foursquare - Location Based Gaming

2011-12-28T08:29:00.000Z

Gaming at large scale with the city as the play field has gathered pace with its community adapting new tools and technologies in the social networking domain. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare are offering platforms additional gameplay ideas can extend upon.

In the past year or so a number of such a add ons to the Foursquare location based social networking platform have been developed.

Image taken from worldoffourcraft.com / At sign up choose your home team.

World of Fourcraft is a New York based game that uses a NYC as a battle ground for borough teams to battle the grounds and fight over ownerships for territories. It is based on Foursquare check-ins and with each check-in territory can be gained.

The players sign up via a Foursquare and choose the borough they want to play for. After that each check-in counts towards the boroughs count of check-ins in a particular area. The area belongs to the team with the most check-ins.

Image taken from worldoffourcraft.com / The battle map of World of Fourcraft NYC. The different colours indicate the borough ownerships.

You can always check the battle map to keep up to date on how the grounds are won and lost. Its a bit like the strategy game Risk where territories can be won in battle. On this one it would be great to see a timeLapse on how the game board has developed over the past few month. Check out more on Mashable.

Oust.me is a platform to transform your places and check-ins into territories and defend them against invaders. The platform is run by a small team based somewhere in the Slovenian region and draws location data from Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places.

Oust.me user Matija wrote a Short Guide how to build territory in 4 easy steps. You will need your mobile phone with your favorite check-in service: Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places, a pair of walking shoes and some time.

Check your neighborhood in Oust.me (if there is already any territory)
Be sure that distances fits into 2km area between two locations
Start walking (use sports-tracker app for measuring distance)
Check-in into the locations on your way - or create new interesting ones
Voila - you have a territory in Oust.me

Image by Matija taken from Oust.me blog / Creating a territory on Oust.me using Foursquare check-ins in four easy steps.

In this manner I created my territory around Gatwick Airport with some m20 checkpoints and a total area of 1.08 km2. Of course there are a handfull of people invading near, but Oust.me keeps me up to date on their moves and send me a message if they are invading my territory. I am not quite sure how exactly the shapes are created and sometimes they can have some detached extensions (like my Basel, Davidsboden territory), but generally the area looks pretty good.

Image by urbanTick / My territory of 1.08 km2 around Gatwick Airport created with about 20 check-in points and multiple check-ins.

Less of a game but a useful tool for gaming is the crosspost service. It offers to transfer your check-ins from one service to another. If you check-in to a location on Foursquare it will automatically be transfered to your Facebook Places and you are checked in there too. For the games platform this can be quite useful as you get double check-ins.

Enjoy the games, happy gaming. Also check out the earlier post on gaming, as forexample using London Oyster card data on Chromorama, Map Attack and Street Grab or Urban Defender and more.

What Makes the night?

2011-12-19T16:51:00.001Z

The daily cycles of day and night influence the experience in a number of ways. The main visual information is, beside the amount of light, the quality of the light. There are very different temperatures from morning to midday to evening.

Generally from the light quality the time of day can be guessed quite accurately. These shades are of course heavily influenced by weather and time of year. This can lead to a confusion with heavy dark clouds pulling up in the afternoon and it can give a sense that time has jumped and it might at two o'clock like it is half five. On the other hand if spent a few hours indoors, in a dark corner of your house, and as you step out into the sunlight the quality of light can be confusing in terms of time of day.

Image taken from philipperahm.com / A rendering of the interior, above the night zone in blue and below the day zone in yellow.

The light is identified by scientists as an important factor to set the body clock or circadian rhythm. This has been tested in experiments where participants spent weeks in caves with no daylight. The human body is able to maintain the cycles without the daylight reference for a long period. It does not depend on it as essential, but it provides a guidance to keep on track.

With this background, the architect Philippe Rahm has proposed a café that mimics the light quality of different times of the day. In essence Split Times Cafe proposes a 24 hour coffee place where you can have day or night at any time of day. The different areas recreate daytime light and night time light quality.

Image taken from philipperahm.com / A rendering showing the cafe in context.

It is possible to dring the morning coffee in the night light condition area and have a beer in the bright daylight zone. The day light zone is showing the characteristic yellow light indicating bright sunshine. The night zone on the other hand is fulled with blue tone light referencing the blue dark moon light. The cafe also offers a third place that is proposed in clear glass and therefore being filled with the actual quality of the light at that very moment.

The light quality is achieved through the use of coloured glass. Yellow glass for the day and blue glass for the night. To support the atmosphere the furniture is distinct in the are the architects make use of the furniture. The day zone is organised horizontally where as the night zone's furniture is oriented vertically.

Image taken from philipperahm.com / The plan showing the three different zones.

Book - Architecture and Violence

2011-12-15T10:16:00.000Z

Space for place defined by practice, where people live and breath is always contested. It is not just, it is to be made, remodelled and reshaped constantly through negotiation. The result is a mix of interests, desires and statements.

Aspects of violence as part of the social structure becomes an element of the process. With its imposing and shattering presence violence marks the territory, cutting lines and burning patches. It eats into the construction of place imposing its own kingdoms of subcultures.

Architecture as a form of spacial geometrification with functional provisions can be a driving ground for violence. Often architecture is the stage for violence, but it can also be a driving force in that it can be violent in itself. Violence might be part of architecture since it is always set in a cultural context which in turn is based on the same negotiation process.

Image taken from enroute / B 018, a bunker or bomb shelter night club at the fringe of the city of Beirut in the Quarantine district. The project is discussed in the book by Elie Haddad on page 93.

Bechir Kenzari has edited a new book Architecture and Violence with a selection of texts by a range of architectural theorists. It is published by ACTAR with contributions by Libero Andreotti , Annette Fierro , Elie Haddad , Dorita Hannah , Sarah Treadwell , Andrew Herscher , Bechir Kenzari , Donald Kunze , Nadir Lahiji , William B. Millard.

From the back of the book: From propaganda exhibitions to suburban residential complexes, from slaughterhouses to jails, from illegal settlements to governmental palaces, from separation walls to concentration camps, and finally, from actual, material environments to image-architecture performing through flickering media screens, not only is architecture able to sanction and legitimize violence, but also to give it a spatial ground to thrive.

Have a preview here at issuu:

Open publication - Free publishing - More actar

Kenzari, B. ed., 2011. Architecture and Violence, Barcelona: Actar.

Fires of the World

2011-12-09T09:45:00.000Z

NASA satellites are observing the wild fires around the world. From satellite images the occurrence and spreading of bush fires are clearly visible. In a summary of the fires over the last ten years

The visualisations show fire observations made by the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instruments onboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The data on fires is combined with satellite views of vegetation and snow cover to show how fires relate to seasonal changes. This is really the interesting part. The visualisation beautifully shows the change over a long time period and the movements in the landscape based on the shift, growth and burning of nature. Even though bush fires are devastating disasters the visualisation shows ohw they integrate with the other elements.

Hic Sunt Dracones - Mapping, what ever

2011-12-07T18:17:00.000Z

For a lecture and some tutorials I visited the University of Lichtenstein today talking to a group of master students at the Institute of Architecture and Planning. The input lecture did focus on the topic of mapping and the implementation of mapping as a practice but also as a methodologies. The input is closely linked to the term projects the students are working on, the mapping of the country of Lichtenstein under specific aspects.

Lichtenstein is tiny with only some 35,000 inhabitants. The small territory constantly confronts one with the questions and expressions of distinction in order to sustain itself. A constant feature is the fact that one sees beyond the country borders. Where ever you are the reference of the other side is always present rendering this here and there relationship very complex.

Image taken from akpool / An old postcard from Vaduz showing the Castel on the upper left hand side.

The task for the students is to develop representations in the form of maps that summarise their individual investigations. It all starts with a walk, a stroll and unfolds between the steps tripping stones and barriers. In thesis sense quite a dynamic and explorative setting.

The input on mapping under the title Hic Sunt Dracones - Mapping, what ever. the lecture developed a rather descriptive methodology of mapping in the context of mapping as a tool, mapping as a practice and mapping as a visualisation. The focus is on topics and characteristics rather than context and specific project.

The developed approaches range from memory mapping and interview as a tool of spatial investigation to more obvious topics of distance, sound and land use and more narrative driven proposals developed around a fictional roman soldiers who lived 2000 years ago by uncovering buried layers of remains and the refolding of processes or the discover of a 49th orchid species based on environmental conditions.

Image taken from ebitki.com / Three of the more rare orchid species that can be found in Lichtenstein: , Chamorchis Alpina, Malaxis Monophyllos and Flora Danica .

Book - Studies in Temporal Urbanism

2011-12-06T15:04:00.006Z

Its here, the urbanTick book is out, published by Springer. It brings together the edited work from this blog as well as external experts introducing specific topics. Its a big collection of thoughts on temporal aspects of the city, including projects, research and theory.

Image by Springer / Book cover, Studies in Temporal Urbanism: The urbanTick Experiment.

This book is very much about what the name urbanTick literally says, about the ticking of the urban, the urban as we experience it everyday on the bus, in the park or between buildings. It is about the big orchestrated mass migration of commuters, the seasonal blossoms of the trees along the walkway and the frequency of the stamping rubbish-eater-trucks. It is also, not to forget, about climate, infrastructure, opening hours, term times, parking meters, time tables, growing shadows and moon light. But most of all it is about how all this is experienced by citizens on a daily basis and how they navigate within this complex structure of patterns. The content of this book is based on the content of the urbanTick blog. Blogging about this topic brought together a large collection of different aspects and thoughts. It is not at all a conclusive view, the opposite might be the case, it is an exploratory work in progress, while trying to capture as many facets of the topic as possible.

Image by urbanTick / Book Studies in Temporal Urbanism: The urbanTick Experiment. Some example spreads. Editor Fabian Neuhaus, published by Springer.

The publication Studies in Temporal Urbanism: The urbanTick Experiment is structured in seven chapters with each being introduced by an invited contribution in the form of an essay. The chapters are: Cycle Study as Basis of Adaptive Urbanism (con Jeff Ho); urbanMachine; Memory: Collective vs. Individual Narratives (con Zahra Azizi); timeSpace; Body, Space and Maps (con Sandra Abegglen); bodySpace; Urban Narratives of Time Images, or the Drift of Alienation (con Ana McMillin); urbanNarrative; Mental Maps: The Expression of Memories and Meanings (con Matthew Dance); Location Information; From UrbanTick to UrbanDiary; UrbanDiary; Footprints, a Regeneration Process (con Luis Suárez); Review. This is wrapped up with a Bibliography and a complete Index covering all chapters.

On the back cover Professor Mike Batty introduces the book in his words with:
That cities pulse and resonate like the human body is an old idea which until recently has remained just that. But in this pioneering book, Fabian Neuhaus shows how we can begin to make sense of the myriad of rhythms and processes that make up the city, by combining new technologies available on smart phones with our intuition expressed in mental maps to generate a new understanding of how cities function. This book stands in the vanguard of new work about temporal cycles that define the city and it is mandatory reading for all who profess to understand how cities work and for everyone who wants to discover how we, ourselves, make the city work. Michael Batty, Bartlett Professor of Planning, CASA, University College London

Its great to finally have it available as a printed version. A lot of thanks go to the contributors for the essays, but also to all the people who granted publication rights for the many illustrations in this publication. Of course thanks also go to a number of people who helped in one way or another with input for the blog or support for the publication.

The publication is available as printed version, as e-book or also accessible on the Springer website directly as pdf.

Neuhaus, F. ed., 2011. Studies in Temporal Urbanism: The urbanTick Experiment 1st ed., London: Springer.

Stay on Top - Little Printer

2011-12-01T16:03:00.000Z

Paper is dead and everything is digital these days. Not quite, it was the big promise twenty years ago, but we are still nostalgic about the use of paper. Having something physical in the context of all this fast changing content and information battle.

Into the mists of the storm comes a promis of a little gadget that potentially bridges the gap and links the digital online world with the physicality of your paper. Its tiny and could soon be your best friend. Berg presents the Little Printer.

Image taken from Engadget / This little box is your new best friend and keeps you uptodate with the lastest buzz. Little Printer by Berg.

Its a small printer, printing receipt size role paper with anything you feed it via a mobile phone or a Wi-Fi connection, via Wired. Berg has started to implement some news sources as well as enabled RSS feeds. It is even possible to send messages to other printers directly.

Image taken from Berg / You can print a summary of the latest news are for example from Foursquare.

Berg have earlier started to look into the topic of information feeds and ways to integrate the feeds poeple consume on their small mobile phone screens with oder media. There were ideas integrating billboards, train table messaging boards, train tickets and so on. See a summary HERE. With this new gadget that is announced to be available in 2012 Berg introduce a whole family of possible gadgets summarised as the Berg-Cloud. This is good marketing!

Book - Floor Plan Manual Housing

2011-11-30T06:42:00.000Z

Housing projects are an architects everyday business. Housing is one of the really big architectural challenges as it more than many other tasks directly represents an idea of being and enabling to unfold and arrange. The society and social implication of architecture is the most direct while designing how the individuals life their everyday lives.

Nevertheless, or especially so, housing is heavily influenced by trends and norms. It has been over the last century and continues to be a play ball of the latest fashion. It does however, also reflect as much as any other fashion niche represent retrospectively the believes and values of each area.

For those and many other reasons this is a great topic for a publication. How to organise an house is still the chalenge mainly because it is so deeply embedded in culture and trends. There is never the final solution to be found it always has to be a tailored proposal, in the wider sense.

Image taken from Floor Plan Manual Housing / Page 203, Torre Blancas, Sáenz de Oiza, 1969.

The 2011 Birkhauser Floor Plan Manual Housing is the 4th revised and expanded edition of the publication that has already quite some tradition. The first edition was published back in 1994. For the fourth edition the editor Friederike Schneider is joined by Oliver Heckmann as additional editor.

The publication is organised as an atlas of housing floor plans drawn from a pool of amazing projects. The content is organised in categories roughly describing the type of buildings they serve. THese include Block Edge, Urban Infill, Corner Building, Firewall Building, Solitair, Linear Block / Superblock, Apartment Tower, Terraced Complex, Space-Enclosing Structure, Residential Complex / Housing Estate, Detached House, Duplex, Row House.

Even though I am not suer what exactly a Space-Enclosing Structure is the topics seem to have some practical meaning and can be seen as helpful guiding system.

Image taken from Floor Plan Manual Housing / Page 129, House Kauf, Peter Markli, 1989.

Each example is documented over a spread with a short descriptive text introduced and documented with one or two outside photographs. There is a whole building section, a plan of the situation the building is situated in, a icon serving as an diagram of the plan of a single housing unit and a table summarising the key characteristics such a number of units, area per user, building dimensions and details such a parking solution and so on. The main element of course are the floor plans which are shown as floor plans of the building as well as often in detail per unit.

The editors have put in a lot of effort to accomodate for each example the building specific characteristics. For this each representation is slightly different and the elements might be more prominent or an additional section is presented to clearly communicate how this particular example is organised across different levels.

Image taken from Floor Plan Manual Housing / Book cover.

THe publication is very similar to the Typology+, reviewed HERE on urbanTick, by the same publisher. However the Manual is more the technical publication entirely (beside the bright orange) in black and white focusing on the organisation and the actual floor plan, where Typology+ presents the housing project as a building and in colour. They serve different purposes and therefore can happily, with overlaps, coexist.

The manual is something for everyone. As indicated in the introduction floor plans and housing organisation are more than only an architecture task, this is architecture it self and tell the story of a social context they are built for as well as out of. As such the book can be read in many different way under different viewpoints and lights. In this context the proposed organisation is only one of many possibilities and clearly supports the atlas aspect of the publication, but you might find your own way through the 335 pages strong oversize book and it will definitely give joy on that quest.

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Schneider, F. & Heckmann, O., 2011. Floor Plan Manual Housing 4th ed., Basel: Birkhäuser.

Printing the City

2011-11-29T09:09:00.000Z

New manufacturing technologies are tipped to change the world, yet again. Machine based production is since the 18th century a reality and with it has the industrial revolution changed the way products and the making of are consumed.

This has had far reaching impacts way beyond the pure manufacturing process, it did completely change society. All of a sudden thousands pieces of exactly the same making, shape and condition were possible. The product was no longer unique and manufactured by hand, but rolled of the conveyor belt.

Image taken from printertesting / A large scale 3d printer in tests to print a simple building by Enrico Dini.

Yet again new technologies are set to change again the way products are conceptualised. The process of raw material that is mined, pre worked, turned into parts of the product and finally assembled could potentially be overthrown by the newly developed product printing possibilities.

This new printing process is a technologies that allows 3d objects to be printed from a 3d computer model. At the moment the process is possible only with certain materials: plastics, resins and metals. There is room for development however. Already the technology is accurate to print at a precision of around a tenth of a millimetre.

So far it is being developed and used mainly for models, especially in the design industry from architecture to car and airplane design, but also in the machine industry for parts. The technology has been developed over the past decade and is now moving from being used for prototyping to being used for actual parts. These include medical implants, jewellery, football boots designed for individual feet, lampshades, racing-car parts, solid-state batteries and customised mobile phones. Some are even making mechanical devices.

Image taken from Peter Schmitt / Parts of a printed clock developed at MIT.

The big change is really that the work no longer is based on the assembly of parts, but the hope of engeniers and developers is that whole products can be printed in one go. Peter Schmitt at MIT has printed a working grandfather clock in one go. But further more printers are also able to reprint themselves.

They can reproduce and print the parts for another printer. At CASA this project is running as part of the payItForward printing project. One printer is used to print the parts for a next printer and who ever gets this printer is to print the parts for the next one. This is the idea of the RepRap printers. Of course they can then also be used to print all sorts of other stuff.

In the building construction industry printers have been used for a while to print models of project. Frank Gerry Architects are leading here with other design firms such as Coop Himmelb(l)au. Of course here the the aims are as opulent as in the car or airline industry to print a whole building.

There are efforts that can be seen as first steps with machines actually building. At the ETH robots from the manufacturing industry are programmed to lay bricks. It can be seen as a first step in printing. The instructions come directly out of the computer and the robots lay the bricks accordingly.

Image taken from Dezen / Gramazio & Kohler from ETH printed a wall for the 2008 Venice Biennale.

This can be extended by using flying robots to build taller structures. With the raise of UAVs and drones, these either remote controlled or even GPS (it probably needs more accuracy) controlled flying robots the assembly of buildings and larger structures can be another option. Terminators are set to build our cities of the future dropping in the pieces or printing them on the go.

Image taken from Frac Centre / A flying robot with its load of a brick, Flight Assembled Architecture.

The architects Gramazio & Kohler are planning a project with flying robots that will assemble a six metre-high tower at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France, next month using styrofoam bricks.

The revolution as such is underway. It is being publicised here and there, but it takes time and a lot of development. Its not being implemented for tomorrow. At the moment printing is going through a transformation from a geeky lab version to actual production of elements and the next step will be the implementation at a larger scale.

It furthermore should also trigger the discussion around raw materials and the sustainable use thereof. With a number of the technologies the recycling of material becomes a very direct reality with old plastic bottles directly being used as the printing material. The same could become true for metal. Imagine the new building being printed from the recycling of the on site existing structure. With the technology the rebuilding of the city is transformed into a reprinting for itself from itself.

Via BLDGBLOG and via Dezen and via the Economist.

Book - Iceland and Architecture?

2011-11-28T06:58:00.001Z

Iceland is a remote place, being a small island high up north in the Atlantic Ocean is not exactly a place on the high street. The island however, has very distinct characteristics to share and can surprise with unique features.

In terms of architecture Iceland was largely influenced by its history of overseas connections. People and economic ties brought in material, knowledge, styles and trends creating a sort of potpourri of approaches to building.

Image take from runawayjane / Hallgrímur, Reykjavik, Iceland. Front entrance faceade Gudjon Samuelsson 1937-86.

A constant of course is the harsh weather and the environmental conditions. In addition the available building materials shaped the early architecture types, the grass- and turf-covered houses as a result of a lack of wood as building material. These earth houses were optimised in terms of isolation and exposure to weather changes, but required a lot of maintenance and rebuilding. at least every two years the unit basically had to be rebuilt. It was to a large extend a living house as such with its shape and extend in constant change.

One of the first to document the Icelandic architecture tradition was Edwin Sacher, who in 1938 wrote his PhD dissertation on the subject. He also was an imported interest, he was a German architectural scholar who promoted the vernacular icelandic architecture. Since these days a lot happened in the Icelandic architecture scene happend and a new Jovis publication looks at how architecture as a discipline and a practice presents itself today.

Since the turf buildings new technologies with prefabrication and then especially concrete found their way quickly into the building practice in Iceland. Also the introduction of stone as a building material. Modernism found its way onto the island together with a number of architects trained abroad after the Second World War.

One of the fascinating aspects today as Kenneth Frampton remarked in 1987, is not so much what is built, but also what could be built. With this especially the landscape in Iceland is moved to the centre of the discussion as it is, beside the weather, the most dramatic condition. The building in connection with the landscape is then also on of the topics the architecture has to live up to an position itself.

Image taken from 3.bp / Project by Jin Choi & Thomas Shine of Choi+Shine for a new type of pylons submitted to a competition organised by Icelandic electrical transmission company Landsnet and the Association of Icelandic Architects. The project was titled Land of Giants. See the winning project, which is actually pretty similar in some points HERE at dezen.

The publication presents a brief recap of the history as wel a selection of recent projects. a third large part are interviews where the context of architecture in iceland is discussed. Well actually they are not really interviews but really conversations. In the context of these conversations the projects are discussed and this makes for a very different presentation of the architecture of a place. Its not your usual architecture guide, nor is it a monograph, nor a simple collection. Its really the quest to find the specifics of architecture for a place that has no international identity in the area of architecture.

The format of presentation makes this an interesting exchange between publication and reader in the sense that one feels involved in the conversation and the feeling of discovery amongst it. It transports as the publication accompanying an exhibition on the subject of architecture in Iceland a sense of excitement. The exhibition unfortunately closed this month at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt. See HERE for a preview with sample pages of the publication.

Cachola Schmal, P. ed., 2011. Iceland and Architecture?, Berlin: Jovis Verlag.

A Network of Suggestions

2011-11-25T11:15:00.000Z

Ever wondered why the suggestions on shopping websites such as amazon or ebay more often than not appeal to you? Most links are targeted and do related to recent activity linking activity and interest together.

Amazon's recommendations for products especially books works as a network of relations and starts to groups together similar interest areas. This is based on cross user activity and behaviour with a learning environment. One purchase leads to another and so on.

Christocper Warnow has looked int o creating a network visualisation for the amazon recommendation service and has written a Processing app making use of the open source Gephi API. The tool can take a web link to a book on amazon and create a network around it for up to 100 recommendations associated with the publication.

The tool can be downloaded HERE for a test. It rus in real time and the process of building the network is unfolding on screen, quite interesting to follow. The tool allows for zooming in/out and hovering for information as well as an pdf export function of the created network visualisation.

Image by Christopher Warnow / Recommendation network on amazon.de for Linked

Image by Christopher Warnow / Recommendation network on amazon.com for Linked

Interesting are the differences between the amazon online stores. Warnow points out that there are connection recommendation differences between for example the .de and the .com store in some examples: "I wanted to compare the recommendations given by amazon.de and amazon.com. And another surprise waited. The milieus looked different. The Germans are connecting postmodernism with Deleuze, the buyers from amazon.com are thinking more about the French situationist movement. I tested it again with the awesome book Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. The similarities are the complex theory and network dynamics. But the differences are interesting as well. The English milieus contain politics and collective systems, where as the Germans are more into successful marketing and economics."

Architecture News on your iPhone - BD app

2011-11-24T11:45:00.002Z

Mobile devices have become the first stop shop for news and information. It is, as a platform constantly available and always updated in real time taking the promis of any news to the limit, to actually getting the latest news.

There are different approaches to news delivery on the devices. On one hand there are the news readers and the news curators, apps that allow the reader to brows the news from different sources in an general environment, often offering the option to link to many online sources including social media. This type like Flipboard or Flud are very popular and flexible.

Image by Ralph Barthel for urbanTick / Architect's news on the iPhone provided by BD.

The second approach on the other hand is for each news provider to launch their individual corporate news app. It is very dedicated and the provider has a complete controle over the way each information reaches the reader.

This second option is being offered by a lot of newspapers. However, most of them can also be integrated with other readers as they offer general webnews that the curator apps can integrate. One of the key factors of course is not only to let readers read and enjoy, but to also let them share. They want to show of what they are reading in order to stay in the game of social media and feed their Twitter, Facebook and so on accounts.

Architecture news so far have mainly been using their blogs to keep news uptodate and allow readers to integrate a feed with their favourite curator app. Things are changing and Architecture News sites also begin to offer their dedicated mobile app for readers to enjoy the freshest and crispiest news in the filed of architecture and planning.

Image taken from BD iPhone app / Screenshot of the app news section with sharing options.

Building Design (BD), the British architecture news platform, is the first one here in the UK to offer an app for the iPhone. It was launched only this week and provides complete access from your iPhone to all the content on BD. Of course the main fous is on the latest news in various categories.

The initial view is organised in Top Stories, News, Buildings, Opinions and under More you can find the rest. Well the rest contains Competitions, Events, App Showcase (nothing there yet, but presumably this is for architecture related apps) and Jobs. This is actually quite an interesting selection and for the filed will be essential. This is what makes a good architecture news platform, where you get profession related inside information that are practical. Any other building news you can find on the blog sphere in a range of formats and versions.

Image taken from BD iPhone app / Screenshot of the in app photo viewer. With a single tap on the screen the images can be enjoyed full screen text free (bottom right).

The BD app is neat and plain providing the essential options, such as changing the font size and marking an article as a favourite which can be reinterpreted by the users as an I read it later button. It also provides a neat feature to view the article related photos and illustrations in a separate window. This makes the text simpler to read on the small screen and can make use of the full size of the screen for the photos. Its great to see that BD here still keeps the figure description with the photos so that they don't float uncommented. The second good implementation is the sharing function. Articles can be shared via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter directly, plus the link to the article can be copied and shared otherwise. So there is no excuse not to let your networks now about the discoveries and latest knowledge acquisition, it works great.

It is debatable whether the categories on the start screen are the best choice and it would also be interesting if in article switching would be possible. Currently the app is organised centrally from one screen where the user can generally go in to depth only one step. Other newspaper apps such as the guardian version for the iPad from the Apple Newsstand, the user can flip pages and go through article by article whit out having to go back to the startpage. For illustrations especially plans and drawings it would be nice to be able to zoom in ont he little iPhone screen. In this context of course it would be great to see them articles and the photos on an iPad screen.

What is missing from the app is a search button. There is no way to find something its purely on an I came across it at the top of the list basis, which leaves the reader to be a playball of the refreshing moment. Real time as it turns out has its downside and you can be sure you miss out on a lot of the interesting stuff simply because your a moment to early or too late. Very quickly news are going to be buried under the flood of even latter news and the small iPhone screen is not the place one scrolls for minutes to go through the list of latest news.

BD in this respect has limited the list of news items the app displays to about 25 and offer at the bottom of all them two filters. One being UK and the second being International. However, here the website offers a lot more options, including the search function.

The app does not replace the BD website in this sense, it is a sort of news outpost for the platform to keep the users entertained while they have some time to kill. With the More option however, there are some features that can take you further. And of course it is to mention that the app comes add free, the latest architecture news can be enjoyed uninterrupted by tempting offers for building materials or architecture software.

The app comes at an subscription cost of £1.99 for 7 days (1 week) and £2.99 for 30 days (1 month) just like the web service of BD. However currently the app is offered for a 30 day FREE trial so its best you have a look yourself and try take it for a test scroll. The app can be downloaded from the app Store HERE.

Image taken from BD online / Screenshot of the online web site.

Book - Great Public Squares

2011-11-23T11:20:00.001Z

Public spaces are big topic on urban planning. On one hand they are seen as what measures the success of the project and their spacious employments indicates how thoughtful the project is implemented. On the other hand however they are feared for their unpredictability as to how the public like it the cruelty with witch they can tear down a whole project after implementation. With planners and designers public spaces and especially public squares are a sort of love-hate relationship of a special sort.

Still these spaces are what most people talk of beside the famous monuments and icons if they talk about the city and further more those are the spaces people interact with, use and activities take place within. Both locals and tourists sit in the restaurant on the square and drink a coffee, sit on the bench and read the news paper or simply stand over there by the pillar to wait for a date. It's the place to be, the place of orientation and a space to get involved.

Numerous books have been dedicated to this subject and have more or less successful captured and presented the various different aspects of public space. Two of the very famous ones are definitely Camillo Sitte's Der Staetebau nach seinen kuenstlerischen Grundsaetzen (City planning according to artistic principles), 1889 and Alan Jacobs's Great Streets, 1993. There are others like Dr. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani's Die Stadt im 21. Jahrhundert or from a different perspective CHORA with Raul Bundschoten's Public Spaces.

The key to a good book is the chosen approach, the consistency as well as the plainness of the representation. In order to serve the understanding and the readability everything has to be dedicated supportive in that the read can dive into a place through the book.

A recent Norton publication by Robert F. Gate presents a new try at this noble task of selecting and summarizing a set of public squares from Europe and the Americas. With Great Public Squares: An Architect's Selection the author not only in the title is inspired by a number of the famous books on this subject, it is an other version of a successful receipt.

Image take from monpazier / The public square of Monpazier, the Place des Cornieres, in the book on page 130.

Unfortunately, even though with great intentions, this book can not live up to the expectation its sets by placing itself in the companionship of such great master pieces. From the design to the graphical representation to the selected photographs this publication doesn't quite manage to convince and draw the reader in. Especially the graphics of the plans that document each square are very crude. The representation is more concealing than revealing and gradients in full colours and patterns make very hard to read. The last thing one want ina gapihcal representation of space is to know about the different coloured chares each restaurant has chosen on the Plaza Mayor in Salmanaca.

The patterns are very dominant and the line thickness distracting, in many cases it is impossible to read the difference between open space and indoor space and roofed parts are non distinguishable. The one point that can be discussed is the direction of the sunlight. The author here has chosen to go with the geographers approach to place the sun in the North-East drawing the shadows towards the bottom right. His argument is that it makes buildings "...jump out". While I believe it is very important to show the shadows my opinion would be to show the reality in order to make the representation of space close to what it actually looks like. It is just that the centre of gravity can be shifted by the dominant shadows and if the Piazza San Pietro in Rome all of a sudden shifts to the south rather than what it always does, shifting to the north, it is a very different thing.

There would be other things to discuss like the use of colours and the representation of canopies, furniture and temporal structures, but it wouldn't make things much better. Similar with the choice and layout of the documenting photographs. There are usually too many on e one page and a number of them are unspecific making them hard to place in the overall picture the publication is trying to bring across.

Image take from Archleague / The public square in Venice Piazza San Marco, in the book on page 34.

However the book has its qualities as a first point of reference if looking for public squares. The selection can never be complete, but the examples chosen are definitely a bunch worth looking at. Also the background texts that weave in a bit of history and point out a few specialities as well as references to other squares are indeed very useful. The same is true for the information and details of measurements. Here the shadows are coming in handy again as at the scale of 1:1000 make it possible to actually measure the hight of each element.

Overall a book on a noble subject that fails to live up to expectations, e.g. graphically (it already starts on the cover in the way the banner is placed very unfortunate slightly covering the books subject, the square), but still holds some qualities for the user in specific use cases. Also for other reviews, have a read over at Archidose with more of a focus on the selection of presented examples.

Image taken from Archidose / Book cover.

Gatje, R., 2010. Great Public Squares: An Architect's Selection, New York, N.Y: W. W. Norton & Co.

MapAttack and Street Grab

2011-11-21T13:14:00.000Z

Gaming at large scale is a hot topic with the new technologies available. It makes for a great spatial experience where locations can be rediscovered and reclaimed in a new way with a new purpose. The practice of the production of space is very present with this new breed of games that make uses of location based technology and smart phones as well as social networking platforms. Earlier posts HERE and HERE.

Around Foursquare a few extensions have been developed such as oust.me or MobZombies. There are also games such a shadowCity or situationist operating platform independent but are crowd oriented. All these games turn real world spatial movement recorded by the mobile phones GPS in to virtual achievements and traces that allow for other players to interact with.

Image taken from mapAttack / An AR view of the game board with the locations as they are captured by the different teams (colour) and the number of points each on contributes.

MapAttack is one of these new breeds of real time, real location, virtual games. It is a game platform that runs on iOS and Android. It was developed from the Geoloqi platform. It is a multiplayer game for 4-12 players in two teams battling for supremacy over a terrain by conquering virtual locations in the real world that will count as points towards the team overall rating. Locations are conquered by being there first which will be registerd by the mobile platform and transmitted to the centralised mapAttack server. In real time all players have an overview of the current stats of the game.

MapAttack gaming session can be hosted anywhere and might come to a city near you. Check out the twitter page for updated on games and locations.
If your interested to use the API to build your own version of the game there is a developers page. The code s open source, including the mobile app.

"MapAttack is a real-time location-based GPS game powered by the @geoloqi platform. Coming to a city near you.
This video shows a visualisation of the territory captured by each team during gameplay.
Why? So you can turn the real world into a game, of course! To get to run around while doing awesome things and have fun! The feeling while playing a real-life game is one of the best things on earth. It’s not common, but it’s becoming an increasingly awesome possibility with mobile technology. We hope millions of these games occur and that we can make more of them possible. We're always inspired by Jane McGonigal and AreaCode and we’d like to increase our ability to bring more people into real-world gaming."

via roomthily via programmableWeb.

City in Time - SACRPH Conference in Baltimore

2011-11-19T16:51:00.002Z

The biannual conference of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) is this year the 14th National Conference on Planning History being held in Baltimore MD.

The Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) is an interdisciplinary organisation dedicated to promoting scholarship on the planning of cities and metropolitan regions over time, and to bridging the gap between the scholarly study of cities and the practice of urban planning.

Image taken from the Baltimore Architecture Foundation / The Inner Harbor, before Charles Center & Harborplace.

I will be presenting a paper on The City in Time and Space drawing on the research work undertaken with the urbanDiary project using GPS-tracking, interviews and mental maps. The paper is part of the session 49 with the overall title Seeing Time: Urban Paces and Building Cycles it will be chaired by Philip J. Ethington, Professor of History at University of Southern California and the initiator of the HyperCities project.

Other presenters in the session are Sandra Parvu, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris on Time Perceptions in Neighborhoods Undergoing Demolition, Francesca Ammon, Yale University on Progress in Progress: The Representation and Experience of Postwar Building Demolition and Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, The New School on Seeing the Human City: A Visual and Value-Rich Urbanism.

Book - Urban Pioneers

2011-11-17T10:59:00.000Z

Cities are in constant transformation with building stock constantly changing. It is a renewal process from within that is loosely guided by urban planning regulation and sometimes through a masterplan or planning vision. This process is paced at a slow cycle compared to everyday buzz, but can have a rather fast turnaround if one is at a distance.

Reasons are various, but include material lifecycle and shift in activity and economics as well as trends and fashion to some extend. Most likely it is all of this and a couple more all at once. However the transformation is, even though repetitive, not a back to back replacement of physical form and neither is it a like for like exchange.

The dynamics of urban renewal can include long term decay, derelict elements, brown fields, building sites and so on. There can be rather long periods of slow or non development where the area is not actively contributing to the wealth generating, money making economy of the trend areas of the city.

Nevertheless, these areas might have a value and are still space, a scarce resource in the urban context. With this such places can become very valuable places for specific activities and society groups. At low or no cost urban places can be taken over and used for individual ideas a concept very often built on a temporary or opportunity concept of usage.

Image taken from null-euro-urbanismus / The project Neuland was initiated by the planning department and focuses on making empty spaces accessible and usable by the local public.

In various cities these mechanisms of transformation have been turned into partly institutionalised processes with officials having recognised the value and power of mainly cultural and social themed temporary uses of vacant urban spaces. A number of cities across Europe and America are picking up on it with Vienna (partly discussed earlier HERE and HERE) and Berlin being pretty pro active.

Jovis Publisher has in 2007 published a summary of projects and discussions around the topic with a focus on Berlin. The publication Urban Pioneers: Berlin Experience with Temporary Urbanism edited by the city of Berlin, the Senatsverwaltng fuer Stadtentwicklung directly has now been reprinted in 2011 and is available again.

The publication features projects around temporary usage of vacant sites, portraits concepts of space occupation and the reclaim of urban territory lost to barriers, hoardings and borded up windows. The origin of these spaces in the publication is described as mainly down to changes in the economy, with older industries disappearing, the developing of new production and logistics systems including technology and supply. Also demographic change is discussed in the publication as a factor.

The projects presented range from gardening, often guerilla gardening to golf and alternative housing projects in trailers and tents. There are also skaterparks, openair theaters bars and accessible green spaces as well as cultural venues, local centres and educational institutions that found a home in reclaimed properties.

One of the very first and very public projects was the Badeschiff (Bathing Ship) in 2005. It is a wooden platform leading to a floating pool in the river Spree. It has become very popular with locals as well as tourists and is a model that is in use in various other cities too. A few sample pages are available form HERE.

Image taken from slowtravelberlin.com / The Berlin Bathing Ship in the Spree in summer. In winter the bath is covered with a tent structure and turned into a sauna and relax world.

The publication details these projects in depth with not only a mere description but a presentation and discussion of the technical aspects, such as development timeframe, initiative, the role of the local authority, ownership, the legal framework and financing models. There is for each project as a description of the main hurdles and conflicting interest. With this the publication manages to lift the discussion form the mere wow a cool, trendy project to a proper discussion of urban space usage, urban redevelopment as well as local initiatives and bottom up planning and discurse. As such it can be a handbook for both planners and initiatives lead by local groups or even individuals.

For once urban spaces are not just to be used, but to be shaped, programmed and activated by the public that is you.

Image taken from Jovis / Book cover

Senatsverwaltung fuer Stadtentwicklung ed., 2007. Urban Pioneers: Berlin Experience with Temporary Urbanism. Bilingual, reprint 2011, Berlin: Jovis.

Skyview TimeLapse

2011-11-15T06:14:00.000Z

Its the biggest thin of all and this view serves for a few decades already as the icon of sustainability. With the beauty it transpires and the calmness it entails, the view from the outer space onto our planet earth provide a sense of belonging.

This timeLapse sequences was put together by Michael König out of photographs taken by Ron Garan and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011.

The frames were shot at average altitudes of around 350 km on a special built ISO HD Camera developed by NHK Japan. There is little to now image or colour correction applied. The colour play out very intensively and do the magic with the green fringes of the light within the atmosphere.

On to of the blue marbel picture this clip provides a good sense of movement and rotation. Even if most of the sequences are short and the motion is rather speedy, whilst capturing the shape of the sphere the rotation is very present. It transcendes a sort of known icon into a motion of discovery.

All of a sudden the primary school geography teachers demonstration of the globe rotation producing day and night make sense, as the land masses, the continents including the clouds and storms with heavy flashes twirl across the screen. Its a real world version of Google Earth. Actually the world might not be flat after all, or is it?

Music: Jan Jelinek | Do Dekor, faitiche back2001 w+p by Jan Jelinek, published by Betke Edition.
A description of location can be found HERE at the bottom of the article. A lot of interesting locations can be spotted, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Egypt, Austalia and so on. Have a go at guessing.

Thinking Vienna - Successful Legacy Marketing

2011-11-14T11:46:00.000Z

In recent years Vienna has topped the rankings as most liveable city in consecutive years. Often enough it is Zuerich in Switzerland and Vienna as the two cities fighting over the first two places. Vienna however has recently overtaken Zuerich and has been, at least in the renown Mercer raking Quality of living ranking, on place number one for two years in a row.

Vienna is lovely, sorted and clean at least somewhere between the first Bezirk and the 19th. The sprawling suburbisation in the ranges of the green fringes around the city is a different topic.

Only just recently the historic centre of the city, the first Bezirk has been given World Heritage status appraising the quality of the ensemble and freezing it for the foreseeable future as such. It's not that there are no interventions, 70s or 80s monstrosities, commercialised shop fronts or material insensivities. Overall however, the management of history, legacy and identity has been rather successful. This for example includes the very first and fiercely and controversially discussed Coop Himmelb(l)au rooftop project number one at Falkestrasse 6, just accross from the MAK.

Image by Geral Zugmann, taken from q2xro / Coop Himmelb(l)au Falkestrasse 6 Rooftop project located in Vienna's first district, now selected as a world heritage site.

Vienna is successfully managing its building stock also beyond the historic centre. From the Ring, the former city wall area, to the Guertel, the former secondary wall, and beyond into the Vorstaedte Vienna has kept a rather xxxx einheitlich xxx building stock of Gruenderzeit buildings. On the city side of the Guertel one finds the upper class houses and on the outside the lower class buildings back then called the Zinshaeuser, meaning interest building, since it was built in the dramatic growth period of the industrialization during the 19th century. During this region Vienna grew from audit 1m to 2m with most of the population living in these Zinshaeuser suffering terrible standards, including the renting of beds, by the landlord twice or even three fold for shift workers.

As mentioned in the earlier post on Vienna, the cities population declined dramatically after the Second World War with the introduction of the Iron Curtain and Vienna in the following being disconnected from its Eastern backcountry. Interesting enough however, the city kept growing, still turing the surrounding grassland into built areas.

Over about 50 years Vienna developed a very sophisticated housing practice. Social housing is a established practice since the establishment of the Red Vienna. Housing is with the massive building stock within the city however, always also a topic of revitalisation and inner city change. Experts from the city today call it Slow Urban Revitalisation. This is however cheekily positively describing a lack of pressure and investment.

Vienna does not have, as other cities do a dramatic pressure on its building stock. Because they kept building, even if slowed down, as well as maintaining the Gruenderzeit buildings, the city is very well stocked. Slow in this case is a luxury of course offering great opportunities. There is more time for quality, more time for adaptability and more time for growth within each project.

Urban spaces don't like to be rushed in to places. the context needs to adapt and grow alongside. In Vienna this practice was sort of accidentally developed and put in to practice, simply because the conditions were pushing it this way. Nevertheless the planners and the responsible people in the Gebietsbetreuung make the most of it and there are a number of very successful projects that could be realised at inner city locations.

Image taken from Wikimeda / Vienna Urban-Loritz Square. Roof developed by architect Silja Tillner as part of the redesign of the square in connection with the Guertel Revitalisation.

One such project is the Guertel Revitalisation mainly lead and developed by the architect Silja Tillner. The project managed to revitalise the 30 km Westguertel along the Stadtbahn (Vienna Metropolitan Railway) designed and relised by Otto Wagner.

Interesting around the management of the building stock and the quality of urbanity developed under the new redevelopment schemas, is the discussion around density. As the Zinshaeuser earlier were really developed as cheep housing options for the owners to make money they provided only minimal standards and were rented out on a room basis. To optimize rents rooms often housed up to ten individuals. This meant real packed living under these circumstances.

However today, these densities have dramatically dropped and even though the built mass, the building stock is still the same the sort of people density must have dropped dramatically. Especially if the population reduction is taken into account as well as the continuous building practice on the outskirts. The image of the city that forms is a sophisticated spreading process. Vienna must have changed from a high-density, highly packed urban moloch into a lovely living standard league topping city.

At what cost? Non there seems, if talking to officials. Everybody seems pleased and very busy with he Slow Urban Revitalization . Everything is happening so slowly that there is little sense of the overall picture. While Vienna is continuously eating and in post-post-modernism digesting the surrounding countryside, the inner city slow changing practice is not adding quality to the urban spaces beyond rising the living standards inside the Gruenderzeit buildings. Its merely a shift from a one room apartment occupied by 10 tenants plus kids, to a very chic Altbau Wohnung (old building flat), a two or maybe three bed apartment for a single household or a couple maybe.

Whilst the urban constellation still looks the same, the city has changed. It has changed dramatically and is slipping through he fingers of the planners. It can not be captured by density factors in numbers, the new identity and the new buzz is generated by individuals and people density. Physically Vienna is built but inside this structure the body of the city has changed, it has been starved and is now with returning wealth thinning out.

The movie shows the building site around the artificially created lake for the new Aspern Lake City development on the outskirts of Vienna. It is located on a former airfield and underdevelopment for mainly housing usage. Masterplan available HERE.

Whilst the Gruenderzeit buildings seems to hold typologically very good qualities with its very basic and simple structure appear adaptable. This thinning process might lead to the crushing of the cities body if these heavy structures are underused and too scarcely populated. The city could it itself slowly from the inside. In addition of course there is a parallel discussion focusing on the outskirts and the continuos growing process at the fringes. With Vienna's forecasted population growth towards t the 2m mark again, the discussion around sustainable growth, density and planning are essential and at the moment appear to bother the politicians and planners in this slow developing city not enough.

Vienna - Resilience and Taxi Tracks

2011-11-08T06:41:00.002Z

Vienna the city at the Donau is rediscovering itself. After decades directly at the iron curtan the city has begun to reestablish and revitalise its former vital connections deep into Eastern Europe.

Between 1945 and the end of the Cold War in 1989 Vienna was effectively cut of its pulsing backcountry in the East. It was the Capital at the Eastern border of Europe surviving on one way connections shrinking from a population of over 2 million in 1910 to about 1.5 million in the 80s and 90s. It has grown since again together with this slow recovery to about 1.7 million.

I am currently in Vienna with a group of Students discovering the city and the intertwined urbanisation and planning processes, with a special focus on the Guertel in Vienna. This incredible resilience, to use an at the moment definitely overused word, of the urban structure to survive and at the same time develop quality during such a long time span of usage and input starvation is incredibly fascinating. It can be a great example of how durable and versatile urban morphology can be, actually has to be and visualises at exempla the meaning of cross generation investment on the level of society.

However it is also clear that this is not achieved only through the form or morphology good architecture or any other single discipline, but is a success proving the resilience of the city as a whole.

Image taken from Sense of Pattern / One day of taxi movement in the Vienna region. The active spotin the bottom South-East corner is the airport.

Interesting insight in this respect of course provide the visualisation of flows and movement. How is the morphology, the urban structure being navigated, used and interpreted for everyday busynesses? How easy is it for the wider public to access and interact with the city? Those are indicators showing the direct interadaptebility and everyday flexibility of the city in exchange with the citizens.

Taxi data has allowed to visualise these commuting movement pattern to be visualised on the scale of the city, providing a glimps of the hustle and bustle of Vienna over 24 hours. The project Sense of Pattern is continously developed by Mahir M. Yavuz, initially at the Austrian Institute of Technology and is rendered and visualised using processing and some python. The dat was provided by AIT.

Image taken from Sense of Pattern / Four different types of commuters out of the data heap. This data was collected over the period of five weeks focusing on just four individuals.

In a series of approaches Yavuz works different aspects in to the focus of the visualisation. This being the sheer volume and the busyness in one, but being the typology and the character of a few in others. This is not providing a final picture but it is painting the characteristics while managing to play the scales and dimensions freely.

Rendevous - History of the Universe

2011-11-04T10:26:00.000Z

The Murf by the band Rendevous is the electronic soundtrack to the universe. Not on its own but together with the stunning illustration by Scott Benson. Together it makes a music video of the very inspiring sort.

It is inspiring technically and of course visually. Still, even though there is a whole story told in the animation the sound is not pushed in to the background, the two elements perfectly join up to one great piece of entertainment.

The Randevous album can be bought on iTunes HERE. They also feature the music video there and some additional stuff.

Population Growth - a Problem of Scales

2011-11-03T14:13:00.000Z

Population Growth - a Problem of Scales

The end of October has according to the UN office for statistics officially marked the population growth reached 7billion. This is seven billion individuals living on planet earth, an astonishing number. On October 31st the 7th billion child was born.

Astonishing it is in regards to the unprecedented growth during only the past 200 years. Back in 1927 the world population was recorded as only 2 billion and in 1804 it was just 1 billion.

Image taken from Wikipedia / World population from 1800 to 2100, based on UN 2004 projections and US Census Bureau historical estimates.

The number however, is only calculated, an estimate at best. The UN statistics office specifies the error margin at 1%. Translated to the time window the 7th billion individual will be born, this margin is 12 month. This is six month before or after the end of October.

This margin might be quite good in relation to the 200,000 years modern humans already inhabit planet earth. Even across the past 100 years, since the beginning of the dramatic population growth, this might seem like a acceptable margin.

To make the story easier accessible to the general public the UN chooses to award the title of the 7th billion inhabitant to an individual, personalising the message. This has been the practice for the past 3 instances where the population crossed the billion mark.

The UN officially choose a baby girl named Danica Camacho born in the Philippines as the 7 billionth inhabitant. Previous title holders are 12-year-old Adnan Nevic of Bosnia Herzogovina born in 1999 and Matej Gaspar from Croatia, who was number five billion, born in 1987. It is to a large extend of course a political decision. To give the title to a child born in the region of the former Yugoslavia torn apart by war the years before is a clear signal of hope and welcome.

Image by Elvis Barukcic/AFP taken form the Guardian / Adnan Nevic in Visoko.

On this personal level the decision of course touches a very different scale. For the individual the error margin of 12 month makes a dramatic difference. A year holds so much for a pre born and newborn. Also for the rest of us, actually 6'999'9999 live can change in this time drama dramatically. This makes it difficult to relate to the error time frame.

The understanding for global management of challenges has increased dramatically over the past decade. From a very local management a sense of global awareness has entered the current debate. As an example, last weeks multi billion financial support deal reached between the members of the European Union to help other members has been supported by countries from around the world, including China.

This globalisation has developed very early related to economical activities, but has with the more recent sustainability discussion, the image from the moon and Buckminster Fuller, developed into a new paradigm for evaluation and decision making. Complexity has risen sharply of course and it has of been fuelled by the development and application of relevant technology.

This tie between global and local has especially for the cities become an essential aspect of management. The growth of urban population has since 2007 overtaken the countryside. In this sense the population growth is specifically relevant for the management, building and thinking of cities.

The discrepancy between the scales from global to local more and more are become an lock in problem. The relevance and presence of mobility between the scales is essential for the dynamic development of cities and the wider the gap the more difficult it becomes for elements to link in on any of the scales.

After all scales are an theoretical classification to grasp the complexity of cities. Many of the elements however, represent relevance on a number of different levels acting as links and at the same time can be a source of contradiction.

Just as the individual child represents a successful new start for a family or a community even, it is stylised as an icon of the world population representing all and everyone. Where the individual destiny and everyday struggle stand against the permanence and duration of the race as such the scales are not relevant any longer. And this might be after all, a model for dynamic conceptualisation of a scale independent description of presence also in the context of cities.

Book - Living in the Alps

2011-10-24T07:30:00.001+01:00

The Alps as a place for living has a log tradition as an influential source shaping specific typologies and buildings. The specific conditions of the environment but also the very special atmosphere impact on both the design and the realisation of projects.

Often this used to be very practical and pragmatic, resulting in specific and highly adapted vernacular architecture. Almost each valley over the centuries developed a very typical and very local solution always in tight interdependance to the cultural practice of everyday live, the recoures and the environmental conditions.

Image taken from Kunst Merano Arte / Alpine landscape, photo: H. Nägele.

The perfect adaptation was essential for the living in the rough conditions of higher altitude and steeper meadows and long winters. With the introduction of technology and machinery this has changed to some extend and the requirements might have changed. However, the sensation, the intensity and the atmosphere are largely still the same. The mountains are still a special place.

Here the weather is more intense, the light is capable of changing the landscape and the seasons are real. Architecture still reflects this with outstanding projects created for very special conditions to fit with a context of vernacular heritage.

Image taken from infrastruct, original taken from Wikimedia by Jide / The Alps shown as a relief shaded according to the elevation.

The Birkhauser publication Living in the Alps/Wohnraum Alpen/Abitare le Alpi: Nachhaltiger Wohnbau in den Bergen - zeitgenössische Wohnformen mit Perspektive summarises and documents a touring exhibition on the topic of architecture in the Alps with the same title. THe exhibition and the publication is lead by the Merano Arte institution. The Alps here are really the Alps and not as previous publications might have selected the alps as a the mountainous area of a country. Here the Alps is everything with hills from the French Mediterranean around Nice through Switzerland and Austria all the way to Vienna. A total of eight countries are involved in this area stretching from Monaco to Slovenia.

For each of the differentiated regions of this large area a selection of projects is presented together with an essay describing and characterising the specifics in both culture and architecture. The projects chosen for the exhibition and also documented in the publication are all communal forms of housing. Probably as new interpretation of the older vernacular model of the multigeneration household. It is clearly stated that the single family house is not part of the this publication.

Image taken from Birkhauser / Kaiserau EA7 Residential Complex in Bozen, Trentino Suedtirol, by Atelier Christoph Mayr Fingerle.

With this clear definition of focus a focus on the communities and the living in the Alps consequently the contributors are also discussion aspects of regional and spatial planning in the different regions. In cities the aspects of planning at different scales is today common practice, in many regions of the Alps this is new.

The publication is in three languages German, Italian and English. It is a large scale catalogue with cute little booklets inside, each containing one of the essays. The photographs are well selected and full page prints bringing the aspects of very specific atmosphere across.

Image taken from Kunst Merano Arte / Gondo (CH), multi-family house, hotel, community hall, architects Durrer Linggi and Jürg Schmid, photo: H. Nägele.

Andreas Gottlieb Hempel explains about the publications: “The exhibition catalogue is an important contemporary document of urban planning, architecture, culture and sociological development in the Alpine region. Every South Tyrolean who is interested in the change of our times should have read it in order to better understand the architectural processes in our region.”

Kunst, M. ed., 2010. Living in the Alps/Wohnraum Alpen/Abitare le Alpi: Nachhaltiger Wohnbau in den Bergen - zeitgenössische Wohnformen mit Perspektive, Birkhauser Verlag AG.

Agile Ethics for Massified Research and Visualization

2011-10-20T11:49:00.001+01:00

The advances in online data mining and the rising popularity of online social networking data is posing challenging questions in regards to ethics and privacy. How can academic research provide a comprehensive framework to secure data management and guarantee appropriate handling?

Given the current popularity of data crunching, big data and visualisation of massive datasets the question of data management under ethical guidelines in a lot of cases are pressing. Current institutional protocols do not cover these new aspects that arise from the accessibility of large datasets of online data.

Social science so far still builds on the basics of informed consent with all involved participants. These protocols were implemented in the late seventies, long before the internet. Most of the protocols have been updated around the year 2000 in regards to online research involving online questionnaires and sometimes research with chat rooms.

The dramatic changes online social networking data brought along with API's allowing the construction of large scale datasets connecting to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like are based on the multiplication of dimensions. Researchers are no longer working with 10, 100 or 1000 participants, but potentially with data relating to millions of individual users. Still the data in as detailed as a qualitative dataset with 100 participants might be, potentially in specific cases even more detailed. This is especially the case in regards to time and location.

Currently the discussion mainly circles around the question whether the data is free and publicly available implying that if it is to be considered so no additional measures would be necessary. The argument in this case would be that the individual users are voluntarily sharing the data publicly for free. This is however a very naive and short sighted argument. There are of course a number of complicating issues to be considered. There are three main elements to this.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / A screenshot of a Twitter data table with the different columns containing metadata. Each row represents one tweet.

The first aspect is the dynamic nature of the data. Since the data is time based and it is being produced at such a vast quantity content very quickly is superseded and disappears in the platform's thumbs in many cases unretrievable for the individual user. In practice this can result in the fact that sets of mined data are becoming unique. In this case the acquiring of such a dataset is an act of making for which the research would have to take responsibility.

The second aspect is that the service operational aspects. It requires the user to share the information as otherwise the usage of the service in most cases would simply be impossible. If the user would not be willing to share the information this would in most cases result in the exclusion of the user or at least mean a dramatic reduction of the capacity of the service. Another aspect of the usability is that the way the user interacts with the platform easily can lead the user to believe to be acting in a private environment. In the individual setting the service only provides information of a closed circle of connections to other users. This means that the users might be tempted to share private information easily not being aware that on a larger scale all activities are public. Furthermore, it is unclear if the user has, by agreeing to use the service also agreed for all his information to be mined and researched towards specific conditions in relation to a vast number of other users.

The third aspect is the fact that no the individual datapoint, message or information is causing concern for privacy, but the series of datapoints. These newly available datasources contain a lot of metadata and continuous data which has the potential to be analysed towards patterns. In other words it is not about one or two places the individual has been to, but about the possibility to infer a very personal pattern from the information distinctively describing the personal habits in both time and space.

From these considerations and points of discussion the now published paper Agile Ethics for Massified Research and Visualization as part of the special edition of Information, Communication and Society, edited by A. Carusi is available online from Taylor & Francis.

The paper is written together with Dr. Tim Webmoore at Stanford and beside the discussion of implications as well as aspects of the development of a framework the Twitter work serves as a practical example.

The topic has already been discussed in an earlier blog post Privacy - Aspects of an Ecology of Ownership that lead at a later stage to the paper. Also a version of the paper has been presented at the Visualisation in the Age of Computerisation conference in Oxford in early 2011.

Neuhaus, F. & Webmoor, T., 2011. Agile Ethics for Massified Research and Visualization. Information, Communication & Society, pp.1-23.

Second International Conference Young Urban Researchers - SiCyUrB

2011-10-13T15:41:00.000+01:00

Today is the second day of the Second International Conference of Young Urban Researchers in Lisbon at ISCTE-IUL.

The conference aims to share recent researches on urban contexts from many different areas of social sciences, to discuss current theoretical and methodological issues and to promote interdisciplinary and international networking. It is intended that the meeting should be boosted by young researchers who work in urban studies and develop research in the cities - especially those who are studying in post-graduate programs but also those carrying out technical and intervention activities.

Image taken from SicyURB / conference poster.

My contribution with the title Location Based Social Networks and the Emerging Sense of Place will be focusing ont he emerging potential of social media data to chalenge and redefine the established cartesian cartographies of cities by generating its own detailed descriptions of spaces. These spaces are temporal, ephemeral in nature making them hard to grasp and categories in a conventional way.

The conception of identity in this case is less the idea of the individual perception of spaces and the creation of a personal tie than it is a collective description of an emerging spatial identity as a description of spatial activity defining the urban space. Identity would here be the spatial description as such, making use of different aspects, including time, space and social connections.

The talk will be based on the assumption of a departure from the static urban conception as a given framework towards a much mor specific, individual and timed conception of city in the context of the now widely available tools and data sources. This includes a number of urban sensors providing real time and very contextual data. This can be local sensors but also includes the citizens themselves as sensors through mobile technology and social network media. With this information that is no longer gathered under the objectivity dogma, no longer serves to support the city as an institution but is highly situative and subjective to the degree that it is potentially not repeatable definitely not in a different context.

At the same time these new datasets also chalenge the established data sources on the level of quantity. So far research into the field of spatial description challenging the established objectivity were doomed due to their qualitative nature based on small 'none' representative samples and methods of data collection. However, the emerging data sets, provided by urban sensors, are available in numbers outshining many of the conventional quantitative sources. Therefor the argument of representativity does not bite no longer and visualisations and research is fast tracked into the interest focus.

This is not without problems of course and the description and relations of the available data sets is still vague and laks clear handles and definitions. Similar it is the case with ethical and regulative questions especially regarding responsibility and accountability. So far the institutions have not picked up on the problem and existing ethical protocols do not yet include the new questions of ownership, security and management.

Using the social networking data it might become possible to depart from the starting point of time geography by implementing the described dynamics on the level of data and start stitching together a picture of the urban environment more in the sense of Guy Debord's naked city proposition that proposed a mapping based on experience.

However, the use of these new data sources is still at the very beginning and specific strands of interest are only beginning to emerge. The New City Landscapes are a start trying to visualise the different characteristics on a city level.

Lisbon the Place to Be - Some Toughts

2011-10-12T07:12:00.000+01:00

This will be some relate, but maybe thrown together rumbling over a trip to Lisbon with bits and pieces of a conference and various thoughts and discussion extracts that link to this particular context. Being on the road usually brings up numerous new perspectives and lines of thought that might initially not be directly related to anything in particular but later on might as well find their way into a more contextualised form.

Visiting places as a tourist can often be quite frustrating. You are always the outsider, you stand out unable to step in to the secrets of the place. Scratching the surface and trotting the main paths with your fellow visitors. The guides direct you to what ever thousands of visitors have seen before tell you a little about the history but never really what you want to know and leave you in the dark about the real local narratives and secrets.

Image taken from skyscraper city / The oriente train station in Lisbons new quarter built by Calatrava for the expo in 1998.

See a place and learning about a place are quite some different things. This visit to Lisbon makes no exemption and the best probably is to accept and keep on walking, with open eyes continuously processing and combining trying to fit the puzzle pieces together reshuffle and attempt a new combination, establishing links both in terms of orientation and local practice whilst sucking ip the atmosphere of a quite unfamiliar place.

Its usually the subtile elements and little details as compared to the familiar context that stand out the most. Here in Lisbon as compared to London these are the sound, the smell and the space of the city. The three are probably diametrically the opposite of what you'll find in the UK and especially in London.

Strong smell are common in Lisbon and you can find them everywhere usually before if at all you will find out about the source. From pleasant to truly awful there is everything. In terms of the sound, based on the dramatic differences in terms of space, architecture and topography the sound scape appears to have very different qualities. There is a lot more transition noises from activities blending into one another. A lot more activities take place in semi public spaces with a lot of balconies and loggias being involved. Then there are taler building and different street with-building hight relations transporting sounds into upper levels of buildings you might not associate normally with a ground floor situation.

Spaces are vast here in Lisbon. From the airport gates to the tube stations, train stations or university reception areas, everything is triple the size one would possibly assigne for the usage. Very impressive and completely changing the way enclosures are navigated used and finally perceived. Spaces flow a lot more here.

-------

One of the talks at the 7VCT conference here at the Nova University was on Biomimicry and the promis of sustainable design based on such a concept. Various very beautiful and striking reference images were sown by Guorreiro during a tour do force of visually linking biological structures to urban physical form.

The occurring question of course immediately is as to how can one explain the linking of organic to man made other than visual similarities? Especially if we look at the creative capacity of people, the factors of decision making of the individual, also resulting in a cultor of space and space making.

Prof Mike Batty put it nicely in his comment during the sessions discussion time that in terms of energy consumption and optimisation of 'the' spatial problem this can be the result. With such a explanation the visual argument is extended and especially moves away from a direct comparison where people and cars in the road shall be see as blood cells transporting goods to the houses.

There is no doubt that there are similarities but there also are striking differences. Of this the capacity to take decision being one, but also the longevity of persistance being an example. if a mouse dies the same cells are very unlikely to reemerge as a mouse since the new baby mouse grows insed its mother, for the mouse being a mammal. However, a house is very likely to be built on the very same plot since this plot is guarded by boundary lines and the neighbouring property is likely to be owned by somebody else and at a very different stage of its live cycle (maybe there is a thing with local similarities though). This results in the discussion around boundary and finally organisational rules as sit would be extended to the discussion about culture and society in the next step. How do people live together in cities. Rules govern the structure, but they are not universal, its a trade off and locally emerged in regards to very specific conditions.

Taking this further these very same conditions however allow also for her consistence and persistance of the urban structure for a long times much beyond the individual inhabitant. Thus guaranteeing the built urban structure to develop and persist at a very different time scale. It is not down to a single planing act or the work of a generation that cities are stil there, but to the fact of social structure and the inscription of social structure manifested in physical form that lead to the continued existence of cities.

Cities rarely dye. Although there are some examples, there are even more stories of cities being rebuilt after great disasters. The earthquake of Lisbon being one or te fire of London. Nearly every city had its great fire actually , see the Wikipedia list of Fires. There is a very particular resilience about cities they don't often die. Although thinking of it it might be the case that there are some examples to be fond.

The point is though that there are structures in place managing the functionality beyond the individual how ever important the single cities might be. This is what the pattern of activity and everyday structure is describing, inscribing activities in the urban morphology. THe word most overused in the past two years in this particular context is resilience. The capacity to withstand impacts and forces running against the everyday structure of the place.

-------

To come back to the paper presented at the conference about the similarities between organic as in natural and planned as in organised one of the examples was the plan of Lisbon before and after the earthquake of 1755. The intention was to show how similar 'natural' growth is to planned growth since the planned result bears similar to the previous setting. The question being what is order and how does it emerge.

Image taken from strangemaps / The city of Lisbon just before the 1755 earthquake that destroyed most of the existing city. The square and the gates to the city are already established structures. So are the linear streets following the topographical conditions.

This comparison makes an interesting example for what the organisation of order can produce. However, to argue based on this that there are similarities between 'natural' growth and 'planned' growth.

There are clear restrictions linking the two stages of the urban fragments. The first image shows the old city of Lisbon just before the earthquake in 1755 and the second plan shows how the planners headed by Manuel da Maia laid out the rebuilding plan. The bold option with a complete restructuring of the Baixa area was chosen by the king as the plan to be implemented.

Image taken from intbau / The city of Lisbon after the replanning following the 1755 earthquake that destroyed most of the existing city.

Still as seen in many examples of reconstruction efforts, for example in London after great fire and after the second world war bombing with some of Abercrombies plans for the restructuring of the city, there are a lot of constraints that can not just be swept away as if it were a fresh plan. Landownership and established routes as well as other infrastructure or topological conditions make the rebuilding more of a puzzle task than a grand design effort.

There are of course some top down examples of restructuring such a Hausmann's Paris plan or maybe some water dam projects in China were restructuring at such a scale is taking place.

-------

Of course being in Lisbon makes it worth mentioning agani the visualisations developed by Pedro Cruz for the city traffic. These were covered in earlier posts HERE and HERE. The data stems forma survey covering traffic on the roads of Lisbon recorded over the period of one month. These animations developed in processing using explorative algorithms together with testing a range of analogies. Visually these representations are very captivating and stimulative in a number of ways. and on top it just loks pretty, very important too.

Having experienced a little bit the city of Lisbon over the past two days let me read these renderings in a different way. Some of the arteries have an distinct image attached and lend to read the network in relation to the topography and feel for urban identity.

7th Virtual Cities and Territories Lisbon

2011-10-11T07:09:00.000+01:00

I will be at the 7th Virtual Cities and Territories conference in Lisbon today. The conference ihas six theme tracks Modeling for urban and spatial analysis, Sustainability, Urban Form and Urban Design, New Technologies in Architecture, Urban Design and e-Planning, Housing and Land Policy, Governance, Competitiveness and Innovation, Land management for urban dynamics and is co-hosted by José António Tenedório, e-GEO-FCSH-UNL and Nuno Norte Pinto, DEC-UC.

Conference registration starts on October 11th, at 8:30 am at the lobby of the Reitoria building, where you will receive your conference kit.

The opening session will take place at 9:30 am at the Auditório A (Reitoria building), with the presence of Prof. António Rendas, the Rector of the NOVA University of Lisbon, and of Prof. João Gabriel Silva, the Rector of the University of Coimbra.

At 10:00 am we will have the opening keynote lecture by Prof. Michael Batty.

The conference puts forward an interesting conceptualised summary of the topics as something called “five fingers”.

“Inventory finger”: The papers reflect the need to structure information acquired by modern means such as 3D laser scanning and satellite images.

“Visualization finger”: The visualization, namely the 3D, is currently an effective way to promote public participation in plans. The third dimension and the possibility of its manipulation is a powerful computational representation of the city and of the territory.

“Analysis Finger”: Shape analysis, urban and territorial processes, as well as the manipulation of spectral data, image segmentation, image processing, object-oriented analysis, and networks analysis (transport, social, etc.) are currently the starting points in the debate of the importance of geographic information in the organizations.

“Modeling and simulation finger”: Computer Science has become a key research field for modeling spatial phenomena in Geography, Architecture, Engineering, and Town Planning.

“e-Planning finger”: The conjugation of the previous “fingers” allows the construction of new electronic tools or computational representations of city and territories. Consequently, virtual cities and territories become the new place for planning and for designing the real world.

I will be presenting the paper NCL - Tracking Location Based Social Networks Using Twitter Data discussing how currently static descriptions of urban areas can become dynamic using data available through mobile technologies and digital social networks. The key to this shift lies in the fact that the new data allows analysis completely independent from established location formula and boundaries. The description emerges from the action not the location. The facts are newly laid out and a true dynamic description can only be achieved if fix points are eliminated. The new information is only pinned down on the here and now. With the new media everywhere is here and here is everywhere.

Since the conference is in Lisbon it makes sense to put together a few Twitter images on the place. It is not the most active place but still generates a fair amount of location based tweets over one week.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Tweet times compared between Lisbon, San Francisco and Singapore. Lisbon has this characteristic four o'clock peak at night. It is very strong on the weekend. Another characteristic is the slow start in the morning the work plateau and te jump over lunch to the evening plateau where it drops off quickly.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Tweets by location mainly in the centre and along the river shores.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Tweets around the centre of Lisbon witha few hotspots highlighted by a crude density estimation. For example the Instituto Superior Técnico is a spot as well as the Estádio da Luz in the top left corner.

Trendsmap Paints Twitter Maps

2011-10-10T06:51:00.003+01:00

Twitter data is becoming a new rawmaterial for representing cities. Visualisations are being produced frequently. The latest addition comes from Trendsmap the online platform visualising emerging Twitter trends.

The guys have produced visualisations for a number of cities from around the world plotting locations of georeferenced tweets. The series is called Paint a City by Numbers and so far covers only a doyen places, but is poised to grow with Trendsmap having access to a lot of Twitter data through heir service.

Image taken from trendsmap / Painting the city of Melburne using geolocated tweets.

Image taken from trendsmap / Painting the city of Sydney using geolocated tweets.

These sort of maps we have seen already for examples in the work of Eric Fischer. Still it is always amazing as to how much detail the maps actually contain with streets completely covered. For example in the map painted of the area around Amsterdam in this example HERE, the main roads draw out in amazing detail.

However Trensdmap have added also specific features. One of the fascinating ones is the airport. Here on urbanTick we have pointed out a number of times how different urban features draw out specifically in the city fabric and the airports are definitely a special case.

The Trendsmap guys have plotted data for the area around the Atlanta International Airport and the resulting creepy crawly bug structure is amazing.

Image taken from trendsmap / Redrawing the airport of Atlanta ATL, actually the busiest airport in the world in 2011.

Image taken from trendsmap / Redrawing the international airport of San Francisco resembling the shape of a spider using geolocated Tweets.

Via GoogleEarthBlog.com

Book - Tufte Visualisation Theory

2011-10-07T13:14:00.000+01:00

Eduard Tufte is one of the key theorist on visualisation design and graphics communication. His books have sold extremely well and his concepts have been picked up by a lot of influential designers. He is quoted frequently in writings and has very large follower basis.

Even though his books, six there are published by his own publisher Graphic Press, are already published for more than a decade, in fact his first important book, The Visual Display of Information was first published in 1983. All of the publications are by now into their second edition and still selling strong at a retail price of above $40.00.

The New York Times called him The Minister of Information, to name but one example of titles he was given. Tufte lectures around the world always drawing a large crowd.

Tufte started teaching at Princeton together with the renown statistician John Tukey where the foundations for the first book The Visual Display of Information was developed. The second edition of this publication (2001) is then also dedicated to the memory of Turkey.

This first book on graphics and information design was an instant success and transformed Tufte from his political science background into an information visualisation expert. With the publications that followed he sticked with this new field of his and extended on a number of concepts in the field of visualisation of quantitative information.

Two qualities of Tufte's book are standing in the foreground. For one there is the quality of the publication design and there is the beauty of the numerous examples drawn from across the centuries. In combination, together with a solid argument and visionary, but detailed observations it creates a extremely powerful statement which is pure joy to read.

Even thought he publications are of some age, they currently live through a revival, in the context of the current data visualisation hype. With these wast depositories of quantitative information accessible the chalenges of visualisation are still as present as ever and often the readability and the presentation is compromised.

Image taken from Businessweek / An examples of the use of Tuftes Sparklines intended to be in text graphs summarising the development of time as extensions to textual or numerical descriptions.

In his first book The Visual Display of Information Tufte (1983) sets out to develop a language to discuss graphics and a practical theory of data graphics. As Tufte puts it in his foreword to the publication: "At their best, graphics are instruments for reasoning about quantitative information." He mainly bases his explanations on the comparison and the discussion of examples. Very didactically Tufte relays predominantly in his descriptions on "this is not very good! It could be improved in this way!"

In this sense the first part of the book is focusing on the history, as Tufte puts it, the recent history, of graphicsal representation of information since the 18th century. Tufte refers to William Playfair (1759-1823) as the main inventor of a theory and practice of information graphics.

Image taken from Wikipedia / William Playfair's Time Series of Exports and Imports of Denmark and Norway

In the conclusion to the book, the chapter 9. Aesthetics and Technique in Data Graphical Design Tufte brings together the observations made through out the book and makes suggestions for design decisions in regards to the graphical representation of quantitative data. It is simple things Tufte picks up here, like line with, chart size and orientation or shading, but those are the main tools of communication and what generally is overlooked.

It is only in his second book Envisioning Information that Tufte (1990) opens the discussion to include more aspects of graphical representation, sort of departing from the initial focus on quantitative data, math and statistics. In this publication Tufte incorporates much more and this is well reflected in the content that reads: Escaping Flatland, Micro/Macro Readings, Layering and Separation, Small Multiples, Colour and Information, Narratives of Space and Time. Here Tufte incorporates the visualisation and style of maps, train time tables and information signs.

It is in this book that Tufte actually discusses the impact of the design and the potential as it is evoked through good choice and specific planning. Where the first book ends, with practical suggestions, this area is extended in this second publication into a whole book really. And it is in these chapters, as listed previously, the reader finds the evidence and the presentation of again comparative examples leading the discussion.

In many ways these two books come as one and it does make sense to read them in sequence and still each book has its perfect identity. For even if your not into the practice of graphical representation of either quantitative data or any information at all it is great joy to look through the books and admire the perfect layout along with the stunning collection of examples each surprisingly comprehensive and integrative with the developing discussion of the book.

Tufte, Eduard R., 2009. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Second Edition., Cheshire, Co: Graphic Press.
Tufte, Edward R, 1990. Envisioning Information, Cheshire, Conn: Graphics Press.

Rummel

2011-10-06T10:20:00.000+01:00

It is autumn, the leaves are falling and the sun stands low on the horizon. A great time with intensive colours, moody weather and the air feels heavier. Its time to wrap up and look back at the rest of a year that has passed. Wh not going back to spring with a similarly low sun and as intense colours but with a fresh and light tone to it.

Spring the time of waking and refreshing is also the time of shows and fairs. Christoph Kalck has created a stunning timeLapse film with the title Rummel, documenting and reinterpreting one of the very large German Spring fairs, the Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest. It is a colourful and bright showcase of a fairground, a maze of stalls and rides, shows and shops for about 1.4 million visitors.

Image by Christoph Kalck / One of the movie stills.

Over three days Kalck has portrayed scenes in and around the fairground capturing the rumble and zumble, the moment of surprise, the laughter and excitement. Its the joy and the fun this blinking, moving, sweet and sticky scenery conveys. He stayed on though and keept looking, he arrived early and stayed late and the movie captures it all. The setting up, the pulling of the curtain, the setting sun and the glowing, blinking and bustling lights to the dinging of the action and the moments the lights come allowing for the staff to wrap up, clean and pack. Only for it all to start again the next day.

Image by Christoph Kalck / One of the movie stills.

The film is by Christoph Kalck & Marcel Hampel with music and sounddesign by Sebastian Bartmann. Title was designed by Frank Rosenkränzer. The film has a facebook fan page of course.

It's the persistance and precision of the chosen scenes, the intensity of the setting and the unreal scenery that brings this clip to live and lets memories of all sorts play out on such a bright and cut autumn day. Soon it will be spring again.

Location Based Library Concept

2011-10-03T07:09:00.000+01:00

The spatial dimension of reading is an interesting aspect in so far as to how far it can actually become the main subject. A lot of narratives make extensive use of space and lace description and the location is often as important as the characters who really come to live from the description of spatial interaction and as to how they are set in the place.

There are genres based on location both from the stories, but also based on the authors. With for example a Scandinavian tradition for crime thriller and detective story. But how could this spatial aspect be translated to organise books?

Image taken from lit.sebastianmeier / The interaction tool is the touch table with the map and the wheel for navigation. At the top is a bare showing search result for books and stories.

A student project called lit from the University of Potsdam in Germany (2010), Urban Layers module (SS 2010) (WS 2010), came up with an interactive software design for location based literacy research. It was developed by Jan-Erik Stange and Sebastian Meier supervised by Till Nagel. The tool was developed for a touch table interface providing direct interaction and handling. The project won a Core77 design award in the category Interactive, Web and Mobile.

Image taken from lit.sebastianmeier / The map showing the sequence as to how the locations are the stage for the story.

On a large map background the location can play a number of different roles. For one it can define a search criteria, by defining places or boundaries to find books. Location however, can then also play the key role from within the book and the software can show the locations this story plays at. For this the project has developed a visualisation to link the linear book text and dots on the map. It is achieved by using an interaction wheel, showing the text as a circle, and drawing lines to the dots. This way the sequence becomes clear and everything can still happen at the centre of the table.

Image taken from lit.sebastianmeier / The map now showing two books in different colour to visually compare.

It is then possible to show the sequence also on the map connecting the dots, thus providing a spati narrative. Further more additional books can be brought in and be compared to one another based on the location.

Via Wrightbrian3, via the Atlantic

Book - The Story of Architecture

2011-09-26T11:52:00.000+01:00

Prestel has launched a new short series on the history of architecture focusing on a range of architecture styles. So far published are Romanesque Architecture, Renaissance Architecture, Gothic Architecture as well as Contemporary Architecture.

The aim of the series is to introduce architecture and specifically architecture styles throughout the ages. Each volume is dedicated to a specific topic and discusses it in detail making great use of carefully selected photographs, drawings and sketches to illustrate and extend on the accessibly written text.

Image taken from skycrapercity / Torre Velasca, Milan, Italy. built between 1956-58, hight 106 meters. Features in the booklet on The Story of Contemporary Architecture.

The text is key here and especially because each booklet is a short introduction, with about 140 odd pages, room is limited for flowering descriptions. The authors have managed to bring out the important points, anchoring each of them in the wider context.

Of course the series is not presenting any new material and history has been discusse before, but the nicely styles and well written booklets are a good way of getting into or even refresh on the different strands of architecture over the past, leading up to contemporary architectural discussion.

Image taken from skycrapercity / City of Saint-Malo built 12th-18th century in France. Features in the booklet on The Story of Gothic Architecture.

The series is mentioning aspects of technology, material and concepts as far at it is relevant to the development of the movement and the style. This also includes references to cultural movements and developments. Overall it provides a quite comprehensive picture.

Each booklet is structured with an introduction, providing the wider context and the lead in. this is followed by a discussion of the main characteristics of the style at hand. The third part is a presentation of examples featuring very prominent ambassador buildings representing each style.

Image taken from boomerangbooks / Architecture history series books covers.

Favole, P., 2011. The Story of Contemporary Architecture, London: Prestel.
Prina, F., 2011a. The Story of Gothic Architecture, London: Prestel.
Prina, F., 2011b. The Story of Romanesque Architecture, London: Prestel.
Servida, S., 2011. The Story of Renaissance Architecture, London: Prestel.
Zanlungo, C., 2011. The Story of Baroque Architecture, London: Prestel.

Digital Media - Alphaville Festival

2011-09-23T11:13:00.000+01:00

This weekend from today the Alphaville Festival is under way providing a platform for digital media and art to be shown, discussed and explored across different venues in East London.

It is the third year for this growing digital-media platform and this years theme is “Zeitgeist, from digital to post-digital. This is very much picking up on how Negroponte put it already back in 1998 in WIRED "The digital revolution is over".

Image taken from Alphaville / 'Cell', concept by James Alliban and Keiichi Matsuda (2011)

The 2011 edition provides an online and live platform to explore, test and disseminate new deas, emerging trends, collaborations and groundbreaking works. Running from 22-25 September the programme presents social media and interactive art, open labs, meet-ups, talks, workshops and screenings alongside with live music, visual performances and parties. Taking place longside the London Design Festival, the 2011 edition enables a network of satellite events spreading across different London boroughs and links with other European cities such as Madrid (Twin Gallery) and Brussels & The Hague (Todays Art). Selected venues include Netil House, Rich Mix, Space Studios, Vortex Jazz Club, XOYO, Hearn Street Warehouse and Whitechapel Gallery. The festival programme also connects east and west London thorough a link with the V&A Digital Design Weekend.

Image taken from Alphaville / Bitquid by Jeroen Holthuis (Photo by Ansis Starks)

The festival will have gathering artists, creative coders, new media technologists, designers, architects, professionals,
musicians, researchers and academics, some of the key names are: Tom Uglow (Google Creative
Labs), Marius Watz, Filip Visnjic (Creative Applications), Man Bartlett, Daito Manabe, Moritz
Stefaner, Keiichi Matsuda, James Alliban, Pantha Du Prince, Matthew Dear, Jon Hopkins,
Jacaszek and Kangding Ray.

There is a range of events including performances, talks and exhibitions. On Saturday 13h00 I will be giving a talk t the Innovation Space in Netil House. Networked Cities I will be discussing some of the Twitter visualisation we have created for the NCL project. This wil mainly focus on Ljubljana, Den Haag and Brussels in terms of activity, network and spatial diversity.

A map to find the different venues can be found below. Tickts can be bougt at the venues or online HERE. To get a previe HERE is and interview with PANTHA DU PRINCE who will be playing at the festival or a sound mix teaser below.

Alpha-ville Festival 2011 Mix by Alpha-ville

View Larger Map

Book Swap - Story Networking

2011-09-20T11:08:00.000+01:00

Books still carry an aura of mistic knowledge only accessible to whom dares to move beyond the cover and through the sea of pages with waves of sentences down to the discovery of words.
There is only little the outsider can understand from a distance, it remains a mystery.

The best way to share the reading experience is by swapping and passing on books. It is more than a gift if a read book is shared it is a way of sharing the experience of the story and getting to know what someone else already knows.

Image taken from the Guardian Book Swap Flickr Group Pool / Garrards_road_streatham_london

Over the last weekend the Guardian and the Observer started a book swap project to share exactly these experiences. Book readers are asked to set out books into the wild, leaving it for someone else to pick up and read. The guardian has set up a Flickr group to document the locations and the books contributed. As an identification the news paper gave a way stickers to mark the books, making them identifiable. It also carries some basic information and instructions to promote the project. If you missed the paper with the sticker that was part of the issue over the last weekend you can download the sticker HERE.

It is not a l scale project. The headline reads Guardian launches national Book Swap with 15,000-volume giveaway. they are making a good initial effort to push the experiment to the edge of self sustaining, hopefully. This is the tricky part, with social media and crowd sourced projects it is never clear how much is beard and what exactly is needed to hook the critical mass. The setting however, looks promising with Twitter tied in via the tag #guardianbookswap.

Image taken from the Guardian Book Swap Flickr Group Pool / Dog and Fox.

Using social media with the integration of Flickr and Flickr map to visualising location, let's the project tap into a vast resource and existing networking channels. The sticker also carries a QR tag making directly linking the physical object to virtual content.

TheGuardian sets out a few basic rules accompanying the projects. Key especially in the London context is the security issue in point number 5.

1. You can leave as many books as you like, just make sure they are your own
2. Make sure your book is clean and in good condition
3. Don't leave inappropriate material where it can be found by children
4. Avoid places your book could be damaged by the weather
5. Make sure it won't be seen as a security risk
6. Don't leave it in book shops or libraries
7. Don't put yourself or the finder of the book at any risk

Image taken from the Guardian Book Swap Flickr Group Pool / Roald Dahl's Biography.

This project is interesting in a number of ways especially also in terms of the timing. There is currently a heather discussion ongoing with a strong focus on London mainly furled by the Evening Standard as to how literacy of the young generation can be improved. Apparently the Evening Standard has identified a alarming low literacy amongst young people in the UK, especially in London and is now spearheading an initiative to poor in money to improve literacy in general. The can be and. Already have been of conures accused of making a lot of publicity and marketing with these initiatives (There was an earlier one this year from the Evening Standard focusing on poverty) and probably this is the case. More interesting is the way it is done and what it means for literacy and reading in general. Is it worth setting up initiatives that actually work in parallel to the education system, placing the efforts to increase literacy in competition?

The Guardian initiative is not to be seen in this corporate efforts of a literacy discussion. It is set as a program celebrating the joy of reading and sharing the texts. And it ties in with the ongoing push towards location based sharing, socialising and networking. The project celebrates the book as a medium, an analogue medium, that can, and has over centuries already enabled this sort of networking. The key here is that the focus is on the experience of reading and the social aspect of reading. To archive this the spatial dimension of reading is here the medium and highlight the public space as a shared space beyond traffic. It can also be a public space of imagination, discussion and statements.

Book - Insular Insight

2011-09-19T07:19:00.000+01:00

In many ways cities are developing a pressurised and highly specialised environment in large areas driven by competition. It is buzzing environment defined by constant change at fast pace where everyone who slows down risks to drop through the loopholes in the system.

For this is an extreme and very narrow view of urbanised places it describes an image cities have fostered for years in order to compete and grow at such a rate they don't recognise themselves. It os attractive and offeres opportunities, however only really works as a concept if there is an opposite pole it can be balanced with.

Image taken from aureon / Book spread, view of the islands.

The countryside is fading away in such a role as balancing pole due to many and complex interwoven reasons, mainly economical ones. However, the slowness creating a relaxed atmosphere of rural areas is inspiring to a number of projects and visions recently. The villages and the traditions are not forgotten, they still have their power and intensity if we only pause and look, stop and experience.

Insular Insight: Where Art and architecture Conspire with Nature is a Lars Muller Publication, edited by Lars Muller and Akiko Miki in collaboration with Hiroshi Kagayama on a large scale project to develop such a thing as public capitalism or an investment in culture.

The book documents the project developed by Soichiro Fukutake, a Japanese businessman who invested in art and he community on islands in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan, bringing the place, the art and architecture together to shape an spirit and way of life. He believed contemporary art to be the best way to inspire people and transform an area.

Image taken from aureon / Book spread, inside the Teshima Art Museum.

In various projects with renown international artists and architects a series of instaations permanent and temporary have been built in the ast on the Setouchi islands of Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima in the Seto Inland Sea. Contributing artists and architects include James Turrell, Tatsuao Miyajima, Tadao Ando, Rai Nito, Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA and many more. Many of the works are set as art houses where artists and architects have actually worked together to create permanent locations for installations. Then there are aso larger infrastructural buildings such a port terminals and museums buit as part of the investment.

Image taken from aureon / Book spread, artwork 'The Secret of the Sky' van Kan Yasuda.

These infrastructures are essential to the change the efforts have brought about the islands. The project has lead to a dramatic increase of visitors to the islands. In the past twenty years the number of guests has increased from about 20'000 to over 620'000 a year. economically this is a very big change, but definitely this is also a turning point for culture and especially society on the smal islands.

This is of course seemingly pushing in the same direction as any city does with unconditional aspiration for growth and change. However, at the hart of this project lies the desire to conspire with nature and this book is a manifesto for it. It offers more than just a documentation or a catalogue of the realised projects, but is a discussion and presentation with background and contextual details. Renown writers such a Peter Sloterdjik, Nayan Chanda or Eva Blau contribute essays to this discussion the founder Sochiro Fukutake want to be carried out into the word. A manifesto for stillness and slowness.

Image taken from fontanel / Book cover.

Muller, L. & Miki, A., 2011. Insular Insight: Where Art and Architecture Conspire with Nature, Baden: Lars Muller Publishers.

Möbius - Stop Motion Sculpture

2011-09-16T07:18:00.000+01:00

An installation to get some action into the frame is these days usually remotely, inserting some 3d rendered elements in to video footage. However if interaction with the elements should take plae it is getting more complicated and a straight forward option to do it is to go with a stop motion animation. This way it is possible to aso controle the crowd interaction with the animation.

Möbius is a stop motion sculpture by Melbourne on Federation Square. It is built from twenty-one large triangles that were alternated for each shot. MÖBIUS is a sculpture that can be configured into many cyclical patterns and behave as though it is eating itself, whilst sinking into the ground. The result is an optical illusion and a time-lapse of people interacting with the sculpture and moving through Melbourne's landmark location throughout the day.

Image taken from Eness / The production company and volunteers changing the installation for the next frame.

For a quick look behind the scenes and the making off peak HERE. Animated and created by Eness.

Book - Architectural Dimensions at Large

2011-09-12T07:07:00.001+01:00

Megeastructures have a fascination of their own, blurring the attention to detail with the impression of now detail at all. Especially in the way such a structure manages to trick the impression of scale is in it self a fascination.

The last century has seen many different styles, but the megastructures had a sort of live of their own fitting in with most of them or none of them. This fascination sort of developed in parallel or through out the styles, mainly in the late sixties and seventies.

Image taken from mg-lj / A sketch of
Ville Spatial project spanning across the horizon .

They are still a big topic. The office producing the most megastructure proposals is definitely BIG, led by Bjarne Ingels. Is basically the practice's solution to anything. However the most beautiful recent megastructure is probably Steven Holl Architects' Beijing project.

The megastruture was especially in after the 1950 a big topic, sort of at the end of the modernist area. Yona Friedman, who is branded one of the fathers of the megastructure, presented his project 'Ville Spatiale' at the last CIAM congress in 1956 in Dubrovnik. The invention of the structure, its conception and purpose was however not at all intended aesthetically as it might be nowadays. Friedman formulates the motivation as "The Ville Spatial is in fact harmony between individual, extreme individual and community".

In a new Actar and AA MUSAC publication edited by Maria Inés Rodriguez with the title Yona Friedman: Architecture with the People, by the People, for the People the architect and artist Yona Friedaman's projects and ideas are republished and critically discussed with contributions by Kenneth Frampton, Manuel Orazi and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Image taken from deconcrete / A sketch of Métropol Europe showing the different hubs of Europe and how they form sub areas.

Yona Friedman was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1923 and lives and works in Paris. He studied at the Technical University in Budapest (Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem) and in Haifa. His work has spanned areas ranging from architecture, art and animated film to education and writing. He has participated in numerous art biennials including Shanghai, Venice and Documenta 11. His highly visionary ideas have nurtured various generations of architects and urbanists, influencing groups such as Archigram and even Kenzo Tange, who declared as such in 1970 in Osaka.

It is a monograph looking back at the work by this fascinating architect who is actually many other things too, but does in most of his projects refer back to architecture. The publications presents a range of his projects, with a focus on the tree main works he is still continuing. The Métropole Europe, the Ville Spatial and the Museum are the sort of main strands in the book.

Image taken from Yona Fridman Blog / A model at the scale of 1:50 of the Iconostase structure for a outdoor museum.

The contributions discuss the work in context and Hans Ulrich Obrist's interview with Yona Fridman provides a sort of link to the present as wel as probably the future. Thanks to this part of the book, the reader gets a sense of actuality. With its retrospective setting one could easily believe these topics to be a thing of the past, but the interview brings it tot he here and now as something that is still happening.

And yes it is, Friedman is still okring on his projects and he has so many upcoming projects, it's fascinating. He's go his Museums set up in Singapore and Italy, shoed the Iconostase at the Art Basel last year and showed a prototype of the Ville Spatial at the Biennale in Venice last year.

Image taken from amazon / Book cover.

Rodriguez, M.I. ed., 2011. Architecture with the People, by the People, for the People: Yona Friedman, Barcelona: Actar.

New City Landscape - Singapore - one Island

2011-09-09T12:11:00.000+01:00

Singapore is an city state with about 5'076'700 inhabitant according to the 2010 census. The society is very technology interested and electronics make a lot of their business.

Digital elements have a strong presence in everyday life, including online social networking. In this sense it is not surprising that Twitter is very popular in Singapore. Also in terms of location sharing, users in Singapore are quite happy to share their location with the tweets. We have about 46% of location based messages. This is only matched by Amsterdam, NL and Lagos, NG. The average over all the locations observed is about 10-12%.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Singapore New City Landscape map generated from location based tweets collected over the period of one week. The area covered is within a 30 km radius of Singapore.

The virtual landscape redraws nicely the outline of the island state. There are the neighboring areas of Malaysia and Indonesia showing up at the top and the bottom respectively of the map. The connection across the water are also showing with tweets send either from a ferry crossing or from one of the two bridges. Beside these connection the international airport on the far most East corner of the island is probably even more important to connect to the outside. It features prominently in the landscape as a tall peak of high tweet activity.

Singapore New City Landscape

Image by urbanTick using the GMap Image Cutter / Singapore New City Landscape Use the Google Maps style zoom function in the top right corner to zoom into the map and explore it in detail. Explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view. The maps were created using our CASA Tweet-O-Meter, in association with DigitalUrban and coded by Steven Gray, this New City Landscape represents location based twitter activity. Thanks for the naming help to Kai from 3rdlifekaidie.

Overall the virtual landscape beautifully redraws the outline of the island Singapore is on. The main features that immediately stand out in the Singapore NCL map are the areas message are absent. The large Nature Reserve in the centre is the larges area with reduced Twitter activity, but also the live firing area and reserve on the western side of the island. In line with the other observed urban areas, outdoor spaces show lower Twitter activity.

On the other hand the complete south coast of the island is abuzz with activity. Ranging from Changi International Airport in the East all the way past the container ports to the West tot he industrial areas. The main peak is Dhoby Gaut Peak in the area of the major interchange station on the MRT.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / The rose shows the twitter activity per hour of the day, starting at 00:00 at the top, displayed as local time. Singapore is an evening city with a clear activity peak between 21h00 and 23h00. Mornings are very slow and it doesn't really pick up until the late afternoon. The graphs show the platform of preference used to send the tweet and the language set respectively.

The languages represented in the Singapore data set are clearly dominated by English and Indonesian. Those two languages cover about 90% of all messages. Interestingly the other few languages featuring are European rather than Asian. There is Dutch, Norwegian, Italian and Spanish, German and French. Also Esperanto again features, though only with for marginal number of tweets.

The platform is dominated by twitter for iPhone, followed by twitter for Blackberry, the web and tweetDeck. The iPhone seems very popular in Singapore. Also the iPad features on the tenth rank with twitter for iPad.

The temporal structure of Twitter activity is extremely focused on the evening. No other city has such a strong activity preference as Singapore shows. There is a clear peak between 9pm and 11pm. with a extreme drop of after 1am to nearly zero activity between 4am and 5am. This is followed by a sharp start in the morning around 8am. Through out the day this stays about leveled until it starts to rise in the late afternoon after 6pm.

CRESC Annual Conference 2011 - Framing the City

2011-09-07T06:59:00.000+01:00

The CRESC annual conference 2011 ‘Framing the City’ is now taking place from today, 07 September through to Friday 09 September in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music. It is organised by Sophie Watson (Chair), Gillian Evans, Elizabeth Silva and Alban Webb.

Key note speakers include: Ian Sinclair, author of London Orbital and London: City of Disappearances; Alistair Bonnett, author of Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia; Maria Kaika author of City of Flows; Roselund Lennart, author of Exploring the City with Bourdieu: Applying Pierre Bourdieu?s theories and methods to study the community; Talja Blokland, author of Urban Bonds and co-editor of Networked Urbanism; Nick Couldry author of Why Voice Matters Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism.

Image by urbanTick for NCLn / Location based social network based on Twitter data collected in central Europe focusing on Switzerland. Colours indicating message language. The main languages are, Italian=blue, English=orange, French=red, German=green.
The bottom line are external nodes for which we have no location information.

I will be presenting today at the conference in a session called 'Change and Moulding' in the afternoon. The paper New City Landscapes and Virtual Urban Social Networks is looking at how physical elements are shaping the virtual world. In detail this is how physical aspects of the location can be found as influencing parameters of the virtual description. Overall this forms an argument as to why and how digital social networking data can be useful for decision making and planning.

Increasingly people use digital or online networks to communicate and interact. This changes the social scape of the urban area and with it the interactive hot spots change and fluctuate throughout the city as individuals follow the narrative path of their everyday routines. People leave messages, distribute news and respond to conversations not only in traditional locations anymore but potentially anywhere in the city.
This paper discusses the emerging potential of social media data used for urban area research and city planning. Also aspects of visualisation as well as privacy and ethical implications are discussed. The information gathered from social media networks usually can be associated with a physical location for example via the GPS of the smart phone. For this virtual social infrastructure mapping project, the data is derived from the Twitter micro blogging service.
The data is mapped as a virtual landscape on top of the real landscape connecting it via the common place names. At the same time the data is used to visualize the social network across these virtual-real places and in this way can make visible the places were people link the virtual and the real world in urban areas around the globe.

Book - Cultural Emergency

2011-09-05T09:49:00.001+01:00

Disaster management has become a more widely discussed topic in recent years. It is not necessarily that there are more devastating catastrophe happening, but that it is discussed and reacted upon in a different way. Word wide connections have grown stronger and a sense of globalnes is starting to settle. It is no longer just the isolated thinking about individual states or regions, but more and more a global image is growing.

Emergency situations are then also portrayed differently and in more detailed, but also quicker. The earthquake that struck Japan on 2011-03-11 this year came through he media and especially social networks, almost in real time.

Image by Joel Saget taken from designdaba / Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia just after the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Beside basic humanitarian needs such as drinking water, food and medical supplies there are other aspects that are supporting a community or societies coping with a calamity. Those elements of cultural support like architecture as for example in the case of the 'Marché au Fer' - Iron Market in Port-au-Prince Haiti, or knowledge in the form of a library as in Sarajevo's National Library in 1999 or museum as in the case of the National Museum of Baghdad in 2003 or cultural achievements such as the Olympic site in Greece or the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan are aiming to stabilise society in general and providing suport in the form of identity and culture.

In a new NAi publishers book Cultural Emergency in Conflict and Disaster the discussion around these efforts of delivering cultural emergency respons (CER) is launched. It is presented around the efforts of the Dutch Prince Claus Fund which has supported various regions in their bid to deal with a dramatic implosion of everyday life due to a striking disaster.

Image taken from designdaba / Iraqui National Deputy Director Muhi Hasan holds his head in his hands as he sits on destroyed artefacts on 13 April 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq. The museum was severly looted during the proceding days.

In his foreword H.R.H. Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands addresses the pressing question "Why should we try to save works of art when people are in desperate need for shelter, food and medicin? Why invest in culture when people may be dying?" He responses with three answers. Cultural heritage provides identity for individuals and society and the support, protection or restauration of it confers value and respect. Furthermore culture can strengthen social resilience, human dignity and a sense of continuity. But he also points out that such cultural emergency response is not delivered independently, but is in conjunction with basic humanitarian needs. He makes it clear that it is not about saving one over the other, but to save both.

Image taken from designdaba / 'All we are wrecking is stone' was the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's description of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan in March 2001, the largest standing statues of Buddha in the world.

The publication cover both element, a theoretical discussion and reports of practical experience. The Prince Clause Fund has delivered a range of support to locations around the world and across cultures to discuss aspects in detail, but it is essential in this discussion to allow a range of perspectives and experiences to be presented. With this publication such a collection has been brought together and gives a good impression of the debate but also practice.

The response to disaster beyond sending in money is very important and charities in general are putting a lot of emphasis on sustainable support that is long lasting and effective. There has been a lot of effort for example in Haiti to enable rebuilding of housing and architecture practices from around the world have helped, as for example Steven Holl Architects. However it is important that the local structures are respected and local people are integrated and responsible for what is happening and how it is happening to largest extend possible. Emergency respons, especially such cultural support has to happen with the people.

This publication will be launched in the Peace Palace in The Hague on 6 September on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Prince Claus Fund.

Image taken from designdaba / The book is designed by Irma Boom. Book cover has a specially designed scratch surface (just like these luck number tickets).

Klein Goldewijk, B., Frerks, G. & Plas, E.V.D. eds., 2011. Cultural Emergency in Conflict and Disaster, Rotterdam: NAi publishers.

Geofence - New Settings Available for Hiding

2011-09-02T07:44:00.000+01:00

Flickr has newly introduced a feature to automatically limit geographical details of photographs based on criteria. The so called geofence is introduced on the Flickr blog and is a defined area within which the location of photographs is not shown. Furthermore, different groups can be assigned to be included and the lover level to be excluded.

Basically users can set up a parameter around their favorite public park and choose only their friends tag as the group family to be able to see the exact location of the picture taken. Since the groups are arranged, similar to Facebook groups, hierarchically, the other groups anyone, contact and friends will not be able to see the location.

The new setting is very good implemented and easy to use. You either search for a location by name or directly on the map. The marker can be draged around to mark the spot and the adjusted in size between 50 to 10000 metter. Interestingly flickr doesn't say whether this is diameter or radius so the feature is basically a visual one. You have to decide according to what feels about right. But it is the radius that is the parameter.

However, it is less the exact distance that is important, rather it is the number of other possibilities. If there is only one house within the fenced area you could still guess that someone must be living there. And on the other hand if a fifty meter radius in a dense street can cover already

Flickr sais to have more than 300 million geotagged photos and videos on its site. the service has also been blamed to be very slow with updating and adjusting its privacy settings in the past, not offering many sharing options. With this new addition it definitely updates these settings in a rather radical and probably industry changing way. Through out the comunity this change has been received very positive, ars technica, wired, mashable

As Wired describes the problem: "It means you can snap a picture of your awesome 42" plasma TV or your kid's fun run day, without worrying about burglars and perverts from examining the photo's geographical metadata and making a beeline for your hometown."

It is very likely that other services will follow and offer similar options. So that in the future users can draw these geofences around their tweets and Facebook messages, hide Foursquare checkins and so on. It is hard to see the point of geo referencing in this scenario, but it seems that this is the tool the user groups currently want to be able to ave in their hands.

To some extend this is understandable because the overwhelming dominance and power the service provider has over the user making it a very difficult relationship to build up some trust. The services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, can just change their policies and rules or conditions of use at any point without consulting the user base. Furthermore they have such a monopoli of use and information that it does look scary to the individual user.

However, maybe the problem has to be fond and addressed elsewhere than the user end. This feature is mainly enabling the user to limit himself. What the service does really is providing a tool to limit the users options, but it is self inflicted rather than superimposed. With this the provider is distancing it self from the problem. But the user end is suffering the consequences of being excluded from the location sharing benefits. This is, because the service is built on the principle, the more you share the better the service is.

Nevertheless, it is already good to see the option being implemented. Together with he option to assign groups to the exclusion zone some flexibility is there too. In the long term it would however be better to see a shift in the way location information is handed and processed, eliminating the problems associated with knowing where one is. Currently the trend of sharing positions of everything everywhere at anytime is big and is going to be even bigger in the very near future. With it growing and extending to any sort of information the management on the user end wil become impossible and geofencing the Flickr photographs wi be the least of the problems.

It is not about a single location and it is not about an exact location either. It is definitely not about the plasma TV or a photograph of a child. The problem lies in the amount of data and the repetition of information. If there is one picture taken outside a school little can be concluded from it. However if there is a string of photographs over a year between a block and a block down the road where a school is located and the timestamps mach roughly the school-run hours, one can assume that there is a link between the locations.

It is the pattern resulting from activity that is of interest not the actual location.

RGS Annual Conference 2011

2011-09-01T07:11:00.000+01:00

The Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2011 is under way this week in London. It opened yesterday under the topic The Geographical Imagination and is chaired by Stephen Daniels, University of Nottingham.
javascript:void(0)
As every year it is going to be a very big event with a lot of paralel sessions. I will be presenting some aspects of the twitter New City Landscape research. The presentation is part of the session organised by Ladan Cockshut of Durham University under the title "Getting lost on the way to Farmville". Virtual, mobile and online spaces of interaction: Exploring the emerging geography and culture of new media technologies. The session starts at 09h00 and is located in the Skempton Building in Room 163 on the Imperial College campus.

The session has four presentations discussing the aspects of emerging social networking geographies. Two of the papers are based on gaming culture and the aspects of locality. One is presented by Kenneth Lim discussing Second Life and especially the SS Galaxy, a cruse ship. Lim's interest for this part of Second Life stems from the view that a cruse ship is a self contained space providing all the essentials for living whilst on the move. There are of course very interesting connections to be drawn to the 1920 with Le Corbusier for example. He viewed the ocean liner at the ultimate city and admired its independence.

THe second gaming paper will be presented by Ladan Cockshut on Spatial and Interactive Dynamics in World of Warcraft. The third paper is by Amil Mohanan from UCL on the net neutrality debate discussing priotised datatransfer in the network by OFCOM and the possible emergence of a two-tiered market.

My paper is going o be the fourth contribution under the title New City Landscape - Mapping urban online spaces of interaction. The data for this paper is derived from the Twitter service, where users can send information as 140 character message. The platform allows to maintain a pool of followers (friends) with whom one shares the tweets (messages). Technically it is possible to collect every tweet sent via the open API (application programming interface) gaining access to millions of location based messages. From the collected data a new landscape based on density is generated. The features of this landscape of digital activity correspond directly with the physical location of their origin but at the same time represent with hills the peaks of locations from where a lot of messages are sent. The flanks and valleys stand for areas with lesser activity and vast plains and deserts of no tweets stretch across the townscapes. These New City Landscape maps (NCL) don't represent any physical features, but the interaction with physical features on a temporal basis. The digital realm has become as much part of the urban environment as the physical features and with these tweetography maps they are made visible for the first time.

Book - The Map Reader

2011-08-31T07:17:00.000+01:00

Mapping and maps as the contextual representation and abstraction of an environment is a very diverse, complicated and very challenging disciplin. With the current ongoing trend of spatialisation the understanding and suitable interpretation , but also creation of maps has become more important.

Martin Dodge presents together with Rob Kitchin and Chris Perkins The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation, a Wiley-Blackwell publication. With this substantial reader the editors are presenting a very comprehensive discussion of the topic in five section: Conceptualising Mapping, Technologies of Mapping, Cartographic Aesthetics and Map Design, Cognition and Cultures of Mapping and Power and Politics of Mapping.

Image taken from linkingelephants / Relief shading example by Eduard Imhof showing a detail map of Laufen.

On these topics the editors brought together a very prominent list of contributors. This ranges from Bruno Latour, Eduard Imhof, David Harvey to Mei-Po Kwan, to name a few. The over fifty specially edited excerpts from key, classic articles and monographs are introduced carefully and with a lot of detail.

The editors not only introduces each section with a specific essay to introduce the topic, but also each essay or book exert. This explains where it comes from and what the wider context is of the tet to follow. Further more each essay is accomplished with references, but also a list of further reading, plus a list of publication internal links 'see also'. This refers the reader to related chapters in the same book extending or continuing the discussion. It would have been nice to have page numbers with this section to make it more convenient for the reader to directly jump between the chapters.

Mapping is currently a dramatically fast changing field and with the introduction and extensive use of new technologies it probably even speeds up. Maps are dynamic, online, interactive and probably crowd sourced these days.

The publication acknowledges these changes without being drawn into the buzzyness of these developments, providing key readings and background information. Some of these texts are quite old. Only a dozen or so were originally written this century. However, this provides a substantial background with a lot more relevance than simply having some bibliographical references. In this publication one has the real thing the editors are referring to. Somehow it is like reading a text, plus also reading the references as they are discussed.

This makes for a tour de force of mapping, but mainly provides what the book is promising, an 'coherent edited compendium of key scholarly writing about the changing nature of cartography over the last half century'.

The publisher offers chapter pdf's of the book for download on their Wiley-Blackwell page.

Image taken from the view from the blue house / The Map Reader Book Cover.

Dodge, M., Perkins, C. & Kitchin, R. eds., 2011. The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Open the Void

2011-08-30T07:34:00.001+01:00

It is ten years since the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001. Quite a lot has happened in the mean time and something unbelievable has become accepted as part of lives that will go on. The attacks with two passenger panes crashed into the World Trade Center at the heart of Manhattan brought with them many changes of perspective in the way cities are viewed.

A memorial is going to be opened at the site on 09/11 this September. It is part of the ten year anniversary. After a lot of discussion and back and forward there is not going to a new tower or set of towers but a garden with two fountains. The two sunken fountains are designed by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker.

A animation rendering of the project can be fond over at Dezeen. It is a flight through showing some context and some details.

As a place of remembering this will serve the public with a museum and a visitor centre. No doubt it will become an attraction in Manhattan and indeed a very welcome space. It is a place for families to remember but also for office workers to eat their sandwich. As any urban space it is multifunctional. In this respect the design could probably become quite successful.

The design is built around the two footprints of the towers. The two wholes in the ground are transformed into waterfalls within a forest of trees. As Rowan Moore points out in a article for the Guardian, the design uses materials of commemoration – water, stone, trees, bronze.

Image taken from nyctrip / Memorial fountain at the 9/11 memorial in New York with broze plates and engraved names.

Another one of the very important elements that are from the original site is the Vesey Street Stairway, practically the only remains above ground. It will feature as an element in the exhibition directly at the entrance.

Memorials are not any more as much in fashion as they used to be. Remembering is not something that fits into a busy dynamic and smooth society. The function of memorials changes as the events move into the distance. In the best case they become landmarks as an integrative part of the individual mental map and a point of orientation for visitors.

Image taken from 911memorial / Vesey Street Stairway as it will be integrated with the museum.

This is not at all a negative thing, but actually the way the city and its places can live, if people can connect to it and project their visions onto it. Memorials are with their 'non-function' the perfect place for this and have the potential to become essential anchor points for identity and place-making.

The site works as a cenotaph similar to the one placed outside Whitehall in London. However is quite a lot bigger as the entire site is the monument. In this respect it remains more of the project for the Newtown memorial by Étienne-Louis Boullée, Cénotaphe a Newton (1784).

The 9/11 site is massive and the memorial to be opened is at a very large scale. It is both, two sculptures and a park in one. Were otherwise a park has a place for a memorial, that is maybe a statue or a plate. Over time we wil see if this nationally styled function is actually functioning as it is designed.

Image taken from Wikimedia / Boullée, ''Cénotaphe a Newton'', 1784.

Book - Architecture: A Woman's Profession

2011-08-25T07:28:00.000+01:00

Gender stereotypes have changed in the past twenty years and in many areas of professional live the gap between the sexes has started to close. The western society has started to accept that both men and women can do the same jobs and should be rewarded the same.

According to a RIBA report investigating the reasons why so many female architects leave practice in the UK the right to work as an architect was only established in 1919 with the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act - women were allowed to become architects. However, after a brief moment at work were sent home to do domestic work until the end of the second world war.

Image taken from dailytonic / ‘Voussoir Cloud’ by San Fransisco-based studio IwamotoScott (Lisa Iwamoto) with Buro Happold.

The current most notable women in architecture are arguably Kazuyo Sejima from Sanaa and Zaha Hadid from Zaha Hadid Architects. Both are Prizker Prize winners, Zaha Hadid in 2004 and Kazuyo Sejima together with her office partner Ryue Nishizawa in 2010. Both feature in the media frequently with their professional achievements.

In a new book Architecture: A Woman's Profession published by Jovis, Tanja Kullack Brings together a reference book that looks not only at the current situation, but also at the wider context such as education. The book offers a range of perspectives from individual women professionals on a range of topics.

The way the content is presented is very interesting in so far as it aims to emulate a discussion. This discussion is arranged by topic, not contributor. The individual vies are presented as statements under a summarising topic. This structure produces text that is very much a debate as if you had a round table and everybody there would put in their thoughts.

Some of the topics discussed are: on authorship and genius; on education, graduates and students; on identity; on leadership; on success and career and conditions therefore; on media and the 'society of spectacle'; plus of course many more.

In addition to this every contributing architect also is portrayed through their profesional practice through a photo essay of their designs and work. There is no individual practice description or anything only the statements and the work. This makes it quite a personal setting for not having this professional security shield of achievements put up front, making the discussion much more accessible.

Image taken from inhabitat / Wildspace by Alison Brooks Architects - Colorful Factory Building - Industrial Building Design.

The publication points out that even though in the education stage the classrooms are fu of female architecture students, the professional world is not, especially not in leading roles. Education has only recently become female dominated but the participants in this bok very often reflect on their personal education as the defining element and the absence of female role models has its impact. As for example Alison Brooks reflects in the text: ... I wasn't sensitive at the time (to the fact that non of the studio teachers were female). Until recently, we were kind of brainwashed into thinking that men are the authority figures; therefore, they teach, run things, etc. Women have been accepting this for such a long time. Men are raised, or grow up expecting to be in positions of leadership and women do not.

Image taken from amazon.ca / Architecture: A Woman's Profession - book cover.

Kullack, T. ed., 2011. Architecture: A Woman’s Profession, Berlin: Jovis.

London aNCL

2011-08-24T07:12:00.001+01:00

London was the first city we collected Twitter data for when we started to create the New City Landscape (NCL) project, monitoring location based Twitter activity in urban areas. This was back in May 2010 and since we have collected data for a lot more cities from around the world.

We have now finally also an animated NCL (aNCL) version using the same dataset. This part of the project was only developed earlier this year in collaboration with Anders Johansson at CASA and we are trying to catch up on the different cities we have data for. A series of aNCL visualisations has already been realised.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Showing four screenshots taken from the aNCL visualisation for a weeks worth of Tweets in and around London. The timings are midnight, morning, afternoon and evening. Each do is a tweet, re-tweets show a lin between sender and re-sender.

There are only very few features we are using for these visualisations. A characteristic landscape feature to roughly describe the urban area and the 30 km collection radius parameter to provide scale. Other than that there are only the individual Twitter messages that were collected over the period of one week. THe animation superimposes all seven days in to 24 hours.

With the visualisation we are highlighting the way information disseminates through re-tweeting of messages. An RT message will show a thin yellow line between original sender and re-sender. The information travels at some speed, which is based on the time it takes between sending and resending.

London, even though the data is already a year old is compared to other cities a very busy place in Twitter terms. We have a lot of individual messages, but more interesting there are quite a lot of different interactions happening simultaneously. Where as other cities don't show a lot of interaction, in London the sharing of information is quite an important part of tweeting. An interactive, but static activity map can be found at London NCL.

Its great to see how London wakes up between 07h30 and 09h00 in the morning after a moderat night. Then there is however, not very much sharing at this point of the day. Only after lunch and especially later in the afternoon the sharing really starts in London. It is almost as if the city was to digest the information it had created earlier in the day, reprocessing it and passing it on.

Book - Figure of Motion

2011-08-23T07:12:00.000+01:00

Motion is both elementary and fleeting; it is a fundamental precondition to our survival and our civilization. Motion is the functional basis to the discovery, measurement and exploration of the world that we live in. Elucidating and calculating motion are central issues within our culture, which is not only based on motion but designs it, being built upon a history of dynamics and acceleration.

The Jovis Verlag Gmbh publication Gestalt der Bewegung Figure of Motion is edited by Annett Zinsmeister and was published in July 2011.

The book presents Representatives of different disciplines—ranging from architecture to car design, from art-, cultural- and media-studies to sociology—discuss the depiction and design of motion in art, architecture, design, dance, and technology. This overview of historic developments and current trends discloses some surprising, border-crossing correlations.

An interesting chapter for example is on ergonomics and the history of making human motion to sync with the rhythm of machine production. Inge Baxmann is discussing the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor who used photography and video to dissect complex working processes in to micro movements and reassemble them to fit better with the machine cycles.

This is a very interesting perspective since motion, especially human motion is generally taken given and natural. We simply move the way we move because of some biological constraints. However as Baxmann argues there i a great deal of training and capitalist rationalisation. Of course this would then on a larger scale be similar as to the way we move in cities and urban areas. WHere we are trained to step in sync with he beat of the location.

Image by Andrew Davidhazy taken from people.rit.edu / Figure in Motion
Stroboscopic Photograph of a dancer in motion.

The publication includes essay contributions by Inge Baxmann, Margitta Buchert, Söke Dinkla, Christophe Girot, Scott de Lahunta, Claus Pias, Stephan Rammler and Annett Zinsmeister, and interviews with Michael Schumacher and Chris Bangle.

For a sample preview of the book see HERE.

Image taken from architecturebooks / Figure of Motion book cover.

Zinsmeister, A. ed., 2011. Gestalt der Bewegung Figure of Motion Weisenhof., Berlin: Jovis Verlag Gmbh.

Networks Networks

2011-08-03T11:08:00.000+01:00

The main buzz word of the 2011 discussion in urban and spatial research is networks. Networks start to appear everywhere and everything is linked in to most other things. This is however, in fact not new. The network discussion has started at least ten or fifteen years ago.

It is very fascinating how network are entering the repertoire of scientists and with the tools to construct analyse and draw them more and more data is analysed towards its network structure. Some of the platfomrs like Gephi or Cytoscape, but also the integration of network analysis capacity with existing software such a GeoTime in version 5.1 makes this emerging branch accessible to a wider research community. The basic elements of nodes as the actors and links as the activity are a pretty simple, but very powerful way of describing very complex structures.

Some three interesting examples of recent weeks shall be presented in the following. The examples chosen are very divers, but show how the term and the idea is unfolding in many disciplines leading to new discoveries of previous unknown aspect. This is not to dismiss anything known previously, but to add another puzzle piece to the picture from a 'network' perspective.

Image taken from 15m.bifi.es / The figure represents the evolution of the network of Twitter users that exchange messages during the 10 days following the beginning (May 15, 2011) of camp in Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Spain. Each node in the network represents an individual, and the node size is proportional to the total number of messages he/she sent or received in the period analyzed. Two nodes are connected if they have exchanged at least one message. The colors encode the "age" of the node: the first active users are represented in yellow, while black color is used for the latecomers..

Social network analysis i probably the biggest and most obvious branch of network analysis. Since the concept of social connection is part of our everyday experience this is the area easies accessible for a general audience. With the data from digital social networks becoming available as for example the NCLn maps using Twitter show or also the Facebook global connection by Paul Buttler it is opening new possibilities for social sciences. The overwhelmingly massive amount of detail could potentially provide a different understanding of social mechanisms.

The project by he BIFI (Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems) is focusing on Twitter data collected between end of April and beginning of May 2011 during the youth movement 15m in Spain. The researchers have collected data over a period of three weeks as the activities are unfolding on Twitter across the country. The visualisation show how the information spreads across the digital social network, more and more groups joining in pushing the converation and the use of specific # hash tags as indicators. In total, 581.749 messages coming from 87.569 users were identified and used for the study.

Clip taken from 15m.bifi.es / video is a visual representation of the tweets exchanged between users involved in the 15M movement. All the information received/generated reflect the actual spreading dynamics in the period analysed.

Another obvious source of network information is to be found in science itself, mapping out the collaboration across the world. The institutions or the individual research groups can act as nodes and a collaboration is establishing a link between the nodes. Similar scientific citation are another established source of network data.

A lot of this work has been collected and presented in the MIT publications Atlas of Science by Katy Boerner. An online version of a research collaboration from 2005 to 2009 network is computed by Olivier H. Beauchesne at Science-Metrix, Inc. At wired explains "analysed the extracts of all of these articles to find where there was collaboration. So if a Cambridge University researcher published a paper with a colleague at the University of Arizona then that would create the pairing of Cambridge and Tuscon."

Image taken from flowingdata / Map showing global science collaborations. Click for full screen interactive version.

In a third example scientist have discovered network of trees. In which the threes are actively exchanging and scientists believe that this network provides an advantage to connected trees over unconnected tree of the same species in the same area. The soundfoundation explains: "Graduate student Kevin Beiler has found that all trees in dry interior Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) forests are interconnected, with the largest, oldest trees serving as hubs, much like the hub of a spoked wheel, where younger trees establish within the mycorrhizal network of the old trees." The original presentation can be found here. It is pretty amazing that networks form such a fashion between plants previously thought of as static and dull in a spatial activity sense.

Image taken from abject.ca / Map showing connected and unconnected trees in the study area.

The networks can extend to many other areas and the built environment being on of them. Just like the trees the buildings are al interconnected with a network of cables and pipes, services and goods, linking across the city and the country. In this context one of the obvious example is the transport network and how a bus service links to a tub service bringing you to your destination via a short walk some gates and Oyster card operated barriers. At CASA, Jon Reads is currently working with some Oyster Card data visualising and analysing public transport networks across London. There is definitely more to come in this area in the next few weeks and month.

Image taken from Simulacra Bog / Map showing Central London Detail of public transport network based on TfL segments.

Networks will be with us for the foreseeable future being stronger an stronger embedded in out everyday thinking of objects and actions. It is definitely linking into a growing awareness of connectivity very much in line with the current sustainability debate as well as the of similar age system thinking theories.

Book - OneFiveFour: Light, Matter and Energy

2011-08-02T10:51:00.000+01:00

What is the material architecture is made of? Is it concret, glass and steel? Mortar, bricks and timber Stone, fabrics and plastic? All of them or none of them? So many different ways of putting this, but there must be something just beyond the physicality of the materiality of architecture, something that holds it together and creates an atmosphere as the sum of all pieces.

For Lebbeus Woods architecture is in essence light, mater and energy put in combination, mastering the elements spatially. He is mainly interested in geometry and light, where geometri is the relationship between light, matter and energy, in reference to Einstein's E/m=c2.

Image taken from the Fun Ambulist / Lebbeus Woods project Berlin Underground.

In a 2011 reprint of the 1989 publication oneFiveFour by Lebbeus Woods and published by Princeton Architecture Press some of Woods' projects are showcased. Foremost, these are A. City, Centricity and Berlin UNderground. It's a beautiful black and white print of projects, sketches and writings unveiling an, at times, futuristic or star wars like scenery of buildings, as a vison for a city. There is a lot of movement in the sketches implying a strong sense of process and making. Most of the elements are partially finished, waiting to be extended and developed further. It's a sort of invitation. Woods is not proposing those structures as static objects everything is in the making, on offer for collaboration?

Image taken from the Fun Ambulist / Lebbeus Woods project.

Image taken from the Fun Ambulist / Book Cover OneFiveFour.

Woods, L., 1989. One Five Four, New York, N.Y: Princeton Architectural Press.

Cartographica - GIS for the Mac Platform - 02

2011-08-01T13:56:00.000+01:00

Traditionally Geographic Information System (GIS) have been exclusively run on the Windows platform. Only very few applications run on either cross platform or exclusively on the Mac. This is part two of a review and introduction to Cartographica, a Mac based GIS software. Find part one with a general introduction HERE.

Getting data into the Cartographica GIS platform is possible in multiple ways. There are a number of formats directly supported, such as shapefiles and kml. It can be also either a vector, a raster or a table format. To connect to other services and devices there is data base import as well as direct GPS import or WMS (Web Map Service) map data.

Image by urbaTick / Screen shot showing the import dialog for tabular data. Here we are importing the Primary school league tables as found on the Guardian Data Blog. The data does not have geo coordinates so we are using the geocoding feature of Cartographica to locate the data via the address given in the csv file.

If you are working with a external data source trying to map some information that comes in a table for example the dialogue will guide you through the steps to identify the different columns, where you have to indicate the location columns and the value columns. It is also possible to use this import option to extend on existing content, by matching two columns to exiting fields and Cartographica will import the additional data to the corresponding data. Also this feature can be used to geocode addresses if you are working with address data.

Once the data is loaded it will be displayed on screen. The next steps will be to either combine it with other data or information, to adjust the projection, to manipulate or to analyse the data.

Image by urbaTick / Screen shot showing the imported data with a Bing Map aerial imagery underlay for the whole of England. The points start to make sense as to how they are located in a spatail context.

Image by urbaTick / Screen shot showing the imported data with a Open Street Map underlay. In this view we have zoomed into the South East of England. The street information as well as geographic features are visible and annotated.

To combine additional data simply import other sources or add a live map. Cartographica currently offers the option of Bing maps or Open Street Map. Bing maps come as street map or as satellite imagery. Through the WMS any other map can be used in the background. This is brilliant, because with just a few clicks the data can be put in context and read in a very different way. See the data information on a aerial photography background or on an Open Street Map background depending what the criteria is.

The projection can be adjusted for the map or for the layer. Cartographica offers a range of preset projections with the very traditional projections such as Mercator or WGS. There are also a range of country specific projections, but most important, with the hundreds of specific projections out there you can import your own projection. This adds flexibility and accuracy.

Manipulating the data by hand is done in Cartographica using the four interaction tools provided above the main map window. The first one from the left is the zoom element, the second one is the information tool to retrive details from objects, but also to select objects. The third tool is the pan tool to move the map around and the fourth tool is for measuring either area or distance. The very handy thing with the tools in Cartographica is really that it work in good Mac tradition with keyboard shortcuts. Selecting the tool and performing some operation can be done directly from the keyboard. This is really good for doing quick and precise work.

Image by urbaTick / Screen shot showing a density overlay calculated from the imported school data set. There is a concentration of school in London as expected.

For the data analysis Cartographica offer again a range of options. There are for example a range of tools to enhance the data like adding the geo coordinates to a point layer that was imported via the address, as in the example above. Then there is als the density analysis tool to create a kernel density from point information. The result is a raster layer representing the density of points. Here the colour scale can be adjusted in much detail. Cartographica is also capable of buffering, creating a distance zone form a feature, either point or line data.

Image by urbaTick / Screen shot showing each school buffered by a 800 meter radius in Camden and Islington in North London. There is Regents Park and Hampstead Heath as empty areas.

A great feature is also the capacity to plot GPS geo coded images you have, for example from the iPhone. This will provide you with a map of the location of all the images, including a small icon. If you are working on a documentation or have field notes together with picture you have taken this is very handy.

Cartographica offeres a range of powerful basic GIS analysis functions. all at the benefit of simple usage. It is not just easy to use but intuitive as one would expect from a Mac application. In case you are not as familiar with GIS analysis and not quite sure how to do this or where to find this, the online platform offers a tutorial on all features and showcases a range of how to step by step guides. Its a great resource for anything technical in Cartographica.

The software is available form the web store at a price of $495 and as an academic student license for only $99 for one year. This is tremendously good offer, especially if compared to some of the other packages prices. Also the latest version has been optimised for OSx Lion, so you should not experience and problems if you have already upgraded to the new Mac operating system.

In a next part the exporting feature and the mobile version of Cartographica will round off the three part review of Cartographica. Watch out for the next bit.

MyTime Interview - Kas Oosterhuis on Process, Timelessness and RealTime in Architecture

2011-07-28T12:02:00.000+01:00

Architecture theory and practice has changed dramatically with the use of computers. A lot has changed or has been adapted, but for many a radical new orientation lies still ahead. There are some fundamental shifts in the way a process oriented thinking of architecture manages the different steps from analysis to design to construction and beyond. The way it can integrate and mange thousands of parameters using algorithms and using it to dynamically model the progress is challenging a profession still largely clinging on to a modernist objectivity and distance.

Kas Oosterhuis is appointed professor digital design methods at the Delft Technical University and leads Hyperbody, the knowledge center for Nonstandard and Interactive Architecture at the TU Delft. His recent book 'Towards a New Kind of Building is published by NAi Publishers (2011) and was discussed earlier on urbanTick.

With this interview we want to focus on the wider context of a new kind of building and specifically on some of the time constraints in architecture as a whole but towards a new building as such. Time is playing a more prominent role in architecture as as proposed by Kas Oosterhuis, both factual and secondary as an element of the process of designing, building and running projects and buildings.

Image by ONL / Digital Pavilion Seoul by ONL 2007. Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd, Chris Kievid, Christian Friedrich, Marthijn Pool, Gijs Joosen, Dieter Vandoren, assisted by Petr Vokal, Jan Gasparik, Matthijs Frederiks, Tade Godbergsen, Tim McGinley, Wouter Slot. Pavilion for digital media in media complex.

---

urbanTick: Is it important to be on time?
Kas Oosterhuis: I would rather say that it important to be actual, that is exploring and eventually incorporating actual technologies in the theory and practice of architecture and building

urbanTick: Would you then also say this incorporation results in actual buildings, buildings, beyond the technology, that are on time?
Kas Oosterhuis: Just there, just then, just that, just thus

urbanTick: With the technological focus of the current western society time is often said to run faster than in the past. Does this also apply to architecture?
Kas Oosterhuis: More things happen simultaneously, we are living in a world that fosters multiplicity, we are living inside evolution and we feel it stronger since there are more thing evolving at the same time then ever

Image by ONL / AOM Launchpad by ONL 2011 - Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd, Gijs Joosen, Ilaria Giardiello, Lieneke van Hoek, Miro Strigác. A family entering and navigating the Launchpad sorts out a much bigger effect on the whole installation. The members of the family browse some shared and individual preferences, causing the AOM Launchpad to crystallize into higher definition zones in all directions they are looking to. The family thus creates a semi- enclosed space, open to other visitors navigating the pad. One single AOM Launchpad may host more then one family.

urbanTick: You are often integrating the term ‘Real Time’ in your texts for TaNKoB. How do you interpret the meaning of ‘Real Time’ for your work?
Kas Oosterhuis: Real time is introduced in my work since 1999 since I designed the Trans-Ports project, the pavilion that changes shape and content in real time. Since then we are more and more conscious of the fact architecture, which is the art of building, and building must be considered as processes then unfold in real time, processes that never stop, processes that are executable, processes that run endless chains of cellular automata. We learned from Stephen Wolfram that nature itself must be considered as a computation. We add to that that all man-made components must be seen as nature, and thus as a computation.

urbanTick: Is there such a thing as a timelessness in architecture?
Kas Oosterhuis: No such thing, that is an arrogant invention of modernists as to declare their view the best possible view on architecture.

urbanTick: With the introduction of these dynamics how are you seeing the profession to change, especially the modernist role of overall creator?
Kas Oosterhuis: I am a specialist, I do no since long time not believe in the myth of the "uomo universale", the generic creator that rules his/her puppets on his/her strings. Conversely I work as a specialist in a team with other specialists. The task of the architect of today is to clearly define hi/her role as a specialist.

Image by ONL / Hessing Cockpit by ONL 2005. Car showroom incorporated in an acoustic barrier.

urbanTick: You are introducing a New Kind of Building based on your own work reaching back 20 years. for trends and fashion in architecture what role plays the classification of time?
Kas Oosterhuis: I do not think in terms of trends and fashion, that is all too superficial for me. But I do think in terms like evolution, based on an internal drive to go on and explore possibilities, and evolution naturally is evolving over time.

urbanTick: How much time is needed for a master piece to evolve as an icon of its time, both in terms of process and in terms critical distance?
Kas Oosterhuis: I can only speak for myself, I was already in the national picture right after my studies, then intentionally took a decade of advanced practice of office building, then came out with my own explicit views on intuitive use of the computer, and another 5 years to accomplish price winning projects like Elhorst/vloedbelt and Saltwaterpavilion. Ten to twenty years seems in general needed to come reach the critical level of insight and knowledge that is needed to be able to establish a deep practice of building. I would not use the iconic, that is how others might label it. I prefer the notion of a deep understanding of what one is doing.

Image by ONL / Saltwater Pavilion by ONL 1997. Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Menno Rubbens, Ilona Lénárd, Károly Tóth. The water pavilion represents water in all its manifestations. the route through the water pavilion describes a vast loop. It takes the shape of a giant lemniscate, the mathematical symbol for infinity. The lemniscate is visible against the flanks of the body, both on the exterior and on the interior skin. "The Saltwaterpavilion has evolved from the very beginning of the design process as a three-dimensional computer model. We kneaded, stretched, bent, rescaled, morphed, styled and polished. He delineation of the form is laid down in the digital genes of the design that hold the germ of life. The first idea is the genetic starting point for all subsequent steps in the development. We no longer accept the domination of platonic volumes, the simplistic geometry of cube, sphere, cylinder and cone as the basic elements of architecture. That resolution is much too low. Our computers allow us to command millions of coordinates describing far more complex geometries." ONL.

urbanTick: Time specific terms such as long and short, before and after, quick and slow are constantly used in everyday language and varying contexts. What role do they play in the parametric design/architecture discourse?
Kas Oosterhuis: The same, but better described as strong connections or weak connections. Objects subject to a strong connection move fast, the weaker connected components may move very very slow. Programming the connections literally means expanding the bandwidth of the strength of the connections, and thus of the speed of the objects. With programmable objects connected to sensor networks I can make building that do not move at all, that are completely frozen in their static movement. Conversely I can make environments that are alive and kicking, that change hallucinating fast for the human experience.

urbanTick: Is time money?
Kas Oosterhuis: I would argue that all building components in a parametric system are directly connected to a spreadsheet or database with parameters, most likely numbers. The value of money is one of these thousands of parameters, the ticks of time another represent another parameter, so there is a very loose connection, one of millions of connections. Money is parametrically related to time via the dynamic database

Image by ONL / Al Nasser Group Corporate Headquarters by ONL 2009. Design team Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd, Gijs Joosen, Marthijn Pool, Ronald Brandsma, Petr Vokal, Jan Gasparik, Tim McGinley. Although the design constraints were strict ONL has found a strategy which features a combination of an iconic architecture and a functional lay-out. ONL decided to develop a vase shaped tower, narrow at its base, gaining volume in the shaft and tapered towards the top. The vase has been styled by subtly slicing and chamfering the otherwise rectangular floor plan. Relatively modest interventions and parametric modifications of the rectangular basic shape while retaining the structural integrity of the design create the iconic appearance of the Al Nasser Group Headquarters Tower.

urbanTick: In one of the section ‘Versatile Time zones’ in the book TaNKoB you are talking about the resolution of time and propose in a thought experiment a high resolution world time. Rather than then current one hour time steps each place would have its own time based on the location. Would this be the perfect merge of time and space?
Kas Oosterhuis: It basically means not accepting time to be cut in very low-res pieces, and not accepting space to be cut in low-res chunks of matter. Our accepted time zone system is a rude abstraction of time and space, and I have argued that now we have the technology to scale up the resolution and merge time and place as it is, not as an abstraction.

urbanTick: With TaNKoB you are focusing on the programming of the process. What is the sort of time dimension of the architecture your are proposing?
Kas Oosterhuis: Buildings should live much shorter, in able to rethink and evolve technology as embedded in buildings. It would help if we could establish a law that for every new building another one should be taken down or thoroughly updated. Interestingly enough this would be much more sustainable then stretching the life of old, ineffective and often malfunctioning building. IT would give us the clue to improve the overall quality and performance of the built environment.

urbanTick: To what extend does the temporal dimension of architecture play in sync with a wider context, either in the architecture world with trends and interests or in the local cultural scene?
Kas Oosterhuis: Industrial products like clothes, computers, sensors, cars etc have a much shorter life-span, if we would sync with those products buildings would be much more in sync with their time.

urbanTick: You are giving the establishment of the pure digital revolution of building design another 50 years until it is a global standard. Is this a long time or a rather short period?
Kas Oosterhuis: We need sufficient critical mass for evolution to make the jump, like there was critical in the Cambrian period to give rise a vast number of new species, maybe Ray Kurzweil could answer this question based on his theory of the critical point in time [2040] where one single computer has reached the computation power of all human brains together on this earth.

Image by ONL / Sculpture City by ONL 1994. Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd, Menno Rubbens. Can a building be a sculpture? Can a sculpture be a building? Or more precise: can buildings be autonomous sculptures? The functionality of the building is just one out of thousands of parameters effecting the resulting image of the concept. With each step in the series of instructions and acts the functionality of the building is equivalent to other parameters. There is no hierarchy of arguments but their procedure. The electronic skin of Cloud010 is alive. The sculpture buildings of Sculpture City are granting their own functioning. Form allows function in stead of form follows function. Similarly the sculpture buildings are permitting that they are subject to gravity, that they are shaped to a specific form, and that they eventually are materialized.

urbanTick: You are involved in teaching already for many years at different institutions. What role does this play in the emergence of a New Kind of Building, not as the publication but really the type?
Kas Oosterhuis: I have never been surfing fashionable waves that were found and mapped out by others, but rather have spent my time in finding the feet of promising new waves and worked my way up climbing that wave, the top of that wave is not even close but could out of the blue appear without a warning.

urbanTick: How much time do you devote to architecture? Is there time outside architecture?
Kas Oosterhuis: I never feel that I am busy, actually I feel that I have lots of time to relax and think things over, to lecture, to meet people, to write, to do gardening, to travel, to spend holidays in our datsja in Hungary where I am right now.

urbanTick: What is your strongest experience of time?
Kas Oosterhuis: That is when I manage to foresee something unlikely and yet it happens, that feels like changing time.

----
Oosterhuis, K., 2011. Towards a New Kind of Building: A Designerʼs Guide for Non-standard Architecture, Rotterdam: NAI Publishers.
----

In an interview series urbanTick is looking closely at meaning and implications of time in everyday life situations. In the form of dialogs different aspects are explored, with the idea to highlight characteristics. The main interest is circling around the construction and implementation of different concepts of time between independent but related areas of activity, such as leisure and work, private and public, reality and virtual. This interview series will not be continuous, but more adhoc, so you might want to use the interview tag to catch up with the previous issues.

Olympics Progress - One year to go

2011-07-27T07:30:00.001+01:00

It is now only One Year to Go! for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Summer Games 2012 here in London. The big event is moving closer by the day. Officials are eagerly pointing out that the planning and the preparation work is on schedule, very well in shape, but still has a mountain of work to do.

However, this One Year landmark is a moment for reflection and aso litte celebration. The Twitter hastag will be #1yeartogo The past weekend was filed with Olympic activities. To now celebrate and look forward to the games is definitely a more positive note after recently the ticket sale filled the media. There were a lot of disappointed Olympics fans after the ticket lottery announced the results. In that first phase, 700,000 successful applicants secured 3m tickets. In the second, a further 160,000 or so were accounted for. In total, Locog has shifted 6m tickets in a matter of months, which the chief executive, Paul Deighton, estimates makes it the most popular event of all time. THere seems to be a decent chance for unsuccessful applications of previous rounds to stil get a ticket as the Guardian reports.

Image taken from London2012 / A unique aerial image shows the number '1' mown into the grass in the Olympic Stadium, starting the celebrations to mark one year to go until the Games begin.

Looking at the workload ahead, Britain's olympics minister Hugh Robertson says there will be 'difficult moments' in the run up to the games, but that 'we are in a very good place' as he is quoted in the Guardian.

In terms of venues the largest part is taking place i the Lea Valley and a lot of the infrastructure is already in place. Most of the to be built venues are in their final stage or finished. The Olympic Stadium is has the turf laid already with the tracks being worked on at the moment. The Velodrome was one of the first venues to actually being handed over. Construction work started in March 2009 and Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy was involved in the design consultation.

Image taken from London2012 / An inside view of the Olympic velodrome as it shall be ready for the London Games 2012.

What the venues are going to be is probably mostly known by now, the very big question is what the legacy of the games will be. THer is a lot of discussion and confusion around the ownership of the Olympic Stadium as well as other venues. Some venues will be demolished, but others such as the Velodrome and the Aquatics centre will be taken over by the respective sport groups.

However there is more to the legacy than only the venues. There will be a massive Lea Valley park that needs maintaining for the public and there is the large transport schema Londoners have been promised. All these things are currently being talked about. The Guardian reports: "There is significant conversion work to be undertaken and the Park is likely to be closed for the best part of a year. But the Olympic Park Legacy Company, mindful of capitalising on the excitement around the Games, has resolved to open it up in sections as quickly as possible and is seeking legacy operators for everything from the vast swimming complex to the Arcelor Mittal tower that towers over the stadium."

The two maskots Wenlock and Mandaville are also very busy touring and promoting the Olympics and the Paralympic. The two characters of the Olympics are currently trying out the different spots disciplines around the UK visiting schools and sports facilities. On their website they introduce themselves: "Hi, I'm Wenlock, the London 2012 Olympic mascot... and I'm Mandeville, the London 2012 Paralympic mascot! We're on a journey around the UK, making friends and finding out all about the Olympic and Paralympic sports. Explore our website to find out more about us and join us on our journey. Come back often - there's always something new. Have fun!"

Image taken from London2012 / The mascots fo the London Games 2012 trying out some of the sports to feature at the Olympics.

So what to do for this last year to go. There are many ways to get involved, as a volunteer or as a torch-bearer to carry the Olympic torch on its way across the UK. After the chaos around the traveling torch on its world tour pre Beijing Olympics the committee has scraped the idea of sending it around the world. The torch travels from Peloponnese to Land's End were it arrives on the 18 May 2012 to travel 8000 miles across the UK. Some of the main event sponsors still accept applications if you are interested to run with the torch.

Image taken from London2012 / An arial view of the site currently (July 2011) for the London Games 2012. The three central elements are the Olympic Stadion, the Aquatic centre and in the middle the View Tower by Anish Kapoor a it is under construction. It is going to be Britain's biggest piece of public art, a 120 metres tall looping tower.

Book - Testify! Architecture for Real

2011-07-26T07:29:00.002+01:00

Architecture is not only about building a new house. There is a wider context to creating spaces for people. Very often this is overlooked already in the planning and in the process. The social and cultural impact for both neighbours and users as well as the community is often a byproduct the wider public becomes aware if it results in conflicting interests.

To integrate these wider community aspects as part of the planning process, thinking ahead and thinking a projects as part of wider network of activities and places is a challenging and particular way of programming a project that require a multidisciplinary team. Architects, even if they wish they could, can not quite think this far out of the box.

Image taken from Studio Freireiss / View into the Testify! exhibition. It will be on until the 13 of November 2011 at the NAI in Rotterdam.

The new NAi Publisher book Testify!: The Consequences of Architecture', edited by Lukas Feireiss, presents a selection of 25 projects that all are designed to address this wider context of architecture. The subtitle sort of hint at the after life of a project, but really the projects are aiming to include the consequences from the innitial idea.

As the Gestalten puts it in short: "Testify! The Consequences of Architecture gathers 25 projects from around the globe that have taken the chance to open themselves up to critical self-reflection, submitting to a non-biased evaluation of their work from a lived-in perspective."

Image taken from Lushlee / Favel Paintingin Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The project was developed by the Dutch artist duo Haas and Hahn, starting in 2006. As presented in the publication: "In the heart of Rio de Janeiro's favelas, the Dutch artist duo Haas and Hahn fostered pride and created jobs by painting enormous murals on concrete structures and residential facades. Through colour and imagery, the neighbourhoods have been given a fresh face and a point of media contact from wich to present themselves anew.

The publication accompanies an exhibition currently at the NAi in Rotterdam presenting the projects in space, to showcase the NAi's engagement and work. A umber of the projects presented were initiated around an engagement with the NAi worldwide. This is of course a very noble thing to do but is, as the book illustrates, definitely a necessity for many urban locations.

This integrated view of spatial planning and the actual implementation is not new but has not founds its feet in practice. Since the fifties this is part of the theoretical planning discussion and pops up every now and then. It has lead to some participatory planning processes in the west, but not as elaborate and far reaching as this new publication proposes it.

The publication comes in four chapters with an introduction by Ole Bouman. Chapter one is 'Urban Acupuncture: Reprogramming the City', chapter 2 is 'Smooth Operators: Interventions in the Public Realm', chapter 3 'Reach Out: Spaces for Learning and Community' and chapter 4 is 'Exploring Horizons: Pushing the Boundaries of Architecture'.

Image taken from monkeyking on flickr / This photo was taken on August 6, 2010. Documentation of the Cinema Jenin in Jenin, a small city in the West Bank. Here the opening festival of 5-7 August 2010, which included the screening of several films as well as musical performances and other cultural events.

The book has a very designed and styled approach tot he topic. From the words to the images everything is cool and flashy. It brings the content a long way and is definitely helpful for the communication of a good cause. At times it is however almost over enthusiastic about itself, at the brink of invention.

Some of the projects you might have heard of already, but there will be others and complementary ones as well as new aspects of contextual and responsive architecture. Especially overall and in combination across the presented project, the book manages to seed the idea of thinking architecture in a wider context. It might not happen tomorrow, but it will sink in a stick.

Image taken from Architype Source / Inkwenkwezi School Du Noon Township, Capetown, South Africa by Noero Wolff Architects, 2007. As presented in the publication "Through intelligent architecture with the aid of government and international support, a school in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood in Cape Town has become a safe place and a hub for youth from all over the Cape to gain the necessary tools to overcome their difficult situations and escape the traps of poverty through education."

Participating are 2A+P/A, iAN+, ma0, Arup Foresight, at103, atelier d'architecture autogérée, Cinema Jenin, Decolonizing Architecture, dhk architects with towthink architects. Alejandro Echeverri Arquitectos, EcoLogic Studio, KARO* with Architektur+Netzwerk, Haas & Hahn, Li Xiaodong Atelier, Antanas Mockus, NAI Matchmaking, Noero Wolff Architects, Grávalos & Di Monte Architects, Enrique Peñalosa, Project Row Houses, raumlaborberlin, Sambuichi Architects, Senseable City Laboratory, Skateistan, Studio Gang, The Winter School Middle East, TYIN tegnestue, Zecc Architekten.

Testify! will be on display at the NAI until 13 November 2011 after which the exhibition will go on tour.

Image taken from iitaias / Book cover.

Feireiss, L. ed., 2011. Testify!: the Consequences of Architecture, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.

Paris Plages - the City Beach

2011-07-25T07:18:00.000+01:00

Transformations towards opening the waterside of cities particularly in Europe are taking place for the last fifteen years. Rivers and lake side areas are being discovered as recreation areas of high value. What was formerly waste land or industrial area has very often been brownfield for some time and is redeveloped, very often turning the city functionally inside out, introducing a new front.

Particularly Rivers are passing through central areas where cities can develop a potential for focused activity and attraction. London is developing this topics, but also Rotterdam, Berlin, Basel and so on.

Image taken from Wikimedia / A view down onto the Paris Plages. With sand the river front road is transformed in to a recreation zone for one month.

Paris has developed a special take on this, with a very much temporary solution. The legacy i sometimes tricky to just change and Paris runs some major road infrastructure along the Seine that they are not willing to reroute. However, temporarily it is during summer transformed into a beachside with sand and palm trees.

It goes with a extensive cultural program, including art fairs and concerts. There are all sorts of activities running like Tai-Chi and reading clubs organised by the library. Of course a game of Boules has to feature too. Actually Pétanque is played at Paris Plages.

Image taken from parisplages / Plan showing one of the locations just across from the Centre pompidou in central Paris.

The project 'Paris Plages' started in 2002 and has taken place every summer since. The authorities announce "The summer transforms Paris. The cityscape dons greenery and the riverside thoroughfares become car-free resorts. The Paris Plages (Paris Beaches) operation kicks off on or around 20 July and lasts four weeks."

Barcelona New City Landscape

2011-07-22T07:14:00.000+01:00

Barcelona is in terms of twitter activity one of the cities that has a strong central core of high activity. Very similar to for example the London NCL or the Paris NCL maps.
The highest point is just over the Placa de Catalonia with a steep slope down la Rambla to the Roca Columbus. Other places of high activity are around the parliament, here the 'Monte di Parliament Catalonia' and around the Olympic centre on Montjuic.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Barcelona New City Landscape map generated from location based tweets collected over the period of one week. The area covered is within a 30 km radius of Barcelona.

The Barcelona New City Landscape map has already been published earlier, but it needed an update because of some problems in the processing and labeling. This new version also goes in line with the adjusted layout and design.

Thanks for the help with the map go to Narcis Sastre, who kindly worked it through.

Barcelona New City Landscape

Image by urbanTick using the GMap Image Cutter / Barcelona New City Landscape Use the Google Maps style zoom function in the top right corner to zoom into the map and explore it in detail. Explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view. The maps were created using our CASA Tweet-O-Meter, in association with DigitalUrban and coded by Steven Gray, this New City Landscape represents location based twitter activity.

Barcelona is very active in the afternoon hours. There is a peak around 15h00, 18h00 and 21h00, after which it quickly drops off. The mornings are very pronounced right after six, however overall far less than the afternoon. Over lunch there is clearly a dip with lesser activity.

Spanish is clearly the dominating language, followed by English. Indonesian, French, Portuguese and Italian are sort of the runner ups. ALso Esperanto is there, this is surprisingly often present in the top ten list and it seems that a lot of people are using it as a statement, since it is not really a spoken language.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / The rose shows the twitter activity per hour of the day, starting at 00:00 at the top, displayed as local time. Barcelona is a afternoon city with more activity between three and nine than through out the rest of the day. The graphs show the platform of preference used to send the tweet and the language set respectively.

Also, we have the animation ready for the Barcelona data set. This one is put together in collaboration with Anders Johanson. The animation also shows the interaction between the users based on RT and @ tweets with thin yellow lines. This indicates a direction and provides a sense for the distribution of flows.

Book - Event Cities 4 Concept and Form

2011-07-21T07:19:00.001+01:00

Increasingly architecture is produced globally. Large offices are delivering projects for clients more than half way across the world making it a very international profession. It is however mainly a oneway relationship with western practices operating for Middle Eastern or Asian clients. This means that even though there are financial benefits and gains in prestige, there are cultural differences and difficulties.

This applies both to the design process and the design as such in a form sense. Architecture is widely acknowledged as a cultural product and therefore this practice could be seen as a sort of cultural export of both practice and product, resulting in quite some problematic entanglement for architecture practices interested in contextual based design processes.

So far this dilema has had little focus, with large practices actually denying its existence for the past ten years at least. However, things are changing and practices are searching for ways and means to conceptualise this problem in order to develop a response.

Image taken from Event Cities 4 / Book spread 10-11, project sketches.

Bernhard Tschumi puts in his new book, Event-Cities 4: Concept-Form, published by MIT Press in late 2010, such a concept forward and presents how he and his practice has developed a process tool to takle this dilemma.

This latest book in the Event series is focusing on the term pair of Concept-Form. This has developed, as it becomes clear from both the introduction and the examples presented in the body of the book from an increased global practice. It is one response to the task of delivering projects across the world, in changing contexts and without the cultural background. In some sense the terminology is a conceptual construction to deal with the stringent requirements of a global architecture, providing a framework for the project development process.

As Tschumi puts it: "It is a concept that generates form, or a form that generates a concept, in such a way that reinforces the other. The concept may be programmatic, technological, social and so on. But the form must be relatively abstract, since many aspects of the program are indeterminate, ..."

It is not a theory book. It is really a project monograph, showcasing and documenting the work of Bernhard Tschumi Architects over the past eight years, from 2002 to 2010. Highlights include master plans for a pair of media-based work spaces and cultural campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi; a major master plan for a financial center with 40,000 projected inhabitants in the Dominican Republic; the innovative Blue Residential Tower in New York City; a group of museums and cultural buildings in France, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and South Korea; a pedestrian bridge in France; and a "multi-programmatic" furniture piece, the TypoLounger. The book contains more than twenty of the Tschumi firm's recent projects, showcasing the most current and forward-looking designs of one of the world's leading architectural practices.

Image taken from aeccafe / Footbridge across the TGV line in la Roche-sur-Yon, 2007-2009. Bernhard Tschumi and Hugh Dutton.

One of them is for example the La Roche-sur-Yon pedestrian bridge. A collaboration by Bernhard Tschumi and Hugh Dutton. It is a project seeking to merge architecture and structure and as Tschumy explains:"The bridge connects new districts to the historical city with both functional and symbolic links."

Another one is the Elliptic City for the Dominican Republic, an IFCA Master Plan. It is a 30 km2 site at the coast with nothing but one road and a power line. The project is termed Elliptic City and is based on a tabularasa concept, meaning its built with no existing context in othe green landcape. And interestingly there are some landcape features, like a series of caves running along the Western boundary of the site, or a ridge in the North-Eastern corner. And after-all there is an existing population of about 8000 squatters living on site at the sea shore.

Image taken from skyscrapercity / Elliptic City Masterplan by Bernhard Tschumi, from 2005.

Proposed by Tschumi Architects is a masterplan based on an elliptical form with nine clusters of massive buildings framed by a highway. It is a rather formal approach, perfectly fitting with the concept-form overall concept. However it is proposed as a phased planning over the period of 25 years.

The publication provides a good overview of the projects and has with its massive 600 something pages enough space for an elaborate project presentation. Its great to have some room fo the projects and not having to understand a complex concept on only half a page. The proposed concept is definitely something that should become part of the international discourse on how architecture as a cultural product can be delivered around the world. The dilemma and the difficulties are very visible in the presented range of project in this volume. There is a clear difference between the project the office has delivered in France, Europe or the States and the ones they have proposed everywhere else. However the point of the book as outlined in the introduction by Tschumi is to have a discussion and this is definitely what the book delivers.

Image taken from Abitare-Urbanism / Book cover.

Tschumi, B., 2010. Event-Cities 4: Concept-Form, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Social Networks - GeoCom 2011

2011-07-20T12:33:00.002+01:00

I am at GeoCom 2011 today. It takes place at UCL here in London from today (20 - 22 of July). The conference focuses on geo computation with focus on complexity and modeling. The keynote today was given by Professor Peter Nijkamp from Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands as 'Digital environments and ‘real world’ geographies'. THe detailed program can be found HERE.

I will be presenting a poster on social networks based on Twitter data. The plot is using the data that was collected for the London NCL map during the period of one week. A detailed, interactive version of the graph can be fond as published in an earlier post.

London NCL Social Network

Graph by urbanTick using the GMap Image Cutter / London NCL Socia Network - Use the Google Maps style zoom function in the top left corner to zoom into the map and explore it in detail. Click HERE for a full screen view.

The network is based on activity on the Twitter platform. The graph shows connections based on @ tweets and RT tweets. The actual followers or friends are not taken into account. The activity is what can be read from the tweet content. So far we have not been looking into the tweet content beyond this networking information, but it could be an upcoming step.

Interesting is to see how information is passed on from users in RT's. It will be possible to analyse the spreading of information spatially and how this travels the urban area as for example London in this case.

Image by urbanTick / GeoCom 2011 post 'Location Based Social Network from Twitter'. for a large version see pdf HERE.

Book - Clip Stamp Fold - Architecture Publishing

2011-07-18T07:28:00.002+01:00

Renewing architectural traditions is hard business. You could try to change the practice, but this would be a singular act. If you publish about it using the media a wider audience is reached and the effort is more effective.

'Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196x -197x' redraws the history of some of the many radical architecture magazines at the mid last century that had this one idea, to change the world of architecture by writing about it. The Actar publication is is edited by Beatrice Colomina and Craig Buckley and brings together e a large body of research on the massive body of material.

There was a great urge to overthrow established architectural structures and break out of the as tight perceived ideologies of modernism. "[T]he FORMALITY of architecture and its teaching has to explode." as Archigram put it in one of their last issues NO.9.

Image taken from electric type/ A section of the magazine timeline as presented on the Clip, Stamp, Fold online page.

The Small Talks section brings a transcript of talks between a selection of members of the movement that took place as apart of the exhibition Clip, Stamp, Fold in 2007 in New York. In different combinations the origines and motivations as well as the individual context of the activity and the magazine are discussed with an audience.

Stocktaking is a timeline bringing together a section of publication, ranging from 1962 to 1979. Each issue with a paragraph summarizing its content and context. This is a great resource and a very interesting read, since it provides an overview and the changes over the whole period can be directly followed.

The Facsimile and the Interview part are interwoven with the interviews printed experimentally onto 'inbook-magazines' surrounded by reprinted example pages taken from some of the magazines. It properly feels like poking around in an archive looking into different drawers with these great treasures popping out, explaining themselves.

Image taken from architizer online / View into the exhibition space in Vancouver. The exhibition traveled the world after it was showing in New York.

Amongst the people interviewed are Peter Cook, Peter Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton, Hans Hollein, Rafael Moneo, Graham Shane, Philip Steadman, Bernhard Tschumi or Tom Wooley, to name a few. In total there are a staggering 47 interviews.

The publication manages to be different things at the same time. It is a documentation of the activities and the context of this magazine period, but it is also a book preserving the motivations and stories behind the individual magazines. Furthermore it is also a summary of the achievements and an position statement thirty years later.

As such this can be read as a vision and a starting point for visions to come. The publication has an extensive website.

Image taken from Peter Lang / Book cover, back and front.

Colomina, B. & Buckley, C. eds., 2010. Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196x -197x, Barcelona: Actar.

New City Landscape - Calgary

2011-07-14T11:12:00.003+01:00

Calgary was established in 1875 as Fort Brisebois by the North-West Mounted Police, located at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers in what is now Calgary, Alberta. Today Calgary is the largest city in Alberta and directs an oil and gas empire, making a rather good situated urban centre.

The city is located similar to Denver at the transition zone between the prairie in the East and the Rocky Mountains in the West. This dominates the views and the impression of the place. However, unlike in Denver the tall mountains are further in the distance. The rockies in Alberta fade out in to the flat land with smaller hills.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Calgary New City Landscape map generated from location based tweets collected over the period of one week. The area covered is within a 30 km radius of Calgary.

The urban area is quite active on Twitter and the NCL map draws out the city features nicely. The main features are the airport, the downtown, the absent Nose Hill Park. Also the the main movement corridor the famous Calgary Y shape shows up on the map as a North West to South Centre connection with a North East connection via the airport.

Calgary New City Landscape

Image by urbanTick using the GMap Image Cutter / Calgary New City Landscape Use the Google Maps style zoom function in the top right corner to zoom into the map and explore it in detail. Explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view. The maps were created using our CASA Tweet-O-Meter, in association with DigitalUrban and coded by Steven Gray, this New City Landscape represents location based twitter activity.

The main peak is over the downtown area as expected. The summit is right above the Scotia Centre building. This central mountain extends to the South West towards the Access Cliff and to the North East to the Highland Park Cliff.

Some of the missing areas are the Nose Hill Park which appears completely empty on the Twitter map with basically no activity. Also around the CPR the tweet desert spreads far, all the way down to the Bennett Forest.

Image taken from Wikimedia / Calgary as it appeared circa 1885.

The Y shaped sequence of hills connecting the downtown area to the outskirts follows the main transport arteries of Calgary, the C-Train.
This transport system is the core of public transport in Calgary and free in the Downtown area but extends beyond. It is accomplished by a bus network.

The City of Calgary is very much a morning city with quite a bit more tweets sent in the morning hours between eight and twelve. The afternoon is slow and the nights early, with the characteristic night dip starting before three and ending soon after four.

The dominating language is clearly English with other languages used on Twitter in this area being very low. For the platforms used the four dominating ones are Twitter for iPhone, Ueber Social, Twitter for Black Berry and the web.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / The rose shows the twitter activity per hour of the day, starting at 00:00 at the top, displayed as local time. Calgary is a morning city with more activity between eight and twelve than through out the afternoon and evening. The graphs show the platform of preference used to send the tweet and the language set respectively.

Book - Animate Form - Topology, Time, and Parameters

2011-07-13T13:32:00.002+01:00

The famous book 'Animate Form' on digital architecture by Greg Lynn is out as a reprint. Its twelve years and a lot of development, both technically as part of the software, application, platform and architecture has happende since.

The publication was originally published in 1999 as one of the very first comprehensive books on digital architecture and has no been reprinted as a 2011 version by Princeton Architectural Press, the original publisher. The new print has no changes and runs as the same book.

Image taken from facstaff / Motion Studies produced by Etienne Jules Marey (late 1800s).

Interesting enough, even though it is twelve years old the content of the book is still relevant, hence the republication. A lot has changed on the technical side with software, but the heart of the publication which is on the nature of digital architecture is very relevant today. The fundamentals Lynn points out in his text 'Animate Form' still has not sunken in with everyday practice today. As he writes: "There are three fundamental properties of organization in a computer that are very different from the characteristics of inert mediums such as paper and pencil: topology, time, and parameters."

The temporal aspect is the one that still is underused and only peripheral implemented. The main focus is still on the end product but not on the process. However as for example Kas Oosterhuis also points out in his recent book 'Towards a New Kind of Building' the process is beginning to play a more important role.

To understand Lynn's work however this temporal aspect is essential. Somehow it could be put as the source as the biomorphic character of most of the shapes. As Lynn points out in the text, one of the original insirations and references is the work by Étienne-Jules Marey in the late 1800s. Marey was interested in motion photography just like Eadweard Muybridge, however Marey used tags to direct the focus of the image as well as trigger the camera. The tags, usually attached to the joints of the subject, paint the motion line, by Marey termed 'phase portraits'.

Lynn is also focusing on this aspect with his work implementing a range of states for each design element.

Image taken from University of Houston / Etienne-Jules Marey used pneumatic triggers, attached to the joints of animals, to trigger camera exposures in rhythmic sequences. In this way, the rhythm of photographic instances were sequenced to the movements of the animal. "Device for harnessing the pigeon to the revolving frame," from Marey, "Le Vol des oiseaux," as appears in Frangois Dagognet, Etienne Jules Morey: A Passion for the Trace (New York: Zone Books, I 992), 85

The second part of the book is dedicated to seven Form projects playing with the digitalisation of architecture from design, development to fabrication. One of the projects is for example Lynn's contribution to the competition for the Cardiff Opera House, which was won by Zaha Hadid but was never built.

Image taken from basilik / Redering of the proposed Cardiff Opera House by Greg Lynn Form.

Another project is a Greg Lynn Form contribution to the Yokohama Terminal competition, eventually won and built by FOA. The two projects FOA and Greg Lynn Form have formal similarities probably because there are similarities in the process structure. The main ide is a merge of function and dynamic programming of usage.

The book is definitely laying out the fundamental of digital architecture and has set the standard pretty high. In the mean time a number of publications have followed from professionals across disciplines and interests, extending and confirming what Greg Lynn has proposed in the 1999 original publication.

Image taken from fapyd / Book cover.

Lynn, G., 2011. Animate Form, New York, N.Y: Princeton Architectural Press.