CityScope Project is a powerful tool created by MIT’s MediaLab that uses augmented reality to quickly and simply model the effects of large-scale urban-planning decisions, allowing urban planning to be more accessible to everyone. The technology employs TIM, a tangible-interactive rapid prototyping environment for matrices of data. TIM uses an array of optically tagged LEGO bricks on the tabletop with overhead projectors that beam color-coded metrics onto each brick: a combination of computer vision and 3D projection mapping.

Overview from MIT’s MediaLab: “We develop simulation systems to predict and quantify the potential impact of disruptive interventions within new and existing cities. We place a special emphasis on augmented reality decision support systems (ARDSS) that facilitate non-expert stakeholder collaboration within complex urban environments. Such systems blend hardware, software, human interface design, cloud computation, and variants of so-called big data. “CityScope” is an open source platform for shared, interactive computation.”

This technology works at follows: every LEGO piece has a special chip that communicates with the overhead projectors, which beams metrics affected by each decision onto the new configuration. So, chips of each brick are assigned a user-determined variable such as “150-unit residential building,” “2-ha park” or “4-lane road”; and other variables such as walkability, access to jobs, housing or open space can easily be estimated in the following way: once assembled on the tabletop, the objects are able to represent an existing neighborhood, city or region, and users are able to pick up and insert, move or remove individual components while this changes to the city are visually revealed in real-time by changing color-codes projected onto the pieces. For example, if you placed a “150-unit residential building” piece onto a previously empty plot of land, the color of the street in front of the new building would change to indicate a quantifiable increase in traffic density. Thus, users from any background can configure the table collaboratively.

Perhaps, the most important value of this technology as a tool of management and governance is the ability to offer information about specific locations: building legislation, transportation systems, walkability, access to jobs, etc. The CityScope method is well suited to model the physical effects of zoning and building regulations, and it can be considered as a repository for hyper-local concerns, public meetings regarding zoning or building projects, allowing planners to easily communicate with their constituency in a more clear and accurate manner.

In conclusion, the beauty and perhaps the most important feature of CityScope rests in its ease of understanding and simplicity of use, being a great example of a technology that adapts to the actions of people instead of the other way around. In other words, allowing urban issues to be more accessible for everyone and providing a much higher level of transparency and accountability than we are used to today.

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La entrada Open Urban Planning: CityScope | An interactive LEGO City | MIT’s MediaLab se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The network of pink pipes responds to the need to drain water from the ground of the city before the construction of buildings or infrastructure below ground level. The unprejudiced decision to allow pipes run free in the urban space, plus painting them the same pink color, has meant that they become a landmark in the German capital.

“What are those colourful tubes for? Is it an art installation? Are they used for transporting natural gas? These are some of the typical questions asked by those who visit Berlin. Colourful external tubes, running throughout the entire city, are one of the first things to be noticed. They immerse themselves into the landscape of the city, not only in modern Prenzlauer Berg or Kreuzberg, but also meandering through the historical sights in Mitte. I myself was also deceived, thinking it to be just another piece of modern art. But here we present you with the explanation of the meaning of 60 km of coloured Berlin’s pipes.”

“Berlin is surrounded by several lakes, and is home to the river Spree. Not to get into too much detail, it simply means that the ground Berlin is built on is quite marshy. […] With groundwater in Berlin existing just two meters under the city’s surface, consequently, it is impossible to dig any tunnels without the risk of flooding the German capital. […] Thus, the pipes surrounding Berlin serve to pump water from the ground and transport it to the canals, allowing both together to drain the basements of the city and to facilitate the urban works. For more than a century already, a company named ‘Pollems’ has been responsible for the system.”

“And what about tube’s colours then? Bernd Kempf, managing director at Pollems, told BBC that years ago they asked a psychologist which colours they should choose to paint the pipes. She suggested pink and purple, mostly because they are the colours prefered by children.”

“And to also solve the tube’s last riddle, why do they have all these twists and turns? The answer is down to earth as well. When temperatures fall under 15 degrees, the material can shrink or break. Avoiding long linear parts prevent the pipes from doing just that.
The idea of the twisting pink iron tubes is one of the landmarks of Berlin and the idea is being copied by other cities in Europe, e.g Warsaw.”

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La entrada Pink pipes | Berlin se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The project by RCR arquitectes recovers the place subtly and makes it accessible to visitors. An intervention that reinforces the character of the landscape and activates the surprise factor in its discovery.

“In the volcanic Natural Park of La Garrotxa in Les Preses, near Olot, there is a unique place: a sea of rocks that is the product of the basaltic mass of the Croscat volcano and the result of man’s hard struggle to own a piece of land to harvest. A fertile terrain in which the plots were gradually levelled and the stones removed to be used later in broad walls, mounds and sheds. Their morphological bumpy and tactile texture stimulates the senses.”

“The project aims to recover the place cleaning it of weeds and undergrowth, strengthening its rough character through the sight of the accumulated stones and suggesting an itinerary that permits discovering the park little by little. A series of signs or the vegetation itself show landmarks, forks and frames along the path. A biological agriculture, of products hardly ever harvested in the region, is kept in good condition.”

“The most marked intervention is located, however, in the access to the precinct. A series of grooves, traced between the volcanic stone by discontinuous walls of Corten steel sheet, creates an initiation path of ridged triangular geometry, endowed with a severe, bold and, to a great extent, unknown beauty.”

Images: Plataforma Arquitectura

Text: AV Monografías 137 (2009) Madrid: Arquitectura Viva

La entrada Piedra Tosca Park | Strengthening the singularity of the volcanic landscape | RCR se publicó primero en More Than Green.

Polder Cup is a one-day football championship in the polders. The special features of the typical Dutch landscape imply that the football pitches are crossed by water channels or that the field is muddy, which requires adapting the rules and inventing new strategies for the game. Thus, a standard global practice is reinvented by inserting it in a specific context, acquiring a local character.

“The facade of the Witte de With art institute in central Rotterdam was adorned with a grass-green banner featuring images of meadows marked with white lines and criss-crossed with straight ditches. Together, the meadows formed four football pitches, one large and three smaller, and the chalk lines appeared ragged compared to the perfectly straight lines of the ditches. The ditches divided the playing fields into asymmetrical blocks that were dotted with hollows and bumps. The banner invited passersby to participate in a football match in the polder, but the unconventional playing fields were a warning that the rules would have to be adapted to suit the situation.

Passersby were confronted by the changes to the rules and the disruption of recognisable scenes. The football pitches re-divided the familiar landscape of parcelled polders, and the ditches and the marshy ground that characterise this typically Dutch landscape determined how the game was played.

(…) As well as being demarcated by the white chalk lines, the boundaries of the football pitches were delimited by real corner flags and real goalposts. Balls that ended up in the ditches were recovered with nets and missed shots were retrieved from the banks using canoes and oars.

(…) The game activated and actualized the geometric polder landscape of ditches and meadows, investing it with a degree of individuality. The event transformed, in De Certeau’s words, a stable and incontrovertible ‘place’ (lieu) into a dynamic ‘space’ (espace).

(…) In Polder Cup the tall grass, the pollen and the squishy ground restricted the players’ movements. The ditches not only transect the pitches, but the presence of water also meant that the official rules of the game have to be ‘rectified’. Players were not allowed to leap over the ditches, which meant a defender could never move to the opposite side of the pitch. Consequently, the players had to discuss and revise their tactics and devise new strategies in the heat of the moment, without them being formalized.”

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Images: Maider López

Text: Ilse van Rijn

La entrada Polder Cup | Football pitches in the Dutch polder | Maider López se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The intervention establishes a new relationship between the bay and the city, or between the water of the bay and the citizens. The dynamic nature of the tide is translated into changing sounds in the jetty, transforming this into a recognizable and mysterious place. Moreover, the jetty was built reusing stones from a local abandoned cemetery, what drives the memory of the place.

“The Wave Organ is located on a jetty that forms the small Boat Harbor in the Marina district of San Francisco. The jetty itself was constructed with material taken from a demolished cemetery, providing a wonderful assortment of carved granite and marble, which was used in the construction of this piece. The installation includes 25 organ pipes made of PVC and concrete located at various elevations within the site, allowing for the rise and fall of the tides. Sound is created by the impact of waves against the pipe ends and the subsequent movement of the water in and out of the pipes. The sound heard at the site is subtle, requiring visitors to become sensitized to its music, and at the same time to the music of the environment.”

“The concept was developed by Peter Richards and was installed in collaboration with sculptor and master stone mason George Gonzales. Inspiration for the piece came from artist Bill Fontana’s recordings made of sounds emanating from a vent pipe of a floating concrete dock in Sydney, Australia.”

“In 1980, Richards (a Senior Artist at the Exploratorium for many years) received a planning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that enabled him to conduct an extensive period of investigation into the physicality of the Wave Organ phenomenon.”

“A prototype, built at the same location, was presented as part of the New Music ’81 Festival. Though very rudimentary in nature, it generated enthusiasm and support for a permanent work. Permit acquisition and fundraising efforts by Frank Oppenheimer, Founding Director of the Exploratorium, began soon after, but actual construction did not start until September 1985, seven months after Oppenheimer’s death. The Wave Organ was completed in May 1986.”

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Images: Listen to the world

Images: Dimart

La entrada The Wave Organ | A wave-activated acoustic jetty | San Francisco se publicó primero en More Than Green.

It is a reality, this project that already we promoted from this blog a few years ago, and has become the first public infrastructure project financed by collective funding, becoming the beginning of crowdfunding urbanism.

The idea arose in parallel to the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) under the name I make Rotterdam, and soon generated a great expectation.

The initiative was proposed in 2011 by ZUS team provided unite three parts of Rotterdam, before disconnected due to be separated by railway tracks.

In the dissemination strategy of the project, in addition to the bright yellow color used iconically, highlights that included the ability to customize a portion of the bridge inscribing the name of each donor an amount exceeding 25 €. A customization that characterizes the new road and also gives it a symbolic collective belonging.

This urban strategy has been accompanied by the reuse of outbuildings to this new route. Have therefore been established around new housing, shops and an urban garden, which have helped revitalize the area.

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Images: Deezen

La entrada Luchtsingel pedestrian bridge | Crowdfunding urbanism | Rotterdam se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The installation uses the existing roof of an old brewery to hang a huge cloud of white ropes from it. Thus, the project encourages playful and collective use of the public space in which it is located. The variation in the length of the ropes creates a relation between full and empty that enables different modes of using and experiencing the space.

“Adult girls and boys revived their inner Tarzan when the installation ‘The Rope Show’, with 3500 ropes suspended from a giant canopy, was inaugurated at the former Carlsberg Brewery area in Copenhagen, Denmark on 09 December 2010. This project is the third of three spaces at Carlsberg experimenting with temporary installations, which should attract citizens of Copenhagen to stay and be active in the public spaces between the former brewery buildings.”

“The focus of the project was to utilize an existing roof and create both active experiences and intimate spaces without spoiling the rare quality of the existing large covered public space. This approach springs from an overall strategy to build on the existing character and qualities of Carlsberg, and reinforce them through temporary urban installations.”

“Both intimacy and challenges are created through a simple concept of hanging around 3500 heavy white ropes fitted with orange ends in the roof structure. The ropes hang closely, with approximately half a meter between them, and produce both a clear outer contour and an internal maze with the possibility of losing yourself.”

“The dense jungle of rope is in some places cleared as the ropes are cut at precise heights in order to form vaulted spaces of varying sizes that can be used as hangouts and for various events. Similarly, there is a pedestrian and cyclist path cut straight through.”

“The construction is in some ways reversed as reinforcements of the canopy and the suspension points of the ropes are all located at the top, allowing the structure to have minimal contact with the ground instead of standing on a solid foundation. The suspension converts gravity into a dynamic force, which helps to keep the ropes in almost constant motion. Only a slight breeze will send swirls through the ropes and make the entire structure seem unstable. It can be experienced as the weightless state of seaweed swaying in a current.”

“When passers-by swing in the ropes they get a sensual experience of moving three-dimensionally in an extraordinary space. The urban jungle is an example of a distinctive urban space that is not subject to a strict functional programme, but is open to be used and experienced in mysterious ways by the public.”

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La entrada The Rope Show | A playful urban installation made of ropes | Copenhagen se publicó primero en More Than Green.

“To help families and children-parents to confront the enemies of child health such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle or the virus”, the Spanish Agency of Pediatrics (AEP) has created “The super-healthy troops”. A series of comics, videos and multimedia material awareness to children about how to stay healthy.

Super-healthy Troop is a set of children fighting in the stories against “Mr. Armchair (sedentarism), that traps children from television screens and video games, Mr. Glotonetix (obesity) that steals breakfast, or against the virus army commanded by Mr. and Ms. Measles Mumps. “

The strategy is given by the same acronym (in Spanish) of the agency that promotes this action, AEP: Food, Exercise and Prevention.

The development of the “super powers” are given for education in these matters to children and, incidentally, to the parents. The one hand basic recommendations are given in terms of food in order to maintain a balanced diet, also give basic information provided to encourage physical activity, and finally encourage children to maintain good personal hygiene and follow the vaccination schedule .

(via trucosdemamas.com)

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La entrada Super-healthy troop | Superheroes to encourage children’s health se publicó primero en More Than Green.

In recent years, more and more initiatives try to counter the role of the car in urban streets with projects like PARK(ing) Day, World Car-Free Day in Riga or Neighborhood in Motion. These bottom-up projects show how the removal of cars affects the urban space and the mindsets and lifestyles of the residents.

“In Ghent 16 residential streets were transformed into collectively created spaces. It all started in 2013 with a bunch of enthusiasts who were busy with the Ghent policy concerning the future of mobility. In order to make people feel what a difference it makes when streets are used by people instead of cars, they came up with the idea of ‘Leefstraten’ which translates as Living Streets. Leefstraten is an experiment that enables inhabitants to transform their street into a place they’ve always dreamed of. By removing the cars and finding other places for parking, new space came available that were turned into places with slides, hen houses, petanque courts, pop-up bars and a lot of astroturf and picnic benches.

One of the most interesting elements is that the process is led by the inhabitants themselves. All the locations have a different outcome resulting in a different use or no use at all. The inhabitants all have their own ideas on how to use the street, which makes up a very local decision making process.

The success in Ghent has led to initiatives in different cities across the Netherlands and Belgium, but seems suitable for every city with inhabitants that want to create places for people instead of cars.”

(Via Pop-Up City)

(Photos by Dries Gysels and Jesse Jorg)

La entrada Leefstraten | Living streets made by people se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The Water Mirror offers a meeting place in town to play and cool off, and establishes an intelligent relationship with its historical context.

Water Mirror is a rectangular water surface designed by French architect Michel Corajoud and located in a very particular point of Bordeaux (France) since 2009. This pool of 3,450 square meters of water is strategically situated between the Garonne River and the Place de la Bourse, in a way that it fully reflects the characteristic façades of the 18th century buildings that are located in it. Thus, the emergence of this new urban element generates an interesting visual game between the historic buildings, the square, the river and the new water surface.

Moreover, the mirror effect of the thin film of water can be suddenly interrupted by the appearance of an artificial fog that exceeds two meters. Thus, the combination of liquid and vaporized water offers refreshment to the citizens on the hottest days. Thanks to these social qualities, the Mirror of Water has become a major attraction for entertainment, play and rest, especially during the summer.

“A series of in situ coincidences led us to create a new urban equipment, which is fresh and playful and doesn’t fight (oppose) the Bourse building, but displays a polite attitude in relation with it.”

“This global device: square, water and mist, magnifies the heritage of this part of the docks, and it quickly became […] a place to practice games, a place of entertainment, refreshment, an attraction point. This unexpected event has become an urban phenomenon that goes far beyond our expectations.”

“The elegant historic French idea of the central reflecting pool has been made participatory. The water mirror both forces people backwards to observe the reflection and then bring them together in the play of splashing water and hide-and-go-seek fog.”

(via aesthetic grounds)

(images via landezine)

La entrada Water Mirror | A place to cool off in Bourdeaux se publicó primero en More Than Green.