Intelligent Infrastructure: Zipcars, Invisible Networks and Urban Transformation by University of Virginia Press.
This edited collection brings together many of the most important new voices in the fields impacting modern infrastructure. A dynamic and diverse cast of contributors includes Mitchell Schwarzer, Frederic Stout, Anthony Townsend, Carlo Ratti of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE, and many other innovators who are changing the urban landscape.
http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4831
Mimi Zeiger and Tim Durfee, Editors
http://mimizeiger.com/category/architecture/therese-tierney/
Synthetic Digital Ecologies
http://tracesf.com/2013/02/acadia-2012-synthetic-digital-ecologies/
Journal of Urban History, Oct 2023.
Disentangling Public Space: Social Media & Internet Activism
Co-edited by Therese Tierney and Anthony Burke. New York: Princeton Architectural Press 2007
Christopher Hight and Chris Perry, Editors. Collective Intelligence in Design.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470026529.html
Leonardo Journal of Art, Science & Technology 43:6
Leonardo Journal of Art, Science & Technology 43:6
How to Hack Utopias: A Blog from the UIUC School of Architecture
T F Tierney, Editor
https://modernutopias.wordpress.com/
Images by Ellen Hartman, Ryan Learas, Vincent Velasco. All rights reserved.
The notion of utopia is not a singular, stable entity, but a provisional phenomena, historically complex and variable. Due to its synthetic origins, utopia has multiple meanings and is used across different disciplines to signify diverse concepts. It is perhaps this very ambiguity that endows utopias with experimental possibilities for architects, historians, theorists, and philosophers.
Architects who deal with utopia have had to contend directly with the ideological forces of politics, technology, and economics, according to theorist Christina Contandriopoulos. Utopian speculations have thus catalyzed architectural discourse and design throughout most of the twentieth century. In the late 1970s a decisive shift occurred when leading theorists such as Frederick Jameson, Charles Jencks, and Manfredi Tafuri declared the death of modernity’s utopia. In the decades that followed, utopia was eliminated from architectural culture and excluded from practice.[1] Since the turn of the millennium, utopian ideas seem to be prospering once again, and an expressive wave of new visionary projects—artificial islands, mountain skyscrapers, wind farms, waste and energy treatment plants, intelligent infrastructures, and entirely new cities—are engaging the issues of our time with a speculative force that seeks to reinvent our cities and environments.
Thus the aim for this publication is to opportunistically and optimistically initiate a conversation on utopia as a means to identify new locations for productive interventions. And yet, utopian architecture does more than merely represent future possibilities. When visionary ideas ignite a cultural imaginary, new allegiances and participatory practices are formed. For landscape architect and urban planner, Kevin Lynch, cultural imaginaries play a significant role in understanding context and in influencing the decisions that either enable or limit possible futures for them. The imaging of utopia provides a space for urban residents to reflect on their experience and to intervene in decision-making processes.[2] They enable a collective conversation and deliberation among residents as a space to envision a different kind of city from what was inherited. These essays and projects from UIUC School of Architecture, How to Hack Utopias seminar contain a set of explorations demonstrating how architects can contribute to a more equitable, accessible, and sustainable city. Architecture such as this poses questions, images alternatives, and stages potentials, nudging the public toward a new openness and expanded understanding -- with the potential to contribute to transformative change.
[1] Christina Contandriopoulos, Introduction Utopia: 2016. JAE March 2013 67:1
[2] Kevin Lynch The Image of the CityMIT Press, Cambridge MA 1960
Author: Ellen Hartman (c) all rights reserved
In the late 2010s, the Internet of Things connected objects, such as refrigerators, thermostats, and alarm clocks to the world-wide-web in an effort to automate many of humanity’s mundane and time-consuming tasks. As that system evolved, not only were more and more things connected, but there were more ways of linking those objects—until a new network was needed to connect everything. https://modernutopias.wordpress.com/home/meganature/
Author: Ellen Hartman (c) all rights reserved.
To respond to the environment, biobots created their own autonomous environmental monitoring and robotics network, one that sensed and responded to the planet’s feedback. https://modernutopias.wordpress.com/home/meganature/
Author: Ryan Learas (c) all rights reserved
The Next Gen Mobile Energy [NGME] is an advanced technological innovation in renewable energy sources. The NGME Device is a small upgrade from the current technology used today, but one that has the potential to influence the future of sustainability. https://modernutopias.wordpress.com/home/ngme/
Authors: Vincent Velasco & Qiao Ding
The Ontogenic City will change the way its residents travel from one point to another. Conventionally, residents of a city travel to their destinations by private cars or public transportation. Instead of using an intermediary method of transportation to cover the distance between two points, why not minimize the distance altogether? Moving the points closer to each other dramatically undercuts the need for a transportation intermediary. https://modernutopias.wordpress.com/home/the-ontogenic-city/
Video Artist: TF Tierney
Over the course of twelve hours, the sun's movement is tracked across an abandoned warehouse, dramatically shaping the viewer's perception of space. Winner of BAMPFA Critics' Choice Award 2008 Length: 5 minutes
ZIPBox Housing will be exhibited at MIT DISRUPTING MOBILITIES International summit November 12-14 2015.
ZIPBox Housing at MIT DISRUPTING MOBILITIES
This design research studio speculates on how a place-based Internet Library & Archive might reflect the social turn in architecture in three ways: [1] historical analysis of information exchange; [2] new programmatic interpretations based on ethnographic data; and [3] cultural contextual analysis.
Image Credit: Stephen Ferroni. The Archiving Machine: Perspective from Freeway, UIUC, 2018
ECO Cities Exhibition: Test bed for sustainable design at [co][lab] gallery. Opening reception will be held Friday 5-7pm.
While transit-oriented development [ToD] offers significant benefits for sustainable urban living, one drawback is that they require highly specific infill sites located adjacent to public transportation routes. Recently the emergence of shared mobility has extended the parameters of ToD requirements, as well as their typological configurations. Responding to those new conditions, ZIPBox Housing -- a scalable prototype development – combines the flexibility of shared mobility with current demographic preferences for urban living. As a novel planning framework, ZIPBox critically examines conventional multi-family housing guidelines by challenging the basic assumption of one unit/one car rule. It achieves a one-to-two (and potentially one-to-four) ratio of apartment unit to parking space, thereby freeing up additional space for amenities. Given that ZIPBox residents have limited access to a personal car, they rely on mobility-on-demand [MoD] services, bicycling, or adjacent public transportation. ZIPBox’s planning framework not only demonstrates the advantages of an efficient multi-unit housing scheme, but also solves sustainable objectives by reducing traffic congestion at the scale of the city. ZIPBox Housing emphasizes how generational aspirations, in tandem with shared mobility services, are contributing to new patterns of urban development –– all of which may have significant environmental benefits.
Positioned at the intersection of design computation and physical spaces, this exhibition explores the potential of interactive objects, surfaces, and situations for aesthetic, critical, and sustainable initiatives. Featuring a range of video prototypes and installations, these projects cultivate new methodologies and vocabularies of design by demonstrating the ways in which interactive systems can respond to social and environmental realities.
Images provided by Anthony Dombrowski and Yang Yu. All rights reserved.
Positioned at the intersection of design computation and physical spaces, this exhibition explores the potential of interactive objects, surfaces, and situations for aesthetic, critical, and sustainable initiatives. Featuring a range of video prototypes and installations, these projects cultivate new methodologies and vocabularies of design by demonstrating the ways in which interactive systems can respond to social and environmental realities.
Positioned at the intersection of design computation and physical spaces, this exhibition explores the potential of interactive objects, surfaces, and situations for aesthetic, critical, and sustainable initiatives. Featuring a range of video prototypes and installations, these projects cultivate new methodologies and vocabularies of design by demonstrating the ways in which interactive systems can respond to social and environmental realities.
Smart Cities seminar and Workshop: Tingting and Travis
ECO Cities: Test bed for sustainable design
Design Team
Justin Wood, Matt Strack, Joe Belcha. All rights reserved.
[i-metro] is an interactive information commons situated within metro stations, providing free locative and comprehensive travel-related information in real-time. Information is displayed through a touch screen interface similar to a vastly oversized iphone providing travelers with access to maps, timetables, ticket reservations – thus transforming the urban experience through layered opportunities and data most useful on the go. Transit riders may also upload their own content through messaging and geo-tagging. [i-metro] contributes to new forms of public engagement by creating socially rich glocal nodes for public benefit by linking the scale of the webpage to that of the city in real time.
Positioned at the intersection of physical space and design computation, this workshop seminar explores the potential of interactive objects, surfaces, and situations for aesthetic, critical, and sustainable initiatives. Featuring a range of video prototypes and installations, these projects cultivate new methodologies and vocabularies of design by demonstrating the ways in which interactive systems can respond to social and environmental realities.
Images credit as noted. All rights reserved.
PROJECT BY: TINGTING PENG AND TRAVIS NORVILLE
The concept for this environmentally responsive umbrella came from the idea of utilizing an everyday normative object and transforming it into an all-weather solution for urban plazas. Issues that traditionally have plagued large paved urban spaces consist of warm climate conditions where pedestrians are traveling through these expansive walkways with little shade....Read more https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/mary-poppins/
PROJECT BY: KAT STOWELL, JULIE ZIDEK & MATTHEW DAITER
The design intention is to create a piece of interactive clothing for dogs that can be used by pet-owners to better understand their voiceless companions. We have implemented multiple sensors in order to gather data and create an output which will be easily understood and displayed. Our wearable object is designed to be customizable with additional sensors—to be a building block for designers and pet lovers alike. The most vital data collected from our design includes heart rate, GPS, angle of tilt, and auditory information....Read more
https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/barkitecture/
PROJECT BY: SAMUEL BERK & SHAOPENG ZHANG
With the use of an Xbox Kinect motion camera it become possible for a space to effectively become aware of the actions and desires of its inhabitants. The camera has the potential to map an entire room in digital three dimensional space. The space can begin to react to its inhabitants be deconstructing their actions into raw data. The data can then be analyzed to make the space come alive....Read more
https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/xmotion-magic/
PROJECT BY: ANTHONY DOMBROWSKI
As the world becomes more connected and ever more digital, so should the artifacts that we build. This approach enables architecture to play as big of a role in sustainability and innovation as other fields. “Architecture as Environmental Interface” is a reactive facade prototype ....Read more [includes demo video]
https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/environmental-interface/
PROJECT BY: AARON LANIOSZ & XUEXIA LI
Simplexity reduces visual complexity while maintaining a room’s functionality through a tensioned surface of elastic fabric. Interaction with the surface begins when sensors detect proximity. The sensor then relays a signal to servo motors which bring forth the desired furniture geometry, and thus, furniture becomes a building system integrated into architecture....Read more
https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/simplexity/
PROJECT BY: COLTER WEHMEIER & DREW SMITH
If we can intuitively gather what the weather is like by glancing out a window, why couldn't we adopt that strategy for visual communication and interaction design? Slow data such as weather, time, and occupancy can be expressed via informative atmospherics, thereby transforming digital noise into a human-intuitive signal. The Fish Tank is a reactive architectural installation that anticipates a positive role for smart buildings by providing....
https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/aquarium/
PROJECT BY: JOHN CAMPBELL & CHRISTIAN PEPPER
The team's design intention is to create a surface condition that interacts with user presence and activity. The modular system can be deployed anywhere; it's self containing and is meant to lead users in their activities, both alone and in tandem with others. Dance Space can be networked to communicate with other Dance Spaces throughout a building or area.... Read more
https://interactiondesignexhibit.wordpress.com/portfolio/dance-space/
Tierney, Thérèse. “Will 3D Printing Revolutionize Architecture?,” Illinois MakerLab, BIF Design Education, February 6, 2014.
http://makerlab.illinois.edu/2014/02/06/will-3d-printing-revolutionize-architecture/
Student name here 2014
Ortega 2014: 3D Organizational Studies
Li 2014: Ur-form studies
Ding 2014: Ur-form studies
Students assemble CNC Site Model
![ECO Cities Exhibition: Test bed for sustainable design at [co][lab] gallery. Opening reception will be held Friday 5-7pm.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/563bc4f6e4b0dec3bf6a81e8/1477841603991-KYCMIKJ8K25XWAMGJ8HU/CoLab.jpg)
![[SMART CITIES] Interaction Design](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/563bc4f6e4b0dec3bf6a81e8/1446786022869-R5JBM4MV292DREIN9GNJ/576.INTERACTION.EXHIBIT.INVITATION.jpg)
