This interview is in the framework of a Phd research about new technologies and hybrid cities. It aims to demonstrate how this new tools can revitalize public spaces at the city.

how would you define public space?

I understand a public space as an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens without discriminations; Nowadays public spaces have their digital counterparts where people gather, share, and engage with each other and their environment.

how would you describe public space at our cities nowadays? (problems and qualities)

The integration of computing, sensing, and actuation technologies in everyday urban settings and lifestyles is transforming contemporary public spaces. In consequence, it may not only matter how good the physical infrastructure is, it is the software infrastructure that also affects how individuals experience it. The ubiquitous technologies (e.g. mobile phone, RFID, sensors) that afford us new flexibility in experiencing public spaces are simultaneously providing the means to reveal our dynamics through the collection, classification, storage, and dissemination of recorded knowledge constituting a city.  However contemporary public spaces are not only about technology, they are also about interaction designs, about taking into account the wider context of organization, systems and people, and even legal and political contexts, belief systems and social and cultural fabric. If we do not understand these aspects, we are prone to make the same mistakes as those originated by past visions that relied on the fascination around the hard infrastructures and reducing cities and their spaces to systems.

what would you change at public spaces ? (proposals, solutions)

The presence of the soft infrastructure and its logging capabilities implies that we are at the end of the ephemeral; in some ways we have new means to replay the public spaces. This potential echoes very well with the recent interest of urban planners and designers in unconventional data sources. Currently land use and space activity data are mainly collected through very traditional means with people paid to perform manual count. These non-longitudinal data limit the emergence of evidences from the statistical relations with variables (e.g. What is the effect of physical layout on movement? How do people use the space?). With the increasing availability of soft infrastructure the process of data collection is improved. For instance, it allows to better model time, space, and behavior as investigated in the domain of simulations. In contrast, we are also ahead of conflicts to reveal or hide unwanted evidences, when new data can be used to the detriment of some stakeholders. Indeed the retrieved information might not be of primary benefit of each individual who contributes to a census. Moreover, some of this information can challenge political decisions that were previously taken based on assumptions or limited survey data. For instance it might lead to a decrease in the offering of public transport in an unjustifiably well-connected public space.

This end of the ephemeral calls for new approaches to privacy issues. In many domains, there is an ever growing number of personalized records which are being collected in public spaces, and at times disseminated in the databases and customer management systems of businesses, organizations, and government agencies that service modern living. In fact, these digital footprints have become inevitable in contemporary society and also necessary if we wish to enjoy many modern conveniences; we can no more be separated from it than we could be separated from the physical shadow cast by our body on a sunny day (Zook et al., 2004). The growth of our data shadows is an ambiguous process, with varying levels of individual concern and the voluntarily trading of privacy for convenience in many cases.

In summary, at the same time as ubiquitous geoinformation gives us new means to map and model human dynamics, it will also challenge current notions of privacy and make the object of study much more fragmented, dynamic, and chaotic. The challenge will be to appreciate and use the complexity and richness of ubiquitous geofinformation without crystallizing into authoritarian structures.

how do you think new technologies influence on public space’s changes? (hybrid spaces)

The ubiquitous technologies that afford us new flexibility in conducting our daily activities are simultaneously providing the means to study our activities in time and space. Indeed, the logs, fruits of these interactions, could reveal elements of human and social use of the ubiquitous technology itself and people’s mobility and travel behaviors. These latter evidences could be employed as indicators of the evolution of the attractiveness of the public spaces amongst other things (Girardin et al, 2009).

In other words, the aim is exploit the information membrane hovering over the physical fabric of public spaces to shift the urban design and planning practices from the speculative predictions and accommodation to more factual observations and improvements. Besides my work on urban attractiveness indicators, other research groups have been using a reality mining approach to derive specific characteristics of urban dynamics (Kostakos et al., 2008). A major challenge in this type of approaches is to draw a clear understanding of the boundaries and biases of the data. Nevertheless, these works support novel ways to describe public spaces leading to an approach we would coin as “human/database urbanism: It could consist in the use of:

The qualitative analysis to inform the quantitative queries: This approach first focuses on people and their practices, without the assumption that something computational or data process is meant to fall out from that. This qualitative angle can then inform a quantitative analysis to generate more empirical evidences of a specific human behavior or pattern. A few approaches in that domain address this perspective. Williams et al (2008) for instance argue that our understanding of the city could benefit from a situated analysis of individual experiences within cities, rather than taking particular urban forms as a starting point for the study of urban experience.

The quantitative data mining to inform the qualitative enquiries: In that approach, the quantitative data help to reveal the emerging and abnormal behaviors, mainly raising questions. The qualitative angle then can help explaining phenomenon in situation. The qualitative approaches actually requests to ask the right questions to learn anything meaningful about a situation.

In conclusion, beyond a utilitarian perspective, we have to consider the promises and hopes around these future cities and their informational membranes. If researchers and practitioners offer citizen better awareness of the dynamics of public space and power to influence their design and evolution, this does not mean they will accept the gift. Indeed, taking the example of citizen-science (Paulos et al., 2008) and volunteer-generated information (Goodchild, 2007), citizens might just not be interested in the collection of data, and the opportunity might increase the divide between the people who are able to participate and those who are not or do not.

Interview: video.

References:

Girardin, F., Vaccari, A., Gerber, A., Biderman, A., and Ratti, C. (2009). Quantifying urban attractiveness from the distribution and density of digital footprints. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research, 4

Goodchild, M. F. (2007). Citizens as voluntary sensors: Spatial data infrastructure in the world of web 2.0. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, 2:24–32.

Kostakos, V., Nicolai, T., Yoneki, E., O’neill, E., Kenn, H., and Crowcroft, J. (2008). Understanding and measuring the urban pervasive infrastructure. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

Paulos, E., Honicky, R., and Hooker, B. (2008). Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City, chapter Citizen Science: Enabling Participatory Urbanism. Hershey.

Williams, A., Robles, E., and Dourish, P. (2008). Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City, chapter Urbane-ing the City: Examining and Refining the Assumptions
Behind Urban Informatics. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, IGI Global.

Zook, M., Dodge, M., Aoyama, Y., and Townsend, A. (2004). New digital geographies: Information, communication, and place. Geography and Technology, pages 155–176.

Fabien Girardin is a researcher and engineer at Lift lab, a research agency he co-founded. He studies and provokes the interplay between urban infrastructures, ubiquitous technologies and people practices. His research employs qualitative observations to gain insights from the integration and user appropriation of technologies in urban environments. Subsequently, Fabien mixes the gained knowledge with engineering techniques to foresee and prototype ideas and solutions for designers, urban service providers, city planners and decision makers.

He holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Digital Communications from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain and an engineering degree from the Biel School of Engineering and Information Technology, Switzerland. Along his academic journey, Fabien was also affiliated with the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA to lead the development of analysis methods of spatio-temporal records generated by human interactions with urban pervasive infrastructures.

I would be grateful for any suggestion and contact of other people who might be interested in being interviewed about public spaces and new technologies.

Domenico Di Siena

What if?

Pupils from Rungsted school, 8B

What if there wasn´t any cars?

What if everyone only had one car and only used it in emergency situations?

What if we could use the energy made in water to our advantage?

What if all our energy came from natural sources like the sun and wind?

What if we could revise everything that we have done?

What if we only used energy from the sun?

What if everybody had a bicycle?

What if we had no aeroplanes?

What if people could be satisfied and wouldn´t keep asking for more?

What if all the energy produced from the weight of the cars on the road could be used for heat and electricity?

What if every house produced more energy than it used?

What if there were only public transport in the city?

What if there were gardens on all the roofs in the city?

What if?

Pupils from Frederiksunds gymnasium (upper secondary school)

What if ashes could be reused?

What if public transport was cheaper?

What if all cars used renewable energy?

What if all transport went under the city?

What if public transport was free?

What if god was one of us?

What if we could have cars driving on water energy?

What if we had car free Sundays?

What if we had car free zones in the city?

What if everybody cared about the nature?

What if we had no neon signs?

What if everybody planted a tree?

What if nature dominated the world again?

What if?

Pupils from Blovstrød school, 5B

What if everyone lived on high stilts so we could have forest and farming everywhere?

What if we could make cars that could accelerate by the use of a rubber band?

What if we used animals instead of lawn mowers?

What if oil was worth nothing so nobody wants to buy it?

What if you could make energy from people running?

What if you could get energy from people doing workout?

What if we in two days didn´t use any electricity?

What if we twice a week were not allowed to take the car?

What if there were only electric cars?

What if you could transform sound to energy so you could make energy from shouting?

…and now we start with our weekly homemade playlists…

spotify:user:eiza1980:playlist:6G2Z28SrMPugyE2azJ0zDL

…and don’t forget to leave your comments

We present some of these references that seem the most appropriate:

The Greenwich Millennium Village (GMV) is an innovative mixed-tenure modern housing estate on an urban village model in Greenwich in south-east London, and part of the Millennium Communities Programme under English Partnerships. The village is designed by architects Ralph Erskine and partners with EPR Architects Ltd as executive architect as part of the regeneration of the whole brownfield site of Greenwich Peninsula former town gas works. GMV is south of the former Millennium Dome, now renamed the O2.The Village is being built by Countryside Properties and Taylor Wimpey. The housing is of modern, environmentally-friendly design, and the development aims to cut primary energy use by 80% using low-energy building techniques and renewable energy technologies. It will continue to expand until about 2015, with its own integrated village shopping and community centres. 1,095 homes and the village square and shops had been completed by 2008.

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The Hockerton Housing Project is a small community of five earth sheltered homes on the outskirts of Hockerton, Nottinghamshire, UK. The houses were designed by ‘green’ architects Professor Brenda Vale and Dr Robert Vale. Low carbon living is facilitated through the use of renewable energy, the water system, food grown on site, and the community’s approach to work and transport. The homes were completed in September 1998 after three years of planning and 18 months of construction, at a cost of about £65,000. Two homes have since changed ownership on the open property market. The development consists of a terrace of five single story dwellings which are earth-sheltered at the rear (North), so that the ground surface slopes and blends smoothly into the field at the back. The houses have passive solar heating (a combination of high thermal mass and the south-facing conservatory) removing the need for a space heating system and the greatest factor in lowering energy use. Each house is 6 metres deep with a 19 meter conservatory to the south. This runs the full width of each dwelling. A repeated modular bay system of 3.2m in width was used for ease and cost of construction. Most of the internal rooms have 3 metre high French windows linking them to the conservatory. Those rooms that are not so dependent on natural light, such as utility and bathing areas are located towards the rear of the homes. The surrounding 10 acre site allows for crop cultivation, the rearing of sheep and chickens, and self-sufficiency in water and energy.

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New homes at Tübingen-Südstadt are developed by innovative building partnerships – groups of individuals working together on a co-operative basis. Designed by Lehen 3 Architekten. The housing market is tight. Families are increasingly priced out by buy-to-let for student rental, and the loss of families and middle income groups to surrounding villages is perceived as a persistent problem. In 1990 the French military decided to leave its base in the Südstadt. This offered a welcome opportunity for the municipality to develop the 65ha brownfield site as a mixed-use urban quarter, which was to provide space for 6,500 inhabitants and 2,000 workplaces. In 2006 the project is nearing completion, with 1,100 residential units built so far, accommodating a population of 3,600.Tübingen is a university town 80km south of Stuttgart. Its population is 87,000 and has been growing for a long time, mainly due to in-migration. A further 8,000 inhabitants are expected by 2020. In Germany the quarter is widely known for its strong and vital community, its distinct urban character and a vibrancy which is unusual for new-build developments. These characteristics are primarily attributed to an innovative development process in which land is acquired and assembled by the municipality and then sold to building partnerships, groups of usually 5-30 parties (individuals, flatshares, couples or families) who themselves commission an architect and a contractor with the design and construction of their homes. Thus no private developer is involved. The concept was unique at the time but has now been imitated by a number of other municipalities such as Kassel, Freiburg, Trier and Hamburg.

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In Amsterdam, the GWL-terrein housing development shows how keeping a community car-free can foster strong community spirit and encourage residents to live in a more sustainable way. Masterplan by KCAP.
GWL-terrein is a large-scale community housing development built on the site of Amsterdam’s former municipal water facility. A central focus of the development’s masterplan was to provide housing predominantly for families with children and to incorporate environmental considerations into the design.
GWL-terrein consists of high-density housing and a series of linked public spaces. The development is car-free in its interior and few parking spaces are provided for residents. It is located less than 3 kilometres from central Amsterdam and is very well connected to surrounding bus, tram and train routes. The car-free nature of the development contributes significantly to its unique character and has earned the development international attention.
The developers retained and refurbished some of the former waterworks buildings, which has helped create a strong sense of local identity. The addition of a distinctive modern water tower provides an additional landmark to the area.
Since the late 1990s, it has been a central policy of the Dutch government to pursue urban renewal through a more balanced proportion of social and market-rate housing. This policy was implemented in order to combat the creation of “ghettos” of social deprivation, as well as physical and social monotony. GWL-terrein responded to this initiative by providing a mix of both social and market rate housing.

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EVA lanxmeer is the name of an eco-neighbourhood (240 houses) build from 1994 to 2009 in the Dutch town of Culemborg in Nederland. It is an environmentally-friendly-housing development.
It was initiated by Marleen Kaptein, who was looking for a more sustainable way of building housing in urban areas. The project was a strong partnership among future inhabitants and the city of Culemborg, consultants and other people. It incorporates many of the principles of high environmental quality and ecotown but its principal originality is the promotion of the constant participation of the inhabitants. Indeed, this area (except for his masterplan) was designed and conducted with representatives of future residents in a creative process (bottom-up; from bottom to top and not imposed by management or administration), often regarded as a model for several of its aspects (for example in Europe by Energie-Cités and in France by the Department of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Sea).

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Viikki, Helsinki
In December 1998, the Government approved a programme of ecologically sustainable development for the construction and property sector, which focuses partly on arriving at models of good practice. In 1998-2000, a special subsidy for pilot projects in line with the principle of sustainability was linked with the Government experimental building programme. During the period 1998 to 2002, an experimental area of ecological building of international importance is being constructed at Viikki, a district to the Northeast of the centre of Helsinki. Viikki is situated 7 kilometres from the heart of Helsinki. Buses began running between Viikki and the city centre in autumn 1999. In the future the area will also be served by the new orbital ‘Jokeri’ line, running across the Helsinki Metropolitan area. By 2010, Viikki residential district will be completed with Science Park as its hub. The Science Park is an international centre of excellence growing up around part of the University of Helsinki situated in Viikki which specialises in biology and biotechnology. Viikki will then provide 6 000 jobs, places for 6 000 students and homes for 13 000 people. The Viikki eco neighbourhood blocks are the result of long-term work aimed at putting ecological principles into practice in actual building. Two design competitions were organised for the area and a number of seminars and debates. The master plan competition was won by a proposal based on a finger-like structure with alternating buildings and green open spaces. The layout permits functions to be combined naturally, nutrients and water to be recycled (composting, allotments, collecting surface water run-off), and the utilisation of solar energy. Another competition was organised for the first blocks. The proposals were evaluated using eco-criteria drawn up by an interdisciplinary working group. The eco-criteria define levels of five different aspects: pollution, natural resources, health, bio-diversity and growing food. An environment profile was calculated for each competition proposal. In this system, points for those five aspects are added up. A zero-points scheme fulfils the strictest minimum criteria for conventional residential building. A ten-point design represents an ecologically excellent scheme and to exceed twenty points requires exceptional innovation.

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Bo01 is a newly developed district of Malmo situated in a former industrial site by the ocean. It encompasses commercial and social services together with about 500 housing units and is entirely sustainable. The project offers 100% locally renewable energy, minimised future transport needs and car dependency, ecological buildings, increased biodiversity, local investment and improved waste recycling facilities.

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Hammarby Sjöstad is a new district to the south of Stockholm, which extends the inner city beyond Hammarby Lake for the first time. Masterplan by Stockholm City Planning Bureau.
The name ‘Hammarby Sjöstad’ means ‘city surrounding Hammarby Lake’ and this new 200 hectare city district will comprise 9,000 apartments, housing a population of 20,000 people, and 200,000 sq m of commercial floor space attracting a further 10,000 people to work in the area. Approximately half of the total area has been developed to date and it is anticipated that the final scheme will be completed by 2015.
The concept for a new district in this location was born in the early 1990s. At that time, the City of Stockholm had developed a plan for development on the north side of the harbour, and this stimulated interest for a more strategic plan for the whole area around Hammarby Lake, both on the north and south banks. The idea was to exploit the unique opportunity to expand the inner city with water as a central focus for the development, whilst at the same time transformed an old port and industrial area into a modern city district.
Impetus was gained for development and infrastructure in the area when plans for Stockholm’s bid for the 2004 Olympic Games were being prepared. The core area of Hammarby Sjöstad was envisaged as an Olympic Village with a strong emphasis on ecology and environmental sustainability, which was promoted as one of Stockholm’s unique selling points as an Olympic city. Although the bid was unsuccessful, development was already underway and the momentum for change had been established.
Hammarby Sjöstad is built on former industrial brownfield land located on the south side of Hammarby Lake, to the south of the city centre, which has historically formed the natural border to the inner city area of Stockholm. The project seeks specifically to expand the inner city across the water.

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Widespread community involvement in the planning and development of the Vauban district has helped it to become a sustainable and flourishing neighbourhood.
The site (38 hectares) will be home to more than 5000 inhabitants and 600 jobs. The main goal of the project is to create a city district in a co-operative and participatory way, meeting ecological, social, economic and cultural requirements.
The landowner, the City of Freiburg, is responsible for the planning and development of the site. This has been characterised by a ‘Learning while Planning’ principle allowing flexibility in reacting to development proposals and through extended citizen participation.
A major achievement by the City of Freiburg has been to divide land into small plots and allocate it in preference to private builders and Baugruppen (co-housing groups). Although the development plan included some regulations for the design and layout of the homes, a variety of structures exists and builders have had the freedom to design and develop the homes they aspire to. Coherence is provided through the extensive use of ecological measures and the ‘car-free’ and ‘parking-free’ concepts of living.
Perhaps the greatest strengths of the Vauban project are the ideas, creativity and commitment of the people involved and their common goal in creating a sustainable and flourishing neighbourhood.

source:
http://www.cabe.org.uk/#1
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/programmes/cost8/case/holistic/viikki.html
http://www.wikipedia.org

Today we present the work by Pablo Rica: Compact – Fabric Forming Component .
Fabric is a flexible and adaptable material with a soft appearance. In combination with a fill in material, the properties change from supple to hard, gaining structural and thermal qualities. The hardened material turns to have a soft appearance in reverse. This is where the ambiguity and discrepancy from solid fabric to elastic stone becomes interesting. And in that process of changing condition is where new possibilities of design arise. Compact is a research project about examining the potential of fabric as a construction technique and developing a modular system, in which material properties and environmental aspects are involved.

Pablo Rica
Graduated as architect from the University for Applied Sciences in Bern Switzerland with honors, he holds a professional Master Degree in Advanced Architecture, Digital Fabrication and Self-Sufficient Buildings from the Institute for Advanced Architecture Catalonia in Barcelona Spain. He has worked as architect and project manager with different architecture offices like UNStudio van Berkel & Bos and VMX Architects in Amsterdam, and Stump Schibli Architekten in Basel Switzerland. Two of his independent projects were runner ups for Europan competition 7 and 8. Recently, in collaboration with Josiah Barnes, the project called ‘Muscular Synergy’ was selected as second prize in the Designing Fabrication Competition of Architectural Association AA|Fab in London.

Download: Pablo Rica: Compact - Fabric Forming Component (305)

Today we present the work by Brynhildur Guðlaugs, an architect from Reikiavik, Iceland. Her proposal, called Sensual landscape, is a bathing facility for the hiking people who travel around the Torfajokull region in Iceland, an uninhabited area in the south and one of the most powerful thermal areas in the country, named after a glacier, Torfajokull. The structure of the facility is an adaptation of the already existing hot springs that are situated all around the area.

Brynhildur Guðlaugs

Brynhildur graduated with B.A. in summer 2006 from the Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavik, Department of design and architecture. She just recently graduated from the Master in Advance Architecture at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.

Thermal landscape

Iceland is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which makes it one of the most volcanically active places in the world. It sits astride the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates and the most volcanic activity is concentrated along the plate boundaries that run across Iceland from the southwest to the northeast of the country. These plates are constantly moving, and in Iceland they move apart from each other and therefore create new earth crust by the convection of lava.
Because of this volcanic activity there are over 200 volcanoes located in Iceland and about 600 hot springs. There are also about 20 high-temperature steam fields that are at least 150 °C and many of them reach temperatures of 250 °C.

This is what allows Iceland to harness geothermal energy and these steam fields are used for everything from heating houses to swimming pools.
The Sensual landscape is bathing facility for the hiking people that travel around the Torfajokull region in Iceland. It is an uninhabited area in the south, containing a wide variety of terrain and some of the most beautiful in the Iceland. It is also one of the most powerful thermal region in the country, named after a glacier, Torfajokull which is a large rhyolitic volcano massif.
The structure or the facility will be an adaptation to the already existing hot springs that are situated all around the area.
The space will literally be structured on a current of fluid. By using the same technique as we use to pump the water into the houses in Iceland, about 200°c hot water is pumped into copper pipes that flow through the structure. The movement of the water then generates different temperatures in the space as it cools down while moving through the pipes. According to this, variation of temperature can be analyzed and then, places of different activities planed according to the distribution of the temperature.
Certain areas of the structure would be influenced by different degrees of temperature, color, light, material and etc.

download: Sensual Landscape (320)

The guests of the facility may move around this landscape of temperature and freely choose a climate and atmosphere according to their desire.

Finalists to Receive $25,000 in Awards and Winner to See Design Built in Lower Manhattan

The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) today announced the launch of the urbanSHED International Design Competition with support from the Alliance for Downtown New York, ABNY Foundation, Illuminating Engineering
Society New York City Section (IESNYC), and the New York Building Congress.

The unique competition challenges the global design community to create a new standard of sidewalk shed design that improves the pedestrian experience while maintaining or exceeding the required safety standards in New York City. The urbanSHED International Design Competition is open to architects,
engineers, designers, and students from around the world, allowing for the widest possible participation. Sidewalk sheds are typically built over public space to protect pedestrians during construction activity, and there are currently more than 6,000 sidewalk sheds installed and in use today at New York City¹s buildings and construction sites, spanning more than 1,000,000 linear feet.

The competition is being sponsored by the DOB, AIANY, Alliance for Downtown New York, ABNY Foundation, IESNYC, and New York Building Congress with additional support from the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).

Sidewalk sheds play a critical role in protecting New Yorkers during ongoing construction projects, but they can also hide the Citys breathtaking architecture and one-of-a-kind streetscapes, said DOB
Commissioner Robert LiMandri. ³That¹s why we are inviting the leading architects, designers, and students from around the world to develop a new kind of sidewalk shed ­ one that is not only safe and functional, but is also pleasing to the eye. These sheds should complement the beauty of our citys neighborhoods, not take away from them. I look forward to serving on the jury and seeing the solutions that address this great challenge.

The economic crisis permits us to stop and reconsider business as usual at construction sites, said Rick Bell, the executive director of the AIANY. Thats one of the reasons why the urbanSHED competition is so important at this point in time. We have the opportunity to call for a different, greener, and better-designed way to protect passers-by. When construction picks up again, the new standard ­ one that addresses our citys safety, sustainability, and streetscape concerns ­ will be ready, and it will be something of which New Yorkers can be proud.

The UrbanSHED competition is a perfect complement to our Re: Construction initiative, which transforms Lower Manhattan construction barriers into engaging temporary works of art and architecture, said Elizabeth H. Berger, president of the Downtown Alliance. Sidewalk sheds are a necessary but unattractive fact of life in Lower Manhattan, and we salute Bob LiMandri, AIA and the New York Building Congress for recognizing that safety and curb appeal can go hand in hand. We are pleased to partner with them on this important and innovative program.

The IESNYC is proud to be part of the urbanSHED competition. The sidewalk shed is a major feature in the NYC streetscape and over-ripe for improvement. The ability of light to provide beauty and security while
being efficient and effective will be a crucial to the success of the new designs, said Charles Cameron, vice-president, IESNYC.

The barriers that surround construction sites protect the public during construction activity but are often unattractive. Recognizing the need for the construction industry to be good neighbors, the Building Congress, through its philanthropic arm, the New York Building Foundation, recently enacted a pilot program, which proved that site safety and improved design are not mutually exclusive. We are pleased that the Department of Buildings and the AIANY, with the help of professionals throughout the industry, are building upon and expanding this effort,said Richard T. Anderson, President, New York Building Congress.

The urbanSHED competition provides a unique opportunity to rethink these ubiquitous and unsightly structures. Raising the standards of design excellence and bringing more light and air onto the sidewalk will not only improve the pedestrian experience but will also benefit retailers and their customers,said DCP Commissioner Amanda M. Burden.

We need to do everything we can to create new, world-class streetscapes but that doesnt mean that we have to sacrifice the quality of our streets during construction, said DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. While sidewalk sheds are typically viewed as inevitable eyesores, this competition will bring fresh perspectives and aim to make our works-in-progress as attractive as the finished product.

This worldwide competition is a great way to encourage designers to build a stronger, safer sidewalk shed than ever before, and the Structural Engineers Association of New York is proud to be a part of it, said Robert Otani, of the Structural Engineers Association of New York. We are confident that the results of this effort will set a new standard for sidewalk sheds and enhance New York City’s reputation for creative design and innovative engineering.

Nine world-renowned architects, engineers and civic decision-makers will serve on the jury for the urbanSHED design competition. The jury is comprised of NYC Department of Planning Director Amanda M. Burden, FAICP; David M. Childs, FAIA, of the Municipal Arts Society; Craig Dykers, AIA MNAL, of Snøhetta; NYC Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri; Jean Oei of Morphosis; NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan; Craig Michael Schwitter, P.E., of Buro Happold North America; Frank Sciame of the New York Building Congress; and Ada Tolla of LOT-EK. Susanna Sirefman
of Dovetail Design Strategists is the competition advisor overseeing the development and management of the competition.

The urbanSHED International Design Competition will take place in two stages. During Stage I, the jury will select up to three designs based on criteria such as the designs safety, sustainability and constructability.

Designs also will be evaluated on their impact on the streetscape and pedestrian experience, use of both natural light and the required electrical lighting, and improvements to structural components. Competitors must enter their submissions no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, October 2, 2009. The finalists will be announced during the AIANY¹s Architecture Week in October 2009. Following Stage 1, all of the submitted designs will be featured on the competitions Web site at www.urbanshed.org
­ including the finalists proposals.

The finalists, who will be awarded $5,000 each, will participate in Stage II, where they will further develop their designs to meet or exceed current technical and structural requirements to assure safety and stability. They also will receive recommendations from a technical advisory group of leading design and construction industry stakeholders. The finalists¹ designs also must be cost-effective to produce, install, maintain, and reuse over time.

During Stage II, the jury will select a winning design and announce their decision in December 2009. The winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize, and as a part of the top award, the Alliance for Downtown New York will facilitate the construction of a full-scale prototype of the winning entry on a job site in Lower Manhattan as part of its RE: Construction art program.

Competitors must submit illustrations of their design concept as it would appear when installed at the DOB headquarters at 280 Broadway in Manhattan. The current sidewalk shed installed at 280 Broadway exemplifies many of the complexities that shed contractors must face when erecting these structures,
including heavy pedestrian traffic, car passenger access, street parking, public doorways, loading docks, parking garage entries, bus shelters, coffee carts, storefront, retail and DOT signage.

To register for this competition, submit a completed Online Registration
Form at www.acteva.com/go/aianyc . Further information on the competition, including details on eligibility, schedule, and judging criteria, is available at www.urbanshed.org.

The urban catalyst: a new centre for Eyla

We believe it is necessary to insist on the moderate expansion of urban space, prioritising the optimisation, diversification and regeneration of the existing city, intensifying and reprogramming urban tissue.

The urban catalyst will be a symbol of the climate conditions of the desert and how Israeli develops systems to win the battle to the environment. Now it is time to introduce those traditional and low-cost systems into the modern  buildings.

The building: a new-old way of construction
The municipality of Eylat is a new activity centre of public and private uses provides spaces for civic engagement, social interaction, and economic activity. It is a gathering place for people of all ages and backgrounds. It is also the place where citizens and tourists meet in a neutral environment. The Civic Square is an open space pleasant in every moment of the day thanks to the bioclimatic conditions, regulated by the technological roof. Light, low-cost building material and common technologies allows each part of the structure to be easily constructed to purchase a reasonable cost. The light and transparent façade reveals the life and colour within the structure to connect inside and outside activity. The centre is a focus point for the surrounding community as well as city-wide businesses, organizations, and tourism. Highly accessible by public transport and pedestrian way from the touristic quarter, he will connect the old housing district with the new extension on the North-East.

The catalyst: multiplicity of use
The optimisation of urban space requires a diversity of inherently urban uses to be seamlessly interconnected. The urban tissue thus generated benefits from a variety of uses throughout the day, the week and the year, some which may alternate, some which will coincide, and leaves no room for blank periods or periods when urban space is substantially underused, temporarily turning into a “ghost” city.

Open air: the public space within
Public space needs to be accessible and usable to be effective. The vertical configuration of the office building and the multiplicity of uses contained within it have prompted the creation of public spaces to match the needs generated from within the catalyst.

Synergies: units working together
Thanks to the technical roof, buildings and public space can help each other as a hybrid system. The office needs a lower skin to protect the inside conditions from the hard climate of South of Israel, and the public space benefits from the humidity conditions, wind cooling and shadow coming from the building. Combining traditional technology, as the nomad tent, the greenhouse, the natural ventilation and innovating technology as flexible solar panels, steel structure and wind miles, the hybrid system generate an acceptable level of comfort without expensive cost.

Rodrigo Toledo, Arq._MAA
Rodrigo Toledo is currently living in Medellín, Colombia, he just recently graduated from the Master in Advance Architecture at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. He has worked both as an architect and as a professor for the last five years. Rodrigo obtained his professional degree in 2004 at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia.

Red Light Circus
The project is intended to behave as an urban intervention that adresses an informal way of economy related to mobility – of cars, goods and information-, understanding “the urban” not as a matter of scale but of exchange and social relations in the city. Located in Medellín, Colombia, the project takes a series of specific corssroads in which informal sales, amateur circus acts, and other non-institutionalized activities take place. The intention is not to legalize these activities; it is to empower them by modifying the physicality of the already existing situation of the crossroads and taking into account that the only things crossing in these places are not just cars and pedestrians but also informal markets, information, public space use, entertainment, and enviormental issues related to traffic. There is an ecology and an economy regulated by traffic lights and spatialized by zebra crossings, that appear and disappear when the light changes from green to red. Therefore the project should act on this two traffic code devices to expand their power to condition behavior in order to create a better atmosphere for this activities while generating a network of urban circus acts distributed in the city.

A series of inventories have been made to understand the complexity of the dynamics of these crossroads:

1. Mobility:
1. Vehicles
2. Pedestrians
3. Bicycles

2. Economy:
1. Circus act
2. Informal sales
3. Beggars
4. Windshield cleaners

3. Information:
1. Road signals
2. Advertisment

4. Public Space
1. Ocupation of sidewalks

5. Enviorment:
1. Polluted air as a result of gas emissions
2. High sun exposure

Having in mind all the layers that interact in these sites, the project is based on two actions that work with the simultaneity of this conditions: Redrawing the zebra crossing and enhancing the traffic light.

On one hand, the zebra crossing plays the role of a circus arena when the light is red; jugglers and acrobats perform three minutes acts in order to get money from the driver/spectators waiting along the downhill roads of the city. A number of salesmen, windshield cleaners, beggars and even mimes make their way through the cars offering their services and asking for money…most of these peole are unemployed citizens, homeless persons and refugees coming from the fields. During the green light this “traffic light inhabitants” wait and rest in the sidewalks using rocks and boxes as seats and moving them according to shade. What the intervention does is to reconfigure the geometry of the zebra crossing with the following logic:
1. Making the white lines longer: The circus arena gets bigger allowing more space and possibilities for the circus acts.
2. Defining wider areas in the pattern: Microstages are generated inside the zebra.
3. Extending some lines along the road: Uphill paths between the car lanes for moving and money collection are defined.
4. Overlapping transversal paths along the road: Return circuits and microstages between the cars are created with less inclination than the road’s slope.
5. Introdicing the zebra into the sidewalk and extruding some lines: A resting area –for actors and pedestrians- with benches and microstages is provided.
6. Creating a bicycle lane: This lane will be further extended to the transversal roads of El Poblado.

On the other hand, the traffic light’s comunication system through light signals is taken as a project strategy to design a suspended inflatable tent that, through image will provide information and scenario lights, thus communicating more than just “stop, get set, go”. The suspended tent is designed as a device that:

1. Is concieved as a shading device: Providing comfort for actos and pedestrians waiting in the sidewalk.
2. Is defined by a sequence of sections: This allows it to adapt to the specific zebra design below it.
3. Is equipped with LED lights: To act as an information node and a stage scenario thus extending the circus act to the night.
4. Is equipped with P.V. cells: To make use of the high solar exposure in favor of energy production for itself and the city’s traffic light nework.

This two interventions are meant to respond to the complexity of the crossroads without making a built statement…it rather uses what is there: flows, speeds, behavior, white paint, light and air to transform the place without changing its nature.

Download: RED LIGHT CIRCUS (341)