Experiment in alternative evolutionary design strategy for smart city design

Esben Skouboe, Jeffrey Serio, Jens Pedersen

Publications: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Today we update our city architecture every 30-50 years, but what happens if we introduced planning strategies that allow environments to adapt every week?

“Smart” has become a label of the progressive, creative and innovative cities, but who does not want to be smart and apply clever insight into city planning and growth? Michael Batty (1997) describes the smart city planning as “rather than letting the market dictate the way cities grow and sprawl, smart growth is a movement that implies we can achieve greater efficiencies through coordinating the forces that lead the laissez fair growth”. This type of growth is based on data captured by products and is accessible to authorities through new types of data management services. The question is how we develop design strategies for public spaces that utilize data as a driver for design?

This paper unfolds results from a two-day design experiment: Media Architectural Growth (MAG) conducted during the Media Architectural Biennale 2015. The experiment revisits the format of Blockworld; a utopian study of robots building architecture in an entropic environment based on the movements of a gerbil colony (Negroponte 1970). In order to study how occupancy data could inform evolutionary design strategies the MAG experiment borrows the concept of the entropic model laboratory from Blockworld and unleashes 10 gerbils in a 3x1 meter model. The gerbil’s occupancy patterns was tracked and used as design drivers (virtual pheromone tracks) in a virtual agent-based design system (representation). The design system was inspired by slim mould aggregation, motivated by the ability for the system to organise into optimal infrastructures.

MAG design system used the edge of the model and previous building blocks as obstacles for the agent simulation, and during the simulation the agents was slowly settling in optimised movement patterns based on the occupancy of the gerbils and simulation. Every 20 minutes the agents had self-organised infrastructural patterns and moved 10 new blocks in an optimal position in the model, these blocks was then realised. Because of the additive nature of this iterative design experiment more then 2000 wood blocks was placed during the two-day exhibition period. During the exhibition the builders was part of the show communicating the process by printing out each occupancy, building and pheromone map, this allowed the spectators to follow the building process from the start to the present growth state. Parallel to the agent-based design system, the visitors were invited to use a custom developed mobile application, which allowed them to vote on one of four programs. Each 20 minutes the existing programs was removed and the three most popular programs realised in the model, this allowed the visitors or the citizens to affect the development of the city while the agent based design system was organising the blocks in a more or less optimal way.

The result is a city of woodblocks and programs grown in relation to the life in the environment and the desires from the visitors. This alternative iterative planning vision speculates on future planning strategies and present potential planning scenarios that explore the relationship between control system, community and entropic environments - a topic highly relevant to people interested in alternative visions for the design of a smart city. This paper unfolds the theoretical and experimental results of this design experiment.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of IASS Annual Symposia, IASS 2015 Amsterdam Symposium : Future Visions – Environmental Factor
PublisherIngenta Inc
Publication date15 Aug 2015
Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2015
EventIASS 2015 Annual International Symposium on Future Visions - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Duration: 17 Aug 201520 Aug 2015
http://iass2015.org/

Conference

ConferenceIASS 2015 Annual International Symposium on Future Visions
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityAmsterdam
Period17/08/201520/08/2015
Internet address

Keywords

  • morphology
  • conceptual design
  • iterative design
  • reponsive space
  • cybernetics

Artistic research

  • Yes

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