SpacePlace

Old school cyberspace embed its own architecture

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Alex Pang is working on the very intriguing topic of "The End of Cyberspace" (there is a short piece about it in Wired today). In one of his blogposts, he's wondering about the names that we given to cyberspace (the ultimate goal is to find a new concept for what is now cyberspace: ubicomp...). Concerning cyberspace names, I looked back at some old role playing games I had both in english and french, dated from end of 80's and 90's. There are names like 'virtual world', "the grid', "the matrix", "cyberspace" and so forth. Sometimes, the names of the artifacts gives the idea of the concept (in "information superhighway" that I really like, it makes me remembering by grandmother who kept asking me "where are those superhighways").

An important thing I guess is the difference or the mix between the idea of a virtual space and its physical representation (as for instance a network of cable or fibers) and the virtual counterpart (information flow).

About this, it's interesting to see that the first representations of virtual reality embed the concept of the cyberspace architecture (in a more perfect way of course). Networked virtual reality is made of wires/cables/fibers (to connect computers) and it's really represented as a grid/matrix. Check those pictures (Space Harriers and Tron):

The ground of this virtual space is - actually - a grid.

Urban Mediator: a hybrid infrastructure for neighborhoods

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Urban Mediator by Joanna Saad-Sulonen: a hybrid infrastructure for neighborhoods is a project grounded in dialogues with people and the urban environment as a way of gaining understanding of urban everyday practices. It's targeted at creating Mediator, an hybrid infrastructure to support interaction possibilities in hybrid space (physical-digital).

A network of information servers (neighborhood servers) lies at the heart of the hybrid infrastructure. Interaction with these servers can happen at specific locations in urban space, interactive spots, through proximity connection between people’s own devices and interactive public boards (neighborhood boards) or through localized access to WiFi. Interactive spots can exist at places of waiting, like bus stops or public squares. Connection to the servers can also happen through the Internet.

Yet another place-based note sharing app.

I like the author's reseach mindmap:

The end of cyberspace

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Californian IFTF pal Alex Pang started a new blog about a very pertinent concept: The End of Cyberspace. His take is that cyberspace, as a metaphor of a virtual and digital world emerged from sci-fi culture, is now coming to an end because of recent developments:

Why is cyberspace coming to an end? Our experience of interacting with digital information is changing. We're moving to a world in which we (or objects acting on our behalf) are online all the time, everywhere. Designers and computer scientists are also trying hard to create a new generation of devices and interfaces that don't monopolize our attention, but ride on the edges of our awareness. We'll no longer have to choose between cyberspace and the world; we'll constantly access the first while being fully part of the second. Because of this, the idea of cyberspace as separate from the real world will collapse.

So if "cyberspace" is no longer relevant, what will we call this new world? That's the big question, isn't it?

This reminds me some thought by dutch designer Rem Koolhas I blogged about two years ago. For instance, he claims that “words that die in the real world are reborn in the virtual”: webSITE, fireWALL, chatROOM. Would we see a reverse trend? Alex is right to raise the issue of the semantic layer of what is happening lately: what would be the name of this new world? The "augmented world" is a bit too narrow.

New micro-dwelling

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The manual for micro-dwelling shows interesting new micro-dwelling development:

MICRO DWELLINGS is a system for making low cost dwellings of variable sizes for any number of persons. It consists of movable housing modules that can form different configurations on land, on water and under water. The system allows for a diversity of materials as well as changes and adaptations. The MICRO DWELLINGS are modular, can be scaled up and down, and expand and grow together with other systems into small communities. (...) An energy unit could be hooked on to the MICRO DWELLINGS, consisting of for example micro-windmills, solar panels and solar heat systems, heat pumps etc. (...) The MICRO DWELLINGS can be built onto rooftops of existing buildings or be suspended from a bridge or a wall.

Why do I blog this? I like the last point: living above a bridge... that sounds so William Gibson.

Renzo Piano's conception of space

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The Guardian recently featured a nice article about italian architect Renzo Piano. I was not so interested by his take on french's so-called riot (even though his take about it is relevant: "The peripheries are the cities that will be. Or not. Or will never be"), rather his thoughts about space and emptiness are clever:

Piano wants to introduce the European idea of urban planning to the British capital, ideas which he characterises as understanding the difference between a piazza (good) and a plaza (less good).

"A piazza is not a plaza," fumes Piano. "The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand." A space without function allows one to be "in the moment", he says, and to counter what he sees as a major flaw in modern life - the habit of interpreting all experience in the light of achievement, as a means to an end. We should, he thinks, learn to lighten up, and the creation of empty, purposeless spaces within cities might encourage that. "You don't have to struggle to give function to every single corner. You can just wait and see and enjoy."

Finally, one of the last quote in the article is a good food for thought that reflects all his thinking: ""Architecture in some way has the duty to suggest behaviour".

Why do I blog this? I find pertinent to have insights from architect's vision of space, how they think about it and how they envision spatial features as well as their connections with behavior. As a 'user experience' researcher, I am interested in how spatial features frame people's behavior.

Notes about spatial features in Japan

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Two weeks ago, Matt Tiessen wrote this thoughtful post about spatial concerns in the city of Lyon, France. Wandering around in Japan, I tried to adopt the same perspective to briefly describe some intriguing phenomenon related to space and culture in Japan.

  • my first impression was the tremendous importance of bridges, viaduct, raised highways. Since Japan is an archipelago, there was a need to connect island, which is reflected by this importance of such structures.
  • another strikening feature is that fact that places and things are smaller: especially bathrooms, tables/chairs, ceilings, hotel rooms, appartments.
  • this morning I also notices an intriguing phenomenon: there are intersitial spaces between buildings as seen on the picture below. This might be due to earthquake prevention (to avoid waves propagation?).

intersititial space

  • There are no street names but they seem to refer to areas or blocks

Architecture and information visulization and Bloomberg's new building

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Two good articles about architecture and information visulization and Bloomberg's new building in Metropolis: Brand Central Station (by Alexandra Lange) and By The Numbers (by Peter Hall). Bloomberg's new offices indeed weave information, technology, and space into a seamless display of interior urban planning as the first article reports. The building architecture is meant to support the omnipresent flow of information (goods, people, and data)

I really like this phenomenon:

Employees rising on the escalator from the fifth floor even appear to move at exactly the same speed as the news and information graphics speeding about the screens. (...) "It wasn't just the video on the screen, it was the numbering system of the wayfinding--it's all tied in,"

The article By The Numbers (by Peter Hall) is a compelling account of how designers worked on this information art project.

Finally, the conclusion is relevant:

beyond the well-seized opportunity to make large graphic and architectural gestures, the treatment of information in the Bloomberg headquarters signals a shift in the way we perceive information. The data on ceiling-mounted screens caters to each department (sales figures for sales staff, network operations for the research and development people), and even the big-bellied numbers that fly across the larger screens are not abstracted but graphically contextualized and explained with accompanying text. The design conceit is that the flying data is actually useful. If the dawning of the Internet and the network society were greeted by design fetishizing information and reveling in that very 1990s trope of information overload, the 2000s have been marked by a desire to filter, parse, and deliver data in accessible form.

Park your car in your appartment's balcony

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Yep that's true, as attested by this article in german newspaper Die Welt: in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, some folks wants to allow people to drive their car into an elevator and up to the front door of their apartment:

Autofetischisten werden diese Immobilie lieben. Im Berliner Stadtteil Kreuzberg planen die Projektgesellschaft Topos Paul-Lincke Höfe GmbH & Co. KG und der österreichische Projektentwickler Porr Solutions Lofts mit Parkplätzen direkt auf der Wohnetage. Die Bewohner der Appartements sollen also mit ihrem "heiligen Blechle" unten in den Autolift fahren und kommen direkt in ihrer Wohnung an.

The architect who wants do this is Manfred Dick. The point is to have elevators at either end of the apartment to let people drive up their car to their balcony... The crux issue here is to let people feel more "security and convenience."

Kleine Basel wind experiment

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In the BUBBLE (Basel Urban Boundary Layer Experiment) project, there is an intriguing study meant to understand the effects of wind on a city (in this case: Basel, Switzerland):

Wind tunnel studies offer an excellent opportunity for systematic and extensive turbulence measurements with boundary conditions which are better known and controlled than in full scale experiments.Â

This is the motivation for the realization of an extensive wind tunnel model of the city part "Kleinbasel" at the scale 1:300. The model covers an area of a bit less than 3 km² of urban roughness densely covered by over 3 200 houses as it is typical for Basel and other european urban environments of comparable size. The reference is given by a 3d digital urban model provided by the local authorities supplemented by over 200 photos documenting street canyons, buildings arrangements and measures as well as details of the respective roof shapes. (...) a succesful delivery of this wind tunnel study will provide an extensive reference data set for urban turbulence and pollutant dispersion particularly suited for the comparison with numerical model predictions.

Why do I blog this? the picture made me think of less serious application: a huge machine to send wind on basel so that people can kite-surf the Rhine :) Ok, it's sunday, maybe I should have a cup of tea.

About Campus Space

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The new Steelcase newsletter raises nice questions about campus space (pdf, html). It's about the fact that the number of students is increasing (since few decades) and those people "has brought unique expectations and behaviors to campus."

These trends are driving changes that are reflected in the facilities being built and renovated on campuses. Two categories of campus environments in particular are undergoing dramatic transformations: research labs and residence halls. (...) “Normally, people are very concerned about their space,” says Saltiel. Now, he says, “there’s not this concept of territory anymore. People forget about it and go on to the next thing, which is doing research.” (...) Architects say more clients at research universities want larger, more open labs. (...) Interdisciplinary research means labs must be multipurpose facilities that can change easily to accommodate different types of work. (...) Many scientists listen to music with headphones to block out distractions. Some offices are set apart so academics have private space to concentrate. (...) Just as labs are opening up as workspaces, more interdisciplinary science buildings are going up on campuses.(...) Bringing diverse specializations together in one facility and encouraging interaction through features such as open stairwells and informal conversation areas increases the chances for significant discovery within the labs

Why do I blog this? I am interested in the social (and cognitive) functions/affordances of space, that's why I found this relevant. The sentence I put in bold font is also very intriguing: how amazing would be this connection between workspace and interdisciplinary facilities/labs.

On the other side of the track, I am always amazed by empty buildings in various universities in which this sort of intents miserably failed. It's a pity because I do think it can work out.

Defensive space / dispositif spatial légitime

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A very interesting article in french about defensive space: Nuisible ? (by Jean Rivière and Olivier Thomas). The starting point of the article is this impressive device, meant to prevent people from seating on a shop window: The concept of defensive space is used to describe an area that has been made a “Zone of Defence” by the design characteristics that create it: preventing people from doing something (seating, skating...). The french equivalent for this is called 'dipositif spatial légitime':

L’expression de « dispositif spatial légitime », proposée par Michel Lussault (2003), peut ici servir de grille d’analyse. Ce dernier en donne la définition suivante : « Agencement spatial produit par un (des) acteur(s) à capital social élevé, doté d’une fonction opérationnelle et normative. […] Le dispositif est une configuration stabilisée dans laquelle l’espace joue un double rôle : celui d’opérateur de traduction qui permet la transformation et la mise en scène de faits bruts en problème(s) social(aux) et politique(s). […] et celui d’un support de délégation, à savoir un objet spatial organisé — matériel et chargé de valeurs — sur lequel on se repose pour qu’une action atteigne ses objectifs ».

About this topic: Michel Lussault, 2003, « Dispositif spatial légitime », in Dictionnaire de la géographie et de l’espace des sociétés, sous la direction de Jacques Lévy et Michel Lussault., Paris, Éditions Belin, 1033 pages, pp. 266-267.

Connected pasta I already blogged about this concept here, with regard to antiskateboard devices.

Urban transportation systems hacking

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I am crazy about this project by HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen): Train : urban structure for aesthetic urban transportation, a very intriguing and relevant project about transportation:

Using existing, past and future railway transportation systems and Reverse Cultural Engineer them. Technological process feathers at its periphery. Similar to a fractal image an innovation is followed by other innovations, based on the original one. In a recursive environment like this we would like to go back to the origin, the innovation of railway and propose a different solution, here an individual perpetuated vehicle. In this way artistic process starts by going backwards to propose utilitarian design scenarios.

The Train project is a speculation into the language and aesthetics of transportation, particularly those that have become so ubiquitous and unquestionable for us. By proposing different real installations which would work within active or abandoned public transport structures and a series of conceptual designs a dialogue should be raised that engages in questions about the reality and "real fiction" of traffic.

The project has been inspired by the demise of ARAMIS (french research project about an high tech automated subway that was developped in France during the eighties), which is well summarized in Bruno Latour's book Aramis or the Love of Technology (hey A. I know it's one of your favorite book).

Why do I blog this? I find the project interesting, a kind of hack of current transportation system (they don't steal or hack a vehicle, just the 'physical network' which is smart (conversely I like people building temporary architecture on walls or mountains while climbing). Plus, I also like the way they define themselves: "reverse cultural engineer the technological systems, that surround us". The "ersonal Rapid Transport system, Cabin Taxi, Germany" they show is also amazing:

Folksomologies and spatial technologies

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Just stumbled across a new concept: folksomologies which is obviously a portmanteau word that I found in Technology and geography: some work in progress by Barry Brown and Louise Barkhuus (a paper from an workshop at ECSCW).

a number of the same designs or concepts are being replicated time and time again, with little in the way of innovation. For example, the ‘tagging’ of locations with information has become a frequent feature of geographical sys- tems, yet there is still little in-depth enquiry as to whether this tagging supports activities of genuine interest to users. (...) In our current work we are exploring much more the choices that individuals have in their location and mobility. We are also interested so called ‘folksomologies’, ad hoc structures that can be built and span across different locations.