Wireless Urbanism

Abstract

2008-04-30T17:36:00.008-04:00

ARCHITECTURE THESIS PROJECT_University of Toronto
01.11.08 - 04.25.08
advised by_Adrian Blackwell

Wireless Urbanism is an examination of mobile technology’s impact on public space practises and the generic conditions
of urban-ness. Its trajectory is one towards an interactive and open source infrastructure and architecture
through this wireless, ubiquitous technology, delivered by the mobile phone; one that establishes a new condition for
urbanism to be developed, and unfold, enabling the city to perform in dynamic ways. If we are able to browse the city
with our devices, how could a place based architecture or infrastructure interact with us?
What new infrastructure or interface could allow the needs and desires of a user to determine the make up of a given
site?
As urbanity today is neither structured in the centre or the periphery, I will look to fields configured in accordance with
fluctuation produced by attractors and networks, both social and professional. In other words, fields of occupational
intensities influenced by programme, and also ambience, day, night, and weather. The site becomes a microcosm for
what could potentially be an entirely new way to develop the city.
If Post-Fordist architects view programme as the engine of a project; the driving logic of form and organization, the
Googlist architect must rather see programme as flexible and indeterminate. Not in the typical sense of flexibility,
where it is more in line with slower processes, but rather immediate changes, such as local needs, light conditions, and
weather. If the typical modes of architecture deal in samenesses and regulation, what is being proposed here is one of
temporality and dynamism.

PRESENTATION INSTALLATION IMAGES
(more to come)

The installation consisted of five projection screens that defined the space the presentation took place within. Kiosks were set up with a wireless mouse on each, allowing the critics and viewers to control the images from the blog that populated the screens. After my own more formal presentation of the material on the blog, the audience and critics were left to formulate their own points and arguments by sifting through the information and images themselves.

Development

2008-04-10T22:24:00.029-04:00

_The existing warehouse building functions as the enclosed space until more enclosure is required. Structures then emerge in areas of intensity that necessitate their construction.

Phase 1_interface

2008-04-09T00:24:00.019-04:00

_The first phase of the project involves the deployment of an interface by which the space of the site is organised; a grid that is both virtual and actual. It performs as the new infrastructure that organises who uses the space, and eventually reveals how the site should be developed.

Another aspect of this interface is the act of browsing the site by way of the mobile phone. Events are displayed; their location, what they are, and how many people are involved.

Click To Play

Visualization

2008-04-02T00:35:00.009-04:00

_From inside the pavilion next to the rec field one can find enclosure during wet days, shade during hot days, and light during the evenings

The Modular

2008-04-02T00:18:00.006-04:00

Architecture / Infrastructure

2008-03-20T14:23:00.018-04:00

_The programme and space allocation of the architecture becomes determined by the public's communication with it via text messaging. It's ambient qualities and conditions alter to suit the need of a particular group who have sent the necessary amount of texts to acquire the space.

GOOGLism?

2008-03-18T13:52:00.009-04:00

image/jpeg
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Reaction 1

2008-02-29T20:16:00.021-05:00

_Concept Collage of programme interminglings and spontonaiety

Related Ideas

2008-02-29T18:17:00.039-05:00

Mark Sheppard's Sound Garden

_The project outlines the possibility for the sharing of music within the ambient of the city. Songs can be uploaded and downloaded upon reaching a particular proximity to the wireless sensors.

Philippe Rahm

Living in the interval of the double-glazing glass

The project modifies the existing configuration of the glazing system to create differentiated spaces based on light and temperature, which in turn rely on season and weather.

_To quote, Our works are developing in this physical realm where architecture, at the outset, is nothing other than a Nietzschean struggle between a human desire for energetic growth and structural maintenance, on the one hand, and the external environment which reduces, degrades and breaks up on the other. We are thus reassessing those factors of architecture represented by materials, structure, space and light, depending on their physical actions.

The Hormonorium

_To quote, The aim is to act in advance of form, at a subformal level, by modifying the very information that gives rise to form, to behavior, to thought. By exerting an influence outside the realm of the senses and the skin, the Hormonorium creates a synthesis of the organic, of mood and space, by establishing a continuity between architecture and human metabolism, between space, light and the endocrine and neurological systems.

The Hormonorium is an interior public space defined climatically by light, temperature, air quality, that involve the body but where certain functions remain indeterminate : resting, working out, breathing fresh air, meeting people, flirting, discussing, people-watching, collecting one's thoughts, washing, toning up, etc.

Mobile Blog

2008-02-28T19:01:00.001-05:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Connection

2008-02-28T15:31:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuzWNOUqLmQ

Questions

2008-02-25T23:07:00.000-05:00

1_How can we urbanize open-source?

2_What is the public domain of ambient informatics?

3_How can we redefine received ideas about parks, nature, and recreation, when everything is
urban?

4_What distribution grids and topological connections, that link systems and practices of
production with systems and practices of consumption, do mobile phone infrastructure
networks provide?

5_Can we differentiate landscape, built landscape, to promote a multiplicity of urban cells
designed to accomodate differentiated labour and capital?

6_How does the fact that immaterial labor immediately involves social interaction and
cooperation impact architecture and public space?

7_How does spatial form relate to the processes that flow through, manifest, and sustain it?

8_What opportunities lie beyond the architectural surface as confectionary spectacle or the
interior vestibule as glorified automatic door opener?

Sites

2008-02-12T17:42:00.019-05:00

_site 2 Lightless and Lifeless

_site 1 The Fair

From left to right_1. Abandoned lot on the corner of Woodward and 8 Mile + Fair Grounds predicted to cost the city $1,000,000 to keep running_2. Unused park. "Farwell Field". Lightless and lifeless_3. Abandoned Go Kart track.

After visiting the city, sites along 8 Mile Rd. emerged as the ones rich with the most potential. Their organisation as a series of points along the border of the city create a line of interest that heretofore has been the divider of urban and suburban. This connection at the street scale seeks to form a rhizome that then connects to the rest of the city. In the Deleuzian sense, priviledging the multiplicities, forming lines and connections as opposed to points and positions. This is especially relevant to a strip of road that has acted as a striation in the city of Detroit; not just as a border, but also a regulator.

_Map displaying the racial & ethnic distribution in Detroit. The segregation between the suburbs and city proper is clearly visible.

_Map displaying amount of immigrants into Detroit and surrounding suburbs.

Potential Sites

2008-02-12T15:44:00.003-05:00

_The potential sites/areas for the project look to the periphery of Detroit; derelict industrial and residential sites. They cluster around and within the cities proposed renewal zone, using it as a framework and a line of designation.

Some are situated along rail lines, others expressways, one even on an airport site. However, they all exemplify in some way the conditions indicative of post-industrial Detroit-abandonement, decay, nostalgia.

Quotes

2008-02-11T19:53:00.000-05:00

This dilution of spontaneous social contact is also made strikingly clear by the observation that the probability of children today randomly chancing upon others of the same age for games on the street is usually so low that they have to find other forms of meeting and playing together. They make their arrangements on the telephone_Thomas Sieverts

…another fluid, liquid, digital sensibility. Airstrips, information centers, public performance spaces, internet and world wide web access all point to a redefinition of received ideas about parks, nature, and recreation, in a 21st century setting where everything is “urban”, even in the middle of the wilderness_Bernard Tschumi

In fact, many central areas have no land resources left for recreational purposes. This problem is expected to become more serious in the future as the population increases and its demand for such activities multiplies along with increases in income, mobility, and leisure time_Doxiadis

Homogenization of landscape, built landscape, promotes a single type of urban cell that is designed to accomodate homogenized labour and capital_

How can we urbanize open-source?_

Previous stages ofthe industrial revolution introduced machine-made consumer goods and then machine-made machines, but now we find ourselves confronted with machine-made raw materials and foodstuffs—in short, machine-made nature and machine-made culture_Antonio Negri

Each person exists in a different Action Space_Thomas Sieverts

In general, however, it would be more accurate to conceive the model as striving toward a
continual interactivity or rapid communication between production and consumption_Antonio Negri

“Ambient informatics” refers not so much to that technical substrate or installed infrastructure but to the condition it will give rise to in use. In my book, I defined ambient informatics as “a state in which information is freely available at the point in space and time someone requires it, generally to support a specific decision. Maybe it’s easiest simply to describe it as information detached from the Web’s creaky armature of pages, sites, feeds, and browsers, and set free instead in the wider world to be accessed when, how, and where you want it: persistently and effortlessly available, just there, like the air_Adam Greenfield

“Read/write urbanism” is, frankly, jargon, but it’s a pretty neat piece of jargon. It’s a way of describing what is novel about urban life under the condition of ambient informatics, the idea that the city’s users are no longer bound to experience passively the territory through which they move but have been empowered to inscribe their subjectivities in the city itself...that those subjectivities can be anchored in place and responded to by those who come after. So your passage through, your use of, or your investment in this place leaves a tangible informational trace, which can either be gathered up and acted upon individually in the aggregate_Mark Sheppard

Immaterial labor immediately involves social interaction and cooperation. In other words, the cooperative aspect of immaterial labor is not imposed or organized from the outside, as it was in previous forms of labor, but rather, cooperation is completely immanent to the laboring activity itself_Antonio Negri

The Modernist notion that new physical structures would yield new patterns of socialization has exhausted its run, failing by virtue of trying to contain the dynamic multiplicity of urban processes within a fixed, rigid, spatial frame that neither derived from nor redirected any of the processes moving through it. This emphasis on urban processes is not meant to exclude spatial form but rather seeks to construct a dialectical understanding of how it relates to the processes that flow through, manifest, and sustain it_James Corner

Infrastructure networks provide the distribution grids and topological connections that link systems and practices of production with systems and practices of consumption. They unevenly bind spaces together across cities, regions, nations and international boundaries whilst helping also to define the material and social dynamics, and divisions, within and between urban spaces
_Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin

The recent fascination with building envelopes consisting of large-scale programmable urban screens or corporate lobbies outfitted with so-called interactive architecture highlights the dilemma. What opportunities lie beyond the architectural surface as confectionary spectacle or the interior vestibule as glorified automatic door opener?_Mark Sheppard

Precedent

2008-02-10T11:21:00.018-05:00

_ Cedric Price's FunPalace engages the technology of that time to produce an architecture that is to be responsive, adaptive, and performative. A conversation is promoted regarding flexibility, but perhaps more importantly the manifestation of architecture as a result of the infrastructure and events that flow through it, rather than a set form in time and space.
_The same conversation continues today but in regards to our current technology/machines; the architecture that responds to and exploits it.

_Also, to quote Mark Sheppard: If much of the late 20th century discourse surrounding public space and information networks emphasizes the production of a global, virtual, placeless space of flows, the ubiquity of mobile communications and wireless networks has revitalised an interest in place-based and locative information spaces. As we have noted, people are more frequently interacting with (and through) mobile devices and wireless networks as they move throughout the city. On sidewalks, in lobbies, across parks and public squares, on busses, subways and commuter trains, the mobile citizen constantly negotiates between contingent desires, virtual information networks and the infinitely variegated attractions of the terrain of the contemporary city.

_From a remarkably thorough study of the Detroit area, the existing population of Detroit is mapped by density and location. Locations of industry and other uses are also included. In his conclusions as to what is the best option for planning the UDA, Doxiadis opts for a multi-centred configuration with infrastructure joining them, as well as the GLM.What’s interesting is despite the clearly documented trend in the declining pop. of the downtowncore of Detroit, Doxiadis forecasts an intense population growth, so much so that the surrounding cores would flourish also.
What is worth noting here is Doxiadis's technique of addressing the metropolis as a dispersed combination of points along a particular line. To qoute him, "The core itself needs to move sideways and expand as the scale of the city increases. Such a city doesn't simply grow; it moves across the landscape. Growth becomes movement."

_If Globalization is international integration; a new zone where an enormous mix of people converge, its localized manifestation is the diversity of the city. In fact, it is becoming more and more difficult to fix ethnicity and culture to a particular place. If mobility has increased migration, then connectivity/communication has only intensified this trend by making it easier to be anywhere.

_ If the settings have become generic, how do we express our individuality and collective personality?

Shopping + Precedents

2008-02-08T18:08:00.018-05:00

_Increasingly, our understanding of what Urban is rests on the act of shopping. Seen in most cities (esp-ecially European) is the mall-ification of the centres into pedestrian designated shopping streets_a. The centres of these cities begin to resemble one another and emit similar culture, while purporting to be a unique experience. At the same time, the shopping centre has become the representation of Urban-ness in suburban developments and the Zwischenstadt_b.

_To apply a situationist practise, today we dérive in the shopping mall.

Use + Worst Case

2008-02-06T01:32:00.012-05:00

_The worst case scenario for the technology is if it gives in entirely to ads and shopping. This is merely the speeding up of consumption and production by capitalism.

_Pervasive computing is now more than ever apparent in the space of the city. As mobile phone use increases so does the network that provides us with the connectivity. The spatial effects are apparent, such as virtual communication in actual space, and increased conversation through mobile devices as opposed to person to person conversation.

_There is undoubtedly an increase in the speed and efficiency of information sharing, as well as the consumption of products, and their distribution technique. I believe we are pushing towards an urban condition of immediacy of conversation via the devices; hyper-collaborative, efficient, and convenient. However, it is also a dangerous condition of control and manipulation. There needs to be a produced agency within the public collective to display that we together are what makes the machine's potential, and not the machine that dictate's our's.

TxtMob vs. AdMob

2008-02-06T01:30:00.004-05:00

_TxtMob produces an agency for the user of the mobile device. Here communication between users can been exploited to inform, rally, mobilize. What's salient is this agency.

The AdMob company is not concerned with agency whatsover, but rather the gauranteed delivery and exposure of advertisements for its clientelle. The unfortunate situation is the exploitation by consumptive industry of the technology. My question is then what can be done to produce an agency in the face of the inevitability of such exploitation?

Information Technique and Barrage

2008-02-06T00:07:00.004-05:00

_Potentials

The breaking down of the slow format web-base page platform,and the resultant immediate conversation and sharing of info.from mobile to mobile, person to person. A system of comm-unication allowing new forms of cooperative working and adjacencies.

_Concerns
Open Source information sharing becoming dictated by the corporate platform. This is a hindrance to potential product-ive content; the general intellect, where everyone has a means

of production and communication.

Google Tree

2008-02-04T11:13:00.001-05:00

WirelessUrbanism

2008-01-30T16:36:00.011-05:00

The thesis seeks to activate a diverse and performative urban space by way of the ubiquitous and autonomous technology of Wireless Technology, delivered by the mobile phone. By questioning notions of public space practice and the generic conditions of urban-ness the project will drive towards a new typology of architecture and urban space where industry, consumption, and leisure assemble by way of mobile information technology. The barrage of information we receive daily, with its link to new media, is increasing exponentially, opening up areas of exploitation by certain industry through this technology. Coincidental with this, urban-ness is exceedingly delivered to us by way of shopping centres; the mall-ified downtown cores and suburban mall.