15 minute read
Projects
NEW NETWORKS: PROJECTS
New Networks City as Virtual and Physical Infrastructure
New Networks: Projects Experiences through Data
113 New Networks
Stock City Alia Bader + Naksha Satish Public Space for New Media Qiao Xu
As digital infrastructure takes on a more tangible presence in the city through data centers, relay stations, and telecommunications towers, there is an opportunity for these faceless technical elements to become playful elements of urban design. Taking the language of scaffolding in a city constantly rebuilding itself, they become a playground that mixes the physical space of the city with digital experiences. Experientially, the most salient aspect of new public spaces may be their electronic interfaces. These can provide new ways to entertain and connect across the city, stitching together distinct places, neighborhoods, and aspects of the city.
Projects 114
Mega Mobiles Jorge Ituarte-Arreola Autonomous Future Incubators Meric Arslanoglu
Mega Mobiles combines concepts of mobility and urban experience. The constantly evolving design of the project and its daily updated routes based on neural networks reflect the quick transformation of Shenzhen while providing spontaneous experience to inhabitants of the city. Materialization of Shenzhen’s emerging characteristics in the form of a spherical autonomous vehicle generates the backbone of the project. Taking advantage of spherical geometry provides flexible and dynamic spaces, which are ready for constant transformation in the urban context.
Stock City Urbanism at the Speed of Data
117 The project builds an AI tool to simulate how the invisible forces of digital finance and high-speed trading shape the visible structure of Shenzhen’s fabric. Based on this tool, we propose selective architectural interventions that provide flexible new data infrastructures for buildings and the city itself. Cryptocurrency, high-frequency trading, and e-commerce are reshaping social interactions and potentially the city itself. As the speed of transactions accelerates, urbanity is suddenly shaped by data infrastructure—optic fibers and data points. Milliseconds and nano bytes are now central to achieving economic competitiveness. At the intersection between visible and invisible forces, what are the implications on urban form and life? How can we, as designers, use these tools to shape and speculate on Shenzhen’s possible futures?
The project uses emerging technologies that are already revolutionizing the way we perceive and design space. We simulate a certain transformation in the urban fabric that could be triggered based on the technology using artificial intelligence and neural network training processing. The data creates zones of advantage and disadvantage and a map of population density that constantly changes based on multiple factors. Here, we use the technological tools to make the invisible visible and produce a new schema for future development. The tool integrates values of the larger economic network into the physical structure of the city.
Right: Hybrid Drawing: Perspectival Plan & Section: Dynamic Structures that adapt density to speed of data, constantly redistribution zones of advantage & disadvantage for transactions in the city.
PL YMOUTH
BRES T
IBRA LT AR G LONDON PARIS
MARSEILLE
EELAND Z N RUMHOR K ICIL Y S FRANKFURT
ARI B M BODRU
RETE C CYPRUS
LEXANDRA A Z UE S A QABA EDDA H J JIBOUTI D DEN A A OH D D UBAI USC AT M ARACHI K M UMBAI ERALA K OL OMBO C
SHENZHEN
HONG K ONG
IT Y HO CHI MIN C U HAIK DAGU PA N
N FUTIA SHANGHAI
URMA B HUKET P INGAPORE S J AKA RT A D A NANG RUNEI B ANILA M BUSAN GU AM
YO T OK
zhuhai SHENZHEN AIRPORT
DACHAN PORT
PROPOSED CENTER
QUIANHAI BAY
CHIWAN BAY
HONG KONG
DEVELOPMENT AXIS
I AW AI H L OS ANGELES
NEW YORK
Stock City: Urbanism at the Speed of Data
FUTIAN
Top: Regional Plan: As Shenzhen does not have any marine optic fiber outputs, the most robust and fastest types of data cables, our project therefore aims to strengthen this infrastructure to establish new international connections with other competitive markets and reinstate its value at the global level. Bottom: Master Plan: Our proposed intervention embraces foreseen narratives of Shenzhen’s expansion, though we attempt to requestion the meaning of a financial district in a future economy completely dependent on data. With that, our project defines a new significance to a conventional CBD, as we establish a powerful infrastructural axis.
Alia Bader + Naksha Satish 120
Top: Site Plan: A New Data Hub: As a spatial outcome, we imagine the port to be redefined. The port, historically an urban edge and station for the distribution of goods, is here reimagined as a new interface between the world and the city. In our proposal, the port serves for the commodification of data in the production of transactions and services. Bottom: Infrastructural Plan (crop): By mapping building arrays, we draw a relationship between the existing patterns of density and the layout of the proposed data infrastructure. As the pattern of replication grows, the network mutates accordingly to plug into these patterns. With this growth, in both data infrastructure and density, new points at the intersection will provide the opportunity for the erection of new structures.
The port as the interface for a new type of trade and the commodification of data: In this drawing, the large disk is a programmed structure that acts as an infrastructural transition between the point of output at the port with the organic edge of the city, as the data network seeps into the armature of the city.
Interstitial structures allowing for strategic expansion of occupiable space of existing buildings at a rapid pace: Sometimes these towers will hover and create a new roofscape. Other times, the towers will sit in between the interstitial spaces between buildings as per the residential block. Others will parasitically latch on to the existing structures where density is already high.
125 The project proposes a strategy for adapting and activating existing public spaces into interactive digital media parks. Anticipating the future of collective entertainment, such parks augment existing ones through digital art, experiences, and games. These parks are also networked together through screens and projections, creating one megapark appropriate for China’s technology capital. The park thus becomes a new kind of interface to the city.
Today, New York City has more than 500 street parks and small open squares. Though they are collectively only one-tenth of the size of Central Park, what makes them so successful is the sensible arrangement of scale and subdivision, as well as engaging small-scale public events. Although Shenzhen has a large number of public places such as the Citizen Plaza, Shenzhen Library Plaza, and the City Mall Plaza, many of them are so huge that they are not effectively used. Using a technological kit of parts, this project aims to improve the utilization of these plazas on a humanized scale while maintaining the original functions for large public gatherings. AI and neural network systems are used in the interfaces of the digital media of the park to connect the city from within and they also play important roles in the design process. Training satellite images in YOLO detects the existing enclosed urban spaces in Shenzhen, while scripted iterations generated by Hyster processing scripts can be read as a material or programmatic division.
127 Public Space for New Media: An Interactive Media Park
Top: YOLO and digital processing for the programmatic and spatial reconfiguration of public spaces in Shenzhen.
Qiao Xu
Top: The innovative space created by new media can be used to connect people and provide a new way of life. It can provide opportunities for friends and strangers to play games together. For instance, people can play virtual soccer games together from different locations. Large events can be broadcast live from media parks around the city and citizens can interact online. Bottom: The light purple shapes are where the programs are located. The four big vertical rails are the truss columns that can hold screens, lights, and cameras. The circles are the small rail systems and movable panels. The rail system introduced in this project makes the space more flexible and adaptive. The green space under the trusses are softscape, grass and trees. The lightest area with paving strips is the open space for circulation. They are hardscape stone/concrete materials.
Mega Mobiles An Autonomous Entertainment Project
131 The project proposes a new kind of entertainment complex for Shenzhen: an autonomous and mobile megastructure that roams the city, connecting to existing entertainment districts as well as directly to buildings themselves.
Taking its cue from the massive “megabuses” that have emerged recently in China’s cities, the project aims to introduce to Shenzhen an autonomous, adaptable, and modular urban design that infills missing programs throughout the city fabric. Using neural networks and agent-based software for autonomous mobility, the project uses aerial imagery and remote sensing to determine what is happening throughout the city.
The proposal’s modular design hyperextends and attaches itself to certain nodes via routes that are calculated by remote sensing. The routes are updated as often as daily basis. It is a part of the city and fits in wherever it is required. The design is constantly evolving, changing to best suit the users of the city. It is the prototype for a network of autonomous Mega Mobile structures that simultaneously move throughout the city every day, docking themselves for service and when being underutilized.
Right: This is an AI urbanism; the Mega Mobile is not necessarily about the designer using AI, it is more so about imagining a city that has AI embedded, that begins to self-analyze parts of the city, all while operating at a time scale that has not been explored previously. Mega Mobiles is a response to the ever-changing fabric of the future city. It is the solution.
Top: Here we begin to establish the sites (nodes) in which a modular, autonomous structure could begin to dock itself in order to infill missing programs. These range from parks to business districts to airports, creating nodes for a temporary entertainment district. Bottom: Here we look at the different aspects of the design. Nightlife + Fitness + Leisure + Shopping + Connections. These modular aspects can be switched in and out and fit to any site now adapted to the future and are what programs required. Mega Mobiles: An Autonomous Entertainment Project
Jorge Ituarte-Arreola
Top: The section diagram shows the mega mobile docked in a busy business district, connecting to the sidewalks and ground level, connecting the users of these high-rises to the entertainment center. The entertainment center provides high-tech workers access to green spaces, bars, event spaces, e-gaming, gymnasiums, and recreational spaces. Bottom: The plan begins to explore the moving platform of the project as well as the built forms situated on top of the platform. Here you can begin to see how these forms each hold their own program; this plan shows the mega mobile moving through the city. A public plaza for spaces of higher densities.
137 The project proposes a factory for autonomous assembly bots, self-driving delivery capsules that expand into a kit of parts for dynamic event architectures. It playfully takes the vending machine as a model, imagining the production of architectural bots on demand. It rethinks the relationship between agile development and manufacturing, and the way that assembly itself can occur with new autonomous machines.
Shenzhen Inc. aims to create a way of dialogue between the urban ecologies and cutting-edge manufacturing technologies of the future. Shenzhen is well known as the “world’s tech incubator,” “Silicon Valley for hardware,” “the electronics capital of the world,” and “manufacturing hub.” Through the lens of remote sensing and neural imagination, the Shenzhen Inc. project investigates adaptation of autonomous manufacturing with the urban lifestyle and speculates about innovative packaging and assembly methodologies. The vending machine flowchart and agile management principles guide the responsive concept of the project and reflect the project’s manifestation of the constant transformation of Shenzhen. Inspired by Karl Sims’s “Evolving 3D Morphology,” the project develops an urban interface that interprets spontaneous digital dataflows from citydwellers with the integration of the vending machine workflow. It brings in new possibilities for creating adaptive and self-learning spaces to Shenzhen.
Right: Axonometric view of the Autonomous Factory shows relationships of various units, which includes an autonomous spherical drone, an adaptable kit for living in, and an autonomous manufacturing facility.
139 Shenzhen Inc.: Autonomous and Agile Assembly Factory
Top: The sphere allows for agile development principles in spatial organization in which different units of the company can be arranged in an adjustable way.
Meric Arslanoglu 140
Flexibility for the reconfiguration of the factory setting is the crucial idea behind the spherical layout. In contrast to the traditional one-directional assembly line, which is highly resistant to the reconfiguration, the company embraces multidirectional ability and mobility features of the sphere for allowing flexible manufacturing layout. This layout is able to respond to changes over time.
141 Shenzhen Inc.: Autonomous and Agile Assembly Factory
Top: Spherical geometry has its advantages for mobility, efficiency in packaging, and flexible reconfiguration. Bottom: Expansion of the spherical form with cam mechanism principles provides spatial possibilities for various functions.
Meric Arslanoglu 142
Interaction of adaptable spaces in the urban context. The kit inside the spherical drones allows users to form a flexible habitation.
NEW RESOURCES
Introduction From a fishing village to the 26th most populated city in the world, Shenzhen’s transformation in just 40 years is unprecedented. However, behind the heat of construction and expansion is a massive demand for natural resources that has far outstripped what Pearl River Delta could supply. Looking to the future, it is time for Shenzhen to slow down and re-examine the costs and benefits of its development mode.
This chapter, “New Resources,” exhibits a series of projects that together create new flows of materials and resources across the city to create new urban environments. Shenzhen is a city that has always adapted to change rapidly. The projects call for a series of transformations that need to be designed in a sustainable manner, to reduce waste and create a judicious resource flow. Through the proposition of New Resources, they put forth ideas for adaptive mechanisms and circular production cycles that create linkages at various scales. By integrating different flows of materials, labor and energy, the projects in this chapter call for more environmental responsibility in the era of the Anthropocene.
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Resource Extraction
Construction
New Resources
Labor
New Resources
Linear vs. Circular Resource Flow Model
This chapter starts from looking at the current situation of intense global resource extraction, then enumerates problems on massive urban constructions and human resource flows between countries and cities. The three topics frame what New Resources wants to tackle in modern metropolises. In the case of Shenzhen, the three topics tightly relate to one another: The rapid growth rate of the city would never be realized without the support of massive resource extraction and huge immigrant labor inflow. Shenzhen is a perfect testing site for a new urban resource ecology.
