B.Pro M.Arch
RC-18
URBAN DESIGN
09.2018
BARTLETT
A N E M P AT H E T I C N E T W O R K O F C O M P U TAT I O N A L G E O L O G Y
Haeam Jung
Luis Carlos Castillo
Farnoosh Fanaian
Portfolio RC18 / 2017-2018 Bartlett School of Architecture University College London London, UK
Design Tutors Enriqueta Llabres-Valls Zachary Fluker Submitted by Farnoosh Fanaian Haeam Jung Luis Carlos Castillo September 2018
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Prosthetic Ecologies [Bartlett , B-Pro Urban Design]
A N E M PAT H E T I C U R B A N N E T W O R K O F C O M P U TAT I O N A L G E O L O G Y
Portfolio RC18 / 2017-2018 Bartlett School of Architecture University College London London, UK
Design Tutors Enriqueta Llabres-Valls Zachary Fluker Submitted by Farnoosh Fanaian Haeam Jung Luis Carlos Castillo September 2018
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CONTENTS
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PREFACE KEYWORDS ABSTRACT
“People are the quintessential element in all technology...Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed” (Hardin 1968). It is evident today that urbanization of cities towards a more productive reality, from aspects of food and energy production, to establishing healthy living and work environments that is resilient to climate fluctuations, can no longer be performed from a purely functional and morphological perspective(.....)
04
READING METABOLISMS THE PROXY MODEL METHODOLOGY ArcGIS DATA MAPPING PLANT DATA APPLICATION ESTABLISHING FOOD TERRITORIES
56_93 62_65 66_67 68_83 84_87 89_93
Algorithms interacting with natural systems : Recreating
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06_07 08_15 16_17
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TERRITORIAL INTELLIGENCE ABSTRACTION OF MAN TO MACHINE COMPUTING EMPATHY RE-STACK GOVERNANCE THE DIGITAL EMPATHETIC NETWORK TERRITORIAL ACCIDENTS
94_121 96_101 102_107 108_109 110_113 114_119 120_121
optimum conditions of plant growth requires recording of data
Empathy is the communication of emotion. Emotions are
that is invisible. The ability to read this metabolism through
common to all, universal yet also individual as people each
computer vision and sensors helps give a voice to the plants
have their own feelings, unique and distinct from the feelings of
where they communicate their very precise needs for optimal
other people. In order to understand the empathy that (.....)
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INTRODUCTION RESEARCH STRUCTURE
18_25 26_27
A Prosthetic Approach : This approach allows us to create landscapes that are natural extensions of the environments they occupy. While the current systems and process that the urban metabolism entails, will also take on new forms of involvement within a city, Agriculture and food production, for example, will need to naturally move back into cities, but strategically placed and included so as to become a natural extension of its surroundings while functioning as good, if not better than (......)
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REFERENCES & BIBLIOGRAPHY
122_123
Picon, Antoine. (2015) Smart cities: a spatialised intelligence. Chichester: John Wiley. Benjamin h. Bratton, (2015) The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty Erik Swyngedouw (2016) Circulations and Metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) Cities Felix Guattari (1989) The three Ecologies, 1989, Ilaria Di Carlo (2016) The Aesthetics of Sustainability Ikujiro Nonaka (1994) A Dynamic Theory of Organizational (.....)
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MINERAL INTELLIGENCE THE UNIT POROSITY PERMEABILITY SURFACE TENSION THE NON-LINEAR MATERIAL
30_55 34_35 36_43 44_47 48_51 52_55
The term ‘Mineral intelligence’ suggests a fundamental shift in the way we perceive the use and application of sensing technologies in urban design. The need is to envision a nonlinear material system that is capable to morph, rearrange and adapt to its immediate surroundings, reinforcing (......)
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APPENDIX THE PROXY MODEL 1 THE PROXY MODEL 2 THE PROXY MODEL 3 ON/OFF REDEFINING URBAN TRANSISTORS PLUG-IN ECOLOGY
124_163 126_133 134_141 142_145 146_153 154_163
Term 1 Research Projects Visualising Metabolism (Heart Rate sensing machine) Influencing Patterns of Growth (NDVI sensing machine) Static Field Generator (sensing machine) (.....)
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PREFACE
ESTABLISHING RELIABILITY
“People are the quintessential element in all technology...Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed” (Hardin 1968). It is evident today that urbanization of cities towards a more productive reality, from aspects of food and energy production to establishing healthy living and work environments that are resilient to climate fluctuations, can no longer be performed from a purely functional and morphological perspective. It requires reading of urban environments as coherent organisms that seamlessly connect the natural and artificial systems in the process of collaborative co-creation of our habitats for co-existence. Architecture then begins to take on a new responsibility to act as an interface of communication between citizens and its ecosystem. The project ‘Prosthetic Ecologies’ is supported by three distinct research directions that inform and direct the overall framework of the project. (1) Relational User Attribute Inference in Urban Space: This research applies the concepts of empathy and the urban commons in the context of city spaces. The spatial experience encompasses the notion of urban place, social place as a social product, and the concept of potential space extended from its fixed reality. It emphasizes the process of abstracting the biological nature of man into machines, thus encoding empathy as an essential characteristic of communication into all technology. (2) The Dichotomy between the Stack and the Palimpsest : Critically analyzing the dichotomy between two ways of understanding the contemporary city, ‘The Stack’ by Benjamin Bratton and ‘The Palimpsest’, where on the one hand is a system of independent layers, technological and intelligent that are linked based on the transfer of information and on the other hand, a layout that is modified from the destruction and overwriting of its components at the physical and digital level. This research proposes to analyze and influence the intelligent link between the Earth Layer, Cloud Layer, the Interface layer and the User layer from the generation of accidents. (3) Reading Territorial Metabolisms: Evolutionary Sciences play a key role in our current approach to understanding and responding to the needs of our cities. This research elaborates on a new paradigm of empowerment of users within a city. Reading and comprehending territorial metabolisms orchestrated by designers to harmonize the currently dissonant voices of our ecosystem towards synthetic urban environments that are indistinguishable from natural systems.
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TOWARDS TOWARDS A A NEW NEW NORMAL NORMAL
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prosthesis
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‘Prosthetic Ecologies’ will awaken and change awareness of the terrain of food production, distribution and consumption in the daily life of the city. 9
synthetic framework
Territorialized Intelligence Infinitely subdivided
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urban epidermis
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dichotomy of governance Peer-peer (or) top down
new governance
Empathetic network
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ABSTRACT
Enhancing Potentials
The advent of city life centered on digital connectivity and fabrication technologies presents societies with new opportunities for enhancing the potential of urban territories. This research focuses on the advancing potentials of the earth’s crust with the aid of a prosthesis. Embedding the earth with synthetic technologies and mineral intelligence to restructure and de-linearize the current metabolic systems within cities. Cities viewed through the perspective of ‘The Stack’ (Bratton) as an integrated system of interdependent layers The Mineral layer, the User layer, and the new Palimpsest layer, suggests the development of a new territory that acts as an interface to connect the various components of a complex system. This approach allows us to envision a new governable stratum capable of functioning as a prosthetic enhancement to the earth’s crust. The aim of this project research is to propose a design process based on reading, actuating and adapting systems. This process engages one of the elements of the urban metabolism, redefining the food production and distribution systems. Moving away from centralized and distributed networks to a localized production network. Engaging users (human and non-human) within an empathetic network to customize urban territories through a new approach to governance and collaboration.
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chapter_1
INTRODUCTION
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THE NEW NORMAL
URBAN PROSTHESIS
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THE CURRENT ANTHROPOCENE
“ [we] come from Nature …There is an importance to [having] a certain reverence for what nature is because we are connected to it... If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.”
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Edward Burtynsky
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A PROSTHETIC APPROACH This approach allows us to create landscapes that are natural extensions of the environments they occupy. While the current systems and process that the urban metabolism entails, will also take on new forms of involvement within a city, Agriculture and food production, for example, will need to naturally move back into cities, but strategically placed and included so as to become a natural extension of its surroundings while functioning as good, if not better than the current linear and industrial modes of food production, using models similar to the blockchain technology. The relationship between data and physical space becomes more and more pertinent, as computation in design plays a catalytic role in making faster and more holistic decisions. Typically, we are able to observe data of say food and water production logistics over many years and make large infrastructural changes that aim to counter or promote a very specific behavior. However, with abilities to read the environment through computation, sensing and monitoring technologies we can alter ecologies in very small ways and direct them in very specific paths. It is possible now to build much more responsive landscapes, that constantly communicate and receive decisions and directions on how they must operate where algorithms interact with algorithms influencing patterns of growth that establishes a middle ground between top-down and bottom-up processes of design. Coherence in the artificially intelligent systems and the ecological systems opens new doors for ‘new normals’ within our cities. Although the ability to read the realities of our immediate surroundings plays a vital role in decision-making, it also needs a digital social platform where the various users may begin to communicate with each other. The current paradigm of social media may extend into a realm of hyper-awareness, functioning as a source of factual and validated information that is encrypted and reliable. Human intelligence and artificial algorithmic intelligence listening to the natural metabolic processes of a city involves talking about sensors at a very personal level. Visualizing the invisible elements of the environment through sensing technologies empower us with layers of information, that further uses computational tools and simulations to arrive at parameters for a strong environmentally sensitive design
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Who takes control ?
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Food Production De-Linearizing the Supply Chain
Non-Linearity of Food Production
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Methodology
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chapter_3
MINERAL INTELLIGENCE
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Parameters for the New Geology The term ‘Mineral intelligence’ suggests a fundamental shift in the way we perceive the use and application of sensing technologies in urban design. The need is to envision a non-linear material system that is capable to morph, rearrange and adapt to its immediate surroundings, reinforcing the elemental relationship that natural systems inherently possess and computing that into an artificial system that begins to seamlessly communicate, collaborate and exchange data. The strategic use of digital tools to analyze the earth’s natural ability to facilitate optimum conditions for plant growth and therefore recreating those conditions through computational design tools and processes hinges on the ability of the new geology to mimic specific characteristics of porosity, permeability, and surface tension. These computational models open up new avenues of design that has the potential to develop algorithms that mimic biological evolution and its intuitive coherent networks with the aim to compress design into a very rapid process. This research project adopts this new paradigm of design and user interactions by envisioning a new layer within cities customized to agriculture and its production-related activities. This new ecosystem that is envisioned through the theoretical discourse of ‘The Stack’ by Benjamin Bratton, an interdependent layer system that explains the planetary scale computation within our geopolitical realities, takes into account the bridging of these different layers, focusing onto the mineral layer to act as an interface between people and geology. Seeking to generate a new epidermis or contact surface between the land and the city, ‘Beginning to envision the earth as a layer within a synthetic machine’ (Benjamin Bratton 2015). The Earth works as the fuel of the synthetic machine that provides energy resources to the system. The Interface plays a key role in initiating the process, allowing users to interact, and transfer information to the system in order to optimize resources. A new synthetic ecosystem that redefines and re-establishes the relationship between agriculture and citizens.
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POROSITY PERMEABILITY SURFACE TENSION 31
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The Unit
Multi-Criteria Optimisation Process
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Surface Tension
Permeability
Porosity
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Porosity
Analyzing Geology
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Computing Geology Defining Algorithms
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Permeability Soil Structure
An essential element that informed the aesthetics of the final design outcome is the characteristic of permeability. The hidden lines of contact that a soil structure develops over the course of time. The degrees of permeability ranges within different soil structures, which limits and categorizes specific soil for specific types of plant. In the designed structure, however, permeability can be customized to a wide range of soil requirements for specific moisture soil conditions of varied plant species.
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Simulating Fluid Dynamics
AVIZO and SIMSCALE Softwares
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Surface Tension Cohesive Forces
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Cohesive Force Property Attractive forces between molescules of the same type.
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Adhesive Forces
Hydrogen molecules [H] Type A
Structure [Porous system] Type B
Adhesive Force Property Attractive forces between molescules of different types.
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Surface Tension
γ=mN/m
γ=mN/m
γ=mN/m
γ=mN/m
[224.67]
[336.38]
[411.66]
[275.31]
γ=mN/m [323.45]
γ=mN/m [283.45]
γ=mN/m [407.15]
γ=mN/m [398.89]
γ=mN/m [376.24]
Surface Tension [γ] = F / L F = Force L = Length The surface tension is proportional to the strength of the cohesive forces which varies with the type of liquid. The synthetic structure with the water gel generate a single surface, allowing the molecules to increase the cohesive forces between them, holding liquid for a long period of time.
Reading Surface Tension [Structure + Water Gel] Forces between molecules, pulling them as closer together and tend to minimize the surface area.
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The Non-Linear Material “Responding to the needs of the Plants morphing itself while absorbing water�
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chapter_4
READING METABOLISMS
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Sensing and Actuating Visualizing urban metabolism while grasping an understanding of the continuous processes of energy, material, and resource exchange within and between cities, with the aid of sensing technologies creating a dialogue between the social and natural systems.
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Reading the Invisible
Algorithms Interacting with Natural systems Recreating optimum conditions of plant growth requires recording of data that is invisible. The ability to read this metabolism through computer vision and sensors helps give a voice to the plants where they communicate their very precise needs for optimal yield through a data set of parameters for plant growth such as Dimensions, Lighting requirements, Soil conditions, suggesting pH values and moisture requirements, including the Harvest and Yield periods. This establishes a data set of design suggestions for a precisely customized habitat for the plants A proxy model analyses a green unit, with the help of an NDVI Camera (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) that can visualize the plants from a perspective that is invisible to the naked eye. The camera produces images with data that specifically points out the regions of intense growth (or) regions where photosynthesis is taking place. This opens new avenues in the field of cybernetic ecologies where the environment is given a voice to communicate its needs with the machine to gain equilibrium.
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NDVI
Normalized Difference Vegetative Index
Near Infrared Image
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NDVI Image
The two images are part of the process of reading the Vegetation Index in the selected green area. The image on the left is taken from a specialized camera that is modified by removing its inbuilt infrared filter and replacing it with a blue filter. Once the image is taken, it is then processed with the help of an online open source platform that uses generative algorithms to prepare an image that identifies a range of the health of the vegetation. The colors in these images range from blue [-1] until green [+1]. This limitation in the colors of the processed image helps us easily codify this data into a binary system that can be fed into a computer to analyze, process and make definite conclusions.
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Proxy Model
Influencing Hidden Patterns
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Merging Patterns [Chip]
The desired result of influencing a pattern of growth on the plants
The various tests undertaken with the green unit provided us with data that seemed inconsistent with the patterns subjected onto the growing medium. However the various images show different outcomes while being subjected to the different shade patterns. To further analyses the same green unit over a specific time frame, we overlapped all the different NDVI images to possibly paint a more holistic image of the general condition of the plans after being subjected to the experiments. The outcome shown above depicts a new code that could further be processed into a binary system to communicate with machines. .
(See appendix for more details)
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“...toward a new visual environment dominated by exactly transmissible but invisible algorithms.” Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm
It is evident today that urbanization of cities towards a more productive reality, from aspects of food and energy production to establishing healthy living and work environments that are resilient to climate fluctuations, can no longer be performed from a purely functional and morphological perspective. It requires reading of urban environments as coherent organisms that fit within the theoretical framework of ‘urban metabolism’. Understanding urbanization in terms of the vital flows of water, energy, and food, that maintains a pulse of life within cities. Evolutionary sciences play a very crucial role of dealing with contemporary urban design, like a scientist observing a highly complex organism (the city) comprising of multiple systems and processes, and understanding the realities of this artificial ecosystem. The digital revolution as described by Mario Carpo has brought with it a new vision of individual empowerment that is no longer individualistic or anthropocentric. It empowers individuals to embed technology into every process of life. With this newfound ability that humanity has accumulated over centuries, the need of the urban environment, however, is to localize the metabolic process in a system of mutual accountability and trust. Thus creating a distributed network of open source data for the transfer of energy in a system that can be read and comprehended by all the individuals belonging to the geographical vicinity, will provide the city with new modes of functionality and elimination of redundancies.
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Methodology The process of reading territorial metabolism involves a nonlinear approach where sensing territorial data and its actuation is done from two perspectives. Actuation of the physical interface relies on a peer-to-peer form of knowledge creation that is validated from the cloud layer as well as from the mineral layer. Data read from the global scale provides a vantage point that the mineral layer cannot provide and vice versa. ArcGIS mapping can provide specific data as directed which adds further clarity to the territory for optimal use. Overlapping the various requirements enables the users to make informed decisions about the urban territories, while a feedback loop of information then works at constantly optimizing the system and providing the interface with vital information about the metabolism of its territory. Top-level decisions from the agency (human or non-human) interacting with the interface at various scales allow the system to comprehend the request as a block or a digital ledger. While the mechanism of new mineral intelligence is specific to plant growth it is also equipped with the ability to incorporate various sources of information, such as simulation software for fluid dynamics, live data of Vegetative health of regions within cities, including plant characteristics data, etc‌ WThis framework enables a new empathetic relationship between humans, Artificial intelligence, natural systems and resources.
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ArcGIS Mapping
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Mapping Data ArcGIS data for London
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Movement Intensity
ArcGIS data for London
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Population Density
ArcGIS data for London
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Vegetative Index Map
ArcGIS data for London
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Access Network Map ArcGIS data for London
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Public and Private Space ArcGIS data for London
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Integrated Metabolism Map Analysing Overlapped Data Maps
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Access Plant Data Applicationp DeepRoot software World wide Plant Database Utilizing online resources such as Deeproot software, provides a very descriptive and detailed set of plant growth parameters that plug-in to the optimization algorithms for the design of the units. These physical parameters spatializes the units specific to the type of plant species, while also clustering various crops that have similar yield and harvest periods to optimally use these underground territories for maximum yield in the minimum space required.
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Influencing Spatial Parametersp DeepRoot software World wide Plant Database
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Territorialization of the City Based on Production and Harvest Time-liness
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Territorialization of the City Claiming New territories for Food Production
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r aye L etic s ath user p m d e E te T h onne c of c
ry r i to o n r e T ti ew uduc N r e Th ood P F of
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chapter_5
TERRITORIAL INTELLIGENCE
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ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
FOR TERRITORIAL EMPATHY
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An Empathetic Bond Abstraction of Man to Machine Empathy is the communication of emotion. Emotions are
common to all, universal yet also individual as people each have their own feelings, unique and distinct from the feelings of other people. In order to understand the empathy that emotions and feelings communicate, it is necessary to analyze the basis of empathy. Mencius suggested a ‘good nature principle’ as a foundation for emotions (W. Bryan 2002). It is through ‘emotion’ that the goodness of human nature is revealed. For him, emotion is an immediate reaction in the mind. In other words, a human expressing what they feel before they think or logically judge, that would be an emotional reaction. The abstraction of the human circulatory system into a machine that visualizes the pulse of a human heart rate in a dynamic way suggests a profound approach towards understanding all our involuntarily shared biological data. The constantly changing and adapting nature of this data places the individual in a very crucial position within the wider ecology. Designing an open system suggests data being transformed into usable information that self-regulates and optimizes itself, creating a feedback loop mechanism. Going back to the human circulatory system, where the flow of blood within the body serves a specific and fundamental duty of transporting blood to the various parts of the body, to be contrasted with this machine which is a closed system and its current output is establishing a visual relationship between the human and the machine. What makes this machine fascinating is its ability to reflect and
Human-Machine [X-ray]
communicate an aspect of the human body that is never seen.
[110] [105]
[106]
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[86]
[86]
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Codifying Empathy Binarization of Biological systems
5.0_ Human Pulse [Binary Code]
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3.0_ Transforming Heart rate data in a Binary Code System
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Layer 7
Max Speed
Layer 6
Variable Boundarie By-Pass [END]
Layer 5
Void [Air]
Layer 4
Variable Boundarie
Air [IN]
By-Pass [START]
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Static state
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Variable Boundarie
Layer 1
Average Speed
Air Pump 1 [ON]
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The Users
A Non-Hierarchical Framework
While the current anthropocentric perspective of the environment we live in is no longer sustainable. We propose a nonhierarchical ontology system where human and non-human users can communicate, collaborate and exchange resources of energy using a single framework that accommodates for non-linearity. Balance, however, is created by accommodating all elements of the ecosystem where every need is sufficed with the aid and exchange from its neighboring species. The urban environment of cities today functions in a slightly different and unsustainable paradigm, it involves multiple, extensive logistical networks of transfer of resources from one location to another on very brittle and linear systems of production. Flattening the logistics of this linearity demands a strategic analysis of the elemental sources of energy and its impact on the built environment so that it can be optimized and utilized locally. The research utilizes a few fundamental theoretical frameworks to establish a logical and radical scenario for a sustainable future of urban life. It is essential to embrace the complexities of current cities, and analyze them as a set of systems functioning in parallel within the same territory, while also affected by build-up and breakdown process of time. Key to the credibility of this new discourse is the interconnectedness of the users within these systems and the empathetic bond of communication that is essential to reduce the gap between people and the environment. Humans take on a role of a service provider to the ecosystem by becoming the link that ties together the ecology with intelligence technologies. Visualizing this scenario is possible today because of the ever-shrinking opportunities of sensing technologies. We are at a position where we are able to embed sensors into the remotest harshest and smallest areas in the environment, establishing an identity and an address for all the elements that make up our current ecosystem. Suddenly our understanding of the world’s population of ‘users’ broadens to embraces a much more realistic scenery of the co-inhabitants of the planet we call home.
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The Stack: “Refers to a transformation in the technical infrastructure of global systems, whereby planetary scale computation has so thoroughly and fundamentally transformed the logics of political geography in its own image that it has produced new geographies and new territories that can enforce themselves.” [Bratton,Benjamin. (2015) The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty]. The Palimpsest: “Palimpsest is a term that denotes a manuscript written over a partly erased older manuscript in such a way that the old words can be read beneath the new. The concept of palimpsest has recurrently been used to explain the layered construct of architectural monuments and urban morphologies developed through the course of history.” [Azimzadeh, Mir, and Bjur, Hans. (2007). The Urban Palimpsest: The Interplay between the Historically Generated Layers in Urban Spatial System and Urban Life].
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Re-Stack
Overlapping Theoritical Frameworks
EMPATHETIC USER LAYER
AI GOVERNANCE LAYER
TERRITORIAL PALIMPSEST
MINERAL LAYER
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“... As users....are enrolled into these collaborative perceptual-interfacial affiliations and platforms, the contingent hierarchies between physical subjects and objects are put once again into play..� Benjamin Bratton 2015 : The Stack : On software and Sovereignty
Establishing Collaboration The Interface Layer is the dynamic link between all the layers, it is the key that allows you to access the system, connect and disconnect links between users and addresses, accelerate or decrease the flow of data in the Cloud Layer. The Interface allows seeing what the user cannot see but only what she can do inside the Stack. It can be assumed that it is a dangerous tool capable of generating mega accidents, it is the transistor that filters user actions within an established range by itself. The Interface is a threshold that appears to be empty in order to give the user the freedom to customize it as desired, by using APPs as an extension of their hand or AR elements that may have the ability to distort the City Layer. It is important to mention that the Interface is not only an isolated key within the system, but is part of the operational chain, so its design must be assumed as a sequence of transistors operating within a multiple networks of interconnections this layer is composed of a chain of states where its time of stay depends directly on the speed of the data transfer. Likewise, its hierarchical structure is determined by those agents that have a greater number of interconnected platforms where users constantly share information. To be able to think about flattening the data layer, it is necessary to understand the interconnection between all the layers, since the modification of one of them influences in a positive or negative way the chain of the system. The Interface Layer fulfils a fundamental role within the system by being the medium where users share, receive and transfer information. Just as industrial processes are a chain of supplements that are connected linearly in order to transform raw material into finished product, Cloud Layer feeds raw material (data flow) to interfaces or platforms that seek to interconnect using the same language, the more connections, the more control and hierarchy within the layer. The scale, components, materials, and volume of each design are directly linked to a negative side of the ecosystem impact. A computational design system should not only be composed of inputs that generate multiple alternatives for multiple users, but also by the analysis of accidents that allow discarding options, in this way the threshold of the impact curve would decrease. On the other hand, the generation of units or components must be validated through communication between users using a single collaborative framework who take as a precedent the acquired knowledge.
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Visualizing the Empathetic Network Following the digital ledger from one user to another
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GOVERNANCE The Dichotomy
The vision of Nicholas Negroponte in ‘being digital’ that humanity is inevitably headed towards a future where everything that can, will be digitalized. This strongly suggests the power individuals will have in the digital realm in reinventing conventional norms of social practices while strengthening key aspects of the urban experience. This project opens an interesting conversation as to including the cities inhabitants to visualize their personal impact on a metabolic process of an urban scale. It begins to create avenues for behavioral change among the population. It is not hard to imagine now the future cities and all of its minutest elements having a digital signature along with an address that can be traced, tracked and monitored if needed. A truly democratic scenario starts to emerge, where we begin to acknowledge the neglected users of our current ecosystem. From a geopolitical perspective, this data will need to be open to all individuals to actively contribute to alterations in social practices because of their ability to comprehend the health of their city. According to Guattari, an organizational approach to reinvent social practices is needed to give back to humanity a sense of responsibility towards the material and immaterial components of urban life. Bringing along with itself new concepts of aesthetics that relate directly to the ecology, where our senses were not meant for detached cognition but for participation, collaboration, and exchange. The role of the users in this digitally connected ecology begins to take the design conversation on very different levels, creating involvement and interaction of users as part of the design process. Architecture and therefore the scope of architects begin to shift and re-framed as an organizational role within the non-hierarchical framework, where it facilitates a platform or an interface that connects spatial design problems to the needs of the users while borrowing methods and theories from various scientific disciplines that can contribute to a more holistic solution.
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“Territorial ownership”
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The Digital Ledger Actuating to the needs of the ‘users’
“peer-to-peer networking is all but agnostic as to the territorial origins and outcomes of packet flows “ Benjamin Bratton 2015- The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
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The notion of a ‘digitally equipped individual’ that is the protagonist in the self-fulfilling fiction of the world today, exists because we want it to exist…‘The digital age of individuality goes with a new sensory receptivity that can be mobilized to promote civic goals as well as mass-customized consumption.’ (Antoine Picon 2010) thereby reconfiguring the city in terms of sensory stimulations, and making more symbiotic boundaries between human beings and natural systems. Environmental sensing, computation, and robotics have begun to change the relationship between human beings and the environment, where simulations and multi-criteria optimizations equip us with a knowledge that can predict possible scenarios of crisis and take nuanced decisions concerning the design of cities. A whole new perspective of interacting elements within the urban morphology that communicate with each other with the help of artificial intelligence and sensing technologies so as to accommodate, adapt and listen to the needs of the other users of the ecosystem, be they synthetic or biological. This approach allows us to create landscapes that are natural extensions of the environments they occupy. While the current systems and process that the urban metabolism entails, will also take on new forms of involvement within a city, Agriculture and food production will need to naturally move back into cities, but strategically placed and included so as to become a natural extension of its surroundings while functioning as good, if not better than the current linear and industrial modes of food production, using models similar to the blockchain technology. The relationship between data and physical space becomes more and more pertinent, as computation in design plays a role in making faster and more holistic decisions. Typically, we are able to observe data of say food and water production logistics over many years and make large infrastructural changes that aim to counter or promote a very specific behavior. However, with abilities to read the environment through computation, sensing and monitoring technologies we can alter ecologies in very small ways and direct them in very specific paths. It is possible now to build much more responsive landscapes, that constantly communicate and receive decisions and directions on how they must operate where algorithms interact with algorithms influencing patterns of growth that establishes a middle ground between top-down and bottom-up processes of design. Coherence in the artificially intelligent systems and the ecological systems opens new doors for ‘new normals’ within our cities. Although the ability to read the realities of our immediate surroundings plays a vital role in decision-making, it also needs a digital social platform where the various users may begin to communicate with each other. The current paradigm of social media may extend into a realm of hyper-awareness, functioning as a source of factual and validated information that is encrypted and reliable. Human intelligence and artificial algorithmic intelligence listening to the natural metabolic processes of a city involves talking about sensors at a very personal level. Visualizing the invisible elements of the environment through sensing technologies empower us with layers of information, that further uses computational tools and simulations to arrive at parameters for a strong environmentally sensitive design
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The Digital Ledger Actuating to the needs of the ‘users’
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“The generation of the block is not just an action, it is also the communication link between users, human and non-human, where a person can interact with any living or artificial being of the synthetic ecosystem in which we live�
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The Empathetic Network Territorial Chain of Digital Ledgers
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Re-Stack
An Integrated Layer System
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Who takes control?
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The optimization of resources and processes goes hand in hand with the modification of the internal components and the ability of the system to adapt to external or internal accidents generated fortuitously or by the users.
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References and Bibliography Picon, Antoine. (2015) Smart cities: a spatialised intelligence. Chichester: John Wiley. Benjamin h. Bratton, (2015) The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty Erik Swyngedouw (2016) Circulations and Metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) Cities Felix Guattari (1989) The three Ecologies, 1989, Ilaria Di Carlo (2016) The Aesthetics of Sustainability Ikujiro Nonaka (1994) A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, (2007) Complex Adaptive Systems: An introduction to computational models of social life Michael Hensel, Achim Menges and Michael Weinstock (2010) Emergent Technologies and Design: Towards a biological paradigm for architecture Michael Weinstock (2008)- Metabolism and Morphology Architectural_Design (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ad.638) Paulo Ferrรฃo and John E. Fernรกndez (2013) Sustainable Urban Metabolism, The MIT press Sennett, Richard (2013) The Open City. GSD Talks: Harvard University. William J Mitchell, (2003) Me++ :The Cyborg Self and the Networked City Achim Mengez- Elytra Pavillion project (http://www.elytra-pavilion.com/#page-top) Last Accessed 1st July 2017 Jacobs Jane. (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Hardin Garret (1968) The Tragedy of Commons Byung Chul Han (2015) The transparency Society AD Future Details of Architecture 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Racheal Armstrong- The Post Epistemological Details of Oceanic Ontologies Tracking Trash - Sensable Cities Lab- Carlo Ratti (http://oro.open.ac.uk/35876/1/TT.pdf) Last Accessed 12 July 2017 PBL Environmental Assessment Agency, TU Delft- Metabolism of Albania (https://www.behance.net/gallery/40339307/The-Metabolism-of-Albania) Last Accessed 1st July 2017 Azimzadeh, Mir, and Bjur, Hans. (2007). The Urban Palimpsest: The Interplay between the Historically Generated Layers in Urban Spatial System and Urban Life. In Proceedings of the 6th International Space Syntax Symposium. Istanbul. Bishop, Peter. (2018) The City as an Open System. Lecture: Bartlett School of Architecture. Carpo, Mario (2013) The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012. Chichester: John Wiley. Carpo, Mario (2017) The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence. Cambridge: MIT Press. Castells, Manuel. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwells. Christopher, Alexander (1965) A City is Not a Tree. Architectural Forum, Vol 122, No 1. Davies, Kate and Young, Liam (2013). Treasured Island_ Madagascar. http://www.unknownfieldsdivision. com/summer2013madagascar-journeytotreasureisland.html (Last accessed 03 May 2018) Naylor, Aliide (2017) The empathy machine: can VR stop bad city developments before they happen? https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/26/empathy-machine-vr-bad-city- developments-virtualreality (Last accessed 26 November 2017)
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Odysseas Kontovourkis (2009) Computer Generated Circulation Diagrams. University of Bath (Ph.D. Thesis proposal) Philip Steadman, Lionel March (RIBA 1971) The geometry of the Environment. Cambridge: MIT Press. Poole, Steven (2014) The truth about Smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy’. https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/17/truth-smart-city-destroy-democracy-urban- thinkers-buzzphrase (Last accessed 26 November 2017) Ratti, C., and M Claudel (2016) The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers and the future of Urban Life. New Haven: Yale University Press Books. Ratti, C., and M Claudel. (2015) Open Source Architecture. NY, NY: Thames & Hudson. Sennett, Richard. (2012) Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sadler, Simon (2005) Archigram, architecture without architecture. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 253 pags. Torisu, T., Tveito H. and Beaumont, J. (2016) Palimpsest. http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/labprojects/ palimpsest (Last accessed 26 November 2017) Torisu, T., Tveito H. and Beaumont, J. (2016) The Palimpsest: Changing cities with virtual reality. http://www. interactivearchitecture.org/the-palimpsest-changing-cities-with-virtual- reality.html (Last accessed 25 November 2017) William J. Mitchell (1996). City of bits. Cambridge: MIT Press. William J. Mitchell (1999). E-topia. Cambridge: MIT Press. Bryan, W. (2002) “The Emotion of Shame and the Virtue of Righteousness in Mencius” Bourriaud, N. (2002) “Relational Aesthetics”, Les Press. Bland, A. (2015) “The World Hit “Peak Chicken” in 2006” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-hit-peak-chicken-2006-180954037 (Last accessed: 12 July 2018) Grosz, E. (2001) “Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space”, MIT Press. Harvey, D. (2012) “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution”, Verso. Jack Kloppenburg Jr., John Hendrickson, and G. W. Stevenson (1996) “Coming in to the Foodshed”, Agriculture and Human Values. McGuirk, J. (2015) “Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture”, Verso. Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980) “Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture”, Rizzoli, pp 5. Palladino, M. (2015) “The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia”, Routledge, pp 81. Pagel, M. (2012) “Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation”, Penguin. Ratti, C. (2014) “Decoding the City: Urbanism in the Age of Big Data”, Birkhauser. Ratti, C., Claudei, M. (2016) “The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of urban Life”, Yale University Press. Sennett, R. (2012) “Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation”, Yale University Press. Tonkinwise, C. (2014) “Sharing you can believe in” https://medium.com/@camerontw/sharing-you-can-believe-in-9b68718c4b33 (Last accessed 5 July 2018) Varghese, S. (2013) “The Global Water Grab” https://www.iatp.org/blog/201301/the-global-water-grab (Last accessed 5 July 2018) Yang, J. (2012) The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks and the Tycoons Are Buying up Water at Unprecedented Pace http://www.marketoracle. co.uk/article38167.html (Last accessed 5 July 2018)
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PROSTHETIC ECOLOGIES
Haeam Jung
Luis Carlos Castillo
Farnoosh Fanaian
RC-18