IT and Urban Space

It was passed the seminar about Physicality, in Lancaster University.

I presented a paper analysing IT in the urban space. The results of three different urban projects were analyzed in order to draw a conclusion about the limits and contributions of my framework to the creation of urban projects supported by Ubicomp. The first project (project A) was for the international contest of urban requalification of Gwangbok Street, South Korea, 2005. The second project (project B) was the urban requalification to Fargate Street, city of Sheffield, United Kingdom, 2006. The Third (project C) was the urban recast to the central area of the campus of the University of Sheffield, 2007. All projects had a common starting point that was to consider the application of IT as a means to contribute in the solution of spatial conflicts. Those urban areas were analyzed through the “reading space” technique proposed by Malard [1], observing conflicts originated from lack or malfunctioning of spatial elements in local activities. The conflicts were interpreted as interfering directly on the qualities of territoriality, privacy, identity and ambience. The architects of project B and C will be interviewed focusing their experience whilst using the framework. Project A intended to reconnect the street with a broader range of events that surround it in the neighbourhood. Busan is the city of the Korean Festival of Cinema, which attracts people all over the country to its celebrations. Originally Gwangbok Street was a calm commercial path that existed during the Korean middle ages. It has become nowadays a busy and congested street with many conflicts. The illegal parking at street obstructs it continuously causing conflicts with pedestrian activities. By its turn, pedestrian activities interfered over each other. The facades show a lack of maintenance that, together with many areas difficult to clean, interferes on the ambience. Also a wide variety of different types of urban furniture did not offer a sense of identity. Thousand of placards make Gwangbok to look as many other congested streets in Asia, nothing special, but a lack of identity. In addition, the city council was aiming to transform Gwangbok Street in a cultural pole, surrounded by a cast of buildings, open-markets, museums and other facilities in the range of walking distance.

The projects of urban spaces augmented with IT (click to see bigger)

The project consisted of eight movable actuators, gadgets named “robots”. Each robots includes 1 Laser projector, 1 display message board, 2 big screen televisions, 2 video cameras, and 3 IBM’s Everywhere projectors. The laser projectors aimed to produce special visual effects in exhibitions and parades at nighttime. The luminous message board would broadcast news about activities in the street and around, information about local museums, events and so on. Televisions would permit watching small clips, ads, footages from the place, real time sequences, and others. Video cameras would gather material to be mastered and after broadcasted through the Robots. The IBM’s Everywhere projector would combine projection with detection on arbitrary surfaces, converting walls and floor in an crude interactive touch screen. Each Robot would move under rails over the street, sustained by 34 structural portals. The Robots were made in molded polycarbonate and structural aluminum. They would be controlled by the Interaction Research Centre, situated inside the 4 towers along Gwangbok street. But the interaction, position, movement and lights of the Robot would be also modified by users through internet.

In the occasion of Busan International Film Festival or when required the Robot can spread information, ads, clips, games and quizzes about the movies exhibited, interacting with the public and attracting their attention. In order to be a pervasive mechanism for declaring, representing, and querying the physical relationship between people, places, devices, and things, the Robot would need a continuous research. The Interaction Research Centre would be an organization which main concern is designing, experimenting and maintaining systems, software and hardware, in order to produce new improvements on interactive urban devices used at Gwangbok Street.

Project B was a refurbishment of an old commercial street at the centre of Sheffield. That street was bombed in the Second World War, and many buildings were rebuild. A report containing a list of conflicts affecting the qualities of the place was made to assist the architects design. The solutions comprised interactive walls, a ring for amusement, playing with local images and a kiosk for tourism information.

Project C was an urban recast of the public space at the Campus of University of Sheffield. Many conflicts were detected, from the lack of delimitations in the territory, causing confusion in people’s orientation, to the diversity of entrances and circulations reinforcing the transient character of occupation to the place, and so on. Two different systems of integrated solutions were designed, using IT devices and small physical interventions. In comparison with project A and B, the solutions were spatially less intrusive and the devices were more accurately specified.