Cosmotic, Aquatic. Exploring the potential of computational design in the preservation of aquatic ecotones

This paper looks at the possible role of computational design ecologically in the fight against the loss of the aquatic Ecotone. As climate change keeps altering all the natural aspects of our planet, and as our kind continues to sabotage its ecologies, coral reefs come in focus. Aquatically, coral reefs count as a fertile zone for biodiversity. Usually being the Ecotone between land and sea, these barriers host many species and riches. However, due to the excessive abuse caused by human activity be it world-wide pollution or direct human contact, these reefs are constantly bleaching and breaking. In 2016, the Architecture Association gathered a group of international architecture students and professionals in a visiting school in Jordan titled “Hyperbolic Reefs” looking at the possibility of recruiting new computational methods to preserve and possibly regenerate the Ecotone. It was considered that new simulation techniques along with parametric design could contribute into the assessment and prevention of the catastrophic results. The two-week event was divided into chapters and was initiated by a series of lectures and discussions conducted by worldwide leading architects and experts who presented an important material to build upon. Then, the participants underwent a site visit to the coral reef of Al-Aqaba, collecting data, samples and media and recording insights and local testimonies. The third step of the experience was to assimilate the material and data and discuss openly the ways that computation could lead to a better coral life. Several software and tools were assigned to produce a design that would help attenuate the compromise of the coral reef through computation. An archive of data was produced and exhibited to the public. The results of this brief exercise was a number of suggestions and future aspirations triggered solely towards revitalizing the Ecotone. Issues such as the abundance of irresponsible snorkeling and diving, many governments’ indifferent policies towards the coral reefs, global warming, climate change, coral bleaching and aquatic architecture were confronted through parametric projects ranging from purely architectural to abstract human capsules. Computational tools allowed the reproduction of the whole system digitally, the precise tracing of the corals’ patterns, dimensions and colors, simulation software predicted the role of light and heat in certain zones, and parametric programs provided an incomparable flexibility in the designing process, going completely in sync with the fragile and intricate aspect of a coral unit. 3D printing was also an integral factor in the presentation and study of the presented models. This study’s scope was to expand the use of computation in a theoretical way to reach new and creative prospects, and to raise awareness to the situation of the coral reef and the risks facing its degradation

The Future Smart-City: An Analysis of the Effects of Global and Technological Innovation on the Evolution of Economic Systems

In 21st century, the current economy is rapidly utilizing globalization to create a vastly different future. With the advent of new technology merging with entrepreneurs who effectively utilize that technology, the economic model is changing. Faster, sleeker, more effective forms of communication and information transfer drive the process of globalization. Production for a single product can happen in multiple countries, companies can operate virtually 24/7 through call centers halfway around the globe, and preliminary smart cities are beginning to emerge to give us a glimpse of the future world. A new category of businesspersons called “prosumers” is emerging and has created a new sharing and soon-to-be self-service economic structure. Analysis of the two drivers of economic change—globalization and technological innovation—will reveal how close civilization is to the city of the future

Producing place atmospheres digitally: Architecture, digital visualisations practices and the experience economy

Computer generated images have become the common means for architects and developers to visualise and market future urban developments. This article examines within the context of the experience economy how these digital images aim to evoke and manipulate specific place atmospheres to emphasize the experiential qualities of new buildings and urban environments. In particular, we argue that CGIs are far from ‘just’ glossy representations but are a new form of visualising the urban that captures and markets particular embodied sensations. Drawing on a two year qualitative study of architects’ practices that worked on the Msheireb project, a large scale redevelopment project in Doha (Qatar), we examine how digital visualisation technology enables the virtual engineering of sensory experiences using a wide range of graphic effects. We show how these CGIs are laboriously materialised in order to depict and present specific sensory, embodied regimes and affective experiences to appeal to clients and consumers. Such development has two key implications. Firstly, we demonstrate the importance of digital technologies in framing the ‘expressive infrastructure’ (Thrift 2012) of the experience economy. Secondly, we argue that although the Msheireb CGIs open up a field of negotiation between producers and the Qatari client, and work quite hard at being culturally specific, they ultimately draw “on a Westnocentric literary and sensory palette” (Tolia-Kelly 2006) that highlights the continuing influence of colonial sensibilities in supposedly postcolonial urban processes.This research was funded by the ESRC (RES-062-23-0223)

Depicting urban boundaries from a mobility network of spatial interactions: A case study of Great Britain with geo-located Twitter data

Existing urban boundaries are usually defined by government agencies for administrative, economic, and political purposes. Defining urban boundaries that consider socio-economic relationships and citizen commute patterns is important for many aspects of urban and regional planning. In this paper, we describe a method to delineate urban boundaries based upon human interactions with physical space inferred from social media. Specifically, we depicted the urban boundaries of Great Britain using a mobility network of Twitter user spatial interactions, which was inferred from over 69 million geo-located tweets. We define the non-administrative anthropographic boundaries in a hierarchical fashion based on different physical movement ranges of users derived from the collective mobility patterns of Twitter users in Great Britain. The results of strongly connected urban regions in the form of communities in the network space yield geographically cohesive, non-overlapping urban areas, which provide a clear delineation of the non-administrative anthropographic urban boundaries of Great Britain. The method was applied to both national (Great Britain) and municipal scales (the London metropolis). While our results corresponded well with the administrative boundaries, many unexpected and interesting boundaries were identified. Importantly, as the depicted urban boundaries exhibited a strong instance of spatial proximity, we employed a gravity model to understand the distance decay effects in shaping the delineated urban boundaries. The model explains how geographical distances found in the mobility patterns affect the interaction intensity among different non-administrative anthropographic urban areas, which provides new insights into human spatial interactions with urban space.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, International Journal of Geographic Information Scienc

Eulogy to Architecture: The Three-Dimensional Collage City of Nostalgia

In our time of existence on the Earth, human beings have designed and realized beautiful things. As we face the challenges that confront us today, we begin to understand the fragility of humankind’s creations. Many of the world’s cities and buildings lie in ruins, gazed at by tourists, studied by scholars, while more lie buried in the ground for hundreds of years, some never to be rediscovered. Everything around us is an accumulation of knowledge and ideas built upon for centuries, now facing questionable circumstances. Of course, the more recent Aleppo and other Middle Eastern cities have fallen subject to bombings over the past years, now lost forever. Climate change threatens coastal cities around the world; natural disasters unexpectedly take from our grasp things that we have had for centuries. Nothing is for certain. Nothing lasts forever. Every built structure, no matter the value, eventually falls. What if the earth is one day no longer ours? Its livelihood depends on us, and our sustained wars and climatic abuse continue to decay the soil we walk on and the air we breathe. Will humans be forced from the planet that we have forever called home? This project imagines a new world built on the framework of nostalgia. It is a eulogy to architecture, a compilation of fragments of our world to recreate a place once lost. The city is designed as a three-dimensionalization of Rowe’s Collage City so as to create an assemblage of parts that form a whole. Various scales of fragments of earth, ranging from single buildings to neighborhood fabrics, are arranged in a volumetric space. This space is located away from the gravitational pull of the Earth, making it possible to collage fragments vertically as well as horizontally. The city embraces both the beauty and imperfections of the collected places. To call it a utopia is forward, considering that the majority of each of the employed places were not originally designed as utopian; thus one cannot project utopianism upon them simply because they have a diĐerent context. One might question how an organic system of organization could ever be considered utopian, considering the lack of planning. However, if utopianism is based on the perfection of the human itself rather than the environment, this city aims to imbue a sense of nostalgia in each human mind, with the idea that these places are inherently important to us as a species and to our connection to Earth itself. This project is a visual essay about the importance of what humans have created for themselves on the Earth. It is a conceptual idea that aims to transcend fears of loss by giving hope for a new world collaged from existing fragments of built fabric

The application of BIM tools to explore the dynamic characteristics of smart materials in a contemporary Shanashil building design element

Traditional architecture is known for its crafted facade features that respond to environmental, social and cultural requirements. Contemporary architecture produced façade features that attempted to enhance local design identity and local culture. Despite the advantages of modern technology, architectural elements have difficulties in fulfilling the idea of sustainable elegance that once traditional elements provided. This problem calls for an interdisciplinary design approach to deliver sustainable design solutions that positively adapt to the surrounding environment as well as maintain the state of elegance in design. With this in mind, the research aims to explore the role of new glass technologies to improve the performance and at the same time maintain the design value of traditional façade element “shanashil” in Baghdadi buildings. This research utilises BIM tools and uses smart materials to restore the lost value in design, which mimics the dynamic characteristics observed in nature, inspired by biomimetics strategies. Such qualities are found in the characteristics of smart dynamic glazing material particularly in the switchable, reversible properties of transparency and coloration efficiency. The material characteristics are attached to a 3D digital prototype to visualise the difference between dynamic and static properties through the use of technology tools Revit plugin and smart glazing virtual reality prototype. This research concludes that the dynamic characteristics of smart glazing materials are effective in delivering a multifunctional design quality to collectively blend in harmony with the surrounding environment

ANALYZING WORLD EVOLUTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON URBAN DESIGNING

Our society's modalities of communication and hence our cities have been rapidly changed due to emergence of several revolutions most lately the digital one. In fact, recently with emergence of the fluid, responsive, kinetic, data-driven worlds of infoscape and its combination with urban landscape, urban designing faces a radical reshuffling of a number of its principal underpinnings. It seems that once again we as urban designers in order to catch up with the current world's situation need to evolve or in better words to re-ontologize concepts of urban designing for twenty-first century. Therefore; in this paper for better understanding of the main characteristics of current changes we try to identify the effects of new actors on urban structures trough analysis of different evolution phases of our cities. To do so we make a diagram called "Evolutionary Trend" trough which we can trace world's evolution history to help us know where we are and what may happen in coming decades. This "evolutionary trend" can be used as a guideline for urban designers to help them navigate better in future.Evolutionary Trend, Urban Evolution, Infospherization, Softerial Era, Digital revolution

CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES APPLIED TO URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The present work organizes information in a systematized way, on environmental technologies applied to each of the tasks and activities that are performed in the cities, urban planning and development. These technologies are an updated part of all the technologies that can be applied, therefore, it is the state-of-the-art of new technologies applied to urban sustainable development which mostly are processes, instruments of measurement, simulators, equipment, materials, Software and Hardware that are of great help for urbanism designers and promoters of urbanism in the cities development. These technologies, which are described in the present article, have been selected on the basis of their up-to-dateness and application in the main sectors or fields of development and it is important to mention that only the most recent and influential on urban development and environmental technology have been chosen. The main objective is to provide an overview of the state-of-the art of these environmental technologies, and how we, designers, architects and promoters of urban development, can apply and use a number of technologies in urban planning with an environmental approach.sustainable urbanism, new technologies, development, tools.

Examining trade-offs between social, psychological, and energy potential of urban form

Urban planners are often challenged with the task of developing design solutions which must meet multiple, and often contradictory, criteria. In this paper, we investigated the trade-offs between social, psychological, and energy potential of the fundamental elements of urban form: the street network and the building massing. Since formal methods to evaluate urban form from the psychological and social point of view are not readily available, we developed a methodological framework to quantify these criteria as the first contribution in this paper. To evaluate the psychological potential, we conducted a three-tiered empirical study starting from real world environments and then abstracting them to virtual environments. In each context, the implicit (physiological) response and explicit (subjective) response of pedestrians were measured. To quantify the social potential, we developed a street network centrality-based measure of social accessibility. For the energy potential, we created an energy model to analyze the impact of pure geometric form on the energy demand of the building stock. The second contribution of this work is a method to identify distinct clusters of urban form and, for each, explore the trade-offs between the select design criteria. We applied this method to two case studies identifying nine types of urban form and their respective potential trade-offs, which are directly applicable for the assessment of strategic decisions regarding urban form during the early planning stages