City Sets – Narrating Visual Urban Identities

City Sets - Visual Urban Identities was a workshop and a seminar arranged for post-graduate students in graphic design, new media, photography and architecture in November 2010. The aim was to research and discuss designs, artifacts and visual narratives embedded in an urban environment. Photo-observation, video recording and interviews were used to collect pictorial material and to investigate modes of visualizing information, identities, promotion and narratives in cities. City Sets is a metaphor that refers to cities as stages where passers-by are seen as actors. Architecture in an urban environment tells history and frames places, which can be seen as stages for various scenes and encounters to come about. Advertising and signage as city sets influence the appearance of a place, although their functions are information and promotion. Arts on streets have developed new modes for participation questioning the restrictions and rights to use public space. Anthropologists have used photography and filming for documentation since 1800s and photo-observation is associated with ethnography. For artists and designers it is a method to explore and observe the world and collect material to create new artworks. In City Sets project these two aspects were combined. In collaborative fieldwork the students documented urban scenes and collected material, which they developed further and created multi-linear visual narratives. The material was arranged and presented online by the City Sets Multilinear media player application designed for the project. The paper presents the workshop model as a visual method applicable for research and for media design

Cities as Sets: Narrative Eye to Urban Design A course case study in combining art, design and media

The article presents a multidisciplinary workshop format to enforce dialogue between the disciplines of art, design and media in audiovisual ethnographical study of urban environment and its design. The City Sets workshop uses the metaphor of ‘city as stage’ in order to investigate critically and expressively the design elements, visual languages and narratives embedded in cities. By a multiple point-of-view audiovisual production, the participants aim to reveal narratives that define our roles on the 'stage'. In the follow-up essay writing, they consider the significance of their own artistic point of view to urban planning and design values that surround us. Reviewing the theoretical backdrop and results from the first experimental workshop in 2010, we present developments for the next workshops organized in the context of the Aalto University World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 programme in Helsinki and Paris. We argue that artistic observations through multiple narrative points of view enrich the understanding of our life in urban environment, as well as the role of design in it

Die Krise der Ordnungspolitik als Kommunikationskrise

The conception of economic order policy (in German: Ordnungspolitik) has been the theoretical foundation of the Social Market Economy in Germany after World War II. But nowadays, the conception of Ordnungspolitik is in a fundamental crisis. It has been removed by Keynesian conceptions or still an arbitrariness of economic policy. Currently, while in Germany growth rates increase there is taken less and less notice of the necessity of fundamental changes in economic policy. In contrast, the current crisis of economic order policy is surprising. The collapse of central planned economies in Eastern Europe as well as the crisis of developing countries in Southeast Asia has allowed market ideas to appear as a clear winner in the competition of economic ideas. Many former transformation countries in central and Eastern Europe are nowadays rising dynamic market economies. Other countries of the world have already successfully reformed their overloaded welfare states, with only Germany seeming to face insurmountable obstacles. The current crisis of order policy is also of communication. In the end the discussion on order policy as main economic policy has been replaced by the contraposition of neo-liberal and globalization-critical conceptions. However, the crisis of order policy is at least partly also a crisis of communicating order policy positions. This fact refers both to the science, where regulatory-political teachings and research were consistently pushed back without resistance, and also to the policy, where basic principles of economic order policy became nearly insignificant. It is however the inability of German politicians and scientist to make clear economic order policy which keeps Germany imprisoned in its stagnation. To improve the position of the conception of economic order policy - or in other words of Social Market Economy - the authors demand a better manifestation of these conceptions via internet. As a first step they created the Ordnungspolitisches Portal

Die Krise der Ordnungspolitik als Kommunikationskrise

The conception of economic order policy (in German: Ordnungspolitik) has been the theoretical foundation of the Social Market Economy in Germany after World War II. But nowadays, the conception of Ordnungspolitik is in a fundamental crisis. It has been removed by Keynesian conceptions or still an arbitrariness of economic policy. Currently, while in Germany growth rates increase there is taken less and less notice of the necessity of fundamental changes in economic policy. In contrast, the current crisis of economic order policy is surprising. The collapse of central planned economies in Eastern Europe as well as the crisis of developing countries in Southeast Asia has allowed market ideas to appear as a clear winner in the competition of economic ideas. Many former transformation countries in central and Eastern Europe are nowadays rising dynamic market economies. Other countries of the world have already successfully reformed their overloaded welfare states, with only Germany seeming to face insurmountable obstacles. The current crisis of order policy is also of communication. In the end the discussion on order policy as main economic policy has been replaced by the contraposition of neo-liberal and globalization-critical conceptions. However, the crisis of order policy is at least partly also a crisis of communicating order policy positions. This fact refers both to the science, where regulatory-political teachings and research were consistently pushed back without resistance, and also to the policy, where basic principles of economic order policy became nearly insignificant. It is however the inability of German politicians and scientist to make clear economic order policy which keeps Germany imprisoned in its stagnation. To improve the position of the conception of economic order policy - or in other words of Social Market Economy - the authors demand a better manifestation of these conceptions via internet. As a first step they created the Ordnungspolitisches Portal. --Economic Order Policy,Social Market Economy,Germany

Enhancing Technological Innovation with the Implementation of a Sustainable Manufacturing Community

AbstractThe global challenge of sustainable value creation can be coped with by raising human awareness about it all around the world. Increasing process effectiveness and efficiency in view of shrinking natural resources, increasing competitiveness and profitability by selling functionality and service instead of physical products give strategic references for the development of the so called sustainable manufacturing community (SMC). Ubiquitous application of modern information and communication technology (ICT) for shaping responsible global citizenship by knowledge transfer can expand learning and teaching productivity by magnitudes, can strengthen the leverage of help for self-help, can enable initiative and creativity for entrepreneurial approaches in the global village without losing local differentiation. Elements of an architecture for an SMC and the concrete case of smart wheel urban mobility with an outlook for an exemplary German Vietnamese collaboration perspective are considered

World caf\ue9 method to engage smart energy-district project partners in assessing urban co-benefits

Urban energy-district projects introduce outstanding technological innovation in buildings and energy systems increasing sustainability in city neighborhoods. Such projects generate additional co-benefits for the city beyond changes in physical elements and development of social and institutional relationships (e.g. local employment, environmental quality, public health, property values, innovation attitude, etc.). Since exceeding main declared goals or not always clearly foreseen in the early project phase, these co-benefits are often not properly understood and considered. However, only their explicit recognition will make possible their inclusion in the assessment of the whole project\u2019s performance. From these considerations, this study faces the issue of engaging project partners in assessing co-benefits in order to consider a broad spectrum of relevant, positive effects in the evaluation process. Group knowledge and group thinking of this complex topic are investigated through the world caf\ue9 method, providing an atmosphere of trust and open discussions among participants. This empirical work lays the foundations to go beyond the mere economic measure as the sole criterion for assessing project effects, also including changes in end-user behavior and intangible asset