Category: Uncategorized

Smart Cities

• P119 “The street finds its own uses for things – uses the manufacturers never imagined.”
  Just like an plastic coca bottle could be modified to a firearms’ silencer, people could also do their own mods on the IoT or open source devices of smart cities. Because those devices are more powerful, then they could be more harmful if they are used in a wrong ways. How to keep the safety in this case? And who have the right and responsibility to manage?

UVS

• P25 “To design something that does not yet exist, if we are not to build it at the same time, requires us to imagine it and represent it, for example on paper, through plans, in maquette form, or through software simulated fly-through.”
  Designing a thing for future adventurous, people can not fo recast what will show up in future, such as the newest iPhone can not plugin the newest MacBook anymore due to the usb-c. One adapter could solve the small issue for iThings but would it be the same easy for smart cities forecast design? Do we have or should we build some guide for this kind of design?

• P30 “…a broken system is usually one that attracts the most attention, in part because it appeals to others’ desire to “repair” and also because breaks can enable one to understand better how something should or could work.”
  In the same time, a broken system is also one that will attract the destructive desire of people (Broken windows theory). Some open source softwares are lack to enough money for maintaining then have some security issue. If smart cities use the open way to develop, will it face the same problem?

Urban Versioning System 1.0 – Fuller / Haque

•  “Architects are seen as supplementary to this process, useful perhaps in advising on legal and structural matters and creating technical drawings but a bit of a hindrance when it comes to design, which, self-builders often feel is something that “anyone can do.” This do-it-yourself (DIY) approach has been popularized, even pimped, in the UK recently by television shows such as “Designer for a Day,” “Grand Designs” and “DIY SOS.” These programs chart the progress of projects undertaken by homeowners or show how design professionals can advise people in upgrading existing homes themselves.”

– Although this ‘open-source’ approach to contemporary redesign has been popularized in society more recently, it does not discredit the architect from playing an important role in whether the “design” by the owner is buildable or structural. What does this mean for architecture as a profession in the future?

– What is it about designing for one-self or designing in general that drives common ‘non-architects’ to want to produce their own surrounding domestic environment, rather than trust it in the hands of someone else?

Architects in particular have the opportunity at this stage to participate in the conversations that take place with regard to enabling and encouraging good building design and collaborative practice. ,
More important is to concentrate on widening people’s spheres of responsibility, and hence motivation, commitment, and agency with regard to the design and inhabitation of the urban environment.

Q What could be the possible channels to create such motivations and facilitate participation?

The fact that it enables anyone to be a co-designer, does not necessarily mean that everyone will undertake to participate in the design process, just as saying that everyone can be an artist does not mean that everyone wishes to participate in artistic practice (or indeed that everything is art). However, it does recognize that those who do wish to operate in such a mode of knowing, seeing and doing may have very different skill-sets, intentions and requirements.

Q What would be the baseline skill sets for participation. if any? If not, how would a consistent format of participation be defined? And by whom?

Sketching, pre-planning and feasibility analysis are activities that function under the assumption that there is a distinct immutable “design” phase, while planning, as an activity, makes it tempting to prescribe and for a certain category of participants to proscribe the activities of others.

Q To what extent and in which context is this idea feasible? The process of conceptualizing Fun Palace ( Cedric Price & Joan Littlewood ) which is considered to be one of the successful examples of, architecture defined by activities and modifiable by the user functions and activity requirements, do show the presence of a design phase. How does this unifying of the design phase and building phase, validate in a practical scenario?

• If architecture becomes more “open”, such as the role of an operating system designer, does the role of the architect become less about the design of a structure according to it’s design parameters and more of the organization of “ready-built” or “ready-designed” pieces in accordance to the wants of anyone who wants to be involved?
• If architecture indeed became “open”, it would seem possible for building and construction to be the first step in producing a building, while omitting the initial design and planning phases. Yet, would this turn architecture into another form of engineering in a sense? Where the most pragmatic building and construction techniques prevail (as long as it fits the wants and needs of the parties who will occupy it), rather than generative forms and aesthetics derived from the skilled designer for a desired party? Can this type of architecture be aesthetically pleasing and not be confused with a construction site like the Fun Palace?

1  The open-source Metropolis

The dodgeball used the “check-in” started flooding in the city, it was like hash tag used in our social network, but back in 2003, this kind of words notification does it really motived the people to “check in” ?  Today our social network is full of picture and video clips. Is kind of showoff, and let other friends or subscribers to interactive with the person who showoffs and give them satisfaction. The dodgeball was like a single active action for friends up data their location, even its added with romance experience it still doesn’t seem with such motivated behavior.

In 2002 December all it cooperation have dominated the public WIFI control, the wifi become more commercial product then it used to be. But since then, the WIFI has been generalized to public. Is the commercial movement benefited the wifi popularized or the commercial operated just in time?

Urban Versioning System 1.0   

Open source could be benefits to user and encourage the device or soft wear improve itself. Does this means open source doing really benefit? As we know IOS and Android OS always. Android os is more open then IOS but the apps and software are quite unstable. So is open source are not doing well in some situation?   

The copying and not copying are irrelevant the idea from software to architecture is it consider as open source operation? The architecture could be self- building construction. And a lots of construction material retailer already support the idea. why does this open sources idea doesn’t seems positive then open source software and electronic devices?     

1. open source urbanism seems to be a big idea here that allows normal citizen has an access for building up his part of the city. it provides the basic requirement for the bottom to top structure of the smart city. In the reading, it introduces some open source device such as Arduino. A single building is the basic component of the city, thus Puts the open source into a building scale. what makes a house an open source house?
2. Should the open source of a building start from design phase? what will be an open source designed building?  a design that uploads to the internet and users can download and combine the design by themselves?
3. Nowadays, in the countryside of China, with the increasing of the income of the people, people start to build their own house, however, without an architect. The purpose of the absence of the architect is budget control. However, for lots of cases, the budget is wasted due to lack of design.  it seems that an open source house design will be a good solution. How does an open source house in the town become the start point of the open source town or small city?

on Townsend, “Open Source Metropolis,” Smart Cities (pp. 115-141)

– In the seventies, Burns acted as a mediator between cable, the ground-breaking technology of the day, and people that wished to appropriate it (pp.117). The community video centers she launched in numerous cities could not have been made possible without the support of local governments and the industry. Townsend uses the term “perfect storm” to describe the synced point in time where technologies and people’s understanding of them become ripe together. Later in the chapter, it is implied that a similar condition is taking place today. How will the contemporary “perfect storm”, supposedly comprised of open source commons, ‘wirelessness’ and democratized electronics affect ‘the ways the city plays itself’ in the words of Gabrys? Are local governments and industry still fit to support the creative process “through which people harness technology to create a system” (pp.118) in the smart city?

– The format and standards of technology emerge as enablers of unplanned ‘idiotic’ applications from the users themselves (such as the microcassete recorder or the beeper of the 70’s, pp.119), yet on the other hand, they also pose important challenges along the way. An example of the latter is the obstacle of ‘walled gardens’ for the mobile web and how Crowley identified e-mail, a technology that was already in place as a workaround (pp.123). In a similar manner, Wi-Fi’s limited scale range was initially tackled with an ingenuous use of simple, already existing tools brought together in unexpected ways (arrays of DIY antennas linked to wireless networks, pp.129). But as technologies become more sophisticated, innovation tends to be in the hands of the ones that have the know-how – the hackers, as the last two examples show. Yet, as the “steep learning curve” of physical computing (pp.136) is being evened out, how are non-engineers empowered to meaningfully disrupt and appropriate the existing smart infrastructure of the city?
on Haque and Fuller, “Urban Versioning System 1.0,” Situated Technologies Pamphlets #2

– To approach the building as an in-progress model of itself opens the floor to the participation of non-designers and directs the discussion towards real-world constraints – two features that are apparently suspended by the representational practices and media through which spatial design is usually communicated (pp.23-24). However, it is probable that if the non-linear space-making processes described here were to be entirely carried out in meatspace, then the financial and spatial challenges that would consequently arise would threaten the feasibility of the project or force to unpleasant compromises. It seems that Haque and Fuller identify a resolution in BIM systems’ ability for digitally merging design and construction in an object-oriented manner (pp27). How are BIM systems suggestive of a shift from representation (a linear structure of communication) to simulation (a digital version of the real, constantly subject to change)? BIM systems have been accused of isolating the designed artifact from its context by situating it in an oversimplified approximation of its original environment. How to resolve this contradiction? For instance, in which ways could BIM systems take social parameters as an input?

– Where non-plan ideas meet Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), Haque and Fuller advocate for an Urban Versioning System that runs on granular parameters. There may include participation [from the non-designer to the virtuoso (p.30, 36)], modularity [ dependent on scale, expertise and time (p.37)] property [from its existing neoliberal redundancy to its mitigation (p.49)] and many others. Is there also a need to granularize persistence (from permanence to ephemerality)? The non-planners proposed permanent hyper-structures on which ephemeral envelopes would allow for ever-changing situations to happen. How would such a condition translate in the contemporary setting? How will the joints between the parts of the system change when the base structure itself is contingent?