Virtual Reality as Architectural Design Tool

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As an architect exploring the meaning and design of fluid spaces, I have been curious about the potential of VR for representing and creating ambiances—not only visualizing but also feeling and testing spatial variations/spaces of affect. In 2017 and 2018 at l’Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, I have supervised the VR-related work of two wonderful students enrolled in the Advanced Master in Design by Data:  Keerthana Govindarazan (2016-17) and Bonny Nichol (2017-18). Both have been investigating how VR can be used as a design tool.

On one hand, Govindarazan developed a “rudimentary web VR system” to “user-test architectural design for behavioral patterns”. To conduct her experiment and test if behavior in VR environments were similar to expected behaviors in real life, she started by modeling a space based on an architectural principle devised by design theorist and practitioner Christopher Alexander (author of A Pattern Language, 1977):

Figure above: The time spent by the same user in each clicked location is visualized in this image for scene 1. The more time spent, the bigger the radius of the circle and the warmer the color. [Keerthana’s edited caption]

On the other hand, Nichol focuses on the concept of “attention”. She is aims at translating eye-tracking and EEG inputs captured during VR spatial experience as design data.

Design by Data Advanced Master

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I have been involved in the Design by Data Advanced Master (directed by Francesco Cingolani) as a lecturer investigating with students the meaning and implication of designing “fluid spaces” and guiding them to conduct research for their computational project. I am also heading the “Art, design and knowledge” area of the advanced master.

To me, it has always been important to reflect on the ways in which technologies affect spaces and transform not only production processes but also the ways in which we relate to space and the world around us. As William J. Mitchell wrote in ME++: The cyborg self and the networked city, space has the same characteristics as the onion—“My natural skin is just layer zero of a nested boundary structure.” (Mitchell, 2003: p. 7). Every layer also connects to others and can change properties.

So it is not enough to learn how to use a software or other tool and technology, one also needs to understand which software to use and to which end, and what does it exactly do. And questions of “optimization” should not be the only ones to be taken into account when building for future generations !

I am happy I have joined the conversation with the team at l’Ecole des Ponts, the best engineering school in France, Francesco Cingolani, also co-founder of the Parisian coworking space / makerspace / food lab Volumes (Subscribe to their mailing list!) and Minh Man Nguyen, co-founder of the Woma, co-working and co-making space in Paris.

If you have any question about the advanced master, join us for breakfast March 14, 2017 :-)

Also very useful.. Twitter handle: @byDataDesign

AMP – Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform

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AMP_1

Dk Osseo-Asare, Principal at LOW Design Office, and myself are launching the pilot project of the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP), thanks to Rockefeller Centennial Innovation Challenge Award funding. We are now looking for talented designers with experience in architecture, electronics and environmental systems. Find more about the project on QAMP, the blog associated to the endeavor. In support of the initiative and to open opportunities to students to get involved and learn more about the informal sector, e-waste, the maker movement and development, I am also conducting a semester-long seminar/workshop at l’Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture this Fall.

Tableau des grandes évolutions technologiques

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Excerpt from Pierre Lévy, L’intelligence collective : Pour une anthropologie du cyberespace (La Découverte, 1997): p. 64:

Bouger, ce n’est plus se déplacer d’un point à l’autre de la surface terrestre, mais traverser des univers de problèmes, des mondes vécus, des paysages de sens.

– p. 10

I am discovering. J’adore !

Digital – Biodigital

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A diagram for a class I give at l’ESA on digital architecture based on the teaching of Antoine Picon who writes that digital culture caused architecture to enter a crisis of scale and tectonic and that architecture is seeing a renewal of ornament [1]. The ornament versus cosmetic argument comes from a text by Jeffrey Kipnis [2]. My interest in mobility and ecology leads me to believe that architecture is actually going beyond ornament, and that we have integrated to our digital manipulations molecular scale and structure. This is what constitute biodigital architecture. You see how both are linked. To be continued!

[1] Antoine Picon, Culture numérique et architecture – une introduction (Birkhäuser, 2010)
[2] Jeffrey Kipnis, “The Cunning of Cosmetics,” El Croquis 84 (1997): 22 – 28

Lecture – GME

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Presenting the neo-nomad research to students of Tokyo Denki University next week. Will discuss about Genetically Modified Environments i.e. the impact of mobilities on the built environment and practices of the city. Thank you to Professor Yoshito Tobe, I look forward to catch-up with the Osoite project – Osoite means “address or place” in Finnish.

FlashTaTu

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Le personnage de FlashTaTu est né d’une réflexion sur le corps et l’espace augmenté. FlashTatu est un super héros qui a le pouvoir de numériser les P. I. G. S. – les People, Information, Goods and Spaces. Flash fait référence aux QR codes aussi appelés flash codes que l’on scanne à l’aide d’un téléphone mobile et qui renvoient à un url. TaTu rappelle l’origine tahitienne du mot tatouage : ta pour dessin et atouas pour esprit. Interpretation littérale mais aussi humoristique de l’individu augmenté et hypertexte, FlashTatu donne corps au zeitgeist bio-numérique. FlashTaTu navigue dans des univers parallèles, le physique et le numérique, et les met en relation. FlashTaTu est aussi un agent bio-politique qui se mêle des questions d’aliénation dans la ville augmentée. C’est un avatar, un médiateur, prétexte à des expérimentations sur les espaces hybrides – physiques et numériques.

Les activités mises en scène au cours de cette exposition qui réunit artistes, penseurs et innovateurs ont pour but de questionner l’identité des espaces hybrides de la ville – le corps est aussi un espace – et d’envisager les lieux hypertextes de demain.

Yasmine Abbas, Research & Design Direction
Marion Daeldyck, 3D design
Nadine Branellec, Research Assistant

Corps – technologie – habitat – peau – information – mobilité – néo-nomade – identités hybrides – espaces hybrides – hypertexte – interface – ecotone – architecture – urbain – numérique – augmenté

Body – technology – habitat – skin – information – mobility – neo-nomad – hybrid identities – hybrid spaces – hypertext – interface – ecotone – architecture – urban – digital – augmented

Domesticate

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I like this verb “to domesticate” – I translate it from the French “apprivoiser” (“domestiquer” also exists in French) as I read over again the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It made me think about social networking and love/friendship. Does facebook really help look for “chicks” or domesticate “foxes”? / Est-ce que Facebook sert vraiment à chercher des poule(t)s ou apprivoiser les renard(e)s ?

– […] Tu cherches des poules ?
– Non, dit le petit prince. Je cherche des amis. Qu’est-ce que signifie “apprivoiser” ?
– C’est une chose trop oubliée, dit le renard, Ça signifie “créer des liens…”.
– Créer des liens ?
– Bien sûr, dit le renard. Tu n’es encore pour moi qu’un petit garçon tout semblable à cent mille petits garçons. Et je n’ai pas besoin de toi. Et tu n’as pas besoin de moi non plus. Je ne suis pour toi qu’un renard semblable à cent mille renards. Mais si tu m’apprivoises, nous aurons besoin l’un de l’autre. Tu seras pour moi unique au monde. Je serai pour toi unique au monde…”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le petit Prince (1946) – pp. 71 – 72 de l’édition de la collection Folio de Gallimard de 1999.

My Body Is A Hypertext

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Summer time – August 16, 2005 – As I was reading (and writing for my thesis) on augmented bodies – William J. Mitchell, Me++, The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (MIT press, 2003) – I thought of getting a 2D code tattoo – though a washable one, for that I don’t like things permanent – or let’s say it differently – I accept that things have an expiration date – that death is part of life. That is true (ecological) neo-nomadism btw.

That is the vignette (with a text) I had produced to illustrate the concept:

project number . 20050816
project title . shotcode tattoo
medium . ink or washable tattoo
my identity has shrunk to my skin…
<< I link therefore I am >> says WJM
my tattoo is no more a barcode that one scans
for revealing the identity of a product
the extension of my body is a url
we exist because of the envelope, the image
which is drawn, written, or projected onto it
our skin is a state of mind, a habitat, and our identity
the last private space?
my body is a hypertext

On August 23, 2005, I received the email below:

My name is [x] and I’m the founder / CEO of [x] / ShotCode.

I loved your blog entry and I just wanted to let you know how close to home it hit for me.

In the coming month I will tattoo a ShotCode on my chest. It’ll be a ShotCode that I can point to any type of content that I want. We’ll make a little movie of it to prove that it’s an actual tattoo and not a stick on or penned shape.

And then again on the same day after I had answered:

I’ve had the ShotCode drawn on my chest to test if it works and it does. The next step is the actual tattooing which I’ll have done in [x] (a city in Sweden) [etc.]

Anyway, I had also been forwarded another link… Here you will find the newest way to pick-up a Japanese Babe! Or when bodies become blunt commodities.

Nowadays, my reflection on augmented bodies (And what this has to do with space) has evolved – especially in light of the Arab Spring. Neo-nomads are bio-political agents – More about this concept in the book: Néo-nomadisme.

Actually pushing the #hyperbody project further (Paris is so intellectually stimulating). Stay tuned. It is coming very soon.