“Architecture in your Hand” it’s the new dpr-barcelona‘s publishing project. A new approach of how books can take advantage on the use of digital technology, the network organization and the production, distribution and use of knowledge, all together outlining a new suggestive landscape to learn.

The ever growing number of mobile devices, the diffusion of the boundaries between public and private space, the subversion of the traditional publishing structure and the new forms of learning; are somehow the start point of this publishing project for architecture contents.

Considering that the main goal of a book is to store and transmit information added to the potential of networked learning, we have imagined that this concept can be expanded and spreaded. As being transmitted through a new basis, this information should be structured following a different mobile logic: enhancing immediacy, brevity, and simplicity.

When atomizing the contents, we are sharing capsules of knowledge for the user to learn, share and interact with the city.

Ceci n’est pas une App.
This publishing project goes beyond the concept of an app. We are developing an API (Application Programming Interface). A wider structure consisting of three interconnected main branches:

BLOGS: Curated by forward thinker bloggers and architects in fields beyond conventional practice.
CITY: Interaction with the surrounding urban environment using geolocation tools and augmented reality.
BOOKS: Publication of “mobile-books”

In a next stage the contents will be arranged by the user, and even print on demand in order to make a very personal compilation of the learning experience. The platform will provide the contents and the user will be the editor in chief.
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The first two books of the series Architecture in your Hand are U-Fields and SitRoom.
You can follow more updates on twitter at @archinhand

At the edge of contemporary civilization, few meters from corporate offices, airports that allow you to physically reach all parts of the world, connections that let people to reach virtually anyone, anywhere; in the middle of an international monetary market and large system of financial transactions, there is a parallel world who lives in a much more local dimension and deals with much more real and pressing problems. This dimension has strong relationships with the international part but often it absorbs and reworks status symbols, attitudes, vices and fashions. In parallel, the image and the characteristic features of smallness is spreading and now needs the proper theoretical framework that supports it. Fundamental part of this system is to understand the existence of this phenomenon, the consolidation of its constituent elements, the determination and characterization of the main actors of the process and to produce a schedule of materials (always in evolutions). The first step to enter in this world is to realize that the smallness is all around us and often contaminates our everyday lives without us even realize it. A series of examples and reflections on the theme will make this concept more explicit.

RULES:

1 S has always existed / B comes from the modern city. S is a constant process / B is a variable trend process.
2 S belongs and refers to a local area / B works on a global scale.
3 S access to limited and local resources / B has the ability to access a much wider range of products at global levels.
4 S is creative and unconventional / B is schematic and conventional and uses standard resources
5 S has an horizontal creative process in wich all the factors (economical, social and technological) have equal importance / B has a vertical creative process starting from an economical input and reaching a standardized output.
6 S and B have a mutual relationship: S gives ideas and creativity to B, while B gives resources and waste products that are reprocessed from S.
7 S and B use different professionists: S professionists are locally adapted to the characteristics of the project, while B research international professionists.

EXAMPLES:

REMIDA The project is part of the consolidation of the “Garibaldi 2” complex in Calderara di Reno (Bo). Key factors such the fight against crime and illegal activities have been used for urban regeneration and planning. The interior design is made only with recycled materials, bringing them to be the real protagonist of the project.

ECOLE DEL RUSCO For the fourth edition of the exhibition of art and recycling of Bologna. An artistic and sensory journey through the squares of the city, with five installations by young designers, dedicated to the touch, sight, taste, hearing and smell.

PEACOCK STORE Interior design and supervision for the new Peacock Store, 80 sqm cloathing store located in the city centre of Bologna. The concept design is based on a low cost profile using recycled and industrial materials. The mix of pipes, osb wood and tanks gives to the store an underground style that match with the style of the clothes sell in the shop.

B – CITY Re-writing urban tissue, political strategy, raids in the areas of dysfunction of the network of cycle tracks, plug-in for the bike are just some of the mechanisms of self-generating of urban
consciousness.

PANICO COLLETTIVO Participatory planning for the renovation of San Lorenzo di Panico. Sponsored by National Institute of Urban Planning (INU) department Emilia-Romagna, in collaboration with Municipality of Marzabotto and supervision of bologna district

CREDITS:
CODE: 012
ARCHITECTS: CICLOSTILE ARCHITETTURA
(Giacomo Beccari + Gaia Calamosca + Alessandro Miti)
ALIAS: SMALLNESS
YEAR: 2011
PROJECT: Research
COLLABORATORS: Alberto Giancani

Beginning the following academic year, 2011-12, IAAC will offer special scholarships for Spanish and Portuguese Architects, covering 50% of tuition fees. Enclosed you will find a poster for the scholarship program. The IAAC professional Masters in Advanced Architecture and Urbanism program is accredited by the UPC School of Professional & Executive Development and can be completed over one or two years.

IAAC is dedicated to the next generation of architectural development with students and researchers from around the world. This year the MAA program includes 60 students from 25 different countries. The official language of the Institute is English.

The Masters program takes a multiscalar approach to the future of habitability through the investigation of self-sufficient buildings, emergent territories and digital tectonics.

IAAC is also the home of Fab Lab Barcelona, part of MIT’s global Fab Lab Network, which is the most equipped fabrication laboratory in Southern Europe

web: www.iaac.net

In July 2011 two leading independent schools of architecture, the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, Chicago, and IE School of Architecture, Madrid/Segovia, will join forces to launch the IE/IIT Summer School in Madrid, one of Europe’s most dynamic capital cities. The intensive 8-day studio-based design workshop is open to enthusiastic Architecture undergraduate and master students worlwide. Using Madrid as a laboratory, participants will explore the architectural, urban, and environmental implications of density. Tutors from Chicago, Madrid, and Singapore, will use their own metropolitan backgrounds to enrich the potential evolution of Spain’s capital.

Teaching Staff:

David Goodman is Studio Associate Professor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and is a founding principal of R+D Studio, a Chicago-based architecture practice.

Jason Pomeroy is an award winning architect, master planner and director of International multi-disciplinary design practice, Broadway Malyan. He is an acknowledged expert in the field of sustainability and vertical urbanism and employs these skills in both practice and the lecture theatre.

Belinda Tato is an architect. Founding member of ecosistema urbano, an innovative agency focused on the understanding of the city as a complex phenomenon, from a point of view between architecture, urbanism, engineering and sociology.

Here you can find the full program.
For more info

Ecosistema Urbano has been invited to lead a workshop (FESTARCH-LAB) at the international architectural event, curated by Stefano Boeri, FESTARCH 2011 (festarch.it) to be held at various locations in the Italian region of Umbria (Terni, Perugia and Assisi) between May 26th and June 5th 2011.

Jose Luis Vallejo (@jlvmateo) and Domenico Di Siena (@urbanohumano) from ecosistema urbano will be guiding a group of 30 young european architects, students, artist and local citizens to experience the complexity of the city.

Weeks ago through this post (COME WITH US TO FESTARCH-LAB 2011 !!!!!!! ), we launched a call for participants and thanks to our blog followers the response has been very succesful. The selected people will be granted with free registration and accomodation.

The workshop will take place in Terni (100km north of Rome), from May 27th to June 1st  2011.
Next Saturday 28th of May 19.30 there will be an open lecture around ecosistema urbano work at CAOS center Terni.
We’ll be glad to meet some of ecosistema urbano blog readers.

See you in Terni!!!!

Ecosistema Urbano participe avec KOZ Architectes à l’exposition “Nouveaux équipements à Paris” qui ouvrira le 19 mai au Pavillon de l’Arsenal à Paris. L’exposition présente en plans, images de synthèse et maquettes, les propositions de 30 équipes d’architectes pour imaginer six nouveaux équipements à Paris.

Parmi les projets présentés, nous profitons pour partager avec nos lecteurs celui que nous avons développé, en collaboration avec KOZ, dans le cadre d’un concours pour la construction d’un centre d’animation et aménagement de terrains sportifs à rue Mouraud dans le 20ème arrondissement.

Voici une description de notre proposition:

La première chose qui frappe – dans ce quartier, «le plus dense d’Europe» – c’est la respiration bienvenue apportée par cette petite place ouverte vers le sud, et par le vide des terrains de sport cernés de près par les hautes silhouettes des immeubles de logements. Ce qui est dommage, c’est que le bâtiment actuel crée une frontière opaque entre la place et les terrains qui coupe ce grand espace.
Nous voulons donner cette perception d’un grand espace aux usages multiples en coeur d’îlot. Pour être le moins imposant possible le centre d’animation se cale le long de la frange bâtie Nord/est. Il ne présente ainsi qu’un simple rez de chaussée dans l’axe de la rue Mouraud. Et la perméabilité entre la place et les terrains de sport est renforcée par un véritable passage ouvert dans cet axe.

101130_processus

Sur la place, nous proposons de poursuivre cette création d’un petit biotope semi-sauvage -relais de la biodiversité de la friche de la petite ceinture- pour gérer de façon douce les problématiques de limite et d’éventuelle clôture du site.
Sur le jardin se trouve un drôle de pavillon. Il ne figure pas au programme, mais sa présence témoigne de notre ambition de dépasser les modes opératoires normaux pour proposer en plus – de la première pierre à la dernière pierre – un processus de Design Urbain Social qui permettra de dynamiser le vide temporel créé par la disparition du centre d’animation pendant le chantier, et d’assurer la continuité des activités et la présence tant nécessaires au quartier de Saint-Blaise.

CREDITS DU PROJET:

KOZ architectes et Ecosistema Urbano architectes / PLAN01 ingénieurs environnement, EVP ingénieurs structure, Delta Fluides ingénieurs fluides, RPO économiste

Pour plus d’informations vous pouvez consulter les documents ci-dessous:
PARIS SAINT- BLAISE | Planche A3
PARIS SAINT- BLAISE | Notice architecturale

Le projet lauréat (image ci-dessous) est de l’equipe BRUTHER / BATISERF bureau d’étude structure, Michel FORGUE
ingénieur conseil en économie du bâtiment, Louis CHOULET, bureau d’étude fluides et environnement.

Exposition Concours Nouveaux équipements à Paris
Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris
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Exposition du 19 mai au 12 juin 2011
Entrée libre
Ouverture du mardi au samedi de 10h30 à 18h30 et
le dimanche de 11h à 19h.
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CONTACT PRESSE
Pavillon de l’Arsenal
Julien Pansu, responsable de la communication
et du multimédia
julienpansu@pavillon-arsenal.com
01 42 76 31 95
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Pavillon de l’Arsenal
Centre d’information, de documentation et d’exposition d’urbanisme et d’architecture de Paris et de la métropole parisienne.

21, boulevard Morland
75004 Paris – FRANCE
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PAV_238_CP

INTRODUCTION

Her blog is focuses on cities and particularly on urban public spaces from a multidisciplinary point of view, tackling issues of design, environment, society and philosophy, and proposing new ways of approaching the design of the urban space. Cities today represent the physical context of the most important challenges facing humanity. Specifically, the challenges of environmental threats, social justice, and economic development acquire special significance in urban settlements, where a rapidly increasing number of people are concentrating. Public spaces play a fundamental role in meeting these challenges as they represent the democratic arenas in which social interactions take place. Since early history, public spaces have been centres for the exchange of ideas, diversity, and everyday experiences. Today, public spaces are considered key in order to enhance social cohesion and improve quality of life within cities.

URBAN PERCEPTION

Among other factors, the way people use public spaces is highly influenced by their environmental conditions: temperature, light, humidity, sound, odours, textures, pollution, wind speed… Thus, proposing a broader view of the environment in relation to the climate and human body becomes particularly significant in order to improve the quality of the urban space. The continuous urbanization process has changed not only the environmental properties of our surroundings, but also our relationship and interactions with it. As the artist Olafur Eliasson states:

“Our senses have been manipulated during the past hundred years, so that we believe the world is organized in a certain way. Ideally we would see things much more individually, but the acculturation or commodification of the senses prevents us from doing so. Our senses are not natural, they are culturally produced, and the commodification of our senses has generalized the way we see the world.” (Eliasson 2007)

Olafur Eliasson & Ma Yangsong, Feelings are facts, installation UCCA 2010

During a set of radio talks in 1948, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty stated the idea that “rather than a mind and a body, man is a mind with a body, a being who can only get to the truth of things because its body is, as it were, embedded in those things.” (Merleau-Ponty 2004). In his work, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the foundational role of perception in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Our body becomes the medium to know and experience our surrounding physical environment and therefore, the experience is dependant to each individual. According to Ittelson and Cantril, “perceiving is always done by a particular person from his own unique position in space and time and with his own combination of experiences and needs.” (Ittelson and Cantril 1954). Not only our particular body with its own characteristics, but also previous experiences, expectations, and cultural background influence significantly our environmental perception. In addition, the environment is temporally and spatially dynamic, as well as its perception changes continuously in space and time.

During the last decade, the study of perception has acquired special attention and has been addressed by physiologists, anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, urban planners and architects among others. For example, the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa has supported this idea within the architectural and urban realm:

“I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square; my gaze unconsciously projects my body onto the facade of the cathedral, where it roams over the mouldings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projections; my body weight meets the mass of the cathedral door, and my hand grasps the door pull as I enter the dark void behind. I experience myself in the city and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and the body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me.” (Pallasmaa 2005).

With that, I am proposing a new perspective to the design of public spaces taking the human body as point of view. The perceptual experience of the space represents a key issue in the success of any urban intervention. Temperature, light, humidity, sound and smell influence the way in which we use the space. In addition, individual’s culture, past experiences and expectations, together with the dynamic condition of the urban environment, as it changes during the day and the year, offers a wide range of possibilities for alternative design approaches.

Notes:
Eliasson, Olafur, interview by Artinfo. (09 07, 2007).
Ittelson, William H., and Hadley Cantril. Perception: a Transactional Approach. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1954.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The World of Perception. London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2004.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.

web: www.martindelguayo.com
twitter: @pmguayo
facebook: Martin del Guayo

Next Thursday May the 12th Gunter Pauli will be lecturing at IAAC from 12.00- 13.00

Dr. Gunter Pauli graduated with a degree in economics from Loyola’s University in Belgium and obtained his masters in business administration from INSEAD in France. He is an entrepreneur and founder of ZERI Foundation (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). The Blue Economy is an international community of companies, innovators and scientists, providing open source access to develop, implement and share prosperous business models that strive to improve natural ecosystems and the quality of life for all.

Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
Carrer de Pujades, 102, Barcelona,
IAAC Auditorium, Free Admission

Ecosistema Urbano has been invited to lead a workshop (FESTARCH-LAB) at the international architectural event, curated by Stefano Boeri, FESTARCH 2011 (festarch.it) to be held at various locations in the Italian region of Umbria (Terni, Perugia and Assisi) between May 26th and June 5th 2011.

The workshop will focus on experiencing the urban complexity while interacting with the city and its citizens. At the same time we’ll try to approach the contemporary urban environment by creative and participatory solutions.

The workshop will take place in Terni (100km north of Rome), from May 27th to June 1st  2011.

FESTARCH-LAB organization will provide accomodation in Terni and free registration fee to those of you who are interested in taking part in the worshop (max. 6 people). Send us a brief presentation about you(300 words) and a motivation letter for joining the workshop (300 words). Send both texts into a single pdf file (address: info@ecosistemaurbano.com)before May 12th, 2011.

FESTARCH-LAB organizers are Association of Young Architects GATR with CAOS Art Center in Terni. You can see the event organized by them last year in Terni (Think Town Terni www.thinktownterni.it)

Featuring: Terreform ONE

Beyond “sustaining” the urban landscape to endure the lifestyles of future generations, ecological design envisions long-lasting urban waste-management techniques and, as the world’s population  climbs, long-lasting urban space-management techniques.

An average of 50 million people migrate to cities around the globe each year. As they do, more and more outside (rural) resources are being transported to cities while more and more waste is being transported out of cities to keep their populations comfortable. As global environmental and social pressures build under this unsustainable system (meaning, it won’t last – we’re drawing resources at a faster rate than they grow, and the waste is building up somewhere faster than it’s decomposing), new visions for urban consumption, waste, and space management are needed. To be clear, urbanism is not the problem we’re facing- the current design of urban spaces is. Built to serve the automobile, urban areas, as they exist today, promote the existence of an artificial boundary between the “city” and “nature” that have made it easy for urbanites to ignore their impressive impact on outside communities.

One way to meet future ecological challenges is through the design and development of self-sufficient communities- spaces that acknowledge their ecosystems and manage their own resources, eliminating the need to draw those of other spaces. Setting the boundaries of these communities will be important. Portland, Oregon, for example, Has been developing all urban planning within a greenbelt , or urban growth boundary, for years, in an effort to prevent American, suburban sprawl and it’s negative effects on rural ecosystems. Similarly, UK town planning adopted Metropolitan Green Belt policy around London in 1947, and has been in effect ever since. However, despite the environmental responsibility of sprawl prevention, these cities are still importing most of their resources from other communities. There is a necessity for ecological design to address both space and waste management to decrease urban-driven resource pressures on rural landscapes.

At their exciting studio in Brooklyn, New York City, Mitchell Joachim and his Terreform ONE [Open Network Ecology] design group, envision projects for the future of cities that both eliminate urban pressures on rural environments and promote innovative design processes. Urban-based mobility has been an important theme at Terreform ONE, where proposals for stackable “soft” cars, human-powered river gyms, bus blimps (pictured above), and the long awaited human jet pack have developed. The biotechnology constructed tree and meat architecture that Terreform ONE is researching  have also attracted a lot of attention. These innovative ideas have been shared at TED conferences (Joachim is now a TED fellow), the Colbert Report, The Economist’s Ideas Economy video Series, many many interested journalists, as well as with the NYU students whom Joachim teaches when he crosses the bridge to Manhattan.

It is Terreform ONE’s  radical re-imagining of the city as a ecological, biological, self-sufficient system, rather than focusing on an incorporation of carbon-curbing solar panels and other “green” technologies, that makes their work revolutionary innovative. The Planetary ONE Urbaneering Brooklyn 2110, City of the Future model presents a re-design initiative for NYC’s Brooklyn borough. The intensified version of Brooklyn supplies all vital needs for its population. Food, water, air, energy, waste, mobility, and shelter are radically restructured to support life in every form, making Urbaneering Brooklyn 2110 an exciting example of what future, self-sufficient communities could look like.

Using the existing street grid as a foundation for new networks, the Urbaneering Brooklyn project re-eingineers obsolete streets with radically robust and ecologically active pathways.  The construction of “ecologically active structure” is proposed with the use of natural grafting processes, supported with prefabricated CHC reusable scaffolds.

Teerform ONE’s ecological design combines biological and technological potential to produce smart models for developments that reach far beyond zero-carbon targets. As Joachim puts it, the term sustainability is “not evocative enough” . The ecological challenges that architects and city planners face today require solutions that not only work to curb environmental exploitation, but also add new, creative inventions that support more positive urban lifestyles.

Radical envisioning of the future of cities is what gave us technologies like the elevator, which Joachim sites as one of the most influential technologies for architecture and urban planning. The ecological design research being advanced in his Brooklyn office provides cities with technological potential to bring together computer science, structural engineering and biology for comprehensive resource, waste and space management that also-  importantly – enhances the urban experience.