De acuerdo con los propios autores:

Openarch es un prototipo real de una vivienda inteligente. La primera vivienda diseñada desde el inicio para incorporar una capa digital que conecta la casa y sus elementos a Internet. Sus habitantes participan y se incorporan a una nueva vida conectada y digital. Es flexible y gracias a su capacidad de transformación se adapta  a cualquier condición que requiera el usuario.

La capa digital a la que a partir de ahora llamaremos D.OS (domestic operating system) incluye una serie de elementos que permiten a los usuarios estar conectados con cualquier persona o espacio, controlar los elementos de la casa mediante el movimiento del cuerpo, realizar conferencias desde la casa, conocer el consumo eléctrico en cada instante, activar cualquier electrodoméstico desde el trabajo, compartir en video y en directo las recetas de cocina con el resto del mundo, crear tu propio plató de TV en el salón, etc.

Openarch || FILM from Openarch on Vimeo.

La vivienda está diseñada para permitir la máxima capacidad de modificación y adaptación a las necesidades del usuario en tiempo real, como parte de un estilo de vida más dinámico y cambiante.

Más allá de la domótica, incorpora desde su propia concepción varios sistemas que permiten al usuario interactuar no sólo con la vivienda sino con la ciudad, con otros usuarios y con la Internet de las cosas, todo a través de una interfaz integrada con los propios elementos arquitectónicos y los objetos cotidianos mediante sensores y sistemas de visualización proyectados.

De este proyecto nos gustaría destacar dos cosas:

Lo primero, que se trata de un claro ejemplo de la aplicación consecuente de los principios de la cultura abierta. Desde la transparencia del proceso, que ha sido comunicado por los desarrolladores en su blog, hasta el hecho de que ser un prototipo real, habitado durante el propio proceso de testeo: lo que podríamos llamar una obra arquitectónica en versión beta. Lo que vemos no son montajes digitales ilustrativos (perfectos e ideales pero irreales), sino fotografías y vídeos directos del sistema puesto en uso, con todas sus deficiencias y capacidades. Acostumbrados a ver terminar el trabajo de los arquitectos el mismo día en que la obra se pone en uso, es interesante encontrar proyectos en los que las pruebas, los errores, los aspectos a medio definir y las mejoras sucesivas se comunican con el mismo valor o más que el resultado final, y son puestos a prueba con su uso cotidiano.

El segundo aspecto más interesante es que, frente a proyectos de investigación y desarrollo similares emprendidos por grandes empresas y universidades en búsqueda de patentes comercializables, Openarch está basado en sistemas de hardware y software open source, empleando estándares abiertos y componentes que permitirían a cualquiera desarrollar su propia versión del sistema, ponerla a prueba, mejorarla y contribuir así directa o indirectamente al desarrollo del proyecto.

Os animamos a visitar la web y revisar detenidamente los contenidos explicativos que incluye, así como a seguir los avances del proyecto en sus siguientes fases de desarrollo.

Fuente: openarch.cc

Between gratified walls, a massive steel structure, flat screen monitors and a speaker’s podium hosts guests and events that critique and inspire new ideas about 21st century creative urbanism. I had been meaning to visit the BMW Guggenheim lab since, while in Germany this past summer, a friend told me about it’s opening. After New York, the structure and monitors will be traveling to Berlin, and then on Mumbai. In fact, the structure and events are scheduled to travel around the world to 9 major cities for the next 6 years.

And what will become of the lot on Houston and 2nd? As I am currently researching the temporary use of vacant urban spaces, this question had been on my mind. I arrived in New York, serendipitously in time for the “What’s Next” discussions at the Lab. it turns out, the vacant lot owns a history of transformation efforts that extend beyond this past summer and BMW or the Guggenheim’s involvement. First Street Green, a local community organization made up of neighbors and friends of the area, has been trying to clean up and redesign the lot as community space for several years.

I choose the right time to visit. The day’s events kicked off with an address from First Street Green’s President, Robert Graf, who spoke a bit about the history of the 33 East first street site and their efforts to work with New York City Parks and Recreational facilities (who has owned the property since the mid 20th century) to clear and adapt the space to neighborhood needs. Next, friends of First Street Green, architects Jorge Prado and Silva Ajemian of Todo Design, presented a potential blueprint for the future of the site. Melding local neighborhood interests and the larger interests of New York City, they suggested a simple split-level architectural design: half community center and half park-space that would integrate the activities on the bustling Houston street with the first street neighborhood.

Then a representative from Art in the Parks, a project headed by the Department of Art and Antiquities, gave a presentation about the type of sculptures and installations that have been showcased throughout New York’s parks in the past. This presentation was meant to suggest the potential for the space to be used for arts viewing. A young, neighborhood boy raised his hand – and then the real discussions began. “What about the kids?” He asked, “we don’t want to look at sculptures, we want to play sports in our neighborhood”. It was quickly acknowledged that whatever becomes of the space, it will have to meet the needs of the surrounding residents, first and foremost.

It seemed the perfect transition into the presentation “It’s My Park”. The Hester Street Collaborative and Partnership for Parks were presented by Jordan Pender, who explained placemaking - the community benefits of citizen involvement in urban development plans. Along the same lines as the What If Cities initiative at Ecosistema Urbano, Partnerships for Parks now has an online interface called “People Make Parks” which encourages communities participate in the design of their park, incorporating tools like “Design Hoops”, “story map”s and “wish objects”. Lastly, Graem Sullivan, director of the School of Visual Arts and The Pennsylvania State University spoke about the significance as Space for making place for questions.

After a lunch break and a on-site game of Urbanology (it’s great, play it online here), the activities on site switched to a visioning wall workshop. Several tables laid out giant foam puzzle pieces and writing and decorating tools. Speakers, listeners, and passer-bys were encouraged to write their own ideas about what could exist in the space post-BMW/Guggenheim Lab. The puzzle pieces took structure, and the sculpture chart grew in idea potential that raged from Mobile Gardening to Music performance.

The puzzle pieces, we were told, would be presented to the 1st street community, who would lay the ideas in order of preference. The site’s development would depend on this input.

I observed two major take-away points from the First Street Green day’s activities:

First, the potential in the flexible use of raw spaces. Architects Prado and Ajemian suggested a “soft “structure for their proposed community center. Natural materials and a simple structure would allow for later construction or deconstruction. In other words, the architecture of the site could be planned from the beginning to adapt to neighborhood needs. Art in the Parks suggested the idea of installation, not murals or permanent sculpture to share the space. This art form could temporarily expose the neighborhood (and New York’s visitors) to contemporary visual art during periods of the year that the space is unsuitable for lengthy outdoor activities.

Second, the potential of socially engaging tools to integrate local (and larger) communities in urban development plans. These tools give all members of the community, regardless of age or educational status, the ability to impact the future of their shared space. Community members will likely care even more for a space they’ve invested thought into. The more stakeholders in a project, the less likely it will fall into disuse or vandalism.

Ecosistma Urbano is well acquainted with the notion that fluid communication between designers and the communities in which they work is one of the most important aspects of 21st century, sustainable urban development. At DreamHamar’s digital and physical labs, similar social tools are being introduced.

The history of the 33 East first street is, in itself, proof of the potential in communities to develop grassroots urban change. Until mid-October, if you’re in New York, I highly recommend checking out the BMW Guggenheim lab

If you’re in New York some months, years from now, it will interesting to see what becomes of the 33 East first street site as well.

Next you can watch (in spanish) a short video presentation we recorded at the office:

At Whatif.es you will find the following content:

• A presentation of the application, its purpose, its features, etc. An the sidebar there are some widgets with download links, last blog entries, Twitter activity (@whatifopen) and the Facebook page among others.
• The last 2.0 version of whatif.w, available for download together with the installation instructions as a WordPress theme that will allow you to turn a blog into a participatory application.
• A demo with which you can interact entering test messages, navigating through the results, etc.
• The blog of the project, where we will be publishing news, articles and all kind of related contents.
• The changelog and the roadmap, containing the work already done as well as the future goals for the coming versions. We would love you to contribute to it with your ideas and wishes!

The website is adapted to the new graphic identity of the project and is completely bilingual: from any page the visitor can click on the EN-ES icons on the upper-right side and get the content and the interface translated to Spanish or English. We believe that the extra effort we are putting into the translation will be worth it if it allows us to reach a wider international community of potential users and collaborators.

Although the website is currently centered on whatif.w, we will be including the new versions in development: the mobile application whatif.m for Android (also planned for iPhone), the plugin that will connect it to the online version, and any related one.

During some time from now whatif.w 2.0 will be tagged as beta. This is just a way of saying that the application is already usable but may still contain error or things that need some polish and won’t probably be visible until different users begin to test it under various conditions. During the first weeks we will be paying special attention to any doubt or problem you have in order to improve this version, and we’ll be opening soon a space for debate as well, for your suggestions to be implemented on the coming version 2.1 and following ones.

Note: The Whatif WordPress theme itself isn’t translated yet, we will be doing this over the next weeks. If you want to help us with it, contact us and we will gladly give you all the support and acknowledgement.

We encourage you to visit the website, to subscribe to the blog feed if you’re interested, and to send us your impressions. We hope that those of you who have some WordPress knowledge will get your hands on it, install it on your web hosts and even modify it to adapt it to your tastes or needs. We will be creating a collection of projects done with the help of this digital tool, sharing modified versions, thinking of ways to improve it, hoping that as time goes by there will be growing a small development community around Whatif and the project itself will become alive.

In a recent coffee-break in Ecosistema Urbano we have been discussing the project for City of Culture of Galicia by Eisenman Architects and one of us used the expression “Bilbao effect”. Inevitably, this reminded me of a post I had written some time ago for the blog complexitys (HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés) and I would like to share my ideas with our readers:

A recent article on ArchDaily talked about our ‘in progress’ footbridge at La Roche sur Yon.
We’re pleased to be a subject of interest for a such an important architecture website, and what we appreciate even more is the public feedback and the list of comments left, which have inspired some interesting reflections about our work here at HDA.
I would particularly like to share some thoughts on the idea (or even obsession) of “being original” in architecture, the meaning of copying someone or something, and what this could imply nowadays, in a time when everybody is talking about copyright and how it’s changing with new communication technologies.

This is a very complex subject and I don’t have any firm ideas or theories, but I would like to use this post just to share some thoughts on it.
In the article I’m referring to , the 80% (maybe more) of comments have a “this project looks like…” format, that’s why I’m mindfully using the word “obsession” above.
My first reaction was to think that these comments were negative, simply because they were saying that at HDA we are not original. But when I heard my principal Hugh Dutton saying happily “they’re comparing us to Calatrava, that’s great!”, I understood that my interpretation was very subjective.
In fact, being original has something of an obsession for architects, but today it’s maybe becoming an antiquated attitude.
With a bit hindsight, it’s quite crazy to think that a lot of architects (am I one?) are always looking to be original and different. I would dare to say that architects with an originality obsession are much more common than the ones with the obsession of simply doing a good project. My perception is that this is in some ways linked with making money in architecture.
If society is looking for spectacular contents, it’s quite evident that “show business” architecture is encouraged. Maybe I’m not being original if now I mention the “Guggenheim effect” and that’s why I want to be the first architect who talks about the Guggenheim side effect, defined as a phenomena of replacing architectural meaning with spectacular contents.

“Suddenly there is this great titanium-clad mountain in front of you”
Doesn’t this sound as a show business language?

But maybe this is coming to an end: as @ecosistema says, “Architecture is not sensationalistic anymore. Helped by a double crisis, the one of the real estate agency and the financial one, sensible architecture is now born”.
I totally agree with this vision of architecture, and I also would like to add that the coming of a more sensible architecture is also helped by new communication technologies, as I think that architecture will soon need to redefine itself as is happening with music or movies on the web.
For music, there is a great example we can use to clarify this point: Spotify, a new web-based music browser supported by big music labels, is reinventing the music business, as it’s selling a service which allows you to listen to a large quantity of music, rather than to sell you CDs or songs.
I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t set out something similar for architecture.

I believe this obsession for originality comes directly from the need to sell an image rather than a design service.
This reminds me of when Domenico (Ecosistema Urbano office) said “I wish everyone copied our Ecoboulevard project all over the world” as then the office would have become the world reference for this kind of project.
That’s maybe the same wise and contemporary thinking we find, in an easier form, in one of the last comments (by PB) on the ArchDaily post: “Looks incredible – I wish more plebeian structures were this beautiful…If it’s a good solution, why not copy it when it? As long as it is well done and carefully conceived.”

[ For italian readers who knows Baricco's novel "I barbari", I invite you to read this on barbarian contemporary architecture. ]
Credits: photo taken on Flickr by him: thanks.

_

The post received a lot of comments and I especially love the one by our friend Ethel Baraona:

I have not more to say that I completely agree with you. It’s time to forget the idea of the star-architect and re-think architecture as it always have been. Frank Lloyd Wright used to say “I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen”.
So, we architects just have to give ourself a chance to work hard in a more human and sensible architecture.

_

See the original post on complexitys

QR-code del Arteleku

Presenté este proyecto para el taller INTERACTIVOS `09 del Medialab y ha sido seleccionado. Es un proyecto abierto y la idea es que pueda mejorarse a lo largo de las dos semanas de taller.  Del 16 al 30 de Julio en Donosti, y aún esta abierta la inscripción para colaborar.

Sensorización de un edificio público y visualización de datos en tiempo real, en un espacio físico concreto, a través de códigos QR.

Se utiliza el Arteleku como base arquitectónica sobre la que desarrollar el proyecto. Para investigar la repercusión, en el uso diario de un edificio público, del conocimiento en tiempo real de datos obtenidos mediante sensores de movimiento y de datos introducidos por los propios usuarios. Se trata de trasladar proyectos de urban informatics a los edificios, y dar un paso más en la hibridación de la arquitectura. La inmediatez de la información, y por lo tanto la inmediatez en la toma de decisiones puede cambiar la manera en la que organizamos los edificios, permitiendo estructuras mucho más flexibles, directas y espontaneas.

Los códigos QR permiten hacer click en un punto físico. A través de aplicaciones como Beetagg (para iphone) sacar una foto del código equivale a entrar directamente a una pagina web representada por el mismo.

código de la pagina del Arteleku

El proyecto se dividirá en 4 fases:

1. Sensorización de los flujos de visitantes en las distintas estancias del edificio.

2. Visualización de los datos a través de una página web creada para el taller y que permita cruzar la información generando diagramas de flujos.

3. Acceso a los datos desde el mismo lugar donde se producen, a través de códigos QR colocados en cada estancia. Cada código tendrá una pagina web asociada donde se visualizarán los datos correspondientes al lugar físico donde se coloca. No solo datos producidos por los sensores, sino todos los datos relevantes que existan en la página web de Arteleku y que los propios usuarios del edificio puedan introducir sobre ese lugar. Todo el que se conecte a través del QR-code podrá introducir datos, mensajes y comentarios que aumentarán la información que se obtenga sobre los distintos lugares del edificio.

4. Finalmente y habiendo producido suficiente información, se realizará una valoración de los datos obtenidos y un debate en el que discutirá sobre la repercusión de la hibridación en la parte tangible de la arquitectura.

Este proyecto no esta cerrado y pretende propiciar un punto de partida sobre el que trabajar y poder desarrollar de una manera abierta, herramientas para transformar la arquitectura convencional a través de la tecnología. Crear un debate, mediante un proyecto abierto, sobre la repercusión de la hibridación en la arquitectura física.

This is our last daily playlist at the office, from now on we’ll post weekly or monthly playlists, so the first music brain-storming ends up here… the bright side is that weekly or monthly playlists are smoother and rested, and we have more time to select tracks for everyday work…

spotify:user:eiza1980:playlist:0iZq0jYXYYnqCggogvts9w

Here we go with the next delivery…

spotify:user:eiza1980:playlist:4Z7uxOl0c4qexuHdbu01Ux

Exploring New Visualisation Tools for Community Participation in the
Transformations of the Built Environment

Pop-Up Landscapes and Wiki Urban Planning Workshop
26-27-28 Feb 2009 – Hangar Barcelona

Thursday 26 & Friday 27 February 17h-21h
Saturday 28 10h-14h 16h-20h
Presentation : Saturday 28 20h30

Participation : 50 euros
Inscripciones : activitats@hangar.org

Workshop leaders :
Teresa Dillon (IRE/UK)
lok Arquitectura (PT/ES)
Tuomo Tammenpää (FI).

Drawing on case studies taken from the Poble Nou neighborhood, participants will use visualization techniques developed as part of the Pop-Up Landscapes project and Wiki Planning to explore how mixed media techniques can be used to create a visual toolkit for citizen participation in urban planning.

Pop-Up Landscapes is a locative and interactive media installation and research project exploring the construction of landscape in relation to transformation, interdependency and survival. The project combines landscape photography and sensor technologies to create an interactive triptych composition within which direct, photographic impressions specific to different locations can be inputted. Developed by the Finnish architect Peter Tattersall, Wiki Planning is part of a wider attempt to consider what the implications of web 2.0 might be on architecture and planning, and whether or not social media (and phenomena arising from it) might be used to make urban planning more participative. Combining the visualization techniques employed in Pop-Up Landscapes, along with the Wiki Planning method, the participants will develop a series of visual maps and architectural sketches to be publicly presented at Hangar on Saturday 28th of February.

Teresa Dillon: http://www.polarproduce.org/
lok Arquitectura: http://lok-arq.blogspot.com/
Tuomo Tammenpää: http://www.misusage.org/
Peter Tattersall: http://www.dodo.org/

“In this innovative animation, filmmaker Laura Hanna, writer Gavin Browning and video artists Dana Schechter and Molly Schwartz examine the concept of The Commons as a means to achieve a society of justice and equality.

In a perfect world, wealth–be it money, ideas or access to natural resources–belongs to all of us. But in our decidedly unjust and imperfect world, wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. There is be a better way. The notion of The Commons–shared land, resources, or the knowledge passed down through generations–is a common-sense way to allocate our natural, cultural and intellectual riches.

On the Internet, the “viral spiral” is a way ideas and innovations grow and be shared with ever-larger numbers of people. That spiral path could be the way the ideas of the commons can help shape a more just society. Learn more at On The Commons.org.”

Joan Connell The Nation