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Collection of e-papers on Collective Intelligence in ArXiv | Link + download

Category: ⚐ EN+downloads+findings+research+resources

If you are interested in collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, collaboration, reputation mechanisms, collective decision making and related topics, then you’re in for a treat!

Collective Intelligence - Illustration by vladgrin on Shutterstock

Collective Intelligence – Illustration by vladgrin on Shutterstock

The page may look unimpressive at first sight; you could say it’s pure ‘Internet 1.0’, but the contents are really worth a careful look. Along with full e-papers, it contains poster papers and abstracts from plenary sessions at the MIT. They are usually available as downloadable PDFs and in other formats, sometimes even including video.

2012 collection of e-papers on Collective Intelligence – arXiv

ArXiv is one of the oldest (1991: that’s pre-World Wide Web!) and most well-known repositories for electronic preprints of scientific papers in different fields of science which can be accessed online and downloaded. It is now hosted and operated by Cornell University, with 14 mirrors around the world.

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Resolution planning and design for peace

Category: ⚐ EN+city+findings+urbanism

Is Peace a matter of design? Do designers have a role in it? During our stay at Harvard GSD last Fall semester, we had the pleasure to meet architect Karen Lee Bar-Sinai who is a current Loeb Fellow there. Last January she launched the workshop DESIGNING PEACE, looking into how designers can envision peace for the city of Jerusalem. Below is a description of the course and the links to some of the contents and results. We hope you find them inspiring.

designing peace

Architecture and Planning may seem to be of little relevance to Conflict Resolution. However, territorial conflicts occur in space, and so are their solutions. It is time architects, planners and policy makers approach disputed territories together to plan viable, peaceful futures for disputed areas.

This workshop invites you to join an exploration of how design can aid envisioning peace in conflicted territories. We will explore the possible meaning of Resolution Planning – originally a concept and practice developed by “SAYA/Design for Change” (sayarch.com) . Together we will try to give broaden this term, and find new ways to encourage policy makers to think as architects, and to encourage architects to think as policy makers.

Palestinian and Israeli zones on Jerusalem

The 5 day solution-oriented workshop will focus on Jerusalem as a case study for other contested cities such as Belfast and Nicosia. We will plan, think and design at various scales, and propose innovative ideas for peace. Several sites will serve as case studies (one will encourage a landscape intervention, another an urban design strategy, and a third will call for a more general policy oriented vision for the future Jerusalem seam-line). The workshop is planned to be followed by a publication.

Goals and Outcome:
The goal of the workshop is to develop spatial-based concepts to aid peace. We also plan to gather the various proposals into a publication which will include both the theoretical framework and examples of various tools for planning peace.
Above all, we wish for this effort to truly aid overcoming the stalemate in the peace process, which we believe it is crucial to future of both Israeli and Palestinian. We therefore wish this event to be as interesting, meaningful and involving as possible, in order for its fruits and visions of peacemaking to be of highest impact.

Among the contents and results of the workshop we highlight here an introduction to resolution planning and a lecture by Karen on the topic:

More info:

Results: Gallery of the workshop | Same in slideshow mode
Homepage: designing-peace.com
Related website: ispeacepossible.com

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Open Data Handbook 1.0

Category: ⚐ EN+findings

Last February the Open Knowledge Foundation presented the version 1.0 of the Open Data Handbook, a guide that explains the basic concepts of open data, especially in relation to government.

Open Data Handbook

It covers how open data creates value and can have a positive impact in many different areas. In addition to exploring the background, the handbook also provides concrete information on how to produce open data.

As the introduction explains:

Do you know exactly how much of your tax money is spent on street lights or on cancer research? What is the shortest, safest and most scenic bicycle route from your home to your work? And what is in the air that you breathe along the way? Where in your region will you find the best job opportunities and the highest number of fruit trees per capita? When can you influence decisions about topics you deeply care about, and whom should you talk to?

New technologies now make it possible to build the services to answer these questions automatically. Much of the data you would need to answer these questions is generated by public bodies. However, often the data required is not yet available in a form which is easy to use. This book is about how to unlock the potential of official and other information to enable new services, to improve the lives of citizens and to make government and society work better.

The original version of the book, called “Open Data Manual”, was written during a book sprint in Berlin in October 2010. Since then, a wide group of editors and contributors have added to and refined the original material, to create the Handbook you see today. Just click the image below and read it online:

Open Data Handbook - ver online

The vision is to create a growing series of open-source Handbooks and Guides that would offer advice on different aspects of open data. This project has already been started, being available so far:

Do you find it useful and want to see it further improved? Then you could consider becoming a part of the project and contributing to its development. The project now lives as a self-contained project within the foundation, its community being mainly centred around the open-data-handbook mailing list. It is primarily supported by the open government data and the EU open data working groups, and of course you can join in and add your bit.

There are many ways you can contribute:

  • Would you like to have it in your language? Help translating it! They are using Transifex to manage translations; see the instructions on their wiki for information about how to get started.
  • You can point out corrections and suggestions for improvement on the issue tracker or by emailing opendatahandbook[@]ofkn.org.
  • You can contribute to the next version of the Open Data Handbook:  join the mailing list and share your ideas!
  • A country specific adaptation could be also a great addition you could work on.
  • Donate! The OKF is committed to keeping the Open Data Handbook entirely free, and all contributions to make this possible are gratefully received.

Source: OpenSource.com
Front page image: digiphile + cactusbeetroot

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House of Steel and Wood | a model from across the ocean

Category: ⚐ EN+findings

Sometimes the Internet brings us great surprises. We’ve been recently contacted by some students from the U.S. (Bernabe Longoria, from the University of Texas at Arlington, U.T.A. and Fabiola Miria, Brigid Hardiman and Shih-hsun Lin, from New York Institute of Technology) regarding the same project: the House of Steel and Wood in Ranón.

Across the ocean

As there isn’t much information about this building around the net (in fact I just realized it isn’t even published here), they asked us to send them the plans. The surprise came when, some weeks later, Bernabe contacted us back and sent us some photos of a nice scale model he had made using that technical information. Here you can see them:

Vista 1

Vista 2

Vista 3

Nice, isn’t it? It’s even more detailed than Ecosistema’s own models! And Bernabe also wrote us some words:

Dear Ecosistema Urbano,
My name is Bernabe Josue Longoria and I am a student at the University of Texas at Arlington [also, he tells us he was born February 8, 1990, raised in the small town of Cleburne, Texas]. This is currently the beginning of my junior year in the architecture program and the first assignment given to us was to study a small, residential, prefabricated house of our choosing. After spending a few days going through books in our library and houses online, I finally stumbled upon the House of Steel and Wood.
The organic simplicity of this design was what impacted me most, along with the spaces themselves. Nothing interrupts them, which allows anyone to not only enjoy the company of their own family and friends, but the beautiful surroundings in the area.
Being from Texas, everything must be expensive, everything must be better than “that design”, above all, everything must be bigger. As a student the fame, fortune, and idea of my name becoming a generic stamp on a building has never been something important to me. What I aim for in this career is clearly what this house displayed; to impact the world itself without leaving a mark. I find it very interesting that you are able to design with not only a limited amount of space but materials as well. I have never been taught to design at this scale or style, so this was a whole new experience for me seeing as how The House of Steel and Wood was my first precedence of this type of architecture. I hope to pull from this experience the concept of making a feasible, discrete, and sustainable designs for the earth and by the earth; therefore offering a design to the world without taking away from its natural beauty.

Bernabe with his model

Many thanks to Bernabe for sharing his work with us! And there’s even more: Fabiola, Brigid and Shih-hsun are right now working on a BIM model of the same house; here at the office we are all eager to see the result.

This kind of interactions make us even more aware of the importance of sharing information about each one’s projects and creations. Right now, everyone can already download the Air Tree project or, just for fun, get the CAD files for EU Comics, but there is still a long long way to go: could we publish every project the same way?

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[EU] spotify playlists #5

Category: ⚐ EN+eu:live+findings+internet

spotifyeu_logo3

…and now we start with our weekly homemade playlists…

spotify:user:eiza1980:playlist:6G2Z28SrMPugyE2azJ0zDL

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[Recycling urban infrastructures] High Line Park NYC

Category: ⚐ EN+design+findings+proyectos+r[eu]cycling+urbanism

highline park11

It’s a rare day indeed when we see [specially in urban scale] a brave project that amazes all of us, and I think this is one of those…
Apart from the “cool” new-yorker look, is some kind of relief that one of many awesome urban-scale proposals has been carried out. It had to happen in New York and lead the way in the U.S. of recycling and not demolishing when a construction stops being in use or is not profitable anymore. I suppose this frecuent situation is due to a lack of legislation to protect buildings that has special interest, but I think this is a cultural issue…

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uncommon maps#1_happiness

Category: ⚐ EN+findings+internet+research+urbanism

smile365

from http://www.benettontalk.com/

“The geography of happiness

Where does one find happiness? Whether you live in Puerto Rico or in Latvia (the nation with the highest suicide rate) can make a difference. One usually tends to think of happiness as something personal: individuals, not nations, are (or can be) happy. So the question is: is happiness a subjective reality (“feeling good”) or do objective conditions exist (“being fine”) that let us define a common standard?

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fisheye sessions #11

Category: ⚐ EN+findings+proyectos+urbanism

fisheye-11_bilbao_ground

Glorieta de Bilbao [Madrid]

-fisheye view from the ground-

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3D …at the office

Category: ⚐ EN+findings+research

3d-eu1_blog

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transparent media facade > Mediamesh®

Category: ⚐ EN+architecture+design+engineering+findings+technologies

media-facade5

Mediamesh® is a stainless steel mesh fabric with interwoven LED profiles and with connected media controls installed behind it. The LEDs render the images onto the facade, providing the ability to display a wide spectrum of graphics, animated text and video.

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