Workshop: Responsive Urban Lighting at Media Architecture Biennale

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

This workshop will celebrate an experimental practice and, through 1:1 scale experiments in the wild, develop new knowledge in crafting interactive lighting scenarios, that are both beautiful and time efficient to realize.

The workshop addresses questions such as: How can we systematically design lighting behaviors in public spaces? To what extent does responsive urban lighting affect our experience of architecture as well as the social protocol? What are the implications on safety, efficiency, social interactions, design, commercial, and aesthetic response patterns in interactive lighting design?

In the morning session of the workshop, participants will be introduced to a thermo camera tracking system, a design tool for mobile phones and design methodologies in public responsive lighting. During the afternoon session participants will be using a system that has been developed to distinguish various occupancy patterns in public spaces. For example, events such as encounters, long term occupancy and “passing through” which result in digital signals that can be used to affect lighting patterns.

During the workshop participants will develop multi-user interaction scenarios for urban lighting and, through simulations on architectural models, test different designs. The final outcome will be displayed in the city of Aarhus on a 1:1 scale model and thereby turn the public space into an ‘urban laboratory’ while allowing the participants to observe and evaluate social, aesthetic and energy related qualities of different responsive lighting designs.

//Esben Skouboe Poulsen, Rasmus Krarup.

Thanks for good days intensive work in the workshop team: Daniela Mortarotti, Henrika Pihlajaniemi, Mark C. Mitchell, Kendrick Khoo, Hanley Weng, Emila Yang, Walther Jensen.

 

 

How does it Feel to be in the Smart city?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goal

The goal of the workshop is to establish a shared body of interesting research challenges, which would feed into the contemporary discussion of the ‘Smart city’.

Some of the key challenges and issues are:

How do we see ‘smartness’ (ie. Computerized information feedback loops) in public space ?

Which new types of functions does ‘smart’ public spaces afford?

How do people experience the changes made by new technologies in the city ?

How can we develop new tools and techniques helping to design new more interesting, engaging, inspiring but still efficient and safe experiences in the smart city ?

How can we develop new tools and techniques that develop new understandings of the city and the uses of the city?

These questions must be addressed through a experimental, interdisciplinary research practice, that potentially involve tool builders, tool users and ‘reflectionists’.

See notes in the Internal section

//Esben Skouboe Poulsen, Ole B. Jensen