Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space
Paola Antonelli and Hadas Steiner in conversation with Mark Shepard
Friday, February 11, 2011
7:00 p.m.
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street
1.0 CEUs
add to calendar

To mark the publication of Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (The Architectural League/MIT Press), a book of case studies and essays based on the League’s fall 2009 exhibition, Paola Antonelli and Hadas Steiner join the book’s editor and exhibition curator Mark Shepard for a conversation on the history and future of architecture and design exhibitions. How have exhibitions helped shape the future imaginary of architecture and design? What agency, if any, does the exhibition have as a mode of design practice? How has both the role of the curator and the nature of curatorial practice evolved vis-a-vis new methods for the production and dissemination of architectural media? The conversation will address the exhibition’s historical relation to architectural production and its influence on contemporary design discourse.

Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. One of the foremost design curators in the world, Antonelli has organized numerous exhibitions, most recently “Design and the Elastic Mind” and “Safe: Design Takes on Risk.”  Her upcoming exhibition, “Talk to Me” (summer 2011), explores the communication between people and things.

Mark Shepard is an artist, architect, and researcher whose work addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network cultures.  He is an editor of the Situated Technologies Pamphlets Series (The Architectural League) and co-author of “Urban Computing and Its Discontents,” with Adam Greenfield.  Shepard is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Media Study at the University at Buffalo, where he co-directs the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies.

Hadas Steiner is an architectural historian whose research concentrates on the cross-pollinations of technological and cultural aspects of architectural fabrication in the postwar period.  She is the author of Beyond Archigram: The Structure of Circulation (Routledge, 2007).  Steiner is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

This program is free and open to all. Seating first-come, first-served.

Co-sponsored by The Architectural League of New York and McNally Jackson Books.

For more information about the book, click here.

Image: Heat responsive cover of Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (The Architectural League/MIT Press)

Pulling architects and urban designers into the debate about how ubiquitous technologies get integrated into the built environment was one of our primary reasons for organizing Sentient City, which was curated by Mark Shepard.  With developer Stan Gale promising to roll out twenty more cities just like New Songdo, it seems like we were just in time.

-Gregory Wessner, Digital Programs and Exhibitions Director

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Via Bldgblog, an amazing video speculation, made by a M.Arch student at the Bartlett, on how your day might start in a world of augmented reality. Less than two minutes but an intensely startling look into a potential future.
-Gregory Wessner, Digital Programs and Exhibitions Director

David Benjamin, Natalie Jeremijenko, Deborah Richards, and Soo-in Yang
Introduction by Mark Shepard
Recorded October 16, 2009
Running time: 1:09:40

Click here to subscribe to League podcasts on iTunes.

Presented as part of the public program series organized in conjunction with the Architectural League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City.

David Benjamin, Natalie Jeremijenko, Deborah Richards, and Soo-in Yang talk about the interconnected ecosystems of land and water, and the potential overlap between social networks of fish, people, and buildings. “Amphibious Architecture,” their project for the League’s exhibition Toward the Sentient City, creates a public interface to water quality and aquatic life of urban rivers, and our interest therein.

BIOS
David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang are Directors of The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Natalie Jeremijenko is the Director of the xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University

Joo Youn Paek, David Jimison, and Daniel Bauen
Introduction by Mark Shepard
Recorded October 9, 2009
Running time: 35:32

Click here to subscribe to League podcasts on iTunes.

Presented as part of the public program series organized in conjunction with the Architectural League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City.

JooYoun Paek and David Jimison discuss building high tech robotic street furniture meant to fail every time. The talk focuses on their research into street furniture in New York City public parks, efforts to mimic the aesthetics of public design, and the potential for sentient objects in the everyday and mundane. “Too Smart City,” their project for the League’s exhibition Toward the Sentient City, posits a set of “intelligent” street furniture that behaves in unexpected ways.

BIOS
JooYoun Paek is an artist and interaction designer born in Seoul and based in New York. She has created interactive objects and installations that reflect on human behavior, technology, and social change. Her art has been displayed by the Museum of Modern Art New York, Postmasters Gallery, EYEBEAM, Museum of Science Boston, and Seoul Museum of Art.

David Jimison’s work examines and develops modes of cultural opposition within urban living, and their relation to technologies. He has been the recipient of grants from Nokia, MTV, Kodak, and most recently a fellowship from Eyebeam. He is currently finishing a Ph.D. in Digital Media at Georgia Tech.

Click here to subscribe to League podcasts on iTunes.

Presented as part of the public program series organized in conjunction with the Architectural League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City.

Working in collaboration with Cisco Systems, Kohn Pedersen Fox is currently master-planning two new cities — New Songdo City, South Korea and Meixi Lake, Hunan Province, China — in which all information systems — residential, medical, business — will be linked. Organized around eight “tracks,” the systems will be designed to provide smart and connected solutions for real estate, safety and security, transportation, utilities, government, education, health care, and sports. James von Klemperer, design principal, and Relina Bulchandani, Director, Connected Real Estate Practice, discuss the major challenges of planning for the “ubiquitous city,” or u-city.

BIO
James von Klemperer has been responsible for the design of major commissions throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. His recent and current projects include the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, Nicosia, Cyprus; Plaza 66, Shanghai; ZhongGuanCun West, Beijing; the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, New York City; the Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C.; 640 Fifth Avenue, New York City; and the Mohegan Sun Resort hotel, casino, and arena in northern Connecticut. He received a Bachelor of Art from Harvard University, Master of Architecture from Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University.

Relina Bulchandani is a director in the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group Connected Real Estate Practice. She focuses on real estate solutions, technologies, and systems for the real estate sector, helping companies transform the user experience, streamline design/build processes, and create enivronmental sustainability. Prior to joining Cisco, she was senior vice president of strategic projects at Forest City Enterprises. She holds an MSE in technology managment from the Wharton School and the School of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania.

An open call for architects, engineers, urban designers, and related design professionals to participate in a one-week design charrette

Design problem announced: October 14, 2009
Pin-up and crit: October 21, 2009
Registration information below.

The Architectural League’s current exhibition, Toward the Sentient City, curated by Mark Shepard and on view at the Urban Center through November 7, critically explores the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture, and urban space.

Over the past several decades, computer scientists and engineers have been researching and implementing ways of embedding computational intelligence into the built environment. Looking beyond the paradigm of personal computing, which placed the computer in the foreground of our attention–most familiarly in the shape of the desktop computer–ubiquitous computing posits a world where computers have disappeared into the background, embedded into the floors, walls, streets, and physical world around us. Enabled by tiny, inexpensive microprocessors and low-power wireless networks, information processing has become ambient, imbuing buildings and cities with the capacity to sense, record, process, transmit, and respond to information taking place within and around them. The implications for the built environment are enormous and inevitable.

The Sentient City Charrette invites architects, engineers, urban designers, and related design professionals to speculate on the form and functionality of this “sentient” city evolving around us. Participants will have one week to propose solutions to the design challenge, after which there will be a pin-up and crit on the evening of October 21 (more information below). The charrette is open to all (although pre-registration is required) and is intended as a purely speculative and collegial exercise.

The Challenge
First proposed in 1929, the Second Avenue Subway system will stretch along Manhattan’s East Side from Harlem to the Financial District, alleviating extreme overcrowding on the 4/5/6 lines and making the East Side generally more accessible by public transit.

How can the Second Avenue Subway integrate digital intelligence to make the system more efficient, more environmentally sensitive, and more comfortable for riders and workers? How will embedded computational processing reinvent the function and/or form of entries, stairs, elevators, booths, turnstiles, newsstands, and the system itself? How will a “smart” subway station–one that has the capacity to track nearly infinite kinds of data, that responds to and interacts with riders, that is networked into the infrastructure of the city–look different than other stations currently in operation in New York City?

The problem is open-ended and participants are invited to consider any and all parts of the Second Avenue Subway as sites for potential action. The League is particularly interested in speculations on how these various technologies might influence architectural form, as well as how architects and related designers can reimagine to what ends and in what form ubiquitous technologies might be better integrated into the built environment.

Register to continue reading the brief (see below).

Registration
To get the full design brief, you must pre-register. Registration for League members, free; non-members, $10. League members may register by emailing sittech@archleague.org; non-members can register here. Once you’ve registered, a pdf of the design brief will be emailed to you.

Pin-up and Crit
A pin-up and crit of the submissions will take place on Wednesday, October 21, at 7:00 p.m. More information will be sent to registered participants.

Questions
Email questions to Gregory Wessner, Digital Programs and Exhibitions Director, at wessner@archleague.org.

Toward the Sentient City was made possible with support from the J. Clawson Mills Fund of the Architectural League and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.  Additional support was provided by the University at Buffalo.

Toward the Sentient City is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Project Presentation: Breakout!
Laura Forlano, Sean Savage, Antonina Simeti, Dana Spiegel, and Anthony Townsend
Introduction by Mark Shepard
Recorded: September 25, 2009
Running time: 48:00

Click here to subscribe to League podcasts on iTunes.

Presented as part of the public program series organized in conjunction with the Architectural League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City.

Laura Forlano, Dana Spiegel, Antonina Simeti, and Anthony Townsend discuss the inspirations, design, and initial experiences behind “Breakout!,” their experiment of mobile work organized for the League’s exhibition Toward the Sentient City. “Breakout!” is a festival of work in the city that explores the dynamic possibilities of a single question: what if the entire city were your office?

BIOS
Laura Forlano received her Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University, where she explored the intersection between organizations and technology and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation. She is an Adjunct Faculty member in Design and Management at Parsons and in the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School.

Sean Savage has ten years of experience in user research and experience design, with a focus on digital design for physical spaces. He co-founded PariSoMa, a co-working space in San Francisco. He also invented and served as CEO of PlaceSite, a location-based digital service that enhances offline social interaction in cafes and other work spaces.

Antonina Simeti is a consultant at DEGW, where she explores her interest in applying urban economic and planning principles to corporate workplace and learning environments. She has a special interest in knowledge industries, and specifically spaces in which innovation happens. She has experience in urban planning, public policy research, and environmental review.

Dana Spiegel is a Software and Product Development Consultant and the President of sociableDESIGN, a company that helps start-ups create and refine their online software and services. He is also Executive Director of NYCwireless, a non-profit that creates free, public Wi-Fi hotspots in New York City.

Anthony Townsend is Research Director in the Technology Horizons Program of the Institute for the Future, an independent research group based in Silicon Valley. He has authored over 20 journal articles and book chapters on the role of telecommunications in urban development and design.

On September 26, the Architectural League presented the Scrapyard Challenge, a one-day intensive workshop with artists Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki in which participants hack found or discarded “junk” (old electronics, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets) to build simple electronic music controllers (with both digital and analog inputs) and drawing robots. Organized in conjunction with the League’s current exhibition, Toward the Sentient City, the event brought together architects, artists, and other design professionals to consider what happens when otherwise inanimate objects become imbued with digital intelligence. League staffer Sarah Snider shares her thoughts on the day.

Here is the garbage we are stuck with.

Reid and I stared at it, picked about. Two computers, a fan, plastic garden shelving units, a printer, a stroller, metal, plastic: none of it recognizable. Reid was late for a show. We called the building manager for dumpster permissions and threw away only what he could ethically let pass through his hands. The rest—recyclable, hackable, beautiful, dirty—we packed up in the back of Reid’s Jeep. We drove away, first east, then south, then back west again. Finally we stopped in front of a house with an empty dumpster and, a shamed but relieved, got rid of it all

Here is the mess we have made.

I remember thinking as I drove along the streets of Park Slope four days earlier, with Scrapyard Challenge founders Jonah and Katherine, that we could save it all: stacks and piles of houseware, hardware, foam, books and toys. We would gather it and use it to create lasting musical gadgets and gizmos that never broke or got old and that everybody loved. We were going to turn garbage into gold, and be renegade heroes forever and ever, and start a band. There is so much garbage, so much gold.

But “You can’t take it with you,” seems to be the constant refrain with objects. Katherine instituted a “no foam, no wood” rule a few years ago due to a fear of bedbugs. Some things were too big. Some things were too dirty. Some things we already had. Some things are not garbage, and people come back for them once they’ve unlocked the front door and put their groceries on the counter. You have to be careful. This is illegal. They are watching you. Put that down, it’s wet.

There was a lot of garbage. We could have been selective, but in the end we took all that we could fit. Given the neighborhood we found strollers, kids’ toys, a pair of PCs from the 90s and, to hold all of the above, shelving units. Fans that no longer worked, were no longer needed. A toaster that, surprisingly, no one would end up turning into an instrument. I found a book in French, a record player. Something blue. Katherine and Jonah did most of the digging while I idled in the car. We emptied the contents of the hatchback into their foyer, planned for the weekend, and I returned the Zipcar full of excitement, ready to invite all of my friends to take the stuff apart and see what we could make.

On Saturday we had an enthusiastic crowd. Very focused. No coffee, no pastries – just garbage to get everyone going. We started by making drawbots out of two biodegradable cups put end to end, with magic markers for legs and a motor powered by a 5V battery pack and just a bit of a counterweight to make the whole thing hobble across the paper, vibrating and spiraling like PacMan on ice. (A sample of the outcome is hanging in the Architectural League’s offices—come visit us to check it out!)

After Katherine explained the idea of a switch, a sort of physical binary code that at its least complex can determine “On” and Off”, the hackers got crafty. They got creative—not surprising, given the context of The Old American Can Factory, which is home to over 200 artisans, fabricators, artists, designers, filmmakers, publishers and non-profits. People chose objects to pull apart, put together moving bits—things that spun, tapped, opened and closed—and created conductive connections to make and modify notes. A bit of design, a bit of aesthetics (red fuzzy turntables!), and a lot of duct tape, and at the end of the day, everyone had an instrument to play. Anyone can make a switch, out of almost anything. And that switch proffers to the person and the object an agency in a larger network of people and things. They are not called micro-”controllers” for nothing. The Scrapyard Challenge, Katherine says, is an important introduction of people to electronics, through the introduction of electronics into everyday things – computing truly becomes ubiquitous.

People were excited about the opportunity to pull objects apart and see their mysterious inner workings. The Scrapyard Challenge is in this sense a direct counterattack on the blackboxing of modernity. I thought it was all about garbage (and LEDs), and a lot of the projects in Toward the Sentient City do, in fact, have something to say about trash (and LEDs). But they are also delivering contemporary (and future!) thinking about technology through their projects, and the Scrapyard Challenge is thinking specifically about the experiential aspects of the city, the soft architecture, the spaces in between, the objects that fill them, and how people interact with all of this. What does pulling apart electronics have to do with architecture? It is material cultural study: if garbage or electronics are resources, how can they be put to use? It is an introduction to electronics: architects have to know a little bit about everything, after all. It is in fact both polymath and philomath: knowing how many things work and seeking new ways for things to function. It is spatial: currents moving through space until interruption. A building as interruption. It is about alternative performance, retrofitting, redesign, underdesign, addition and subtraction. Architecture has always been and still is a hands-on process. This is nothing if not a hands-on research, testing and performance workshop. Just as architecture experienced a moral panic surrounding the introduction of CAD, so too will people question the methods or materials used in the Scrapyard Challenge—especially the garbage.

I have tried the freegan thing before. The deal with garbage, though, is that most of it is indeed useless. We can save certain consumables, but the rest of the garbage we see around us is going to take as much energy to turn into something else as it would to dispose of it. Grabbing a bag of bagels at the end of the day to feed your roommates, or a stack of old papers to even the carbon-nitrogen balance in your compost bin, requires a lot less thought and effort than constructing a bed frame out of found wood. Just as landfills and the removals systems that keep them growing are unsustainable for a large society, so too is freeganism. It is fringe; it works for certain communities at certain times; one can live off it, but it cannot save the world. We need to be better than that.

In a conversation at the Scrapyard Challenge, Mark Shepard, the curator of Toward the Sentient City, listed off the tenets of early DIY forms of green thinking: “Recycle, reuse, and…what’s the last one?” He, like a lot of us, gets stuck. People are obsessed with trash, and it gets a lot of press, and people write books about it, and do techie projects and even craft lifestyles around it. As they should: we need to collectively take individual responsibility for the entire life cycle of objects. We need to worry about where things go as much as we worry about their free-range, organic, corn-fed, fair trade, local origins. And this counts as much for objects we get for free as for those we buy—hence Reid and my feelings of shame about dumping garbage that we found in the street back into the street. Our garbage was lucky: we gave it another, albeit temporary, life; some garbage doesn’t even get that. Maybe it will have more. Or maybe it will idle. This is why we need to drastically rethink that final r-word in the big three: REDUCE. This way of thinking doesn’t get a lot press—it almost disappears without a trace, one might say. But this way of thinking is a design problem, it is a consumer problem—it is a BIG problem and it is all of our problem. In the mean time, people like Jonah, Katherine, and all the Scrapyard Challenge participants and freegans out there, will have plenty of things to keep them occupied.

Scrapyard Challenge from Architectural League on Vimeo.

Happy Hour Project Presentation
David Benjamin, Soo-in Yang, and Natalie Jeremijenko
Friday, October 16, 2009
7:00 p.m.
The Urban Center
457 Madison Avenue
add to calendar

Click here to listen to the podcast of this event

Presented as part of the public program series organized in conjunction with the Architectural League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City.

David Benjamin, Natalie Jeremijenko, and Soo-in Yang will talk about the interconnected ecosystems of land and water, and the potential overlap between social networks of fish, people, and buildings.  “Amphibious Architecture,” their project for the League’s exhibition Toward the Sentient City, creates a public interface to water quality and aquatic life of urban rivers, and our interest therein.  For more information about Amphibious Architecture and the exhibition, visit the exhibition website.

BIOS
David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang are Directors of The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Natalie Jeremijenko is the Director of the xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University

TICKETS
Tickets are required for admission to League programs. Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets here from October 9 until noon of the day of the program. AIA and New York State continuing education credits are available.

Toward the Sentient City was made possible with support from the J. Clawson Mills Fund of the Architectural League and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.  Additional support was provided by the University at Buffalo.

Toward the Sentient City is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Image Credit: Network of Floating Tubes at Pier 35 in the East River. Rendering of installation by Living Architecture Lab. Concept rendering of Pier 35 by SHoP Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architect. Courtesy of the New York City Economic Development Company.