E-28-20121104-ENG

28 Elisavadesign CultureteChnology CommuniCation

TEmEs dE dissEny

speedrEconsidEring TimEin dEsign

editorial

The time factor in urban regeneration

Open source urban planning for augmented citizens

smart cities, smart lights. Digital signage and the city experience

slow design: “cultivating” culture and sensoriality in the artifacts shape and use

Common rhythms

Unlimited nanotechnology

From microchip to the planet

New relationship between Visual Communication design and Interaction design

Index

28 Elisavadesign CultureteChnology CommuniCation

TEmEs dE dissEny

edited by

Elisava Escola superior de disseny i Enginyeria de Barcelona

all rights reserved

© of the texts, their authors

© of the images, their authors

© of the edition, Fundació Privada Elisava Escola Universitària

la rambla, 30-32. 08002 Barcelona

www.elisava.net

editorial team

rafael de Balanzó, raffaella Perrone

editorial Board

ramon Benedito, daniel cid, ignasi cubiñà, dennis doordan,

vicente lópez, Javier nieto, Javier Peña

editorial board secretary

maribel gelabert

editorial production

Elisava - marketing and communication department

translations

UnilEXis - Translation and interpreting services

literature review

Biblioteca Enric Bricall

graphic design

david lorente

Elisava - marketing and communication department

(design area)

Cover

"Bouncing carpet" de www.irenegonzalo.com. Photo: irene gonzalo

Printing

gràfiques ortell, Barcelona

Paper

Fredigoni arcoprint 110 g/m2 (interior) and 300 g/m2 (cover)

issn: 0213-6023

d.l.: B. 41541-2011

BarcElona. novEmBEr 2012

digital edition

http://tdd.elisava.net

giovanni Flore - alfio Pozzoni

helena Casanova - Jesús hernández

Belinda tato - José luis Vallejo

heura Ventura

eleonora lupo

andrea mendoza

andrea di salvo - Paolo tamborrini

Carlo ratti

rafael de Balanzó – raffaella Perrone

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10

22

34

44

54

66

76

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David Casacuberta The Web as Utopia

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Why talk about speed?

In the 1909 first Futurist Manifesto, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti declared, “la magnificenza del mondo s’è arricchita di una bellezza nuova, la bellezza del-la velocità” (the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed). By the early 20th century, speed became a way of life, a goal, a moral code, almost a religion.1 One century after the steam engine’s invention, man was able to travel, communicate and provide food and goods which were previously far out of reach. This was “the revolution”!

Speed was a tangible, quantifiable, comparable quality which transformed man’s modus operandi. It was synonymous of fast versus slow. This “physical” speed of bodies in motion expanded both spatial limits and knowledge, while also prompting the quest for new languages.

Twenty years later, in the 1930s, Streamlined or aerodynamic design was born in the United States, a phenomenon featuring the redesign of products based on their external appearance, especially with the goal of communicat-ing the concept of speed and swiftness. Transport was the first industrial sec-tor where Streamlined design was applied. Beyond their strictly technical and functional needs, cars, planes, ships and buses had to “lure” and “fascinate” the public with their forms. Soon aerodynamic shapes became “fashionable”, and they began to be used in various spheres of design and architecture. At that point, speed was synonymous with modernity.

editorial

1 Marinetti,F.T.La nuova religione-morale della velocità-11demayode1916[online].[Consultation:October25,2012].Availableat:http://www.futurismo.altervista.org/manifesti/religioneMorale.htm

rafael de Balanzó – raffaella Perrone

28 ELISAVA Temes de disseny

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Eleonora Lupo recounts the genesis and evolution of the slow design concept until today, offering examples on how contemporary young designers are apply-ing the “slow approach” in their projects. The examples cited encompass every-thing from highly experimental projects to mass-produced products, revealing a major current trend in which the sensorial quality of objects is “cultivated”.

On the other hand, Andrea Mendoza focuses her sights on the personal rhythms of private individuals who are trying to survive in cities like Jerusa-lem, Bogotá, Palermo and Istanbul. In other cases, individuals use grouping mechanisms to organise themselves into creative communities with the aim of improving their own livelihoods and, indirectly, enhancing life in their cities.

On a very different level, the article by Heura Ventura features an examina-tion of the nano scale as a basic factor in the development of products’ life cycle. She introduces us to the nanotechnology of materials which can improve prod-ucts’ usability, maintain their outer appearance and programme their capacity for self-repair.

Finally, the articles by Ratti and Di Salvo-Tamborrini speculate on digital technology as an intrinsic factor in our everyday material environment, and they discuss research projects currently underway at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab and the Politecnico di Torino, respectively.

Carlo Ratti focuses on the proliferation of access points to data offered by modern products. The new “digital age” features also imply rethinking the outer appearance of these objects and their interaction with users. This reflection is then extended to projects that “imagine” hybrid physical-digital spaces where the built environment is enriched by growing strata of digital information.

Andrea Di Salvo and Paolo Tamborrini close by suggesting a new approach to training programmes, based on university research and teaching, in an effort to avoid misalignments between product design, visual communication design and interaction design. The article presents the approach used at the Politecnico di Torino for the visual language “revision” of the control station interfaces for future vehicles.

We hope that the miscellaneous ideas, projects and narratives showcased in this issue of Elisava Temes de Disseny may prove interesting to our reader-ship and pave the way for broader reflection into other spheres of design. We believe it necessary to reconsider time as a “meaningful” feature of objects and our “way” of life, and we trust these pages will give us the opportunity to do so.

In the 1960s, the paradigm of speed was replaced by mobility. The develop-ment of broadcasting media spurred this change in favour of a kind of mobility that has nothing to do with physical movement through space but rather with people’s access to information. In the closing decades of the 20th century, lap-tops, tablets and smart phones multiplied our ability to be “connected” at the speed of light, even while sitting on a sofa.

In the 21st century, mobility is no longer a novelty. We actually take it for granted. Our babies travel by plane, and we change jobs, partners, flats and cities more regularly than our parents did. This has entailed a huge shift in the perception of our material environment, as well as a change in values.

If we consider speed as “the relationship between space, or the distance that an object runs and the time it takes”, we realise that today this physical-scientif-ic definition is no longer adequate. It is not valid. Why not?

In this 28th issue of Elisava Temes de Disseny, we offer an interdisciplin-ary outlook that allows us to reflect on the concept of speed. We do so from the standpoint of how fast we use and consume things in our immediate environ-ment and how we perceive and process information.

For this reason, the various authors barely use the word “speed”, but they do address the concepts of interaction, interface, pace, slow, soft qualities and smart cities.

The articles can be divided into two major groups: the first reflects on urban space, and the second examines more everyday objects and products.

The first three articles present projects that involve a new way of design-ing and perceiving cities. Casanova-Hernández and Tato-Vallejo reflect on time in the innovative new design strategies for urban interventions. Flore-Pozzoni highlight the city from the passer-by’s perception and interactive experience.

The transformation and evolution of cities is dominated by lengthy bureau-cratic processes untied from the active dynamics of the social networks and far from the real times and needs of citizens in this period of systemic crisis. The article by Helena Casanova and Jesús Hernández stresses the importance of the time factor when addressing the new social, economic, environmental and cul-tural challenges.

In the era of digital time, the article by Belinda Tato y Jose Luis Vallejo in-troduces the complementary view of public space as “an augmented reality” that fosters the hybridisation of the physical with the digital as a common good de-tached from official hierarchical bodies.

Giovanni Flore and Alfio Pozzoni, in their article on digital signage, address how applied graphics are affecting light levels in the intelligent digital city. Cit-izen-consumers are no longer mere spectators like Mallarmé’s and Benjamin’s flaneûr but rather have become actors and key players in the urban space, inter-acting with the commercial spaces in modern cities.

And downsizing to the object’scale Eleonora Lupo and Andrea Mendoza sug-gest rethinking the pace and time of everyday experience in order to find new

“emotional values” in objects.

raffaella Perrone—rafael de Balanzó editorial

Cultural density

Self-organisation

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Smart car

Open source

Creativity

Sensorial qualities

E-bike

Systemic design

Digital signage

Interaction design

Social innovation

Interaction

Self-cleaning

Interface

Smart light

Mallification

Nanotechnology

Digital visual language

Networking

Augmented reality

Beat

Control system

Smart home

Social software

Wikicity

Smart city

Slow design

Soft approach

In contrast to the former “solid modernity”1 stage, the ongoing second stage of modernity, referred to by Zigmunt Bauman as “liquid modernity”, has been especially characterised by the time factor. This analogy to liquids as a state of matter that changes in shape over time, not only graphically portrays our cur-rent society’s tremendous capacity for transformation, but also highlights the fast-paced rate at which this transformation occurs.

In turn, liquidly modern cities are now more than ever characterised by a constantly evolving social structure, influenced, among other factors, by immi-grant flows, economic fluctuations, rising unemployment mainly concentrated in the slums or market pressures, all producing substantial mutations in the social structure of certain districts.

Most often, the rate at which social structures evolve is far greater than the rate of transformation of urban habitats in response to these changes. This leads to situations of conflict that degrade urban life. Such degradation is often ag-gravated by the lack of quick response mechanisms enabling municipal agencies to respond to new situations.

On the other hand, the degradation of urban and social structures in cer-tain areas of the city has traditionally been combated with urban planning op-erations aimed at urban regeneration, involving the demolition of part of the consolidated urban structure and the construction of new buildings and facili-ties. These interventions were executed in a context of strong economic activity mobilised by private capital expenditures or alternatively, they were backed by the sound financial condition of municipal agencies capable of promoting gov-ernment action. But what happens when the private sector is at a standstill as a

test intervention

temporary intervention

emergency intervention

mutant intervention

urban acupuncture

Jesús Hernández (1967) is an architect, urban planner and landscaper. Together with Helena casanova, he is a founding partner of casanova+Hernández architects (2001) a firm based in rotterdam, netherlands, which executes projects in both Europe and asia. since 2002, he has also worked as a researcher and professor at several European universities and the Berlage institute.

The time factor in urban regenerationThe regeneration of urban life is a central theme in many European cities that are in need of new and innovative action strategies. The time factor has become a decisive tool, not only in the development and management of such strategies, but also in the design and operation of the relevant interventions in public spaces.

“Urban regeneration is supported by new urban acupuncture strategies developed exclusively in public spaces, based on independent but coordinated spot interventions”

1 Bauman,Z.Liquid Modernity.Cambridge:PolityPress,2000

helena Casanova Jesús hernández


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Estonoesunsolar strategy in ZaragozaIn the Estonoesunsolar (this is not a vacant urban plot) strategy developed in the city of Zaragoza, the convergence of a number of urban and social factors created the need for a specific, unconventional strategy based on quick response times. Rapid urban decay in certain areas of the historic centre of Zaragoza was evi-denced by the increasing number of abandoned vacant lots. Also, the dispropor-tionate increase in the number of immigrants living in the most underprivileged areas of the city coincided with the relocation of part of the indigenous popula-tion to newly created suburban areas. Rapid social changes produced profound transformations in household composition in historic downtown Zaragoza homes, with considerable increases in the number of families and consequently, in the number of children. Unemployment was also on the rise, coinciding with the onset of the Spanish financial crisis, the early stages of which had a stron-ger impact on the immigrant population living in these areas. All of these factors combined created an exceptional situation generated by a downward spiral of events that generally fos-ter urban degradation and can eventually lead to serious social problems, something that has already occurred in the historical centres of a number of European cities.

In light of this situation, the city of Zara-goza developed the Estonoesunsolar strategy, coordinated by the architect Patrizia Di Monte. This strategy involved the creation of a techni-

result of the economic crisis and the public sector, immobilised by new austerity policies to reduce the spending deficit, is unable to create urban regeneration interventions by itself? What new tools are available to municipal councils for promoting public life and social cohesion within damaged urban settings?

Acupuncture strategies in public spacesAlthough most problems relating to urban life degradation are not new, many European cities have shown a growing concern for finding solutions to these issues. On the one hand, such concern is due to increased social instability in towns with high rates of socially maladapted immigrants, unsafe conditions for the people who live in urban centres where public life is disappearing from the streets or the lack of social cohesion latent in new urban developments. On the other hand, it is motivated by the long-lasting European economic crisis, which has alarmingly reduced the ability of traditional urban mechanisms to act as urban regenerating tools in some cities.

Under this new scenario, interesting alternative proposals are being devel-oped in certain European cities to respond effectively to today’s new challenges. As such, regeneration is supported by new urban acupuncture strategies devel-oped exclusively in public spaces, based on independent but coordinated spot interventions that could be appropriately termed “public space acupuncture”2. These strategies are developed using low-cost interventions that seek to achieve the strongest urban life regenerating impact with the least amount of resources. They combine new tools, such as citizen participation throughout different parts of the process, with other factors, such as the timeliness of interventions or even their ability to mutate over time.

Although these are still pioneering initiatives that have emerged as isolated actions, they do share many things in common and could very well become a new action tool that could be routinely used by European municipal manage-ment agencies in the near future. Such initiatives could lead to the creation of a new urbanism discipline that would include its own analysis, strategy creating and process management mechanisms. This is why some of the more interesting strategies recently developed in several European cities have been studied in a research funded by the Dutch government, which we have named Public space acupuncture3.

In studying these strategies, the time factor has been found to be one of the major elements that determine the success of most of the researched case studies. Following is an overview of three cases analysed, located in Zaragoza, Utrecht and Vienna, as well as three of the main ways to incorporate the time factor into the public space acupuncture strategies analysed.

i gravalosdimontearquitectos.SanJosé,Zaragoza,2010.Photo:PatriziadiMonte,IgnacioGrávalos

t gravalosdimontearquitectos.SanBlas,Zaragoza,2009.

Photo:PatriziadiMonte,IgnacioGrávalos

i Zaragoza

2 Solà-Morales,M.;Frampton,K.;Ibelings,H.A Matter of Things.Rotterdam:NaiPublishers,2008

3 HernándezMayor,J.;CasanovaGarcía,H.“TheRegenerationofPublicLife”.Scape Magazine,No.1(2011),p.18-25

i gravalosdimontearquitectos.

SanAgustín,Zaragoza,2009.

Photo:PatriziadiMonte,IgnacioGrávalos


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Like many other new urban developments in the Netherlands, in its early stages, it was rapidly colonised by “pioneer” residents who had no connection to the place or amongst one another. At this stage, social relations tend to be almost non-existent and social cohesion is extremely fragile.

The Beyond 4 strategy developed in Leidsche Rijn was named after one of the meanings of “beyond”, i.e., “ further-reaching than the usual planning customs”. It is a medium-term action strategy initiated in 2001, which has consisted of a number of actions and artistic interventions in public spaces intended to promote relationships between the citizens and their place of resi-dence, on the one hand, and to strengthen relationships between neighbours and en-rich the town’s public life, on the other.

The time factor plays an important role in the development and management of the Beyond strategy. Firstly, because it was origi-nally designed as a ten-year strategy. And it is during this period – when the new urban development is still in its growth phase and lacks some of the basic facilities – when the strategy can be a more efficient tool to help build cultural and social structures that can keep on growing stronger on their own after this period.

An independent organisation called Bu-reau Beyond was created to develop and manage the strategy. It was formed by a small team of specialists in charge of creating the complete interventions programme, designating the participating artists, designers and architects and

planning the start of each project and its content. This team controlled the strategy’s implementation pace by organising, within a short period of time, temporary interventions that were capable of ad-dressing the new needs of Leidsche Rijn’s growing population. Apart from the difficulty of this task, the very idea is truly exciting: having a team of ex-perts continuously working on analysing the social consequences of any shortcomings in the develop-ment of the plan and creating a complementary programme to balance urban life and generate some kind of cultural and social identity.

The time factor plays a vital role in the develop-ment and management of the Beyond strategy and also determines the specific nature of the interven-

cal office that would firstly devote its efforts to respond quickly and effectively to some of the urban problems identified. This technical office, which is a part of the Zaragoza Housing municipal entity, combined an employment programme to provide jobs to 40 unemployed people in the area, with a plan to clean up the vacant lots. This later became a strategy for making public use of the abandoned plots. As such, many of the abandoned private and public plots in the densely-populated historic centre of Zaragoza became small squares, playgrounds and gardens interwoven into the city’s network of urban public spaces.

The time factor played a crucial role in the development of this strategy. Quick responsiveness coupled with the technical office’s operational autonomy were some of the keys to its success.

The office, which had a low budget that was mostly used to pay the salaries of employment programme participants and to a lesser extent, to purchase the necessary materials to carry out the interventions, completed 14 interventions in public spaces during its first year and 15 during the second. This means that all the formalities required to get the owner’s permission to carry out the inter-vention – deciding on the use it would be given through a citizen participation process, the design of the space itself and its final construction – were all carried out within less than four weeks on average by intervention. At the same time, the technical office’s quick responsiveness in managing and maintaining com-pleted interventions was essential to ensure the success of this strategy, modify-ing less successful interventions as needed and learning from past experience in order to improve on future interventions.

The very essence of the Estonoesunsolar strategy, which is carried out in plots that will eventually be constructed, highlights the temporary nature of the in-terventions. But regardless of how long each intervention lasts depending on the availability of each plot, the overall strategy might very well become a per-manent one, as would happen with the creation of a continuous cycle of vacant lots being constructed, while new empty spaces are being generated and in turn colonised by public space acupuncture interventions.

The Beyond strategy in the new town of Leidsche Rijn in UtrechtLeidsche Rijn is a new, rapidly developing residential neighbourhood in Utrecht. Initially conceived in the nineties as an urban plan for new plant communities, Leidsche Rijn is considered the largest urban development carried out in the Netherlands in recent years, with total inhabitants at 16,000 in 2001 and 25,000 in 2011, and still growing to this day.

This extraordinary and fast-paced growth has been bolstered by strong de-mand for new housing in the Netherlands in the past few years. The result has been a gigantic mono-functional urban development based on the construction of stand-alone, semi-detached or terraced homes, all of them with private gar-dens.

t BikvanderPolyKorteknieStuhlmacher

Architecten.NomadsinResidence,Leidsche

Rijn,2004.Photo:JosvanderPol

i Milohnic&Paschkei.s.m.Resonatorcoop.TheParasol,LeidscheRijn,2001–04.

Photo:MishadeRidder

i LeidscheRijninUtrecht

4 VanGestel,T.;Heezen,H.;Zonnenberg,N.Art As Urban Strategy: Beyond Leidsche Rijn.Rotterdam:NAiPublishers,2010.

Helena casanova, Jesús Hernández The time factor in urban regeneration


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A transformable strategy in the public spaces of the MuseumsQuartier in ViennaAfter many years of planning, the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna was inaugurated in 2001 without any plans having been made regarding the use that would be given to public spaces in its courtyards. High new construction costs, disabled access problems and lifelessness in the museums’ public spaces gave the new cultural complex a negative image, hampering the arrival of visitors and the goal of becoming a new activity centre in both the city and the neighbourhood.

To counteract such motionlessness in its public spaces, the complex’s management held a competition among young archi-tects to design a multi-functional urban furniture system. The winning team was PPAG with the ENZi system, which was first exhibited in igloo-shaped form at the MuseumsQuartier in the winter of 2002.

The strategy implemented in MuseumsQuartier aims to en-courage public life and transform its empty courtyards into ap-pealing public spaces for the use and enjoyment of Viennese people. It is based on combining an attractive and versatile urban furniture system with a varied programme of carefully planned seasonal activities. The system’s 116 modular elements, built using expanded polystyrene, could be easily relocated within the com-plex’s courtyards. Also, these modular elements were designed with a number of possible combinations in mind to create different spatial configurations. Soon thereafter, museum visitors respond-ed enthusiastically to this strategy, using the modular elements as a resting place and turning the museum’s courtyards into popular meeting places. At the same time, diverse cultural programmes were developed, including concerts, dance performances, fashion shows and winter games, turning the MuseumsQuartier into a new vibrant public space in the Viennese cultural scene.

The time factor was the central axis that linked the entire strategy, making it a novel and exceptional concept. The strategy was initially conceived this way – not as a series of interventions situated in different points in space, but rather as a series of con-secutive interventions that made it turn into a constantly evolv-ing, mutant strategy.

The careful planning of this strategy’s evolution is being coor-dinated by the MuseumsQuartier E+B – the department respon-sible for scheduling the centre’s cultural programme – and PPAG architects, who are responsible for the specific design of each in-tervention. Together they coordinate and design the activity pro-gramme and the modular system’s different spatial configurations for the interventions planned throughout the year. They control the pace of urban life transformation in the courtyards. In this

tions themselves, which may be defined as emergen-cy or test interventions.

Sometimes, the interventions were carried out in specific neighbourhood locations due to the lack of basic facilities during the early stages of the urban development. Temporary pavilions were built for this purpose, such as The Paper Dome, designed by Shingeru Ban and built in 2004 with 700 cardboard tubes, which serves as a temporary multi-use venue to host all kinds of events such as concerts, dance performances, theatre plays, winter ice skating and art fairs.

Other temporary interventions serve as tests to assess social acceptance of certain programs and the feasibility of future permanent interventions in certain locations. In fact, some of the most successful temporary interventions, such as The Building, conceived by artist Stanley Brouwn in collaboration with architect Bertus Mulder as a temporary exhibition hall, have now become per-manent. The Building, currently a visual icon and one of the main cultural cen-tres of this town, is formed by two superimposed prisms that are 27.3 metres

long, 3.9 metres wide and 3.9 metres high, rotated at a 90-degree angle with respect to one another.

Beyond was originally conceived as a mutant strategy that was in-tended to evolve and transform over time. Some of the so-called “para-site” interventions were intended as actions that could be relocated to different parts of town in order to implement certain programmes and, in turn, surprise and awaken peo-ple’s curiosity. The town’s sense of busyness was thus heightened and activity programmes were spread across its different areas. The inter-

ventions called The Parasol, site Bazeille and Nomads in Residence are some examples of parasite pavilions where guest artists would live and work, carrying out activity programmes intended to help residents become active agents in the town’s urban life.

i ShigeruBan.ThePaperDome,LeidscheRijn,2004.Photo:MishadeRidder

i StanleyBrouwni.s.m.BertusMulder.HetGebouw,

LeidscheRijn,2005.Photo:MishadeRidder

t PPAGarchitectsztgmbh.Museumsquartier,Vienna,

2005–09.Photo:PPAG

t Museumsquartier,Vienna


1918


ventions, evaluate their results and address any shortcomings either by imple-menting new interventions or making changes to existing ones. In most cases, these offices are run by small, highly versatile and operationally autonomous teams of experts.

The time factor in temporary interventions: Test and emergency interventionsInterventions implemented in public spaces, such as the renovation of streets or the creation of new squares, typically have a limited life span. Even interven-tions designed for the long term will need to be modified or completely renovat-ed at some point in time, due to normal wear and tear of materials used, dam-

specific case, however, this pace is controlled not by reacting quickly to urban and social constraints, but by creating a basic rhythm of transformation that is sufficiently flexible to allow for the steady introduction of new activities or special events to continually invigorate urban life.

The controlled manipulation of public space appearance and activity trans-form the city into an urban theatre5, where citizens concurrently play the roles of actors and spectators. This urban theatre underscores the most public aspect of urban life, as compared to other strategies that enhance its more domestic or collective aspects.

The staging of public life also calls for an appropriate setting. This setting is made up of the Baroque patios of the courtyard’s former stables, where the his-torical identity of the place blends with today’s contemporary culture. Cloistered by architecture, in the manner of an Italian piazza, the space becomes the ideal setting for impromptu public life performances.

The strategy’s thorough temporal planning firstly results in the citizens’ heightened sense of curiosity and attraction to the novelty of this idea. Sec-ondly, its ever-changing nature, combined with a well-designed activity programme, captures and maintains citizens’ interest, thus encouraging people to make use of this public space into a habit. Eventually, the public space goes from being exceptional to commonplace for many citizens and is used as an impro-vised gathering, leisure and resting place embedded into the city’s public life.

The time factor and the strategy management process: Interactive management systemsIf we view cities as constantly evolving, complex organisms, we can see how ur-ban planning is one of the main mechanisms that control some of their functions, regulating how they grow, dictating how existing urban fabrics need to be trans-formed and defining the activities that must be developed within different areas.

Each municipality has its own mechanism for controlling the city’s proper operation under certain conventional conditions. But at times when certain parts of the city are subject to extraordinary situations, the balance of urban life comes under threat. Under such special circumstances, most of our cities are unprepared for reacting quickly to new challenges, with urban planning mechanisms failing to provide an effective response. These circumstances call for flexible and perhaps unorthodox mechanisms capable of responding quickly to new situations, such as the strategies developed in Estonoesunsolar in Zara-goza and Beyond leidsche Rijn in Utrecht.

On the other hand, in most of the cases analysed, specific management of-fices were created to monitor the development of each strategy. Both the Es-tonoesunsolar technical office, a branch of the Zaragoza Housing Department, and Bureau Beyond in Utrecht, were created to facilitate the execution of inter-

5 Sennet,R.The Fall of Public Man.NewYork:Knopf,1977.

i Comparacióndelasintervencionesenlastresciudades.

“the time factor was the central axis that linked the entire strategy, making it a novel and exceptional concept”


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age resulting from accidents or vandalism or, occasionally, lack of use resulting from changes in urban habits.

With this in mind, new alternative interventions in public spaces need to take greater account of their estimated life span and adapt their design and choice of materials accordingly to obtain a more efficient and sustainable prod-uct. Also, careful synchronisation of suitable activity programmes with the in-tervention’s useful life helps foster maximum use of the public space during such periods.

Temporary interventions are generally efficient tools to regenerate urban life, as their short life expectancy allows for synchronisation with a specific use throughout their life span.

Strategies based on temporary interventions have two main purposes: either to serve as emergency solutions that address specific urban problems, as in the case of interventions carried out in the vacant lots of Zaragoza, or to operate as test interventions to later develop more permanent ones, as occurred with some of the temporary pavilions built in Leidsche Rijn or with the first generation of ENZi expanded polystyrene modules, the success of which later evolved into ENZOs modules made with polyethylene for added durability.

A well-known example of emergency interventions carried out in public spaces was the strategy developed by Aldo van Eyck6 between 1947 and 1978, which consisted in creating more than 700 interventions that transformed many vacant lots and small interstitial spaces of Amsterdam’s public spaces into chil-dren’s playgrounds, some of which are still in use today. This strategy met a growing need for spaces where children could play, encouraging the use of pub-lic spaces and interaction among citizens.

An exemplary case of a test intervention is the strategy developed by New York City’s Traffic Department, which banned vehicles in Times Square – one of the city’s most congested areas – turning the avenue into a pedestrian area equipped with 376 chaise lounges. This test intervention carried out during the summer of 2009 not only intended to record the behaviour of traffic in the vicin-ity of the square and the resulting transformation of urban life in this part of the city, but also sought to determine how citizens and public opinion would react to the situation, thus projecting the future consequences of potential, longer-term actions.

Mutant interventions: strategies that evolve over timeOne of the most noteworthy examples of live public space is Paley Park7 in New York (1967). One of the reasons for its popularity is that this small public space serves as a quiet island where people can relax, sheltered from the city noise.

Another reason is that its urban furniture, comprising movable chairs, makes it possible to use the space in many different ways, depending on the time of day, the season or the need to be alone or in a group. In such a manner, public space is conceived as a part of the city that undergoes continuous trans-

formation, evolving steadily not only throughout the day, but also throughout the seasons of the year.

This ability to transform public spaces in response to different functional requirements that change over time has huge growth potential within public space acupuncture strategies. The alternative way to traditional, static, unifunc-tional interventions, which paraphrasing Zigmunt Bauman could be defined as

“solid strategies”, are mobile, mutable, transformable interventions that comprise what might be termed “liquid strategies”, such as the strategy developed in the MuseumsQuartier courtyards in Vienna.

Public space acupuncture strategies based on mutant in-terventions should carefully plan for variations in the differ-ent configurations that are going to be developed over time, as with the relocation of “parasite” interventions in Leidsche Rijn or the development of all the configurations that will be created with ENZOs modules during different seasons of the year in the MuseumsQuartier courtyards in Vienna.

At the theatre, a script unfolds along a succession of scenes on stage, with actors playing their roles in front of changing backdrops. Likewise mutant interventions need to be carefully planned out, taking into account factors such as the number and duration of the scenes, the actors involved in the play and the nature of the public space’s physical transformation.

“the alternative way to traditional, static, unifunctional interventions, which paraphrasing Zigmunt Bauman could be defined as ‘solid strategies’, are mobile, mutable, transformable interventions that comprise what might be termed ‘liquid strategies’”

7 Kayden,J.S.Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience.NewYork:JohnWileyandSons,2000.

6 Lefaivre,L.;deRoode,I.;Fuchs,R.H..Aldo van Eyck: The playgrounds and the city.Amsterdam:StedelijkMuseum,2002.


23


Cultural density

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Smart car

Creativity

Sensorial qualities

E-bike

Systemic design

Digital signage

Interaction design

Urban acupuncture

Social innovation

Interaction

Self-cleaning

Interface

Mutant intervention

Emergency intervention

Temporary intervention

Smart light

Mallification

Test intervention

Nanotechnology


Networking

Beat

Control system

Smart home

Wikicity

Smart city

Slow design

Soft approach

Architecture students who studied in Spain in the 1990s were taught by the top active professionals of that time. They envisaged and built infrastructure and basic facilities such as hospitals, libraries, sports centres, cultural centres, auditoriums etc. The architectural production of that period is a dictionary of sound architecture from which one can draw the discipline’s keys to successful planning, designing and building from a wealth of superb examples. We studied and breathed architecture, our references were always architectural in nature and our lives were circumscribed to circles of architects.

Soon thereafter, greater contact with a society that was undergoing transfor-mation at breakneck pace put an end to the monolithic consensus surrounding the discipline and its limits started getting blurrier. Today, we cannot fathom talking about cities without the input of other professionals, such as engineers, sociologists, economists, geographers etc., sharing views and work tools in a collective conversation that uses cities – living, mutant, unencompassable and inherently complex organisms – as their game board.

Real-time connectivity, ubiquity and unlimited access to huge flows of in-formation and knowledge have all changed the rules of the game. Information is infinitely more accessible than ever before, but it also mutates more rapidly, becoming obsolete almost instantly.

Currently, the office is our home; computers are the work tool par excellence; and mobile phones are external prostheses of our brains or the gateway to our most public profile. The boundaries between our public and private lives are dissolving. Citizens are shifting away from being consumers towards becoming prosumers, producing ideas, knowledge, information and content. The bound-

augmented reality

social software

self-organisation

open source

Belinda Tato and Jose luis vallejo are founding partners of ecosistema urbano, founded in 2000. ecosistema urbano is an innovative agency focused on understanding the city as a complex phenomenon, from a unique vantage point taking into account architecture, urban planning, engineering and sociology. The agency has also created a communication platform that leverages new communication technologies to develop social networks and manage online channels focused on the subject of creative urban sustainability. ecosistema urbano has received many international awards. (www.ecosistemaurbano.org).

Open source urban planning for augmented citizens open source urban planning has to be understood not as focusing on physical aspects of cities, but as approaching their transformation by understanding the behaviours and the social processes of the citizens and exploring alternatives to reconciliate them with physical realities designed in response to former social structures and ways of life.

“The direct benefits of incorporating citizens into the creative process include potentially better results, facilitated development, wider intervention acceptance and the creation of a sense of community”

Belinda tato José luis Vallejo


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José luis vallejo, Belinda Tato Open source urban planning for augmented citizens

According to Juan Freire, the [physical] urban public space crisis is also due to the lack of open designs that are truly able to capture the interest1 of citizens. He has successfully introduced into the debate concepts such as “hybrid spaces”, referring both to opportunities created by physical/digital hybridisation in pub-lic spaces, as well as to “augmented” urban experiences created by superimpos-ing virtual information over existing physical information. “Augmented reality” is defined in Wikipedia as a direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are combined with virtual elements to create a mixed reality in real time.

experimenting platformsElinor Ostrom, Economics Nobel Prize winner in 2009, has devoted years to studying self-organisational economic models to prove that commons (i.e. re-sources that are owned in common or shared among communities) can be ef-fectively managed by independent groups of people, without the participation of hierarchical government agencies. Her work demonstrates how humans in-teract to maintain existing common resource production levels in the long term. Compared to the traditional view of economists who believe that maintaining such resources is only possible through government intervention or individual private interests, Ostrom asserts that commons users develop sophisticated de-cision-making mechanisms and rules to handle conflicts of interest, with results that are not only positive, but usually better than those attained under tradi-tional economic models.

In the urban scenario, contemporary initiatives incorporating citizens as active agents have shifted away from the conventional paradigm of citizens as finished product customers-spectators-receivers, to turn them into citizens-agents-producers within open processes, thereby creating augmented spaces that may be modified according to user needs (understanding the city and its public spaces as sensitive areas under permanent transformation, capable of adapting over time to address different demands, and defining spaces as support plat-forms for interaction and experimentation). Vast experience in networking and co-working can be used as a point of reference to design new models for the col-lective creation of public spaces and cities. The direct benefits of incorporating citizens into the creative process include potentially better results, facilitated development, wider intervention acceptance and the creation of a sense of com-munity.

aries between our personal and professional lives are starting to blend together and this rapid evolution is taking us to imagine and experience spaces and cities in a whole new different way. We have become receivers and emitters of a con-tinuous flow of information that we need to redirect, administrate, assimilate or simply discard.

But, apart from their digital lives, humans are still social beings on an undy-ing quest for interaction with other people to exchange information, knowledge or direct sensory experiences. “The Cloud” provide appropriate conditions for part of this exchange, but the physical reality remains the irreplaceable stage where most of our lives unfold.

Parallel to this on-going revolution, city planning continues to be a languid, bureaucratic procedure that is completely detached from the dynamic pace of our social processes. The amendment of regulatory and legislative frameworks is such a slow process that finalised reforms are generally out of synch with initial demands. New rules, which are systematically born obsolete, generally re-quire further amendment, creating a never-ending loop of processing and public management procedures.

Slow and tortuous official urban planning processes focusing on the design and physical transformation of our environment (infrastructure, buildings, materials, geometry etc.) have ended up creating a dominant discipline that simplifies urban reality, ignoring its social as-pects and creating isolated situations instead of processes, re-lationships, storylines, links and interactions among all of its composing elements. The increasing complexity of urban envi-ronments exponentially multiplies the number of synergies and the likelihood of contact between all elements, thus generating healthier and more creative urban environments.

emerging public spacesAt present, the Internet is undoubtedly the “place” where collective creation and self-organisation models are being carried out with the greatest success. Internet boosted the social identity and people collective interests, turning them into a strong influential power within the urban world.

In contrast, an ever-growing excess of rules and restrictions to control and direct urban spaces have made their use progressively less spontaneous and cre-ative. The Internet allows and encourages interaction among people, whereas the design of many physical spaces negates it.

The Internet seems to provide an alternative, non-traditional space for so-cial relations. This can be seen either as a problem, if viewed as encouraging the gradual “emptying” of public spaces, or much to the contrary, it can be en-visaged as an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen local social relations by creating the necessary conditions to activate and invigorate traditional public spaces.

“internet boosted the social identity and people collective interests, turning them into a strong influential power within the urban world”

1 “SentientCity:JuanFreire–EspaciosPúblicosHíbridos”.Ecosistema Urbano[blog].2009.[Consultation:October13,2012].Availableat:http://ecosistemaurbano.org/castellano/sentient-city-juan-freire-espacios-publicos-hibridos/


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Open source urban planning for augmented citizensOpen source urban planning is understood as that which, rather than focus-ing on the physical aspects of cities, approaches their transformation by under-standing the behaviours and social processes of their people, exploring alterna-tives for our reconciliation with physical realities designed in response to former social structures and ways of life. It includes isolated or collective initiatives capable of generating immediate transformations; spontaneous mutations or metamorphoses that are unpredictable or difficult to quantify; actions that are either purposely intended to produce specific changes or that may have unfore-seeable outcomes, based on operations planned with a certain degree of freedom.

As alternatives to traditional urban space transformation models, below is a selection of experiences that propose uses, processes or results that disrupt nor-mal hierarchical dynamics and open up infinitely more creative and stimulating dimensions.

Participation

OneThousandsquare (onethousandsquare.org) is the winning project in an ar-tistic intervention competition organised by the City of Hamar (Norway) in Stortorget Square, the city’s main public space. This project proposes an alterna-tive solution to the outlined programme in competition’s terms and conditions, defining a participatory design process for the new square. The artistic interven-tion’s budget was initially allocated to a process lasting several months, which included an intense programme of events, workshops and the construction of 1:1 scale prototypes of ideas brainstormed during creative sessions.

OneThousandsquare drives collective reflection on public spaces by strength-ening social relations, based on the assumption that beyond their physical defi-nition, to build public spaces is to build communities around them.

OneThousandsquare is a project open to local interaction (citizens of Hamar) that also promotes global participation (other citizens via the Internet).

In 2005, the German city of Magdeburg implemented the “City on Trial” strategy, aiming to resume efforts to recover an urban centre located within a post-industrial district with high rates of unemployment, population aban-donment, empty buildings and abandoned lots. This experiment started out by reinforcing social ties and creating new ones before any physical changes were made to urban reality. The Open air library project was an initiative that began with the implementation of a participatory process to design a “social sculpture” that would later evolve into an open air public reading space.

More than 30,000 books donated by citizens were collected at successive theme festivals and events and 1:1 scale prototypes of the most popular designs were built using empty beer cartons. The place soon became popularly known as the Bookmark, until the Open air library project was inaugurated in 2009, embodying the aspirations of citizens. The public square, along with all other spaces in this city, now operate as open reading hall.


i ecosistemaurbano, OneThousandSquare,2011

“this project proposes an alternative solution to the outlined programme in competition’s terms and conditions, defining a participatory design process for the new square”


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self-organisation

The former Tobacco Factory of Madrid (Tabacal-era) in the Madrilenian district of Lavapiés has been designated to become the future National Visual Arts Centre. Although further efforts for its development are currently at a standstill due to the economic crisis, the Ministry of Culture au-thorised the use of part of the building to establish a self-managed social centre during this “waiting” period. In less than a year, since it opened to the public in June 2010, Tabacalera (latabacalera.net) has become a cultural benchmark, not only for the surrounding neighbourhoods, but for the entire city of Madrid. The creative philosophy of Taba-calera provides for the establishment of work and information spaces that, rather than being lent out to individuals (studios, exhibits etc.), are granted to art practices and disciplines as a whole (work-shops, clinics). Tabacalera’s work, time and space distribution structure aims to provide a common

ground where the most advanced art practices can share work and discussion spaces with political and social practices in Lavapiés and the rest of Madrid. Tabacalera is betting on a collaborative, open source production model, under-standing culture as an active, vital process intertwined with its environment. According to the “rules” of this space, all activities are carried out and provided at no cost and all production is developed under “free licensing” schemes.

The Estaesunaplaza (estaesunaplaza.blogspot.com) project emerged from a workshop where students and young professionals turned a vacant lot (C/ Doc-tor Fourquet no. 24) that had been abandoned for over 30 years, into a public space for the Madrid town of Lavapiés. Aiming to create a gathering space in a densely populated neighbourhood sorely lacking in facilities, this group was assigned the right of use of this lot after painstakingly long negotia-tions with the Madrid City Council. The project is now actively under way, promoting a self-management model whereby the entire space is made available to everyone, activities are free and participants donate their time to help keep it going.

activism

Whether through action or omission, every citizen initiative has political sig-nificance. In the words of geographer and social theorist David Harvey, we need to get accustomed to continuous, consensus-building conflict in order to gener-ate healthy urban environments2. Therefore, activist initiatives that create the proper climate for debate by activating citizens should be viewed as positive.

Mike Styczynski, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), created actual air – a hybrid measuring instrument/database/social network project. Detecting high asthma incidence in one of Boston’s towns, he set out to make an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon, including its causes and con-sequences. He selected a commonplace item to this city – a bicycle – to view, record and report on the town’s alarmingly high pollution levels. actual air is a sensing device that can easily be attached to any bicycle wheel to monitor air

quality. A LED pilot light changes colour depending on the level of pollution. Real-time data collected is sent to a Web-based database, mapping urban pollu-tion levels and yielding a clear picture of a problem that had so far been ignored. Such data, now accessible, is an instrument at the service of the community that should help stir up discussion.

In Mexico City – one of the most polluted cities in the world –, the group Make your city collective designed and painted its own so-called guerrilla bike lane. This initiative was triggered by the passivity of city government, which had promised to build 300 kilometres of bike lanes by the end of 2012, showing only a minimal percentage of completion in 2011. The official statement explained that non-compliance by the government was due to insufficient funds. In a single night, however, an active group of 80 people on a tight budget of merely 1,000 dollars, completed 5 kilometres of the Wikicarril, so termed because of its open and participatory nature.

t Estaesunaplaza,Madrid,2011

i MikeStyczynski,Actual Air,2010

2 HarveyD.Urbanismo y desigualdad social.Madrid:SigloveintiunodeEspañaEditores,1977.

HarveyD.,Paris, Capital of Modernity.NewYork:Routledge,2003.

i Tabacalera,Madrid,2010


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by-laws of the future users association. At present, this initiative is managed by the members of this association, expressly created for such purpose.

gastronomy

Dining out in urban spaces can have countless cultural and social meanings. Beyond its strictly nutritional aspects, the collective practice of dining out can serve as an extraordinary tool for community mobilisation.

In her project called Knock for neighbours (knockforneighbors.com), Molly Turner, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, developed a digital interface to help connect tourists with locals who are willing to open the doors to their homes and share their own food and table. Contrasting with predictable dining experiences for tourists, Knock for neighbours gives people the chance to meet and bond with other people from distant urban environments, ensuring a unique gastronomic and sociological experience. The database allows users to enter selection criteria such as profession, culture, type of cuisine etc.

In its COMa (eat in English) project, the Mexican group Torolab (torolab.org) explores the physiological changes that people experience over time in their day-to-day relationship with food and how this affects their social behaviour. This experience culmi-nated with the creation of a new food product: a type of bread that contains all the nutrients missing in the typical Mexican diet, according to the Mexican nation-al health census.

mobility

Currently one of the major challenges in terms of en-ergy consumption, pollution and physical urban space occupancy, the choice of urban mobility policies has a huge impact on city de-sign and operation. In many cases, these policies are so decisive that they can radically transform the social habits of citizens.

Bring buddy is a project developed by students of the School of Design Think-ing in Potsdam, in co-operation with the DHL Innovation Centre. This project aims to find new formulas for more efficient transport of goods within urban centres with rising energy costs, increased CO2 emissions and restricted vehicle access. Bring buddy is a social web that analyses the daily routes of people to build a distribution network based on such routes. This system is inspired on food delivery networks in certain Asian cities, where thousands of meals are de-livered every day through self-organised systems. Still in its experimental stage, this project includes GPS and mobile phone use, creating an exchange network that is connected to a transport network. Last but not least, Bring buddy is an altruistic network of anonymous citizens working together to help out other fellow citizens.

En tu coche o en el mío (entucocheoenelmio.es.tl) (in your car or mine in English), is an initiative created by a group of students from the School of Ar-

temporality

As part of a one-night arts and culture festival (la noche en blanco) held in Sep-tember 2010, an ephemeral recreational facility – isla Ciudad – was set up in a vacant lot in the centre of Madrid. This empty urban space had been created by the recent demolition of a former sports centre, where the new planned project had been put on hold as a result of the economic crisis. The synergies created around the isla Ciudad project triggered a vindicatory process that resulted in the Elcampodelacebada (elcampodecebada.org / The barley field in English) proj-ect – a citizen initiative to convert this empty space into a temporary public space where cultural, social, sports and other activities could be organised. In February 2011, the Madrid City Council signed a temporary assignment agree-ment, marking the onset of this promising project.

Hortas na cidade dos barrios (hortasnacidade.wordpress.com) is an initia-tive that began in 2009 for purposes of establishing networks between the city and the countryside through the temporary implementation and recovery of or-chards in abandoned plots outside of Corunna. The team that designed this pro-posal (desescribir.com) created mechanisms to establish an autonomous process that can be managed by its participants in the long term and does not depend on oversight by any specific agents (designers, managers etc.). This project was set into motion by contacting the owners to reach agreements on the assignment of abandoned plots, as well as with public presentations of the initiative to orchard owners, interested individuals and other potential users. A board was later cre-ated, which would be responsible for drafting orchard use regulations and the

i eXYZt.Isla Ciudad (City IsLand),2010 “Bring buddy is a social web developed by students that analyses the daily routes of people to build a distribution network for more efficient transport”


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social software

Links are essential elements of Internet. Since their inception, we have associ-ated Internet with “surfing” or moving from one page to another. Linking allows us to discover new things and build new relationships. Rather than concentrat-ing on a small number of nodes, links propose a new intellectual structure based on networking systems and multi-point relationships. With an Internet-like structure, the Critical City (criticalcity.org) project summarises these concepts, encouraging entertaining dynamics for social interaction aimed at helping us-ers experience the city as a place of opportunity. This project is a local social network where users can propose urban actions, meet their neighbours and help improve their surroundings, thus driving the creation of contact networks be-tween people living in the same neighbourhood. The Peuplade network (peup-lade.fr) allows same-street or same-neighbourhood residents to organise local festivals to get to know one another and build relationships with new acquain-tances. Peuplade (tribe in English) offers added support to continue to build on new friendships by allowing people to trade favours and items.

What if cities (whatif.es) is a Web tool that modernises the concept of citi-zen participation with the use of the Internet, incorporating new participants that had so far been absent from traditional participatory dynamics. This tool explores new formats that enable communication and interaction among the agents involved in the process of creating a city. Using a simple interface, citizens can access this webpage to add comments, submit new ideas for their street, neighbourhood or city or upload photos and videos. All content is geo-referenced and connected to major social networks, producing real-time maps of the citizens’ wishes and needs.

A Whatif mobile application to allow anyone, any-where, to access the platform and enter content, is cur-rently under development. Whatif is available under Creative Commons licensing for any city around the world to download, install and customise for its own use.

chitecture in Seville, that invites Sevillians to carpool for their daily commutes to and from the city. The goal is clear: to reduce the number of vehicles, as well as energy consumption and pollution levels.

recreation

Setting up a unique ephemeral element or reinterpreting an everyday item in a different context can trigger unusual, surprising and playful urban experiences.

Play Me, i’m Yours (streetpianos.com) is a set-up by artist Luke Jerram that has been travelling across many cities around the globe since 2008. A piano standing smack in the middle of a public space for everyone to play and enjoy, acts as the catalyst for a wide range of impromptu dynamics in public space use. The piano and its surroundings temporarily become places for social exchange and interaction. Each city creates a website to provide access to all the material generated during the experi-ence, including videos, photos and stories. The Web then becomes the project’s legacy, as well as the connecting link between the pianos and communities involved.

The British group What if (what-if.info) implement-ed the sit in project as a formula to revitalise a down-town neighbourhood that had number of abandoned plots due to the industrial economic downfall. sit in – a small-scale project that encourages residents to donate benches or chairs to the city – has fully transformed public spaces by generating new positive dynamics and injecting life into them.

transparency/mapping

New technologies have enabled the routine collection and updating of geo-referenced data. With the contribu-tion of thousands of individuals, many Web platforms are currently able to provide us with otherwise unavail-able maps using real-time data. As problems and oppor-tunities are now more visible and apparent, organising groups of people to help solve them has also become an easier task.

Implemented in New York City, the garbagescout.com project consists of a number of geo-referenced photos of potentially reusable items that have been thrown out as garbage along public roads. These photos are taken by anonymous New Yorkers and later displayed on a city map. Any users interested in any of the photographed items can easily find their location and pick them up before they are taken away by the city’s trash collection service.

Bristol Food for Free is a Web-based database that provides information on edible plants in the city of Bristol. The webpage generates maps for all of the 113 species identified and also shows new potential planting sites, allowing novice gatherers to find fresh fruits and vegetables quickly and safely.

i Ecosistemaurbano,What if cities(whatif.es),2010

i Play Me, I’m Yours.,2008


35


Cultural density

Self-organisation

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Smart car

Open source

Creativity

Sensorial qualities

E-bike

Systemic design

Interaction design

Urban acupuncture

Social innovation

Self-cleaning

Interface

Mutant intervention



Test intervention

Nanotechnology


Networking

Augmented reality

Beat

Control system

Smart home

Social software

Wikicity

Slow design

Soft approach

billboards hanging from buildings, LCD moni-tors assembled in media walls, 3D projections onto buildings, light façades, interactive points of infor-mation, digital kiosks, educational or commercial installations. The list goes on, and represents the visual access to the smart city2.

All these visual outputs are already networked and will soon be interconnected in some way. Cur-rently, the main connections are those created by users. Users connect different smart places, initially with their own eyes, but also with their own digital extensions. Smart phones run geo-referenced appli-cations, tablet devices show virtual content through augmented reality applications. As well as this, fu-turistic visors3 or readily available glasses4 can also harness an enhanced smart city experience.

The idea is simple: over the past decade, digital

technologies have begun to blanket our cities,

forming the backbone of a large, intelligent in-

frastructure. As such, bits and atoms are con-

verging, and this process is making our built

environment increasingly responsive and smart.

Forget buildings as machines to live in, as Cor-

bu famously put it. Think instead of computers

in open air.1

carlo ratti

Smart lights for smart citiesComputers in open air need displays, i.e. smart plac-es for visualizing dynamic communications. Those smart places are spreading throughout towns in various forms. They may be huge advertising LED

Interaction

Mallification

Smart light

Smart city

Digital signage

Giovanni Flore is currently Project Manager and researcher for Fabrica projects in the field of retail and customer experience. He has acquired a sound professional background in Marketing and Communications, working in consulting firms and creative agencies. He also investigates and writes about how social sciences interact with marketing strategies, and how the marketing mix can integrate new ways of relating to users.

Alfio Pozzoni is currently Director for Innovation and Research at Fabrica as well as project leader and creative director for the Benetton Live Windows project (http://www.livewindow.it/). He works at the intersection of design, marketing and technology and their application in business projects as well as in cultural initiatives. His professional background is mainly in fashion photography and film-making for a number of top international magazines and brands.

Smart cities, smart lights.Digital signage and the city experienceThis article is about the experience of light in the smart and digital city or, in other words, the existing and widening use of visual digital signage in the urban environment, open air and in public places. This research focuses on where in towns this digital “contamination” is more visible and accessible, i.e. in shopping districts.

“Consider the emerging trend of the “mallification” of urban high streets, where citizen experience is essentially aligned to the customer experience”

1 Ratti,C.Architecture that senses and responds[online].LongBeach,Calif.:TEDCongress,March2011.[Consultation:June11,2012].Availableat:http://www.ted.com/talks/carlo_ratti_architecture_that_senses_and_responds.html?awesm=on.ted.com_Ratti

2 “Smartnessisnotjustaboutefficiency(e.g.usinglesspower)butcruciallyalsosmartnessaboutcreatingaflexiblesystemthatcandynamicallyadjusttochanges,onethatrespondstounpredictablephenomenainawaythatisnotplanned,andthatharnessesthecreativecapacityoftheinhabitants”.Haque,U.“Surelythere’sasmarterapproachtosmartcities?”.Wired[online].April17,2012.[Consultation:June11,2012].Availableat:http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-04/17/potential-of-smarter-cities-beyond-ibm-and-cisco

3 “Visorscouldbethekeytothefutureofnotjustgaming,butshopping,socializing,andmanagingyouremails.Butdon’tpronounceyourcurrentLEDTvdeadjustyet:Gaikai’sDavidPerryseesastrongfutureformoretraditionaldisplays,albeitwithanext-gentwist.(…)Theywillbemulti-channelstereoscopic4Kvideo(4,096pixelswide)”,thatwillallowuserstohaveamulti-anglevisionandtomanagethiswithgestures.“FutureTech”,Edge Magazine,No.238,March2012,p.90-92.

4 “ProjectGlassisaresearchanddevelopmentprogram

p

Giovanni Flore Alfio Pozzoni


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byGoogletodevelopanaugmentedrealityhead-mounteddisplay(HMD).TheintendedpurposeofProjectGlassproductswouldbethehands-freedisplayingofinformationcurrentlyavailabletomostsmartphoneusersandallowingforinteractionwiththeInternetvianaturallanguagevoicecommands,inamannersimilartotheiPhonefeatureSiri.TheoperatingsystemsoftwareusedintheglasseswillbeGoogle’sAndroid.”ProjectGlass.In:Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia[WikiatInternet].St.Petersburg(FL):WikimediaFoundation,Inc.2001.[Consultation:June11,2012].Availableat:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Glass

5 ThiscompressionofsinglepersonalitiesbyconsumerismisimpressivelydescribedbyZygmutBauman’sparadigmoftheliquidsociety.Butthemostfashionable,andmisused,mantraisthatofthe“societyofthespectacle”,definedbyGuyDebordin1973inhisbook“LaSociétéduSpectacle”,aradicalattackoncontemporarysociety,inwhich,inDebord’swords,“beinghaddeclinedintoastateofhaving,andhavingsimplymeansappearing”.“TheSpectacleisnotacollectionofimages,butthesocialrelationbetweenpeoplemediatedbyimages”.Debord,G.The Society of the Spectacle.[Trans.byDonaldNicholson-Smith].NewYork:ZoneBooks,1994,p.4.

6 TheEuropeanUnionhassetaplantobanthesaleofbulblampsby2012.

“This density of businesses transforms the street into a communications battlefield, with brands striving to attract people’s attention”

Giovanni Flore, Alfio Pozzoni Smart cities, smart lights

7 Thisshiftwillgeneratemajorsavingsinpowerconsumption,whileprovidingmorelight.LEDlightshavebuiltareputationofbeingmoresustainableandeffectiveandforthisreason,theyarevitaltothegreeninitiativesofmanylocalauthorities.Taiwaneseauthoritieslaunchedthe2012planfor250,000LEDlightstobeinstalledinplaceofoldermercurylamps.ThisconversiontoLEDcompletesthewholecountry’sshifttoLEDanditissupposedtosave143kWhandthecorresponding87,500tonsofcarbondioxide.Oneconsequenceofthegrowingefficiencyoflightingtechnology,however,isthatwesavepowerbutwenevercompromiselightoutput.Thereisalwaysmorelightfromlesspower.

8 Klooster,T.[ed.].Smart surfaces.Basel:Birkhauser,2012,p.101.

9 Thisishappeningatadifferentpaceinallcountries.Digital-out-of-homeisgrowingfasterintheFarEastthaninEurope.DOOHinChinaalreadyrepresents36%oftheoverallOOHspendingwithagrowthof30%comparedtothepreviousyear.IntheUS,ittotals19%oftheoverallOOH,withagrowthrateof25%ontheprecedingyear.IntheUK,itrepresents12%oftheoverallOOH,withagrowthrateof37%ontheprecedingyear.InItalyandFrance,theDOOHshareisstillsmallbutithasdoubledsince2010.Source:“2011Globaldigital-out-of-homehandbook”.The Kinetic Global Digital Handbook[online].December2011.

[Consultation:June11,2012].Availableat:http://kin.tc/globaldigitalhandbook

10 Digitalbillboardsoffermuchbrighteroutputbothatdayandnightandaremuchmoreexpensivethanstaticbillboards,yetarefarmoreprofitableforadvertisers.

11 “Digitalbillboardsareawonderfulsuccessstory.Injust10years,digitalbillboardshavegonefromintroductiontowidespreadacceptancebybillboardoperators,advertisersandlocalzoningauthority.Therenowaremorethan2,500digitalbillboardsintheUnitedStates.That’sprettyimpressiveforaproductthat’sdisruptinga150-year-oldindustry.Partofthereasonforthisgrowthistherecession.Soundscounterintuitive,butbillboardoperatorshaveseenlocaladdollarsdryupduringtherecession,andmanyturnedtodigitaltostemthedownturninsales.Oneoperatortoldmethatalthoughdigitalmakesupjust4percentofhisinventory,itaccountsfornearly50percentofhisrevenue!”Friskney,D.“Trendspointtocontinuedgrowthfordigitalbillboards”.Digitalsignagetoday.com[online].November2011.[Consultation:June11,2012].Availableat:http://www.digitalsignagetoday.com/blog/6891/Trends-point-to-continued-growth-for-digital-billboards?rc_id=157

will not be completed anytime soon, if at all, but, no doubt, it will ultimately prevail. There is a big argument around the density and impact of digital billboards. Media owners and local authorities usu-ally agree to some reduction of static billboards to install new digital ones in return10. In the United States, several cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston and many more) have banned them from roadways, due to the traffic safety issue, while many others have established a moratorium on new installations. Traffic safety seems to drive the trend for regulation in the States, whereas local authorities in Europe are more concerned with the effect they have on individuals.

LED-based billboards, however, are extremely bright compared to traditional billboards. Moreover, the whole LED signage unit needs a cooling system and operates 24/7, including during seasonal peak-times when energy is more expensive. It is certain that the overall energy consumption of digital bill-boards exceeds that of static signage and this makes the trade-off between LEDs and bulbs less relevant, compared to the return on investment11.

complete the change from mercury bulbs to the more efficient and sustainable LEDs7. This diversity of lighting also forms part of the identity of a town.

Today’s lighting technologies, in particular LEDs, have facilitated new uses that weren’t even dreamed of, just a few short years ago. Light has be-come much more dynamic and communicative:

The advantages offered by these new deve-

lopments, such as continuously variable ad-

justment of the intensity of illumination and its

color, allow light to be used to create spectacu-

lar effects, motivating designers and planners

to use lighting equipment in a more generous

manner, that also consumes more energy. The

emotional and associative potential of specta-

cular lighting installations as a communicative

medium is often underestimated.8

LED billboardsTraditional billboards on roads, rooftops, and build-ing façades are changing into digital billboards, mainly employing LED technologies9. Consider-ing the cost of set-up and operation, this change

outdoor communication and also in the urban vi-sual experience.

From electric towns to digital citiesOur towns, especially the central shopping districts, are experiencing a significant change in lighting and visual impact. In just a few years, the lighting aspect of most towns has shifted from electric to electronic.

We can still experience a number of traditional lighting techniques, such as incandescent bulbs and neon tubes, but they will soon become quite rare6. For instance, souvenir and tourist stores in places like La Rambla, Barcelona, or opposite the Colosseo in Rome, frame their merchandise with uncovered neon tubes that light up their window displays, a

hard experience for the user’s retina. The Benetton store in Paris, on the other hand, actually hits pe-destrians with spotlight bulbs that make looking at the store window an uncomfortable experience. Poor, excessive, or badly-managed lighting has af-fected the average city experience since the begin-ning of the electric age. Public and road lighting

Carlo Ratti envisions this scenario of the digiti-sation of towns as something that is already in prog-ress, with digital signage playing a major role.

This article is about the experience of light in the smart and digital city – or, in other words, the exist-ing and widening use of visual digital signage in the urban environment, open air and public places. This research has focused on where in towns this digital

“contamination” is more visible and accessible, i.e. in shopping districts. We use the term “digital signage” in a wider sense, beyond the simple concepts of out-door billboards for commercial or information pur-poses. We also include the experience of digital light and dynamic images displayed outdoors as a media that is evolving along with the technology itself. This experience is conditioned by environmental factors, technology choices, design culture, business and, not least, local regulations. This article is also about current trends in digital experience design in the real world, as well as its future scenarios.

Consider the emerging trend of the “mallifica-tion” of urban high streets, where commercial den-sity is as high as in a shopping mall and where citi-zen experience is essentially aligned to the customer experience5. This density of businesses transforms the street into a communications battlefield, with brands striving to attract people’s attention. Stores are communicating more than ever, through win-dows fitted with digital lights and with various tech-nologies out on the street. This is what makes the shopping district a “laboratory” for observing and analyzing the technological weapons with which brands are fighting. High streets are urban transfor-mation labs, where brands dictate trends in digital


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Las Vegas, at the entrance to the Donna Karan New York store, a 6x3m LED billboard displays a live stream of Manhattan, taken from above. The whole media-wall is covered with a thin film that blurs its brightness, taking advantage of the pixelated reso-lution of the cityscape. This rarefied experience is in keeping with the cool and chic brand imagery. The light emitted from the LED media-wall varies in softness and warmth dependent on the displayed content.

Hollister is a teen-oriented brand from Aber-crombie and Fitch. It has fitted its store on 5th Av-enue, New York, with 180 46” LCD monitors. These are installed in different combinations; the largest one is outdoors, with more than 100 monitors dis-playing a live feed from a Southern Californian bay; a haven for surfers and their followers. On the side-walk, below the media wall, a flat fountain recalls the sensorial realm of sea water. The store becomes a metaphorical sea-light that attracts people into its bay and welcomes them into a “virtual” surfers vil-lage. The outcome is impressive, but the whole con-cept seems somehow under-used. The poor resolu-tion displayed on such a vast surface undermines the whole experience.

As far as content design is concerned, the most significant revolution has been in the LED’s ability to provide both lighting design and manageability, as well as the way this ability can influence the expe-rience of light and its effects on individuals13.

On the other hand, seamless monitors can be as-sembled in various multiples to cover a large surface and can display all kinds of content in higher reso-

“The impact of digital signage on the city experience depends on two key factors: size, for visual experience, and concept, for social experience”

12 Theexpertiseofwindowdecoratorsisvaluableandcannotbeunderestimated.Butcreativeandimpactfulwindowdecorationisveryexpensive,andstatic.

13 Researchresultshaveshownthat,inadditiontothereceptorsresponsibleforvision(rodsandcones),therearealsobiologicallyactivereceptorsinoureyes.Theseinfluencetheproductionofthehormonesmelatoninandcortisol.Bommel,W.J.M.van;Beld,G.J.vanden;Ooyen,M.H.F.van.Industrial lighting and productivity.Eindhoven:PhilipsLighting,2001,p.14-15.


LEDs or Monitors? Retail brands are fitting many stores with on-window media walls. Why? It is obvious that tra-ditional store windows belong to the same age of static outdoor communication: they may cost less in the short-term but can hardly produce a remark-able outcome12. Brands need not only to make their communication more visible on the street, they also need to generate attention and encourage participa-tion from people where they are ready for spending (in the shopping district) – they need to link both store and shoppers. Traditional store windows can be turned into media walls that are placed behind the window or just by the store entrance.

Stores have two main visual and technological options: covering a surface with LED tiles or posi-tioning high-resolution monitors.

LED walls are made of lighted dots which form a pattern at a certain distance, which technological improvements are dramatically reducing; monitors have different dimensions and can be assembled seamlessly, providing higher resolution both from a distance and close-up. The main difference between these two technologies is in the resolution of the im-age and, consequently, the content design potential.

Generally speaking, LEDs have a lower resolu-tion that is better suited to outdoor use, and moni-tors work better indoors. We do have reverse trends for both, however: LEDs are being deployed inside buildings, also in the form of media walls, while monitors assembled in the same shape are popping up outdoors, usually encased in totems or kiosks that are water and temperature proof.

The following are examples of those trends and the different impact for which they are designed. In

lution. This enhanced quality demands a content strategy able to interplay both size and brightness, as well as design. The experience they create is vi-sually neat and can be further enriched with high quality visual effects.

The choice of one option over another depends on many factors. Firstly: design. If the brands need nuances of light, fine details, a wider and vivid palette of colors, or extra definition, the outcome is certain: only monitors can fulfil these require-ments. On the other hand, a more abstract or less defined design can take advantage of the many oth-er strengths of the LED.

Other influencing factors for choosing one op-tion or the other are: the physical characteristics of the location, how the installation fits in with exist-ing architecture, and the kind of visual experience the brand wants to deliver to the user.

A misuse of LEDsLEDs give the greatest impact over a larger distance. Continuous development in this technology has increased the number of light spots per cm2 and, consequently, the resolution. This improvement in image resolution also results in greater brightness, which makes the close-up usability of the media somewhat challenging.

The use of LED walls on premises and close-up to the viewer may be disturbing and also represents a source of light pollution.

Something similar happens in a Desigual store. This brand has adopted LEDs for displaying its vi-sual brand identity both inside and outdoors. Vari-ous sizes of LED panels are attached to the store windows or close to the entrance, in a position that can be easily enjoyed from outside. The semi-dark in-store lighting design emphasizes the impact of the media wall, which is very bright and displays a loop of dynamic content. The outcome is an excess of light emanating from the media wall.

LEDs have many advantages, such as their ex-treme modularity and flexibility in covering various surfaces. These strengths are weakened, however, by

the excessive light output for close-up vision. This type of lighting is, therefore, more enjoyable viewed from a distance than close-up.

Impact on city experienceThe digital signage experience presents a multitude of attributes for the city experience as a whole. The experience results from the combination of applied technologies, architectural integration, content de-sign and its ability to be interactive.

The impact of digital signage on the city expe-rience depends on two key factors: size, for visual experience, and concept, for social experience.

Size does matterSize must be considered in relation to the viewer. In any case, it is only when we are physically close to the media that we can produce something like an immersive impact and a more sensory (and not only visual) experience. This may happen with media walls deployed on the street, but not, however, with billboards.

The scale of the media compared to that of the viewer creates a discontinuity, where the viewer can dwell and feel at ease, enjoying and sharing the experience with others. The scale is key to both in-dividual experience and mass visibility; the hyper-scale creates a digital background where the viewer experiences something completely different. This creates an “event” in the viewer’s everyday city expe-rience. At that moment, the viewer becomes a user.

A brief glimpse at different concepts and sizes of street-experience may be useful to highlight the dif-ferent approaches available.

In Times Square, New York, everything is cov-ered in LEDs and all media run 24/7. The huge LED billboard on top of the Forever21 store runs an in-teractive application: an attractive young woman literally picks people up from the Square below and moves them somewhere else. This happens on the billboard, thanks to an interactive application. The image of the people is still small on the huge screen


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i “LiveWindow”.Benettonstore,PiazzaDuomo,Milan

areas and keeping the level of urban lights quite low during night-time.

Many towns in Europe and the United States are facing the spread of digital signage and lighting technologies, often deployed without the appropri-ate skills and expertise. There is an urgent need for regulation, not only to protect the urban landscape, but, more importantly, to safeguard the existing city experiences that are also the result of lighting and digital signage design. There is huge scope for urban planners, architects, designers and retailers to im-prove the quality of the experience for users16.

only a few years ago. This has an impact on the whole experience of the city by its users14.

The issue of the spread of lighting and of the im-pact of light pollution in towns has been addressed in the UK. A government paper states the impor-tance for towns to set a lighting master plan.15

The focus is on prioritizing the visual experience of the city for the pedestrian, improving the variety and quality of the lighted scene, to a level above and beyond base lighting. Such plans have been imple-mented in a number of cities throughout the UK, in-cluding Edinburgh, Leeds, Coventry, Liverpool and Belfast. One main outcome has been the limiting of lighting and digital signage installations to specific

tors, results in an immersive feeling, designing an environment that is worth enjoying for a while or recording in some way.

User generated contentThe concept, in all of the above cases, is focused on the user’s image. It also aims to make the user the content provider. He/she becomes the branded con-tent itself, as well at its distributor, disseminating the content through his/her social channel of choice. It reveals the individual’s desire for video protago-nism, for being displayed and seen by a wider audi-ence. This demand for public visibility conditions everybody’s behavior, with teenagers and “digital natives” in first place. This kind of experience re-connects them to their personal digital realm. A hyper-scaled portrait of the user being displayed in a public area is not only a live experience, but also digital content worthy of distribution via the Inter-net. This makes the experience lifecycle longer and reinforces the branded message.

Moreover, customers get a reward in terms of relevance, i.e. their own relevance. Having the cus-tomer at the center of the content production pro-cess causes big changes in advertising strategy, forc-ing brands to create fewer monologues and more dialogues; in attention strategy, creating highly per-ceived brand experiences; in project sustainability, letting the users themselves provide constantly new and fresh branded content. Such an experience also reinforces the user’s awareness of his or her own presence in the public space, the same space that has been occupied by brands.

Towards urban lighting master plansMany European towns are changing their night lighting from the former pale yellow source, to a brighter, and more neutral, white light. Lighting point proliferation is regarded by the general public as a sign of care and safety and is required by cam-era control networks and security policies. Gener-ally, urban areas are much brighter than they were

and hardly recognizable, but it also extremely rel-evant because of its positioning in Times Square. Many bystanders laugh, queues of users form, and everybody take photographs of the spectacle.

In Piccadilly Circus in London, The McDonald’s signage creates interest for both locals and visitors, with some attempts at interactivity from its curved LED billboard. A hat, an umbrella and bulldog paw are displayed. The scale of the billboard allows pho-tographs to be taken from many sides of the circus, incorporating the user with one of those elements as an amusing background. The brand however goes along with the images. Poor design and poor experi-ence. The media is under-used, but probably cannot exceed a certain level of engagement due to its posi-tion. It is embedded and assembled with many other brands to form the well-known Piccadilly wall.

In Piazza Duomo, Milan, Benetton has devel-oped a “Live Window”; a project for digital signage that networks some of its f lagship stores around the world (Milan, Paris, London, Moscow, New Delhi, Shanghai, Munich, Barcelona, and more). Four large-sized LCD media walls (6 × 3 m) fit wholly into the window space and play videos, ani-mations and interactive applications. The user is mirrored on the media, becoming the protagonist of the street. His/her image is captured by an eye (a camera or sensor) and re-displayed after pass-ing through one of the many applications that add funny effects or tricks to the image. This happens on the street, on a hyper-scale, before a live audi-ence. It triggers a bodily experience that resembles a live show, with a stage, actors and audience. It ef-fectively creates what usually happens with a street artist performing his show and it takes places in front of the store windows. An ephemeral and dy-namic audience on the street, both gathering and departing, shares this fun experience. Some move their body and interact, while others simply gaze directly or digitally (through their mobile devices) at the show.

The size of the media-wall is essential to create a richer experience and deeper visual impact. The background, made of high-resolution LCD moni-

14 TheInternationalDark-SkyAssociation(www.darksky.org)isthegloballobbythatcallsattentiontothethreatsoflightpollutioninurbanenvironmentsaswellastowildlife.

15 “Todesign,inaco-ordinatedmanner,alllightingwithinadelineatedurbanarea,soastoavoidarbitraryanduncoordinatedlightinginitiativeswhichwasteconsiderablesumsofmoneyandhaveverylittlenetvisualeffectonthenight-timeappearanceoftherelevantarea.”RoyalCommissiononEnvironmentalPollution.Artificial Light in the Environment.Kew,Richmond,Surrey:OfficeofPublicSectorInformation,InformationPolicyTeam,2009.

16 “Wehaveseenlightingdesignsthatfocusonspecificdetailsofbuildings,ratherthanblanketfloodlighting,whicharebothvisuallymoreeffectiveandresultinlesslightpollution.Thereseemstobeplentyofroomforimprovementinmonumentallightingschemes,whichneedtobecarefullyplannedandmusttakeaccountofthewishesofthelocalcommunityandusers.”Ibidem.


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—Social usefulness: when providing not only a brand experience, but also widening its scope to serve some social or local issue, positive perception of a display installation is greatly increased.

—A new language: the digital signage experience requires a new language and must allow dialogue between brands and users. Simply displaying com-mercial content that was specifically created for tra-ditional channels produces weaker brand strategy and irrelevant attention from users.

—Creative technologies: the integration of different kinds of technologies such as sensors, transparent films, OLED, nano-particles and micro-mechanics will dramatically change the perspectives and capa-bilities for communicating with an audience on the move and in the public space. There will be greater demands upon designers to integrate this ever-changing landscape with the ever=increasing ex-pectations of users, as well as the demand for brands to create new and innovative digital experiences in the real world.21

Ethics and aestheticsEthics and aesthetics should influence the spread

of smart displays in towns. How? A sustainable and fair integration of digi-

tal signage into the perspective of the smart city must take into consideration all of the following drivers:

—The carbon foot-print20: this may become one of the main areas of criticism against large lighting in-stallations of many kinds. Power consumption and sustainability are without doubt major issues in the urban environment and cannot be underestimated. Such issues can potentially drive negative public opinion to favor a more traditional and less innova-tive approach in urban light planning. Technology vendors are quickly moving toward lower consump-tion and more energy efficient equipment.

—The privacy issue: when fitted with cameras and sensors for sensing a user’s interactions, or ever more sophisticated face and demographic-tracking technologies, branded installations must comply with personal data protection laws and regulations.

—The over-abundance of moving images: designers and marketers have to find the proper balance be-tween user perceptions, population flows and urban vocations. They must aim to save residential areas from light profligacy and avoid confrontations be-tween brands where lighting power exceeds concept power.

dusk. The test lasted two whole days and produced a quantity of data and visual research.

The outcome of the test was quite surprising. The LCD media walls emitted less light than the common light boxes or neon tubes that are usually placed in window displays. The old-fashioned light-ing was much more impactful (and annoying) than the digital light. Not only that, but the luminance of the media walls can also be easily adjusted by moni-tor brightness control, or by putting polarized films over the glass.

The store was allowed to restart the installation, and the Municipality acknowledged that the whole situation needed further expert appraisal.

Tomorrow is already todayIn a short time, all the aforementioned issues may be overtaken by a new technology that is already conquering a huge market share: the OLED. The Organic Light Emitting Diode allows the creation of extremely thin films, with the capability of emit-ting its own light. Among its features are higher en-ergy efficiency and adaptability, with total material recyclability and the same versatility that can be achieved with paper, i.e. it is light, can be cut, folded and installed extremely easily.

Technically speaking, the OLED works as a monitor but converts light through particles and not crystals. In contrast to the LED, it produces light using organic elements, such as carbon and oxygen. Once exhausted, they can be 100% recycled without creating any polluting waste. They consume far less power, the light does not dazzle, and they do not require cooling systems.

Still quite expensive, they are currently used in mobile phones displays, medical devices and cars, however all vendors and researchers are in agree-ment that their main use in the long run will be in lighting systems.

Assessing lighting impactOn May 2011, the Barcelona municipality17 ordered a number of stores in commercial high streets such as La Rambla and Portal de l’Àngel to switch off their digital signage installations. This request was targeted at a number of stores with different win-dow displays: LCD media walls, LED panels, and single TV sets. The request was said to be the result of complaints from citizens who had been disturbed by the intensity of the light and the moving images. It was also deemed that no official authorization had been given to these installations, nor had such au-thorization ever been requested by the stores them-selves.

The Municipal Committee for Urban Land-scape and Quality of Life approached the issue in a straightforward way, i.e. “just switch it off now!” Many stores did not comply, being aware that the legal controversy was fully open in terms of rights and regulations.

The writers of this article, being responsible for the development of a digital signage installation for the Benetton store windows in Portal de l’Àngel, agreed to comply with this order. They did, however, ask for a direct meeting with the Municipality, to discuss its rationale.

The municipal officers agreed to the proposal to set a test18 to assess the light impact from the two (2,5 × 5 m) LCD monitor media walls installed in the store windows19. Fabrica (Benetton’s commu-nication research center and project owner) and Elisava delivered a test in partnership to assess the light impact over the course of the whole day, until

17 AjuntamentdeBarcelona,InstitutMunicipaldelPaisatgeUrbàilaQualitatdelaVida–CommissiòMixtaProtecciòdelPaisatgeUrbà.

18 Themethodologyadoptedthesamedatasetsandtoolsoflightengineersanddesigners.Itmeasuredtheluminanceofthemediawall,toquantifyitssurfacebrightnessastheamountoflightanobjectgivesoff:withaprofessionalchromo-meterandinfoot-candles.Itmeasuredalsotheilluminance,whichquantifiestheamountoflightthatfallsontoanobject:withaprofessionallux-meter,infoot-candles.

19 Theinstallationcomprisesfifty46’monitors,intotal.

20Intermsofpowerconsumption,itisabsolutelytruethatLEDshavemoreefficiency.Incandescentlampsconvertonlyaround2%oftheelectricalpowerintolightingenergy,whereasmodernLEDshaveanefficiencyofaround25%.Theyproducemorelight(lumensperwatt)thanincandescentbulbsandtheirefficiencyisnotaffectedbyshapeandsize,unliketraditionallightbulbsandfluorescenttubes.

21 TechnologicalinnovationssuchastransparentfilmsfittedwithLEDs,orultra-lightconstructions,indicatethemuch-neededdevelopmentpotentialofferedbyhybriddesigns.ThecombinationofcompletetransparencyandoptimalvisibilitystrivenforwithLEDsseemstohavebeenachievedforthefirsttimebytheintegrationofvisibleconductorsintheglass.Klooster,T.Op. Cit.,p.102.


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Self-organisation

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Smart car

Open source

Creativity

E-bike

Systemic design

Digital signage

Interaction design

Urban acupuncture

Social innovation

Interaction

Self-cleaning

Interface

Mutant intervention



Smart light

Mallification

Test intervention

Nanotechnology


Networking

Augmented reality

Beat

Control system

Smart home

Social software

Wikicity

Smart city

these within a global system of virtuous connec-tions, exchanges and networks. Following its devel-opment, a so-called slow philosophy was established, advocating a cultural shift towards slow qualities in other branches of human life: slow travel, slow me-dia, slow cities, slow design. The current Slow move-ment isnot a single association or organization, but a global community promoting a contemporary concept of slowness as a post-modern value.

The link between slow and design was originated through two different paths: on one side, slow has been considered as a paradigm towards sustain-ability1 at a time in which design was questioning its role in material production, thus incorporating some of the Slow movement values; on the other side, in particular in Italy, design started to focus its attention on local production and collaborate with the food system, establishing a direct link be-tween the Slow Food movement and the Food De-sign discipline2.

Soft approach

Cultural density

Sensorial qualities

Slow design

Designer, Assistant Professor, School of Design, Politecnico di Milano. PhD. in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication at the Indaco Dept. of the Politecnico di Milano. She is part of the Research Unit “DeCH. Design for Cultural Heritage” and a member of the scientific board of the HumanitiesDesignLab, funded by Dip. Indaco, Politecnico di Milano. In 2008, she was Visiting Researcher at the School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Over the years, she has attended several International Conferences, and has lectured in different schools within the EU (Artesis-Antwerp, Elisava-Barcelona), Brazil (Unisinos-Porto Alegre) and China (Polytechnic University-Hong Kong, Jiangnan University-Wuxi).

Introduction: the slow philosophy and its application to design and artifactsThe Slow philosophy and movement proceed from Slow Food movement. Known worldwide, Slow Food association was born in Italy in 1989, when, to instances of Carlo Petrini, delegates from 15 countries signed a document called the Slow Food Manifesto. In this manifesto, values are shared as a protest towards the impoverishment of life quali-ties caused by industrialization and its efficiency-driven production and consumerism, stigmatized as “fast life” and standardization. In opposition, the Slow Food movement proposed a way of “cultivat-ing taste (…) by advocating historical food culture and by defending old-fashioned food traditions”. From that time, Slow Food has enlarged and dif-fused its activity, envisioning good, clean and fair food, defending biodiversity, protecting local and traditional production, supporting short produc-tion chains and co-production, but locating all of

Slow Design: “cultivating” culture and sensoriality in the artifacts shape and useThis essay seeks to provide key assumptions and examples of applying a “slow approach” in the design of product functions and experiences. Some examples will provide evidence of embedding “soft qualities” and cultural/intangible elements in “culture intensive artifacts” for a real “slow” but dense and profound experience of relationships and appropriation between people and material production.

“Sensorial expressive artifacts can operate a sort of ‘time refraction’ by a single form”

1 Fuad-Luke,A.“Slow design” – a paradigm shift in design philosophy?[enlínea].2002.[Consultation:April13,2012].Availableat:http://www.arts.ulst.ac.uk/artm/courses/jdmm/emotion/slow-des.pdf

2 Manzini,E.;Meroni,A.“Theslowmodel:astrategicdesignapproach”.Gastronomic Sciences,No.1(2007),p.70-75.

Eleonora Lupo


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physically (experience and appreciation time) and conceptually (connections and nets of meaning) and the metaphor of “cultivation” results in an ap-propriate translation of slowness into this immate-rial dimension of experience and connections.

This idea is not fully new: as Flusser pointed out in 20036, the form is a kind of ideal non-consum-able model; the shape of objects is the opposite of the matter. Flaviano Celaschi, in 2008, proposed a model focusing on the design phenomenon as a bal-anced system of form, function, value and meaning7. In other words, intangible aspects too (value, mean-ing) “inform” the shape of artifacts. Giulio Ceppi considers sensorial qualities to be the quality of the experience derived from the enjoyment and con-sumption of products and he bases this on the story-telling capacity of objects: from processes to brand values, from experience design to strategic design8.

Within this bigger frame, anyway, our point is definitively that a strategic slow approach has to deal with the “intangibles” or the “soft qualities” of things:

—incorporating cultural elements;—embedding sensorial qualities.

Incorporating cultural elements responds to the need to value the recognizability and typicality of things, thus also rediscovering the value of tradi-tion and the past. This implies design’s ability to add to the value of the cultural asset as an open-ended knowledge system9; it is possible, via an hermeneu-tic and interpretative design process, to identify and clearly isolate and define a system of recognizable and constant elements of a cultural patrimony, in terms of “authentic qualities” of forms and pro-

3. Reflect: Slow Design artifacts/environments/ex-periences induce contemplation and what slow-Lab has coined ‘reflective consumption.’

4. Engage: Slow Design processes are open-source and collaborative, relying on sharing, coopera-tion and transparency of information so that de-signs may continue to evolve into the future.

5. Participate: Slow Design encourages users to be-come active participants in the design process, embracing ideas of conviviality and exchange to foster social accountability and enhance com-munities.

6. Evolve: Slow Design recognizes that richer ex-periences can emerge from the dynamic matu-ration of artifacts, environments and systems over time. Looking beyond the needs and cir-cumstances of the present day, slow designs are (behavioural) change agents.

For Ezio Manzini4, “the slow approach outlines a model of production and alternative consump-tion which is both subversive and feasible, a model which confronts head on the ideas and practices of today’s globalization. Nevertheless it can be imme-diately realized on a local level and, as Slow Food has proven, with success”. In a context where “the issues with which design is concerned are chang-ing” and a “new design (often not recognized as a design activity and not practiced by designers) is emerging on well-being and way it can be attained”, the encounter with the Slow Food movement gener-ated an attention on Food Design not focused on the spectacularization of experience but on facili-tating distributed food economies based on creative communities’ tacit design. According to Manzini the qualities of a slow approach are an attention to localization (always more “connected” to the global)

and a distinctive quality of human and sensory ex-perience that involves cognition, emotion and mo-tivation. This is a different shade of sustainability that is inclined towards culture, intertwining ethics with aesthetics5.

A proposed path from slow to soft qualities: cultivating cultural and sensorial density and intensityFrom these premises, we would like to isolate three elements to propose our personal understanding of how slow design can be further developed and ap-plied in the field of product-service-system design.

1 holism, represented by the systemic attitude of slowness, can be intended as the multiplicity of meanings and experiences that artifacts should convey through their sensorial qualities;

2. durability, encouraged by environmental sus-tainability of slowness, can be intended as atten-tion to the “temporality” of artifacts and their use and experience, the way they should incor-porate time into their shape and appreciation;

3. distinctiveness, related to local and territorial resources promoted by slowness, can be speci-fied in the peculiarity of incorporating heritage elements into the design of artifacts.

These aspects lead to focusing on the design of the intangible qualities of artifacts, or “soft” quali-ties, in opposition to the “hard”, tangible qualities of objects and products, thus connotating the con-cept of slowness with an idea of intensity and depth of experience thanks to this new “density” of the artifacts. Within this vision, time is intended both

According to Fuad- Luke, who was probably the first to use the term “slow design” in 2002, the rise of sustainability issues stimulates the design com-munity to act as agents of change towards environ-mental and social responsibility in the challenge of design for sustainability. Indeed Fuad-Luke claims that mainstream design still needs to change its ap-proach as it is too closely linked with the industry’s business model and its time constrains, while it should be more focused on well-being and human needs, beyond the acceleration of the manufacture of things for the marketplace. He proposes the slow design paradigm as a “balance between socio-cul-tural and individual needs and the well-being of the environment” (…) “celebrating the de-commodifi-cation of time”. Slow design is about well-being, is sustainable, durable, pluralistic and non techno-centric. In this early work, Fuad-Luke provides ex-amples of various products but, in fact, slow design can be applied to the design of services, experiences and processes too, as a step toward the de-material-isation required for long-term sustainability.

Later on, together with Carolyn Strauss, in slow-Lab 6, he posited guiding principles of slow design that, in fact, refer more to the immaterial dimen-sions of design, and move beyond the materialized object and focus on locality, community and local potential3:

1. Reveal: Slow design reveals experiences in ev-eryday life that are often missed or forgotten, including the materials and processes that can be easily overlooked in an artifact’s existence or creation.

2. Expand: Slow design considers the real and po-tential “expressions” of artifacts and environ-ments beyond their perceived functionalities, physical attributes and lifespans.

“A strategic slow approach has to deal with the ‘intangibles’ or the ‘soft qualities’ of things”

5 Lupo,E.;Campagnaro,C.“Formarecomunità,in-formareterritori.Designingconnectedplaces:farescuoladidesignperilterritorio”.Tafter journal: esperienze e strumenti per la cultura e per il territorio[online].Rome,No.15,2009.[Consultation:April13,2012].Availableat:http://www.tafterjournal.it/2009/07/15/formare-comunita-in-formare-territori-designing-connected-places-fare-scuola-di-design-per-il-territorio/

6 Flusser,V.Filosofia del design.Milan:Mondadori,2003.

7 Celaschi,F.“Designmediatoredisaperi”.In:C.Germak(ed.).Uomo al centro del progetto: design per un nuovo umanesimo.Turin:UmbertoAllemandi&Co.,2008,p.40-52.

8 Ceppi,G.Design storytelling.Milan:Lupetti,2011.

9 Lupo,E.;GiuntaE.;TrocchianesiR.“Designresearchandculturalheritage:activatingthevalueofculturalassetsasopen-endedknowledgesystem”.Design principles and practices journal,vol.5,No.6(2011),p.431-450.

3 Strauss,C.F.;Fuad-Luke,A.“Theslowdesignprinciples:anewinterrogativeandreflexivetoolfordesignresearchandpractice”[online].In:Changing the Change,conference,Torino2008.[Consultation:February29,2012].Availableat:http://www.slowlab.net/CtC_SlowDesignPrinciples.pdf

4 ManziniE.,MeroniA.Op. cit.

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based material is used to create architectural deco-ration, maintaining the same traditional process for baking simple ingredients into the basic shapes of containers and vessels. The designers saved the process and technique of production, innovating the shape and function of objects from decoration to tableware, from folk events to daily life. Cultural references can be found in the linguistic and expres-sive codes of textures, colors and surfaces, in spite of a great formal discontinuity of the new product sys-tem (from devotional to functional) developed with a non- literal and yet sophisticated interpretation.

2. A kind of stone, “pietra ollare”, traditionally used in northern Italy to make multi-purpose vases called lavec, that have sedimented their essential shape into a sort of invisible and anonymous design, has been the object of a renewal and re-application pro-cess in a local craft workshop (first directed by An-tonio Corrado and then by Goffredo Minocchi, then operated by Ginevra Mattioli and Floriana Palmieri). Here the designers wanted to maintain the material and its production process, innovating its area of ap-plication from tableware to fashion accessorizes.

user’s experience and interaction with the object go beyond functionality and problem-solving, and ex-tend the understanding and awareness of material culture production through a tacit and unconscious cultural learning of its stratification and depth. We could assume that these “culture intensive products” are a concentration of items in one single form, ask-ing for a paced appreciation.

On the otherhand, embedding sensorial quali-ties means opening up the relationship with things as a multifaceted physical and emotional experience.

“A product is not simply a form with a single func-tion but a collection of considered messages and sto-ries” that engages the user’s attention or response. Through their sensorial qualities, products can start conversations with their users that transcend func-tionality. According to Kenia Hara11, we are in front of “not products, but a mechanism to provide stim-ulus”, no matter whether they remain at the level of potentiality and possibility; they are an opportunity to grasp something that was previously unknown or unexplored. Therefore, these products can distance themselvesfrom market and business rules and their timing and efficiency, in a drive towards innovative serendipity, often through the use of new materials, anduser participation and interpretation of their potentialities.

In fact “sensorial expressive artifacts” embrace a relationship with people in the tactile and visual dimensions, but, above all, these expressive objects need an interaction to be performed in time to re-veal and exteriorize their qualities. Here, too, this multilayered experience requires a different articu-lation and multiplication of time: sensorial expres-

sive artifacts can operate a sort of “time refraction” by a single form.

The two strategic lines can be used separately or combined together. Some examples are provided in the following paragraphs.

Incorporating cultural elements in the artifactsIn this paragraph we’ll briefly illustrate some pos-sibilities for incorporating cultural elements into the design of new objects: they range from using and modernizing archetypal visual codes, patterns, materials and processes, to contemporary interpre-tation of craft practices, and were created by both famous and young designers.

1. Baked is a project by Formafantasma, an Italian designer duo based in Eindhoven, whose interest is the reevaluation of disappearing craft techniques. This project translates immaterial elements linked to a local and traditional ritual event into sugges-tions for new material artifacts in terms of both form and process. The designers took inspiration from a Sicilian folk event in Salemi, where a flour-

cesses, codified in cultural archetypes, that can be used as a repertory of creative sources to design in-novative artifacts and practices, essentially through activation strategies for the cultural asset: re-con-textualization, modernization, authentication. In this sense, the cultural elements are a source from which to gain inspiration for design purposes but, above all, experience and appreciation by users of

“culturally intensive artifacts”. These minimal cul-tural units, which are usable as design features,are related both in forms and processes: formal, visual and material features, but also processualfeatures, such as history, memories, knowledge, production techniques, etc., can be incorporated and actualized as extra meaning and pleasure in the function and use of contemporary objects. Two results are, there-fore, obtained: innovating traditions and enriching products. Innovation can happen within the re-con-textualization of the cultural asset (alternatively its formal or processual aspects) within a new produc-tive sector or ambit (for instance, transforming folk products into contemporary tableware, see example 1, or tableware to fashion accessories, see example 2) or within a geo-cultural context10 (for instance delocalizing a site-specific heritage and communi-cating it through global products, see example 3).

Another possible outcome of this approach of culturally enhancing products is a high sensibil-ity towards craft techniques and aesthetics (see ex-ample 4), that, sometimes, entails proposing and valuing the quality of imperfection in the product design, as a distinctive aesthetic feature, and the vis-ibility of the creation process, as a technical trait, when products show traces of how they were made and by whom (personality, interests, background, individual memories). These connections help the

i Formafantasma.Baked,2009

10 Lupo,E.“Beyondcraftculture:designinganewcontemporaryauthentic”.In:Design&Craft. Proceedings of the 7th Conference of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies[online].Brussels,September2010.[Consultation:October10,2012].Availableat:http://designview.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/paperdesigncraft_lupo.pdf

11 Hara,K.Senseware.Holon,Israel:DesignMuseumHolon,2010.

“These ‘culture intensive products’ are a concentration of items in one single form, asking for a paced appreciation”


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4. Hella Jongerius’s work is an example of valuing tradition and context traces in new design. Almost all her designs are characterized by a reinterpreta-tion of existing forms and patterns to satisfy a desire for greater meaning and depth. Like other Dutch designers, she pays attention to detail and forgot-ten handicraft techniques, being free of the nega-tive connotations of regression or nostalgia. In fact, craft techniques and motifs have been incorporated into new “discourses” (media, production processes,

3. Opera gloves-extraordinary craft is a concept by Giorgio Affinito, developed in a workshop within the context of the “Inspired by Beijing Opera” re-search project12. The research project was aimed at raising funds for the Ada Ceschin Pilone Founda-tion (Zurich), a collection of costumes and props from the traditional Beijing Opera. The patrimony has been analyzed and reduced to minimal cultural units and archetypes, repurposed in inspirational visions to be redesigned within a design workshop. Affinito, moving away from a scenario defined as

“hyper-characterized” and derived from the fact that in the Beijing Opera each element is unambigu-ously meaningful, employing conventions (i.e. the characterization of the protagonists who personify extreme roles, values and universal sentiments with a precisely executed make-up and use of distinctive colors and accessories), decided to transfer this en-abling capacity to contemporary accessories, like gloves, that in fact help users to play the four main characters of Chinese opera.

i GiorgioAffinito.Opera Gloves,2010

12 Projectfoundedin2010.ScientificcoordinationEleonoraLupo.Researchgroup:ElenaGiunta,RaffaellaTrocchianesi.Availableat:http://designview.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/inspired-by-bejinig-opera-final-delivery/

13 ThesecasestudieshavebeeninvestigatedbyNarineTchilinguirian,inhisdoctoralthesisatthePolitecnicodiMilanoin2011.Thesisadvisor:EleonoraLupo.

i FlorianaPalmieri.Tablewarein“pietraollare”,2006

u FlorianaPalmieri.Highfashionaccessoriesin“pietra

ollare”forthefashionbrandAcquistapace,2006

distribution channels and social contexts), not liter-ally, but by reinterpreting more subtle elements that are not immediately recognizable, yet are genuine, original and distinctive. With her personal attitude and contribution she updates tradition in a typically contemporary Dutch conceptual way of thinking. Rebelling against the perfectionist culture of the industry, she deliberately introduced irregulari-ties into a porcelain dinner set produced by Royal Tichelaar Makkum, giving an industrial product a handmade, crafts flavor. Using medieval shards donated by the Boijimans Van Beuningen museum she created vases and pots by gluing the shards with

epoxy. She designed vases for large-scale produc-tion by hand in China for Ikea PS, and developed a project to support Indian women to start their own sewing business by contributing their craftwork (the traces of which are visible in the final product together with their embroidered names) to the cre-ation of embroidered wall hanging panels for the global market.

Many designers and companies are sensitive to this attempt to incorporate cultural (material or immaterial) features and reinterpret them: Patri-cia Urquiola, Marcel Wanders, Heloisa Crocco, and Moroso, Ekobo13, among others.


o JongeriusLab.VasesforIKEA,2005

t JongeriusLab.7 Pots / 3 Centuries / 2 Materials,1997

t JongeriusLab.B-set,1997


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7. Many designers14 consider user involvement over time as being important to unveil the sensorial and experiential nature of things. Kristine Bjaadal, a Norwegian designer, assigns the power to express hidden qualities to use and consumption: Underfull (a table cloth) has a hidden pattern that becomes vis-ible only when wet or stained by wine, and Underskog (an upholstery fabric) has a hidden pattern which is slowly revealed as the fabric is worn. Both her proj-ects work on changing product appearance over time, linking it with personal memories. Bethan Laura Wood’s Stain tea cups change the assumption that use damages a product; the more the cup is used the more the pattern is revealed, thanks to a surface that is treated so as to retain the tea stain patina more in predetermined places, thus expressing personal tea drinking habits. Oscar Diaz’s Ink Calendar is a surface calendar that enhances the perception of

these products stimulate senses and feelings, visual and tactile. Ross Lovegrove created an ultra-light-weight backpack made of a triaxial woven fabric, ap-plying the potentialities of fiber in the creation of an unconventional three-dimensional shape, called Seed of Love. It is proposed in white to communi-cate the intimacy and seduction of a bride’s wedding dress. Nendo, a product design studio, designed a

set of moldable, nonwoven lampshades blown-up like balloons in hot water. Due to the non-industri-al production method, each product has a different form which takes inspiration from the traditional paper lantern. The wrinkles and folds in the neck tell the story of the manufacturing process.

6. “In Residence”is a design workshop promoted by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò to explore contemporary design within the framework of the World Design Capital event held in Torino in 2008. The topic of “nature through artifice” was assigned to 5 designers with the idea of codifying the rela-tionship between the natural and artificial, whether inspirational or conflicting. The results led to chal-lenging the “nature” of objects even in their senso-rial and aesthetic appearance. The designers created

“natural unnaturalness” able to transfer new mean-ings, emotions and expressivity extrapolated from nature into the inanimate materiality of the object,. Pieke Bergmans, a designer from the Netherlands, altered existing production processes to create new shapes and controlled imperfections: deformed lamps (“Light blubs”), bottles (“Crystal virus”) and vases (“Unlimited Edition”). Studio Glithero worked on time and transformation to capture the beauty of the moment that things are made and in-corporate it expressively into the object; their blue-printing process, applied to vases and tiles, causes surfaces covered with light-reacting chemicals and exposed to UV lamps to undergo an intense color transformation from white to Prussian blue. They used botanical specimens to leave white floral-de-sign silhouettes on the blue background.

Embedding sensorial qualities in the objectsThis paragraph presents examples that focus on sen-sorial qualities, and, more precisely: visual dimen-sion, tactile dimension, time dimension and user involvement. In this approach, too, we include proj-ectscompleted by both famous and young designers.

5. Kenia Hara, Japanese designer and director of Muji since 2001, promoted the Tokyo Fiber Sense-ware project in 2009, to experiment with new ap-plications for new materials, and, in particular, new artificial fibers. He used the term “senseware” to define “the matter that stirs the human creative in-stinct and awaken the desire to make things” citing the example of the qualities of a stone suggesting uses to humans. He selected seven Japanese fiber manufacturers and seven creative people from dif-ferent backgrounds (design, architecture, media, art, fashion, etc.) making them collaborateto create new products or applications using artificial fibers. All

i Nendo.Blown-fabricforTokioFiberSenseware,2009

o RossLovegrove.Seed of LoveforTokioFiberSenseware2009

t StudioGlithero.Blueware,2010.Photo:PetrKrejci'

o PiekeBergmans.Light blubs,2009

t PiekeBergmans.Crystal virus,2005

14 TheseothercasestudieshavealsobeeninvestigatedbyNarineTchilinguirian,inhisdoctoralthesisatthePolitecnicodiMilanoin2011.Thesisadvisor:EleonoraLupo.



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Complementary bibliography

Bramstom, D. Visual conversations. Lausanne: Ava Publishing, 2010.

Brondi, B.; Rainò, M. (eds.). In residence design dialogue: diary #2, matter matters. Mantua: Co-rraini, 2010.

——. In residence design dialogue: diary #1, nature through artifice. Mantua: Corraini, 2009.

Ceppi, G. Epigenesi del design. Rome: Aracne, 2010.De Martino, M. Tra ragione ed emozione: il signi-

ficato della forma degli oggetti. Florence: Alinea, 2007.

Fuad-Luke, A. “Slow design”. In: M. Ehrloff, T. Marshall (eds.). Design dictionary: perspectives on design terminology. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008, p. 361-363.

Mojoli, G.; Manzini, E.; et al. “Slow + design: slow approach to distributed economy and sustai-nable sensoriality (manifesto + abstract)” [on-line]. In: International seminar, Milan, 6 Oc-tober 2006. [Consultation: February 29, 2012]. Available at: http://www.experientia.com/blog/uploads/2006/10/slow_design_background.pdf

Sacchetti, V. Il design in tasca. Bologna: Editrice compositori, 2010.

Vlassenrood, L. (ed.). Tangible traces: Dutch ar-chitecture and design in the making. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2009.

time passing and rather than simply signaling it: it makes use of the ink spreading on the paper to indi-cate time. The ink is absorbed slowly, and the num-bers in the calendar are “printed” daily. One per day, they are filled with ink until the end of the month.

This cultural and sensorial attitude can be stimulated and developed by designers thanks to the contributions of the humanities and social sci-ences to the understanding of the sense of things (and their re-design): cultural and stylistic elements need to be historically studied, contextual elements need to be geographically localized and anthropo-logically understood… to be innovatively used and transformed in something that is authentic but con-temporary. All disciplines, such as history, sociol-ogy, anthropology, semiotics and their application in what we call “humanities centered design”15, are crucial for incorporating cultural elements and em-bedding sensorial qualities in the design of “intense” artifacts. Only a “soft approach” can transform the potentiality of the new manufacturing processes into an object poetry and spirituality that balance ethics with aesthetics.

t ÓscarDiaz.Ink Calendar,2007

i BethanLauraWood.Stain,2006

i KristineBjaadal.Underfull,2009

u KristineBjaadal.Underskog,2009

15 See:http://www.humanitiesdesign.org/wordpress


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Cultural density

Self-organisation

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Smart car

Open source

Sensorial qualities

E-bike

Systemic design

Digital signage

Interaction design

Urban acupuncture

Interaction

Self-cleaning

Interface

Mutant intervention



Smart light

Mallification

Test intervention

Nanotechnology


Augmented reality

Control system

Smart home

Social software

Wikicity

Smart city

Slow design

Soft approach

Networking

Beat

Creativity

Social innovation

Andrea Mendoza. Biologist to her very core. Former Advertiser and PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication with emphasis on Social Innovation and Sustainability. She currently experiments as a Video Maquettist, coordinates the video chapter for the DESIS Network and consults as a strategic designer.

PremiseA movie, taken as a whole (sometimes) has a progressive narrative, but when you take the CD soundtrack of the movie, each song has its own rhythm, its own characteristics. In the same way, each one of the cities discussed in the first part of the article has its own rhythm. Please try to read this article as if listening to the soundtrack of a movie.

In the second part, you will find the linkages between the creativity of SO-LOS (Self-Organized-Livelihood-Subjects) and that of CCs (Creative Communi-ties), presented on a map that allows us to re-read collective needs and possible sustainable solutions.

TAKE 1In cinema, rhythm is considered to be the force that almost imperceptibly leads the emotions of the viewer. Each scene is arranged in such a way that timing, speech, atmosphere and, especially, music create a pattern. The progress of all these patterns results in the film itself.

Now, for the daily scenes of our cities, if we look at them as a stage. What is it that leads people to move in a particular rhythm? Who arranges the harmony on the streets? What does sustainability have to do with all this? In my view,

Common rhythmsWhat are the rhythms that inhabit a city? Which are those that are unseen and could give an account of a more sustainable way of life? This article unfolds from the personal rhythm of a particular group of individuals: Self-Organized-Livelihood-Subjects (SOLOS) who singly make a living and a life trying to describe the rhythm to which they joyfully survive. Moving on from that apparently “unorganized” rhythm, we then portray groups of individuals Creative Communities (CC) that have formally organized initiatives that improve not only their own livelihood but also the life of contemporary cities. This is part of a mapping exercise that the DESIS* Network (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) has pursued.

“We cannot talk about communities without first considering the individual him/herself and the changes that he/she is keen to initiate on a personal level”

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

MICHELANgELO ANTONIONI

*http://www.desis-network.org/

Andrea Mendoza


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Andrea Mendoza Common rhythms

ing the temple, Christian nuns, tourists and devout Armenians passing by. All this without disturbing the Jewish man with his black coat, black hat and gray beard, who is praying on his knees at the bottom of a stairway leading to one of the gates of the Oman mosque.

What can design learn from this Kombina, from the beats of this scene? It could be said, based on personal experience in the field, that the set of elements1 and the atmosphere portrayed here was evidently multicultural and, to a certain extent, chaotic, but pleasant; now, can design help to highlight such pleasure? There is a feeling which differs greatly from the mainstream ideas sold by news agencies outside Israel; the space, through its multicultural coexistence, was sustainable to a certain extent.

Now, when talking about sustainability, we are used to terms like reduce, repair, reuse, recycle, etc., but as stated on the Patagonia website (American outdoor clothes brand), we also need to re-imagine2. Re-imagining has a strong faith component hence it directly satisfies the spiritual aspect of the individual. It is a basic need that needs to be fulfilled.

A well-trained photographer of Israeli culture, Alex Levac, in his book Our Country3, photographs characters that fit the reality of SOLOS. Levac: “anony-mous people engaged in banal incidents, all of whom together reflect the anthro-pological face of our society. This is the documentation of “non-events”, quotid-ian street pictures of moments snatched from the uninterrupted stream of life”.

It must be added that the “sound” of the picture (Photo. 2) was a delicate and almost imperceptible echo, given the architecture of the place and people’s sense of respect. Qualities bonded to a religious and architectonic set.

Bogotá. El rhythm of hope

Bogotá is a city longing for harmony. That is how, while looking for social, ar-chitectural, political and environmental accord, we meet, again, Patagonia’s Re-imagining factor. In the city, people imagine better spaces, better opportu-nities and “better” people. That is how many neighborhoods have been named (according to people’s imagination of what is better): Venecia (Venice), Rome, Lisbon, etc.

Hope is also present in the visions that experts have drawn in relation to the dynamics of the city. Once known as the “South American Athens”, nowadays it is a regional hub for “creative industries”, but sustainability is a merely techni-cal aspect.

So, what about SOLOS’ creativity? SOLOS have been denigrated and referred to as simply hampering the public space. Their ways and practices are not re-garded as harmonic elements. In this line, former Mayor, Antanas Mockus (who is now entering the world of art, see the Berlin Biennale 20124), made a huge effort to harmonize law, morale and culture by supporting legal foundations for society, affirming that he preferred to: “modify the law instead of imposing rules that people would not respect or practice”5. His Cultura Civica harmonization program invited citizens to resolve any existing conflict with pedagogic and

in order to reach and understand CCs (Creative Communities), we need to first assess the creativity of SOLOS and their human condition, since we cannot talk about communities without first considering the individual him/herself and the changes that he/she is keen to initiate on a personal level.

These two actors – SOLOS and CCs – don’t work together in daily life’s practice but what we are interested in is the point where they converge – human creativity, dynamization of cities, and time management in relation to quality.

SOLOSIn 2008, I submitted my PhD thesis entitled: SOLOS, Primal cre-ativity in the livable cities discourse. The thesis mapped the cre-ativity of SOLOS and drew relationships between the limits of the planet and their unusual behaviors from the communication design viewpoint. The four mapped cities were chosen because of their particu-lar milieu, cities in which the limits of the planet are also visible on an emotion-al level (i.e., places where tolerance is low, the political situation uncertain, the public space not very welcoming, and which are widely perceived as dangerous and chaotic, but which are still, somehow, fascinating). The cities chosen were: Jerusalem, Palermo, Bogotá and Istanbul.

The SOLOS in these cities do the basics: repeat, like a pulse, their daily ac-tivities.

To better explain this, let us visit each one of the cities and take one actor (SOLOS) as an example to better trace his beat.

Jerusalem. The rhythm of faith

In one of his songs, Israeli musician Idan Raichel says: “Shuvi El Beyti” (Come back to my home), a very representative statement for Israel’s daily life, since Israelis are always implicitly talking about going back to their home, to the Promised Land, to their roots. Faith is what moves them. Now, what is the rhythm of faith? Could we state that it is a rhythm composed through (re)-use?

The picture on which we attempt to make this analysis (Photo. 2) was chosen because it embraces various characteristics of Jeru-salem’s daily life, and, particularly, Kombina.

Kombina is what Israelis call the way in which someone can ingeniously organize an idea, artifact or situation to get things done easily.

In the picture, we see a hot metal pot being swung into the air to allow oxy-gen to ignite the charcoal which will be used to burn the incense and also light up a coffee machine placed on a table behind the public telephone, which is next to a desk where, at the same time, carrot juice is being offered to Muslims enter-

i Photo2.Jerusalem.A.Mendoza.2006.

1 Christopher,A.“ACityisNotaTree”.Design,No.206.London:CouncilofIndustrialDesign,1966[Reprinted].

2 “Re-imagine:Two-thirdsofoureconomyisbasedonthepurchaseofconsumergoods.Buttoblindlypurchasewhat’sgoodneitherfortheplanetnorourselvestokeepthegamegoingistheverydefinitionofunsustainability.Let’sbuywhat’shealthyanduseful;let’sstayawayfromwhatwedon’tneedandwhatcausesunnecessaryharm.Everyactionwetaketogethertoprotectthelandandwatersweloveaddstoourknowledgeandconfidencethatwecanreimagine,thenhelpbringabout,asustainableworldforthosewhocomeafterus”.In:Patagonia[online].[Consultation:July12,2012].Availableat:http://www.patagonia.com/eu/enIT/common-threads/reimagine

3 Levac,A.Our Country.Jolón:MeiriPrintLte.,2000.

4 AntanasM.Am I a good artist?[online].Berlin:KWInstituteforContemporanyArt,June2012.[Consultation:July12,2012].Availableat:http://www.berlinbiennale.de/blog/en/events/am-i-a-good-artist-by-antanas-mockus

5 MockusAntanasonaninterviewbyAndreaMendoza.Bogotá,2005.

i Photo1.Streetmusician,Jerusalem.A.Mendoza.2006


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comfortably chatting by the window because that is the very sound of Palermo: the loud talk, the gestures, the quality of communication.

Istanbul. The rhythm of love

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

STANLEy KUBRICK

In his film Crossing The Bridge, Fatih Akin states: “To know a culture one has to know its music”. Knowing the music is knowing the rhythms of a city, its timings, its history and a way to guess how the future of such a culture might sound.

Istanbul is a city where an immeasurable quantity of deep ancient sounds and instruments mix with the latest global sounds. The citizens, being themselves rambling dwellers coming from far off territories in the Anatolian peninsula, foreigners or locals, fill the city with their own sound, at times, a silent one. Their hum is almost imperceptible within the vastness of the city, but it is still necessary to orchestrate the motion symphony, which keeps the city alive.

Those working with food make some of the most remark-able sounds. From dawn to dusk, and sometimes beyond, one can see men steaming, cleaning, lighting, slicing, chop-ping, whipping, cutting, heating, doing everything neces-sary to provide the basic needs of their fellow citizens. But then there is the question of happiness (an overly analyzed buzz topic/word10), because of cultural tensions and inter-ests. Being a bridge between the east and west, the inhabit-ants of Istanbul have found in music, a perfect tool to bridge, and harmonize, differences.

All that hectic movement of the city maintains a vitality that seems to be brightened by love. Love for their culture, love for their roots, proud and, to a certain extent, modest. By being there, you can perceive its rhythm as the ar-rangement of formal elements to create movement, tension and emotional value as in the development of a plot.

Shoe Polishers for instance (Photo. 6) maintain the long tradition of keeping their service stalls in perfect order and artistry. And, while polishing, they ex-hibit a great deal of commitment to their clients not at a mere commercial level but at a deeper one11.

In Istanbul, everything is possible. And this “possible” comprises a “why not?!”, a “let us try!”, and this is one of the main characteristics of the behavior of SOLOS; they re-invent, reuse, repair and, as mentioned previously, re-imag-ine new possibilities motivated by a cultural trait of the Turkish people: generos-ity, the main quality of Love.

extremely creative methodologies using a great deal of art, music and performances.

For Mockus, life and all that it comprises is sacred, so his view on SOLOS has to, according to him, be read through a Hu-man Condition lens (Arendt).

The selected picture (Photo. 3.) portrays a colorful umbrella, sort of a small circus one, which lays rolled under a bunch of packages of platanito chips (fried green bananas) on top of which sit different brands of cigarettes and lollipops; all this is placed next to a folded raincoat, right beside a backpack inside which the owner of the baby-carriage has brought his/her meal for midday.

It is sound street, supported by the quality of hope.

Palermo. The rhythm of humor

“Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity

upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed,

and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous”.

yEHUDI MENUHIN

The humor we address in the research is theoretically seen as a mechanism that takes two elements and unexpectedly re-composes them. Freud6 for instance, explains humor as the mechanisms that the unconscious uses to apply strategies of absurdity to resolve conflicts and Bateson7, for his part, worked specifically

on the role of humor in human communication. Daniel Goleman, in turn, states that “humor augments the capacity of thinking in a flexible way, allowing us to reach more complex levels and simplifying the problem solving, indepen-dently from the fact that those problems are in-tellectual or interpersonal”8.

The reorganization performed by humor goes hand in hand with the planetary discontinuity needed to reach sustainability9 because humor proves to be a way to re-dimension meaning, i.e., reorganizing and suspending mainstream conditions of production and consumption in urban daily life.

In the picture (Photo. 4), we see a “courier” device. A plastic messenger that prevents us-ers from having to go up and down the stairs. A practical element that enables laziness but which, who knows, may help older people to avoid fatigue and instead allows them to keep

6 Freud,S.“Theaetiologyofhysteria”.In:Strachey,J.[ed.andtrans.].The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud.Vol.3.London:HogarthPress,1962,p.191-221.

Freud,S.El malestar en la cultura y otros ensayos.Madrid/Mexico:AlianzaEditorial,2008.

7 Bateson,G.Steps to an Ecology of the Mind.Novato,CA:ChandlerPublishingCompany,1972.

8 Goleman,D.“Leradicidell’empatia”.In:Goleman,D.Intelligenza emotiva(1995).Trans.BlumI.(partI-IV)LottiB.(partVandappendix).Milan:Libri&GrandiOpereS.p.A.,BurSaggi,1996,p.96-110.

9 Manzini,E.“Enablingsolutionsforcreativecommunities.Socialinnovationanddesignforsustainability”.Design matters,No.10,2005.

i Photo3.Babycarriagere-imagined.Bogotá.

A.Mendoza.2005

i Photo4.Palermo.Italy.

A.Mendoza.2006

10 Hagerty,M.R.;VeenhovenR.“WEALTHANDHAPPINESSREVISITED.Growingwealthofnationsdoesgowithgreaterhappiness”Social Indicators Research [online],vol.64,2003,p.1-27.[Consultation:July12,2012].Availableat:http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/Pub2000s/2003e-full.pdf

11 Toseetheirrhythmsonamoreglobalscalepleasegoto:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjUeSvCpG6Q&list=PL5C4AC18BA30523B9&index=6&feature=plpp_video

i Photo5.Shoepolishservice.Istanbul.A.Mendoza.2006


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tential in any material they to which they can apply existing ideas, insert their accessible technologies and use living traditions. According to Manzini “their structure is a system of interactions between people, places, and products”. But, unlike SOLOS who work in isolation, CC have systematized their solutions in such a way that, seen from the strategic design viewpoint, they cause us to envi-sion, plan and propose methodologies to support them by, among other things, finding new ways of representation.

DESIS

In 2009, after almost a decade of mapping and assessing initiatives such as the above, Ezio Manzini13 founded the DESIS Network (Design for Social Innova-tion and Sustainability); an academic network devoted to linking these initia-tives to the world of design, hence those are signals of promising solutions and the evidence of substantial social changes that lead to a paradigmatic shift in society and also to a change in the perception and role that design has within society. As an international network (www.desis-network.org) it’s made up of design labs, based in design schools and other design-oriented universities and operating with local, regional and global partners; DESIS promotes and sup-ports social change towards sustainability.

Many actors take part in the consolidation of the Creative Communities. So please allow me to set them as in a film.

We may need a good plot (the initiative itself), a stage (the neighborhood/city), a director (here we split hence seeing it from the design perspective there is the director of the initiative itself but, also, there is the director at the design school who leads students’ work). Finally, we also need a good photography director and a post-production team that will edit and give rhythm to the whole piece.

By wondering what could be a pertinent aesthetic approach to the rhythm of CCs, we find that Neorealism14, for the purposes of this article, can bring us closer to the world of the these communities since, as a cinematographic move-ment, Neorealism was characterized by its high creativity/low budget aspects.

After the Second World War Italian cinematographic studios were destroyed and filmmakers had to go out into to the streets to capture their images. Neo-realism used non-professional actors, just as CCs are formed by non-profes-sional, creative people (considering professional creatives: architects, designers, advertisers, filmmakers, etc.) but most important in Neorealism was the man-agement of sound. It seems that sound management was the added value that Neorealism gave to the global knowledge of cinema. Sound and music in Neo-realism were taken from reality itself (unlike what cinema used to do).

In the Neorealist film Bike Thief (1948) we find the bicycle as a metaphor for hard but somehow joyful struggle within the limits of the world. It is not coin-cidence that bikes are always there when a “revolution” or a social transition is taking place, such as today when we associate biking with sustainable mobility.

Somehow, all those involved in Design for Social Innovation and Sustain-ability are learning to ride this new bike, where skills need to be developed,

Now, let us cross to the other side, the loud one. For mainstream city devel-opers and investors, silence can be a disaster as John Tackara, design thinker affirms after his last trip to the city: “Turkey’s 30 year long construction boom is losing momentum. True, the sound of jackhammers was pervasive in Istanbul during our visit – but the cold winds of the global crisis are making themselves felt. An estimated 600,000 dwellings stand unsold in the city and, in January, a first attempt to raise private funding for a third bridge across the Bosphorous failed. Not a single company showed interest […] Back in 1995, Mayor Erdo-gan of Istanbul declared that a third bridge would be “murder” for forests and reservoirs around the city. Irreplaceable green areas and wetlands, of unique ecological importance, would be destroyed by the bridge, its associated roads, and subsequent development. Trouble is, just because a property bubble is Too Big to Fail does not mean it will not fail. If the jackhammers do fall silent, what would happen to Istanbul then? […] I’d been struggling with a challenge: how to explain, to a bunch of bright architects and city managers, that retrofitting solar panels and green roofs will not be an adequate response to the energy challenges that are upon us”12.

By reading Thackara’s words concerning the big developers, we feel even more eager to talk about SOLOS and Creative Communities because, even if they appear as a bunch of unorganized street sellers or utopians, there is also the possibility for alternative ways of development.

So neither silence, nor full noise is needed, and this balance is called, rhythm.Further to the thesis years, the realization has been this: SOLOS, as well as

Creative Communities, by having a connection to the countryside, reusing a great deal of material, treasuring old artifacts, re-creating the material culture and believing in self-sufficiency, have acquired a particular and radically differ-ent sense of time and place. But to better address these characteristics, let us now move on to Creative Communities.

TAKE 2

Creative Communities (CC). The rhythm of joy

From the single rhythms of SOLOS we move towards the common rhythms of those individuals that have decided to counteract the modern stream of produc-tion and consumerism. If SOLOS provide the city and themselves with handy solutions, the groups of people we are about to describe provide, beyond poetry: services.

Creative Communities are groups of active people who have organized, worldwide: communitarian libraries, community-supported agricultural and urban gardens, co-housing initiatives, carpooling, bike-sharing, neighborhood care services for both children and the elderly, talent exchange using social net-works, Time Banks etc. Like SOLOS, these communities also use a great deal of their creativity to improve their livelihood; they also see the building po-

12 Thackara,J.Istanbul: City of Seeds[online].DoorsofPerception,April2012.[Consultation:Jul12,2012].Availableat:http://www.doorsofperception.com/city-eco-lab/istanbul-city-of-seeds/#more-359113

13 EzioManzini.2012SirMishaMedalrecipienthasbeenworkinginthefieldofdesignforsustainability.Mostrecently,hisinterestshavespecificallyfocusedonsocialinnovation,consideredasamajordriverofsustainablechange,andwhatdesigncandotosupportit.Manzinihasexploredandpromoteddesignindifferentfields,includingDesignofMaterialsinthe1980s;StrategicDesigninthe1990s(creatingaMaster’sDegreeCourseinStrategicDesignatthePolitecnicoinMilan);andsince2000startingspecificcoursesinServiceDesigninthesameinstitution.Takenfrom:http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=515455&GroupId=515454&

14 Verdone,M.Il Cinema Neorealista, da Rossellini a Pasolini.Palermo:Ed.Celebes,1977.


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take time to “socialize”, theirs is a shared-time in which the other actors of the streets are part of their stage, they need time to be in tune with other SOLOS, hence this is what brings quality and value to their lives. In the case of the CCs, they are complex organizations where “deep interactions ask for new ideas and new experiences of time: the time needed to build enriching complexity and deep relationships. The time of complexity is plural. It is an ecology of time where different times, with different characteristics and different paces, coex-ist”16. Manzini considers this to be a delicate point and uses the idea of the Slow Food movement to explain it: “the slowness to which Slow Food refers is not quality in itself – nothing is good just because it is slow. But slowness is a neces-sary requirement for the production and an appreciation of (deep) quality. That is, the quality of being at the same time – good, clean and fair –”.

By observing both, SOLOS and CCs, we can say that they introduce novel and more sustainable behaviors “counting on their own resources, without wait-ing for a general change in the politics, in the economy, or in the institutional and infrastructural assets of the system”17. They display a sustainability that also comprises emotional elements, such as the “pleasure of struggling”18.

To conclude, I would add that there is a bridge between these two actors, mediating beats of faith, hope, humor and love to arrange harmony and thus to re-imagine life. That is the rhythm of Social Innovation: a “Jam Session i.e., new patterns of sounds in a harmonic way”19.

equilibrium should be maintained and the rhythm needs to be consistent.

Ayabe. A slow rhythm

Continuing the example started in the SOLOS section, I’d like to portray the beats of a CC found in Japan: The Ayabe Ladies (Photos. 6, 7).

Theirs is a very slow rhythm. Slow, not because of their age (85 on average), but because of the whole atmosphere which sur-rounds them (a forest 2 hours from Kyoto). Their strong cultural roots hold them together, roots from which quality is produced.

During the cold winter of South-Western Japan, they collect chestnuts transforming the nuts into flour from which – following an artisanal process – they produce snacks, which are, at times, distributed in Kyoto and Tokyo thanks to a small network.

What is remarkable here, besides the manufacturing process, is to see how active these women keep. They are an example for the whole community, including younger generations that nowa-days in Japan have to face the fact that the countryside, some years from now, will be vacant.

Regarding the concept of time and this initiative, we can re-call Manzini’s words referring to the Slow Food movement: “The quality of things, of all things, cannot be produced in a hurry and it cannot truly be recognized without dedicating time. Deep quality is the result of a slow social process in which the ability to do goes hand in hand with the ability to recognize”15.

TAKE 3

Time: the connecting factor

As I said, SOLOS and CCs conceive time as a different dimension, different to how the urban stream of production and consump-tion perceives it. They take their time to offer quality and, some-how, they also contemplate more.

This contemplation allows them to think and enjoy better and also to recall. Indian designer, Jogi Pangal, states that “in India, the sense of the word quality is: what can be remembered”. As social artifacts, the initiatives developed by the CCs do stay in the memory of those who look at them from the outside and in the inner/intuitive action of their own daily life. The initiatives become part of their daily pulse as do the recurrent beats of their movements.

Both SOLOS and CCs live at a slower pace. In the case of SOLOS it is true, among other reasons, because they do not have to obey an established (office) schedule; they are their own bosses and thus manage their own time; they also

16 Ibídem.

17 Ibídem.

18 Meroni,A.(ed.).Creative Communities. People inventing sustainable ways of living.Milan:EdizioniPolidesign,2007.

19 ManziniE.;TassinariV.Op. Cit.

15 ManziniE.,TassinariV.DESISPhTalk#1"DiscussionpaperpresentedattheDesisPhilosophyTalk#1:"EmergingAesthetics"onFriday,March2,2012,promotedbyParsonsDesisLabSchoolofDesignStrategiesParsonstheNewSchoolforDesign". Note:

WithinDESISthereisachapterdevotedtoVideotheaimofwhichistopreciselyresearchnewwaysofrepresentationusingvideonotonlyasatooltocollectmaterialorcreatearepositorybutasafundamentalpartofthemodelingoftheinitiativesoftheCC.Towatchthischapter’sfirststepsandtoknowbetterourcommunities,pleasevisit:http://www.youtube.com/user/DESISNETWORK

i Photo6-7.TheAyabeLadies.Japan.A.Mendoza.2011

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Cultural density

Self-organisation

Smart car

Open source

Creativity

Sensorial qualities

E-bike

Systemic design

Digital signage

Interaction design

Urban acupuncture

Social innovation

Interaction

Interface

Mutant intervention



Smart light

Mallification

Test intervention


Networking

Augmented reality

Beat

Control system

Smart home

Social software

Wikicity

Smart city

Slow design

Soft approach

Nanobiomimetics: Learning from nature

For millions of years, nature has practised bind-ing different atoms to produce larger structures, giving rise to the principles of nanoscience. Using nanoscale-sized building blocks to create other macroscale-sized structures, nature has found a way to bind cellulose molecules to build fibres that are in turn used to build other larger materials such as cotton; proteins are bound together to create colla-gen fibres that are used to build tendons, cartilage, muscles, skin etc., among many other examples.

Also millions of years ago, nature provided Edel-weiss flowers with filamentous nanostructures that make these flowers extremely resistant to ultravio-let radiation. Thanks to these nanostructures, Edel-weiss flowers are capable of withstanding environ-mental conditions at high mountain altitudes (3,000 m above sea level), where they grow and thrive. Sim-ilarly, the nanostructured surface of moth eyes al-lows these insects to capture light in a more efficient way for enhanced nocturnal vision. These nanoes-tructures have inspired scientists to come up with ideas on how to improve solar cell performance.

What is “nanotechnology”?

The world of “nano”

In order to explain what nanotechnology is, we need to take a plunge into the world of “nano”. The pre-fix “nano” comes from the Greek word nanos, which means “dwarf”. Currently, “nano” is defined as one billionth of a part. For example, one nanometre is the result of dividing one metre by one billion equal parts, or equivalently, one millimetre by one million equal parts. The second example most likely gives us a clearer picture of the size range we are dealing with when talking about “nano-sized” things.

The nanoscale moves within a range of up to 100-200 nanometres (nm). A human hair is 90,000 nm in diameter, a red blood cell is approximately 7,000 nm in size, the wavelength of the visible spectrum of light ranges between 400 and 700 nm, a virus mea-sures about 100 nm and DNA double helix measures around 2 nm. These comparisons give us an idea of nanotechnology’s minuscule scale and also serve to introduce the most experienced and successful nan-otechnologist known to mankind: nature.

Self-cleaning

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Nanotechnology

Heura Ventura (1984, Barcelona) studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Elisava School of Design, as well as Materials Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). She also holds as Master’s Degree in Textile Engineering from the UPC. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Elisava School faculty, combining her work as a professor with other work as a collaborator in materials research projects.

What’s Nanotechnology, where it comes from and what can be done with it? Nature serves as inspiration for developing new nanostructures and nanomaterials with truly amazing properties, as well as an overview of the fields where nanotechnology can help achieve fascinating breakthroughs.This article aims to explain different systems that use nanotechnology to maintain functional product properties for extended periods of time, resulting in longer useful product life cycles; to better maintain visual product appearance by reducing "premature product ageing" as perceived by users; or for self-repair purposes, to eliminate the need for product replacement or repair.

“The nanotechnology can help achieve a functional added value”

Unlimited nanotechnology

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is chemical vapour deposition, where the interac-tion between a high-energy beam and a suitable gas produces nanoparticles that are deposited on a substrate, resulting in a coating that is only a few nanometres thin.

Nanotechnology and consumption

To a certain extent, today’s consumption-based so-ciety “forces” the market to continually devise new astonishing proposals, solutions and technologies. We are increasingly surrounded by high-perfor-mance products and devices, in which technology plays a key role. A clear example of this is found in the field of communication technology, specifically the mobile technology sector, which has undergone a complete makeover within a very short period of time. Nowadays, mobile phones not only have to make users reachable 24/7, but also need to be light-weight, efficient, recyclable, and safe, as well as in-clude Internet access, gaming and social networking applications etc. This also applies to computers and other electronic devices such as tablets and video-game consoles. In a context where remarkable prog-ress is being made on a day-to-day basis, our tech-nology-consuming society is eager to learn about new products with surprising new features, avidly seeking them out and taking great interest in them.

At present, nanomaterials have two basic ap-plications: first and foremost, as polymer rein-forcements to obtain plastic nanocomposites with fascinating and enhanced properties, but also as continuous-layer or nanoparticle-containing coat-ings that give special finishes to glass, walls, steel structures etc. These exciting properties and special finishes, coupled with society’s thirst for new daz-zling products, have given birth to an unmistakable interest in nanotechnology, given the enormous and highly functional value it can add to products.

As a result, nanomaterials research is growing exponentially, yielding an ever-increasing number of nanotechnology-based products. Furthermore, the breakneck pace of product research and devel-opment has in turn led to the wide-spread avail-ability of materials (e.g. nanocomposites), which

— Surface finishes such as anti-fungal, anti-bacteri-al, photocatalytic, anti-pollution, stain-resistant, water and oil repellent, self-cleaning or easy-to-clean, self-repairing, anti-fog, anti-reflective and even iridescent finishes.

— Reinforcement of materials to obtain nano-composite materials. Reinforcements are found as nanoparticles or nanofibres, as well as other nanoscale-sized forms.

— In technological applications, nanotechnology helps us build more efficient solar cells, effec-tive filtration systems, small monitoring devices, smaller and more powerful computers and mo-bile devices etc.

— In medicine, the use of nanoparticles is being studied to create new systems for diagnosing and curing cancer, as well as localised and con-trolled drug-delivery systems, among others.

These effects are largely achieved thanks to the application of nanomaterials such as nanoparticles, nanocoatings, nanostructured surfaces etc.

Nanomaterials manufacturing

There are two basic approaches to obtain nanomate-rials: top-down and bottom-up.

The top-down approach starts with larger-than-nanoscale-sized particles or blocks and progres-sively removes excess material until both the desired shape and nanometric size are achieved. One could say that this method is similar to sculpting a block of marble, which starts with a large block from which excess material is removed until the desired shape is obtained. One example of the top-down ap-proach is the lithographic process used to manufac-ture computer microchips.

Conversely, the bottom-up approach starts with small building blocks that are gradually arranged and assembled until the desired nanostructure or nanomaterial is obtained. In this case, an illustrat-ing analogy would be that of the process of building a brick wall, where small building blocks (bricks) are piled up in a certain order to achieve the de-sired structure (wall). One example of this approach

Also for millions of years, gecko lizards have been able to climb up walls and walk upside down thanks to feet filaments finer than human hair with multiple mushroom-shaped nanostructured termi-nations that stick to dry surfaces without the use of adhesive substances. In this case, nature has given us ideas on how to develop new nanostructure-based dry adhesive systems.

The leaves of lotus f lowers are yet another ex-ample. These leaves have a rough surface with wax nanocrystals that confer superhydrophobic (water repellent) properties to this plant. As water drop-lets do not spread out across these leaves, they keep them clean by picking up any dirt particles they find along their path. This hydrophobic effect has inspired coatings devised to create stain-resistant, easy-to-clean or self-cleaning surfaces, which are very useful in applications such as furniture or car upholstery and work clothing.

Definition and applications of nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is an applied science that lets us create nanoscale-sized devices, materials and struc-tures with astounding features. When factors such as specific surface or quantum effects come into play, materials acquire different properties within the nanoscale range than those otherwise displayed. In fact, materials such as gold, when reduced to na-no-sized particles, have different optical properties (12-nm gold particles are not gold, but reddish in colour) and even different melting points (1060 °C for gold macroparticles, compared to around 650 ºC for gold nanoparticles).

Thanks to the study of nature and nanoscience research, we now have a better understanding of the nanoscale properties of materials and can apply nanotechnology to a number of fields, including1:

“There are two basic approaches to obtain nanomaterials: top-down and bottom-up”

i Gecko feet filaments (below) and nanofilaments scheme about

sticking to dry surfaces (above)

1 Ashby, M. F; Ferreira, P. J.; Schodek D. L. “Nanomaterial Product Forms and Functions”. In: Ashby, M. F; Ferreira, P. J.; Schodek D. L. Nanomaterials, Nanotechnologies and Design. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2009, p. 403-465.

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In sports such as tennis, the bounce of the ball is critical to the game. Tennis balls have a single inner rubber ball that contains air at a certain pressure (to ensure bounce). This rubber ball is then lined with fabric made of characteristic yellow filaments. Al-beit low, the inner rubber ball does have some gas permeability; furthermore, inner pressure is not easily maintained due to strong impacts to the ball as the game is played. With use, tennis balls eventu-ally stop bouncing properly, and without a mecha-nism for re-inflation, they are ultimately thrown out into the trash. Tennis balls are a product with a very limited life span. However, if we apply an inner nanosealer (a thin nanocoating film), we can create a gas barrier – using the same mechanism described above – that doubles the tennis ball’s useful life5. This also cuts the need for product replacement in half, resulting in other environmentally friendly ef-fects, such as lower waste disposal and reduced raw material requirements. The same concept can also be used to improve performance in products such as inner tubes. In this case, however, product life is not lengthened, but maintenance requirements are reduced (inner tube swelling).

Fresh food products (such as packaged meat), soft drinks and beer are industry sectors that are especially vulnerable to the effects of packaging gas permeability, as inefficient packaging materials that let gases either escape or penetrate can spoil the product. One way to extend the shelf life of these food products is to pack them using packaging ma-terials that are capable of blocking the passage of gases. The applications of nanoclays in a variety of plastic matrices have been extensively studied to achieve proper gas barrier effects in food packaging. Studies have also been conducted to enhance gas barrier properties in polymers such as PLA6 (a bio-degradable plastic) to produce improved packaging containers that are more environmentally friendly

other effects, as compared to other non-reinforced polymers. Reinforced polymers can also be used as thin films or nanocoatings.

Two clear examples of products that have en-hanced their functionality thanks to nanotechnol-ogy – with gas barrier properties prolonging their useful life – include tennis balls and soft drink bottles. In both cases, proper nanoclay dispersion in the polymer matrix creates a distribution of small elements that hinder the passage of gases. As shown in the diagram 1, gases would need to follow an in-tricate path to pass through the wall, making such passage a very difficult task. As such, gas permeabil-ity is reduced, preventing inner gases from escaping and outer gases from penetrating easily.

to be replaced or, at best, repaired, re-painted or embellished. Also, the launching of new products with improved features can lead to the product’s

“premature product ageing”. Within this system and given the environment that has been emerging over the past few years, responsible consumers are look-ing for higher quality and value-added products, in an attempt to purchase the best products that may be kept in the best condition for the longest peri-od of time. This is where nanotechnology can help achieve this functional added value.

How does nanotechnology help lengthen product life cycles?Nanotechnology offers a huge array of options that are difficult to classify, as a single finishing product can sometimes produce several value-added effects. As regards products, nanotechnology can lengthen product life in three different ways: by maintaining functional product properties for longer periods of time, thus extending their useful life; by maintain-ing visual product appearance in better conditions, thus reducing “premature product ageing” as per-ceived by users; or by repairing products either by self-repair or by quicker and simpler repairs, avoid-ing costly replacements or procedures.

Nanotechnology to extend product

functionality

As mentioned earlier, one of nanotechnology’s ma-jor focuses is to obtain nanofillers (such as carbon nanotubes, fullerenes or nanoclays) for polymer reinforcement. In very small amounts – as little as 1-5% –, nanofillers can substantially modify the properties of the plastics to which they are added. But in addition to mechanical reinforcement (i.e. higher strength), nanoparticles can also improve other very interesting properties. For example, add-ing carbon nanotubes to plastic can make it tougher but also electrically conductive (even though poly-mers are insulators by nature). Similarly, nanoclay-reinforced polymers have greater flame resistance and display better gas barrier properties, among

have been made available even before knowing how to dispose of them at the end of their life cycle, or whether or not these materials involve any environ-mental or health risks. Despite efforts being made in this direction, a consensus on this matter has yet to be reached, as evidenced by a considerable num-ber of research studies investigating the effects of nanoparticles on human health and the environ-ment, compiled in literature review articles2; the creation or re-structuring of regulating bodies to oversee regulatory and legislation matters; and proj-ects implemented to learn more about these nano-materials3, such as the Recytube Project4 to assess the recyclability of carbon nanotubes, currently one of the nanoparticles of greatest interest. Admittedly,

it was not until recently that we became aware of these issues, with the lack of consensus being com-pounded by a generalised complaint regarding the lack of information and regulations. Surprisingly enough, nanotechnology has been within our reach without first having any testing, labelling or nomen-clature standards in place.

Therefore, the current trend in consumption can be summed up in one word: speed. Most products purchased are quickly replaced for other newer ones, as even the slightest change in their original appear-ance makes them seem like old products that need

i Diagram 1

O2

CO2

Content Content

Without nanoclay(Direct Path)

With nanoclay(Tortuous Path)

100% PET

O2

CO2

PET + nanoclay

PET

PET

2 Maynard, A. D. “Nanotecnology: assessing the risks”. Nano Today, vol. 1, No. 2 (2006), p. 22-33.

3 Karluss, T. et al. “FORUM. Research Strategies for Safety Evaluation of Nanomaterials, Part VIII: International Efforts to Develop Risk-Based Safety Evaluations for Nanomaterials”. Toxicological Sciences, vol. 92, No. 1 (2006), p. 23-32.

4 Recytube Project [online]. [Consultation: June 20, 2012]. Available at: http://www.recytube.eu/

5 InMat Inc. Press release, 2001: “New technology doubles the life of tennis balls” [online]. [Consultation: April 13, 2012]. Available at: http://www.inmat.com/newsdocs/InMat-Press-release.htm

6 Picard, E.; Espuche, E.; Fulchiron, R.. “Effect of an organo-modified montmorillonite on PLA crystallization and gas barrier properties”. Applied clay science, 53 (2011), p. 58-65

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the stain slips until it falls off the fabric. The un-treated side of this fabric can absorb water or sweat, making it both comfortable and practical. Fabrics with this type of finish can be used to manufacture upholstery, work clothing, ties, shoes etc., creating a wide array of products that need less washing and are easier to maintain. These fabrics can even ex-tend product life considerably in products such as furniture that do not allow for the removal of fab-rics for washing.

The second hydrophilia-based system is used on glass and walls to achieve the self-cleaning ef-fect. In this case, water spreads quickly across the surface upon contact, wetting it and creating a thin film that falls by gravity like a curtain, sweeping up dirt and dust along the way. These finishes are made of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, which may be applied as clear coatings to skyscraper glass windows or to the exterior walls of buildings. It is easy to see how these finishes help make skyscraper windows easier to clean or maintain simply by wet-ting them, but they are also extremely useful on car windshields, as they not only maintain visibility by keeping the windshield clean, but also improve visibility during severe rainstorms, thus providing car windshields with an added safety feature. As re-gards the second example, the application of these products to the exterior walls of building helps them stay cleaner longer, reducing the need to re-paint façades, among other things.

Thanks to their specific nature, TiO2 nanopar-ticles not only provide these surfaces with self-cleaning properties, but can also help clean up the environment (anti-pollution effect) by preventing unsightly fungal growth on wall surfaces, thanks to their photocatalytic effect. This effect, which occurs when ultraviolet light interacts with TiO2 nanopar-ticles, triggers an oxidation reaction of organic mat-ter, affecting bacteria and fungi (preventing mould and mildew growth on walls), as well as volatile organic compounds and NOx, which are common air pollutants in large cities. Given that these pollut-ants are reduced to carbon dioxide, water and other non-toxic products, these nanoparticles may also be

To further illustrate how nanotechnology helps reduce the need for product maintenance, below is a discussion on self-cleaning surfaces, which are closely related to easy-to-clean or anti-stain prod-ucts, among other examples10. Self-cleaning sur-faces can have one of two completely opposite sys-tems: superhydrophobicity or hydrophilicity. These systems play with surface energy either to make fluids spread out easily, wetting the entire surface (hydrophilicity), or to make fluids remain as drops on top of the surface without wetting it (hydropho-bicity). The resulting effect will be one or the other depending on the surface energy needed to create the liquid-air surface. If great energy is required and the solid-liquid surface energy is lower, liquid drops will tend to maximise contact with the solid surface, spreading out over such surface. Conversely, if little energy is required and the solid-liquid sur-face energy is higher, then the liquid drops will tend to minimise contact with the solid surface by taking a rounded shape.

The superhydrophobic system mentioned earlier as an example of nanobiomimetics, is based on the lotus flower effect. It consists in achieving a surface that is water repellent to such an extent that drops of water (or stains) slide over the surface without wetting it. Water drops then carry any dirt, dust or other debris along with them as they slide over the surface, thus producing the self-cleaning effect. An-ti-stain fabrics are one example of this system. These fabrics have a fluorocarbon-based surface finish that provides the finished side with superior hydropho-bicity or water repellency. Therefore, when a drop of tomato or soy sauce spills on the treated surface,

in terms of their final disposal. Also, adding certain nanoparticles (such as silver nanoparticles7, which are known for their anti-bacterial properties) to plastic packaging materials8, may result in active packaging9 that helps preserve food for longer pe-riods of time.

As another case in point, beer bottles are tra-ditionally made of glass, specifically because of its impermeability to gases. Glass bottles, however, are heavy and fragile, making them difficult to transport. But conventional plastic bottles are not a feasible alternative either, due to their lack of suit-able gas barrier properties. Thanks to nanotechnol-ogy, however, bottles with thin intermediate layers (nanosealers) containing nanoclays are now being produced, providing the appropriate conditions for the beer bottling process, as these nanosealers pre-vent oxygen from penetrating and carbon dioxide from escaping.

Nanotechnology to maintain good product

appearance

For some time now, manufacturers have been sell-ing refrigerators made with anti-fingerprint metal surfaces, or clothing made with water- and stain-repellent fabrics. From scratch-resistant anti-reflec-tive coatings to anti-graffiti walls, nanotechnology has shown to have many applications where main-taining good product appearance is crucial. These applications, which usually make use of nanocoat-ings, extend product life by reducing the need for re-placement due to deterioration in visual appearance. However, reducing the need for maintenance is also seen as a factor that may extend product life.

Superhydrophilicity

Air

Liquid

Substratum Substratum

LiquidAir

Superhidrophobicity

7 Robinson, Douglas K. R.; Morrison, Mark J. “Nanotechnologies for food Packaging: Reporting the science and technology research trends” [online]. Observatory NANO, August 2010. [Consultation: July 17, 2012]. Available at: http://www.observatorynano.eu/project/filesystem/files/Food%20Packaging%20Report%202010%20DKR%20Robinson.pdf

8 Soutter, W. “Silver Nanoparticles as Antimicrobial Agent”. [online]. 2012. [Consultation: July 19, 2012]. Available at: http://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=3056 Will Soutter

9 Silvestre, C.; Duraccio, D.; Cimmino, S. “Food packaging based on polymer nanomaterials”. Progress in Polymer Science, 36, 2011, p. 1766-1782.

10 Greßler, S.; Fiedeler, U.; Simkó, M.; Gazsó, A.; Nentwich, M. “Self-cleaning, dirt and water-repellent coatings on the basis of nanotechnology”. Nano Trust Dossiers [online], No. 20 (2010), p. 1-6. [Consultation: July 19, 2012]. Available at: http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/0xc1aa500d_0x0024fa56.pdf.

i The superhydrophobic system is based on the lotus flower

effect

i These fabrics have a fluorocarbon-based surface finish that

provides the finished side with superior hydrophobicity or water

repellency

i Diagram 2



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lead to greater control and re-utilisation of nanoma-terials (chain of custody system), in turn translating into substantial savings in both economic and envi-ronmental costs.

All of this leads to one main question: What is the final balance of using nanoparticles that are ca-pable of killing both harmless and harmful bacteria, or nanoparticles that may involve risks if not prop-erly controlled? And we need to ask ourselves this question because, in order to achieve revolution-ary breakthroughs in science (and medicine), new developments need to take advantage of the “fas-cinating properties” that nanoscale-sized materials can offer, such as lower weight, greater efficiency, increased durability, enhanced properties etc. On this same note, it is important to underscore that in the 7th Framework R&D Programme of the Eu-ropean Union, a substantial number of lines of re-search focused on the study of nanotechnology and its risks13.

ConclusionsThis article discusses several examples of how nano-technology uses different mechanisms to help ex-tend product life. Products using nanotechnology

– a trend that seems to be on the rise – are already on the market.

However, we must not forget that before these products reach mass market levels, we need to have clear and effective regulations in place to allow for extensive use of these products without health or environmental risks. Nanomaterials are not hazard-ous per se, but we do need to take certain consider-ations into account, as with some chemical products, like batteries or drugs.

Using nanotechnology to add value to products allows us to produce more efficient, lower-mainte-nance and ultimately more environment-friendly products, but this needs to be done keeping the full product life cycle in mind. By doing so, we could provide for residue recovery, which could eventually

ed to the material. Then, as cracks in the material become progressively larger, the capsules rupture and release a healing agent that reacts with the cata-lyst to produce a curing reaction that solidifies and seals the crack, as shown in the following diagram 3. Although most research studies have focused on microscale-sized capsules or tubes, some studies are currently investigating the development of nano-capsules12.

used to create purification and odour-eliminating systems. This last example clearly shows how nano-technology can add significant value to products.

Nanotechnology for product repair

There are some wax nanoparticle-based products that are currently being marketed as car scratch removers or polishers. However, one of nanotech-nology’s strongest future prospects is in the field of self-repairing materials, i.e. materials that include

“smart” systems capable of reverting mechanical damage, among other things, without the need for costly procedures, the same way snails are able to self-repair cracks and damage to their shells.

Developing metal paint coatings capable of re-verting damage caused by scratching or cracking is important because any deterioration of metal coat-ings can lead to corrosion of the underlying metal parts. As regards aesthetic damage, self-repairing coatings can also help save on money and raw ma-terials by eliminating the need for automobile re-painting. And in the case of certain construction blocks such as cement walls or slabs, the appearance of cracks can be fatal to the strength of the entire structure. As such, removing any damage to stress concentrators, thereby minimising the possibility of mechanical failure, could undoubtedly prove to be one of nanotechnology’s most important appli-cations. Self-repairing systems are still under study, but current knowledge suggests that sufficiently de-veloped systems may become available in the not so distant future.

The most studied self-repair function11 is based on the encapsulation of healing agents (essentially polymer resins) inside relatively fragile spheres or tubes. Both the capsules and small particles con-taining the proper catalyst for these agents, are add-

Initial Point Crack

1

2

3

4

sealed wall

propagation

+wall rupture

combination

resin

+catalyst

11 Ashby, M. F.; Ferreira, P. J.; Schodek D. L. Op.Cit.

Cho, S.H.; White, S.R.; Braun, P.V. “Self-Healing Polymer Coatings”. Advanced Materials, núm. 21 (2009), p. 645-649.

12 Blaiszik, B.J.; Sottos, N.R.; White, S.R. “Nanocapsules for self-healing materials”. Composites Science and Technology, núm. 68 (2008), p. 978-986.

13 Fries, R.; Gazsó, A. “Research projects on EHS aspects of nanotechnology in the 7th Framework Program of the EU”. Nano Trust Dossiers [online], No. 30 (2012), p. 1-6. [Consultation: July 17, 2012.]. Available at: http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/0xc1aa500d_0x002b2673.pdf

i Diagram 3


“Using nanotechnology to add value to products allows us to produce more efficient, lower-maintenance and ultimately more environment-friendly products””

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Cultural density

Self-organisation

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Smart car

Open source

Creativity

Sensorial qualities

Systemic design

Digital signage

Interaction design

Urban acupuncture

Social innovation

Interaction

Self-cleaning

Interface

Mutant intervention



Smart light

Mallification

Test intervention

Nanotechnology


Networking

Augmented reality

Beat

Social software

Smart city

Slow design

Soft approach

Control system

Smart home

Wikicity

E-bike

Architect, engineer and agitprop, Carlo Ratti owns the Turin-based carlorattiassociati | walter nicolino & carlo ratti studio and leads the MIT SENSEable City Lab in Boston, USA. A graduate of both the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris, he also has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. Ratti has contributed to over 200 publications, and his work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, the Disseny Hub in Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, the GAFTA in San Francisco, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Fast Company has named him among its “50 Most Influential Designers in America” in 2011.

Talk To Me. This was the faintly Almodóvar-inspired title of the show curated by Paola Antonelli and Kate Carmody at the MoMA in New York that finished last November. The idea was simple: in recent years, the digital revolution has brought many electronic devices into our everyday lives. These devices have en-dowed our objects, our houses and even our cities with the ability to “talk”, i.e. to interact with us. All this is radically changing our way of living and, with it, the role of designers, who now need to be able to operate across a very variable range of disciplines.

Paola Antonelli, who knows something about the zeitgeist, seems to have picked up on one of those trends destined to leave a mark. Could Talk To Me be the key to the future of architecture and design? It can certainly be considered the key theme of projects that our studio has been focusing on in recent months, from the bike that you can turn into an e-bike (electric & electronic bike) just by changing its rear wheel, to the domestic kitchen with an internet link. Every day, new ways emerge for people to interact with the objects around them. Let’s see how, by taking a look at some of our projects.

The Connected KitchenWhat will the kitchen of the future be like? That is a tough question, and the first clue to answering it is this: from next year, many electrical appliances will con-tain a chip that enables them to connect to the internet and to network with one another (courtesy of Zigbee, a cheap, limited-bandwidth Wi-Fi link). But how ex-actly will this innovation affect our way of cooking and doing household chores?

From the microchip to the Planet

“Our objects, our houses and even our cities with the ability to “talk”, i.e. to interact with us”

in collaboration with Andrea Cassi, Martine Grange and Jenni Young

The projects presented in this article focus on the interaction generated between people and objects, from the household all the way to the urban scale. Integrating and displaying data is transforming everyday objects and environments and the trend will allow us to discover new uses for digital technology.

Carlo Ratti


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lets. How about an oven with a built-in video camera, for example? We could keep an eye on the soufflé while an-swering our email in the lounge, or we could send pictures showing the chicken roasting away to our friends who are coming round for a meal. (A futuristic way to say “The din-ner’s on! …”)

In similar vein, there is scope for a new take on the idea of an “intelligent fridge” that could recognise the type and number of foods in it and remind us when the milk is about to run out. This old concept dates back over ten years, but it has never become reality for lack of a universal means of automatically identifying objects using RFID. Now, though, it could be implemented simply by collecting data inside the fridge with sensors and video cameras.

Data access will be a key feature of the domestic appliances of the near future. They will enable us to monitor the larder, to do the shopping instantly, to check the nutritional and allergen information about what we eat, and to share recipes with our friends. And, more generally, they will help make our homes smarter, by pursuing an old dream that has not yet become reality but will when the platforms become simple, integrable and economic. Think, for example, of the great success that the Nest thermostat has enjoyed in the USA. It installs itself and is easy to control online by computer or via telephone; it can become a new talking point within the family, as the children play with the temperature settings or vie with one another to reduce energy use.

The Copenhagen WheelThere will be changes not only in the home but also in our means of transport. The bicycle is the simplest and most popular means of transport on the market. We thought that it would be useful to make it more intelligent, in order to incentivise sustainable mobility – but how? How could we make the bicycle easier to use without spoiling the simple pleasures of a bike ride? In 2009, we worked on a joint research project with the city of Copenhagen. We set up a team of designers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, programmers and interactivity specialists; after a few months, they came up with the design known as The Copenhagen Wheel. It can electrify any bicycle simply by replacing the traditional rear wheel. Our wheel is completely autonomous, capturing the energy generated by pedalling and braking (as in hybrid cars) and storing it for when you need some extra juice to get up a hill. Free of external batteries, wires or levers, The Copenhagen Wheel is controlled by your feet as you cycle, ready to give you a boost like a virtual companion silently pedalling along behind. The wheel has a Bluetooth interface to send the data captured with its sensors to the cyclist’s smartphone in real time. The

First of all, if our appliances are online, it will be easier for us to interact with them. There will be no need to rummage through the manual to select one of the washing machine’s innumerable programmes or to scratch our heads over how to set the cooking curve for a soufflé (which needs a series of temperature adjust-ments from 220 down to 160 degrees). We shall simply be able to access all these functions by talking directly to the appliance via one of those interfaces that have now become part of our everyday lives: a smartphone or iPad-like tablet.

So what will become of the refrigerator, dishwasher, oven or stove? Perhaps the answer lies in the incestuous relationship between Apple’s iPod and iTunes, where the latter lets us manage all our digital content while the former just gives us a simplified way to access it. Similarly, the electrical appliance would be freed from all its control interfaces and could be given a radical makeover (literally!) to appear in a whole range of different guises. Its interface, on the other hand, would enable us to use only its basic functions: on/off, cooking time, tempera-ture, etc. Continuing along these lines, we have dreamed up a touch-sensitive concealed handle with front lighting from a strip of interactive LEDs that tell you in a stylish, striking way – even from a distance – what is happening inside the appliance (e.g. when a program is ending, or how cooked the food is).

We call it the “sensing ray” to emphasise how it monitors the house. Indeed, it can alert us to a gas leak or tell us about the air quality; it can gather a mass of data and put it on the internet (in the cloud) for us to consult from our tab-

i In the space of a year, all domestic appliances will have the potential to be connected: they

can then be controlled via a remote app that can be installed on personal devices

u Simple and intuitive interactive experiences invited people to enjoy the space and get a feel

for the proposed concept. Photo: Max Tomasinelli

u The interactive induction hob has a new integrated touch-control interface.

Photo: Alberto Sinigaglia

u The Sensing Ray shows the status of your domestic appliances and, when touched, it opens

out to become a handle. Photo: Alberto Sinigaglia

“Data access will be a key feature of domestic appliances of near future.”

Carlo Ratti From the Microchip to the Planet

t The Copenhagen Wheel, 2009


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times and how long before the next bus arrives. In this way, digital technology will provide a means to gather information about the city while offering a useful service to local people.

Real Time RomeUrban mobility is also the theme underlying one of Senseable City Lab’s first projects: Real Time Rome, created in 2006 for the Venice Bi-ennale. The project analysed journeys made by millions of people in the Eternal City. By look-ing at a particular scenario, like the 2006 foot-ball World Cup final, we mapped the city in an innovative and dynamic way, making use of mobile-phone traceability. Using real-time maps, we could follow what happened on that famous night: the army of Italian fans was totally silent during the match, between 8 and 11pm, when they did not use their phones at all, except in great bursts during the breaks; there was total silence during the most crucial moments in the game (like Zidane’s infamous headbutt); and finally there was the eruption of joy as the fans telephoned each other and hared all around the city in celebration. The project’s basic principle can easily be applied to local government planning mechanisms, with a view to improving quality of life and increasing understanding of the urban ecosystem. Indeed, in Real Time Rome, collective mobility was studied by mining the mo-bile telephone network for traffic information and relating it to the movements of cars, pedestrians and public transport. By overlaying this kind of information with the city’s topography, we could illustrate the relationship between physi-cal features and urban flows. These dynamic maps help us to understand how the different areas of the city are used during the day, for example, and how the distribution of buses and taxis relates to population density.

information gathered about the route travelled, the distance covered and the speeds reached can help give riders a real, direct sense of the place where they live; thus, The Copenhagen Wheel fosters public awareness of and respect for the environment. Moreover, data of general interest – like atmospheric pollution levels, traffic density and the state of the road surface – can be shared in real time to provide a substantial database of detailed information that is useful to the community and for future urban planning.

Eye StopLet us turn from individual to collective mobility. Given the millions of jour-neys made daily by city dwellers, we started thinking about how to make urban transport more practical and, above all, more efficient. Clearly, attuning trans-port more effectively to residents’ needs could considerably improve the quality of their busy and stressful lives. There are many roads that we could take, so to speak. One might be to realise the vision of an “intelligent bus shelter”. Eye Stop, a project conceived by Senseable City Lab in 2009, is a step in this direc-tion. The aim is to create bus stops that users can interact with – through Wi-Fi connections and touch screens, and with integrated photovoltaic cells for energy generation – to make the entire city transport system more efficient. The shelter will display waiting times, tourist information and service updates, all in real time, of course. Users can plan their trip by specifying a destination on the interactive map: the system will show the route and give details about journey

t Eye Stop, 2009

“The project’s basic principle can easily be applied to local government planning mechanisms, with a view to improving quality of life and increasing understanding of the urban ecosystem”

i Real Time Rome, 2006



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that can be used for professional training and education, which is essential for the creative industries that will drive economic growth in the city and the re-gion. Yet the plan does not look to culture alone. There will also be a broad range of tertiary developments: restaurants, hotels, an open-air theatre for concerts and films, and recreation areas and playgrounds for children amid the green space. All this in 234 hectares that will be home to fifty thousand people. CCD will be a district built in line with the increasingly contemporary concept of the smart city, with a strong interactive dimension. A wide range of digital tech-nologies will be incorporated into the buildings, which will therefore be able to offer different experiences – not just as workplaces but as social and cultural milieus, too. This technology will also help to improve energy management, as eco-friendliness becomes a cornerstone of the local development strategy.

Technology is becoming increasingly used in our cities. The projects that I have described set out not to invade our human spaces but rather to assist us more and more in our everyday lives. For, in effect, the paradox of technology’s ever-deeper presence in our lives (ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp1, as it was defined in the 1980s by IT pioneer Mark Weiser) is that it is there, everywhere and always, precisely so that we can forget about it and return our attention afresh to the things that really matter. A simpler life. Building a rich social fabric. All from riding our bikes together or – why not? – even baking a good soufflé.

WikiCity RomeThis exciting experiment has led to WikiCity Rome, a project that allows people to interact directly with the moving city. WikiCity takes the data obtained in Real Time Rome and presents it to or-dinary people in real time, enabling them to add their own com-ments on the fly. The visual presentation of the urban dynamics therefore becomes not just a reflective analysis but a new tool for exploring the ever-shifting cityscape as it moves. The metaphor underlying the project is that of a real-time control system, in which individuals can be seen as intelligent protagonists inter-acting with one another and with the built environment, thus helping the overall system to run itself. This tool was put together for the 2007 Notte Bianca festival, when Rome was given over to hundreds of after-dark indoor and outdoor events that attracted around two million people. The WikiCity Rome map was based on a satellite image that showed the intensity of mobile telephone activity and gave an idea of the Roman people’s movements. It also acted as the backdrop for other information, such as the Notte Bianca events and their loca-tion, where the public transport vehicles were in the city, journalists’ comments on the events in real time and much more besides. The spatial and temporal data collected by the system was then presented in a visual display to make it easy to understand. The WikiCity Rome map was projected onto a building facade in one of the city’s great piazzas. So local people could use the display and see the results of this experiment for themselves. The public screen created a kind of human network across the city, encouraging people to interact by sharing information about their home town. The WikiCity interface is a tool for taking col-lective decisions involving the city’s virtual and physical space. It is a first step to developing hybrid physical-digital spaces where the built environment is enriched by ever-growing layers of digi-tal information.

CCDA concrete example of this ongoing change is CCD (standing for Ciudad Cre-ativa Digital). This new project is establishing a creative district in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city and the main centre for the creative and multime-dia industry, at the heart of the state of Jalisco. A significant level of digital con-tent is envisaged, and there will be considerable engagement with local people, with massive use of high-tech materials. The idea was conceived in late 2011 by the studio carlorattiassociati srl, with assistance from MIT, to revamp Morelos park, the green lung of a district that in recent years had almost been swallowed up by the inexorable metropolitan sprawl. The objective is to upgrade a series of buildings around the park in the historic centre and convert them into spaces

t Ciudad Creativa Digital, Guadalajara (Mexico), 2011


“A wide range of digital technologies will be incorporated into the buildings, which will therefore be able to offer different experiences”

1 Weiser, M. “The Computer of the 21st Century”. Scientific American, vol. 265, núm. 3 (1991), p. 94-104.

i WikiCity Rome, 2007

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Cultural density

Self-organisation

Self-repair

Gas barrier

Open source

Creativity

Sensorial qualities

E-bike

Digital signage

Urban acupuncture

Social innovation

Interaction

Self-cleaning

Mutant intervention



Smart light

Mallification

Test intervention

Nanotechnology

Networking

Augmented reality

Beat

Control system

Smart home

Social software

Wikicity

Smart city

Slow design

Soft approach

companies it is still usual to conceive (and imagine) the design phase as a separate element, in which the graphics are considered to be just an external layer; this kind of approach is not suitable when manag-ing projects where graphic elements, interfaces and commands coincide perfectly within a surface that is smaller than a fingertip, such as, for example, in touch-screen devices. This phenomenon is develop-ing and imposing itself not only within common market sectors, such as mobile communications, gaming and entertainment, in which technological development is the driving force that attracts new potential users, but also in very complex systems, like cars and aircraft.

Research and teaching within the university are also closely related and feed into each other; more-over, students are a dynamic resource that can have a positive influence on the methodological frame-work and on the need to update and follow those new technologies and applications that are widely used today within social networks.

For many years, the well-established DAD re-search approach has integrated both HCD and Sys-tem Design. In this way, first of all a human being,

Digital expansion has forced a sudden U-turn in every field of application. At first, designers trans-posed contents and commands into a shape and language that were faithful copies of their analogue precursors. Is it now possible to design a completely digital-oriented language through new interaction modes driven by new technologies? Visual languag-es, in particular, play a fundamental role in human-machine interfaces inside control stations: this is a branch of research within the DAD (Department of Architecture and Design) at the Politecnico di Torino and it has led to important collaborations with companies like Alenia Aeronautica, to develop innovative HMI for UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Ve-hicles), and CRF (Centro Ricerche FIAT), to study interactive systems for electric and hybrid cars.

The goals of these research areas and collabora-tions are manifold, widespread and, above all, cross-disciplinary, because they include the study of a lan-guage which is no longer linked exclusively to signs or images; on the contrary, they have to measure themselves against new needs, new products, well-established habits and structures and innovative ways of interacting. In fact, for many production

Systemic design

Interface

Digital visual languages

Smart car

Interaction design

Andrea Di Salvo. PhD in Design, research fellow within the Department of Architecture and Design at the Politecnico di Torino, and musician. He deals with interaction design and its leading component, interface, with a focus on humans and their natural way of experiencing.

Paolo Tamborrini. Architect and Assistant Professor of Design at Politecnico di Torino. Responsible for national and international research, speaker at conferences and conventions and editor of several architectural magazines.Author of Design sostenibile. Oggetti, sistemi e comportamenti, Electa, Milan 2009.

New relationship betweenVisual Communication Designand Interaction DesignIf the future of interaction design relies on movement recognition rather than haptic/vocal/muscle/brain interfaces, how will visual communication be able to guide people to perform tasks? Researchers and teachers have a very complex challenge ahead of them: on the one hand, they must follow continuous and daily updates to acquire and give a proper overview about the state of the art and future scenarios; on the other hand, the university must re-think design guidelines from a holistic viewpoint, avoiding fractures between product design, visual communication design and interaction design.

“Visual languages become crucial and we, as designers, have to take the opportunity to design a new product”

Andrea Di Salvo Paolo Tamborrini


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However, a significant development, character-izing the rise of digital technologies is the adoption of metaphors as the main language and the shift to an interaction based on instruments whose task is to reach metaphors and act on them.

Even if the introduction of GUI dates back to 1981, today it seems that conceptually there has been no revolution concerning graphics. Icons have experienced a continuous evolution, signs have been constantly updated and differ in style depending on the operating system and application but, only re-cently, with the introduction of gestures and inter-action through movement detection systems, has it become possible to interact with them in innovative and, in some cases, very natural ways. In control stations, this type of communication between the user and the machine is still in its early stages. Vi-sual languages function as labels or feedback con-trol, and the criterion applied was what we might

call correspondence of proximity: a key to press, a change in the system, a corresponding small light near the key that turns it on or off.

Keys were then transferred to a monitor, inter-action was mediated firstly by a single keyboard (through lines of code), then by a mouse (pointing and clicking on an icon-metaphor), then by keys on the screen border, now by tactile devices; all these components rotate around the main physical con-trol instrument: a steering wheel, a stick or other.

However, if the future of interaction design pro-vides invisible rather than haptic, vocal, muscle or brain interfaces, how will visual communication

to rely on a memory and a computing capacity that were not remotely comparable to those of humans.

Over time, digital technology has also absorbed the part of the day that it was supposed to free up, even revolutionizing interpersonal relationships. In the past, it was imagined that relationships would change over time through the construction of vir-tual environments or 3D avatars, but today we see relationships evolving based on applications which are not too different from blogs and traditional chat applications, where, with just a few clicks, you can show others your location (foursquare), or write short messages (Twitter), or share more or less im-portant aspects of your daily life (Facebook).

In just a few years, products designed to be es-sential work tools have become a support that ac-companies us every day, every minute, in almost all our activities, when we travel or use any means of transport. Indeed, the power of digital tools lies in the capacity to gather a wide range of functions in a single artifact, and to meet different needs. While, up until a few years ago, many different objects, such as mobile phones, organizers, music players, laptops, etc., were required to perform the same tasks, they now consolidate and innovate personal connection and communication between people and information.

Digital media are being introduced to support our actions and not vice versa, creating different environments in which humans were supposed to immerse themselves.

Visual languages have played a crucial role in the evolution of digital technologies, promoting the acceptance and dissemination of products, making interaction with systems that were far from self-ex-planatory and not very clear to customers who were accustomed to mechanical or electronic objects sim-pler, clearer and more pleasant. The language of the first digital interfaces drew on the formal communi-cation styles of those years: hand-written messages to convey orders, feelings, opinions, etc. The main difference, then, did not lie in using a conventional language, but in learning the exact sequence of ges-tures.

pand the research field to mobility in the general and local context.

Placing the human being at the centre of the project and the methodology, however, also includes analyzing the different technologies with which man is in constant contact, highlighting opportuni-ties, special features, limitations and critical aspects, questioning the role that designers should have. The feeling is that designers are often forced to pursue a technology that stands out as the driving one and as the one able to impose project specifications accord-ing to relevant needs. In order to avoid this mistake, perhaps we need to remember the factors and condi-tions that accompanied the massive integration of digital technology. Digital natives did not experi-ence the whole process and some aspects seem to be fully obsolete, even if they were prevalent just thirty years ago. The introduction of digital technology at home and in the workplace rather than in control stations was dictated by the incredible performance of devices that allowed, on the one hand, a consider-able amount of information to be condensed into a very small space and, on the other hand, the ability

as opposed to an artifact, is placed at the centre of a first delimited system. This process focuses on hu-man requirements and needs, and on cognitive fac-tors (such as perception, memory, learning, culture and experience) that come into play when interact-ing with objects1.

This first step shifts the focus of the project from technology (Technology-Driven Approach) to the concept of the user as an active, aware subject (Hu-man Centred Design)2. This makes it necessary to involve humans in the whole design process, not only as testers, but as proactive stakeholders. Who better than future users to recommend solutions that better meet their needs? The second step in-volves building a wide scenario to identify and cor-relate not only all the stakeholders involved in the design and use of the product, but also those who may have an influence on the project or be influ-enced by it, and finally those who will benefit from or suffer the consequences of the project, such as the local community and the region. Therefore, subjects will get involved in the system not at the end of the process but, rather, they will be integrated as figures of reference from the very beginning and through-out the entire project.

The design process, applying both the systemic and HCD approaches, will become iterative and virtuous, developing a network of interconnected relationships that are impossible to create using the linear or “cascade” design process3. If the linear process is in fact comparable to a straight line, the HCD process brings to mind the shape of a snail, and the systemic one looks like an endless spiral.

Going back to the DAD investigation, it is no longer possible then to talk about electric cars and their interfaces in isolation; it is necessary to ex-

1 Preece, J. Interaction design, beyond human-computer interaction. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.

2 Germak C. [ed.]. Man at the Centre of the Project: Design for a New Humanism. Turin: Umberto Allemandi & Co, 2008.

3 Bistagnino, L. Systemic Design: Designing the productive and environmental sustainability. Bra (Cuneo): Slow Food Editore, 2011.

i New connections to and from the vehicle system

Andrea Di Salvo, Paolo Tamborrini New relationship between Visual Communication Design and Interaction Design

“Placing the human being at the centre of the project and the methodology, also includes analyzing the different technologies with which man is in constant contact”


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as inserting the key into the dashboard of a car and turning it to start the engine, are changing due to technological reasons, and they require appropriate communication.

The new hybrid electric cars, for example, are started by a simple button that looks like the power button on any household appliance or PC; however, the problem is not the loss of well-established ges-tures, but how to give the driver feedback which is accurate and consistent with their expectations, as the characteristic sounds and vibrations of the com-mon internal combustion engine disappear.

In cases like this, where automation is changing habits, visual languages become crucial and we, as designers, have to take the opportunity to design a new product, for example an electric vehicle.

Even if the outer shell remains similar to other vehicles, the functioning of new cars is completely different and we should not make the mistake of thinking that a simple interior redesign is sufficient.

Digital visual languages will firstly communicate the current status of the vehicle, but they will also clarify some aspects, such as starting and waiting.

Managing waiting is one of the most difficult aspects of the project. As a solution, splash screens, random musical loops, seductive women’s voices, etc., are often used; this means using ad hoc voices or images to invite users to wait while they are al-ready doing so, making the user feel that it is impos-sible to intervene. Jef Raskin obviated this problem this way: during Canon Cat booting, a saved im-age of the last operation performed by the user is loaded4.

The introduction of digital technology and the resulting automation within control stations is not a recent phenomenon but one which began many years ago. Over twenty years ago, for example, car companies attempted to introduce digital languages within car dashboards, but these devices had not yet met with great success, despite popular films and television series contributing to the creation of a strong imaginary. Futuristic cars could fly, travel through time, speak and advise the hero driving them but, in the 80s, real cars were still very me-

communication after creating a map of possible op-erations in their minds, based on their experiences and cultural aspects.

Over the years, machine aesthetics have changed radically and the introduction of digital technol-ogy in almost all products has helped to eradicate mental maps and expectations in relation to the lan-guages used in interfaces.

Behaviours, feedbacks and consolidated lan-guages, which refer to mechanical imaginary, such

will work whether the user is on board the vehicle or on the ground monitoring it. Many aircraft are now remotely monitored by qualified staff, sitting at a desk in front of a personal computer, maybe

in a base far from the operation area. It is equally possible to plan the route you want to travel by car while you are still at home; in this case it should be possible to trans-fer the virtual path to the inside of the car using a common language. Therefore, many actions can be per-formed in this sector and they are not limited to redesigning symbols but include studying information layout and accessibility. In this way, to fly an aircraft rather than moni-toring areas of land through a sen-sor will become easier and as viable as accessing content on a web page. Factors such as proper use of colour coding, readability, grid, and in-

formation hierarchy can and should be applied to a greater extent in situations where immediacy, us-ability and security coincide.

One might think that such reasoning cannot be applied because human beings, faced with any object, device or machine, expect a specific type of

be able to guide people in performing tasks? If we think about aeronautics, command interfaces are not comparable to the analogue systems used, for example, to browse the web, because they have al-ways been designed by experts for highly specialized and trained users.

This resulted in a design process which was often not interested in innovating visual languages, which tended both to maintain already ad-opted and certified standards and to distinguish its product category from common tools and projects that were considered to be home en-tertainment.

Keys, switches, knobs and indi-cators were, in fact, replicated on a display trying to recreate their three-dimensionality without con-sidering the differences in interac-tion or the complete absence of the natural and necessary tactile feed-back.

This does not mean that control station inter-faces are not usable, but we can interact with com-plex systems through more human-scale interfaces to obtain a dialogue mode with a look and feel which is similar to the tools we use every day, that

i BMW i8 Concept, Central information display

t BMW ConnectedDrive, New generation Navigation system Professional


i Aplicación para Smartphone

My City Way, de BMW i

4 Raskin, J. The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 2000.


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which was extracted and carefully placed on an-other rotating circle, followed by the application of a small needle, with a light, precise touch, looking forward to hear that characteristic crackling noise for a few, seemingly endless seconds.

There was no play or pause button, and it was not possible to skip even one second. Waiting was part of the rite. Similarly, for this generation, it will be difficult to explain to their children how extraordi-nary it was to have tons of music inside a tiny, por-table square, as small as a little piece of chocolate. Every generation has a physical, emotional and af-

fective object, even if contents may be dematerial-ized or not even present inside the object.

Digital technology can transform well-estab-lished rites, like the pleasure of driving, through its innovative potential, such as identifying in real time what the future developments of the current situa-tion could be. We would then transition from a car that is capable of emitting signals through feedback to a smart car, able to advise and assist the driver through feedforward. This scope has yet to over-come some serious problems in technological devel-opment, despite the high computing power achieved, for example, by nomadic devices. However this re-

another trend in their new concepts, which is in-serting an overload of social applications and info-tainment inside the car.

The same companies, however, perceive this as a risk, because turning the car into an app would move it too far from its core business, and the prod-uct added value would shift from the pleasure and comfort of driving, something we can see in any ad-vertising campaign, to a dematerialized object. In this case, however, the car would not be denied or put in the background, but rather related to a wide range of other digital products and services char-

acterized by a new user experience. In the face of a new product or service, we continue to extend the possibility of “doing something new”. It is neces-sary to realize that the objects we are most fond of are the ones which allow us to develop a ritual, then to address the concept of “how”. Genuine digital natives, the children who started to play with an iPod at three years of age, will find it hard to under-stand the beauty of a huge cardboard sleeve (315 x 315 mm) containing a peculiar kind of magic circle

Intelligent textiles, for example, can transform any object, including our clothes, into an interface.

Therefore, the aim of the research is not the ap-plication of technologies already present in aviation, such as the Head-Up Display, within the automotive field, but rather to design a system that will be inte-grated with the surrounding environment, a system in which humans can enjoy and interact with visual, sound and tactile information in a natural, satisfac-tory way.

The research tries to answer many questions, for example, in relation to the current trend toward re-placing all hard controls present in the car tunnel with a touch-screen interface. However, to interact with the different menus, drivers would be forced to divert their attention away from the road and move one hand off the wheel to the panel every time they want to communicate a command to the system. The introduction of new technology is not a mistake in itself, but it may produce errors if it omits some crucial aspects connected to usability.

The old and obsolete knobs can be replaced, of course, but we should keep in mind how easy in-teraction was: the driver knew what position every component occupied, because he learned and stored these pieces of information, and thanks to physical limits it was easy to understand the knobs.

In this case, perhaps the use of smart textiles and materials capable of communicating with dif-ferent textures the functioning of components, or the use of natural feedbacks, such as heat or cold, communicated from a metal material rather than stone, could easily substitute air-conditioning ad-justment knobs. Car manufacturers are following

chanical and not at all close to concepts such as “soft”, “smart” or “eco”. Today these concepts, to-gether with the adoption of digital instrumentation, have become necessary.

However, how is it possible to satisfy both the formal and cultural needs that still exist, such as speed, strength, comfort, technology, sportiness, etc. and, at the same time, educate about a new, more responsible use of cars? The automotive sec-tor is, therefore, currently one of the areas in which all the highlighted problems, but also opportunities, are converging.

In the course of our research, we are, in fact, try-ing to connect the cultural, well-established needs of users to the new emerging requirements and dis-rupting capabilities of new technologies. In such a complex system, driving still remains the main ac-tion and new technologies are working on the one hand to support and promote driver “empowerment” and, on the other hand, to try to make the car smart, fully automatic and able to drive itself. However, it is necessary to rethink the car as one of the pieces that create the mobility system.

In this way, digital technology becomes the means to connect and to create active communi-cation between the different stakeholders, services and infrastructure; the innovative interfaces inside the car will not stand alone but they will rather be transportable even on devices that we wear every day, generating new digital products and services.

If, up to now, our discussions have suggested that cars should communicate like a personal com-puter or, better still, like a web page, it is now easy to see that a car should speak the same language as smartphones and vice versa. This scenario does not seem to be far away and experimentation both by car manufacturers and app developers is prolif-erating; our research, however, tries to imagine new tools and new interfaces.

Every object, including an architecture or, better yet, the human body, can become a projection sur-face and an interface, or it can contain and transmit information to other surrounding objects by in-creasing our capacity to perceive and communicate.

i The Citroën C-Airplay is a concept car presented by Citroën in

December 2005 at the Bologna Motor Show

o Citroen C-Airplay Concept (Interior), 2005

“Every object, including an architecture or, better yet, the human body, can become a projection surface and an interface”



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als and accessories,; in the near future, we will also be able to choose what visual language they should speak. It will be possible to design a city car as a sports car or a family car, or to transform it into a mobile, hyper-connected office, or to combine “eco” and hyper-technological needs by choosing and changing styles which have been specially created

not only by the manufacturer but also by the net-work, on the basis of patterns and guidelines that protect safety aspects and regulations, just as it hap-pens today in apps development.

This is not a simple restyling operation, aiming to change a few details inside the dashboard while leaving the outer shell unchanged; it instead aims to innovate the entire process of communication between human being, vehicle and the surrounding context, which can and will also affect the exterior architecture and the physical and virtual support infrastructures within the field.

ally may be the trump card of digital control sta-tions: the ability to predict behaviours, report them, and therefore anticipate or modify user actions. This perspective foresees complete automation; cars would be able to decide the safest action to take, but the way of reporting it to the driver is still an open field of discussion. Sound and visual languages will have to intervene to warn, advise and reassure users, relying on disciplines such as cognitive ergonomics and Human Factors.

The expected results of the research are manifold since they include: the study of how to reorganize the interior of the car and, as a result, an analysis of intervention/interaction/control areas for the driver or passengers, or both; the study of innovative tech-nological interfaces that allow the car and its sys-tems to be driven and controlled in a more “natural” way; the introduction of nomadic devices, such as a key component that enhances vehicle communi-cation skills to predict and warn the driver about the vehicle status and travelling context in a feed-forward mode; and, finally, the creation of visual languages that will make it all possible. In particu-lar, the contribution of digital visual languages will focus, in our opinion, on giving greater flexibility of style according to the different needs of the vehi-cle’s occupants. Currently, cars are customizable by manufacturers only in relation to colours, materi-

“Digital technology can transform well-established rites, like the pleasure of driving, through its innovative potential”


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