Responsive Environments

This book provides some key concepts in the form of a design manifesto. Critically articulated from the perspective of leading experts, scholars and professionals, the ideas explored are unpacked through speculative urban visions and design projects at different timeframes, contexts and scales ranging from interactive artifacts to augmented cities.

REAL Lab

REAL Lab

Drawing from a multiyear research at the REAL Lab at Harvard GSD and design work

by INVIVIA and other innovative practices, the book unfolds the experiential facets of our technologically-mediated relationship with space in the fields of architecture and urbanism, design and art.

RESPON ENVIRON MENTS SIVE ˉ ˉ

What makes an environment “responsive”?

RESPON SIVE ˉ ENVIRON MENTS ˉ An Interdisciplinary Manifesto on Design, Technology and the Human Experience

REAL Lab

1

RESPON SIVE ˉ ENVIRON MENTS ˉ An Interdisciplinary Manifesto on Design, Technology and the Human Experience

REAL Lab Allen Sayegh Stefano Andreani Matteo Kalchschmidt

RESPON SIVE ˉ ENVIRON MENTS ˉ An Interdisciplinary Manifesto on Design, Technology and the Human Experience

REAL Lab Allen Sayegh Stefano Andreani Matteo Kalchschmidt

Responsive Environments

The entanglement of physical with digital spaces is constantly creating new types of hybrid experiences and realities with a profound impact on the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of our living environments. At the individual level, the ubiquitous presence of technology in our everyday lives affects our relationships with our surroundings. These transformations pose unprecedented challenges and yet offer novel opportunities for designing the built environment— from artifacts and spaces to buildings and cities. This book explores the dynamic role of innovative technologies to create hybrid environments that adapt to—and create a dialogue with—people’s needs, behaviors, and desires. By unpacking the experience of technologically-mediated spaces, it sets the ground for redefining and re-framing the concept of “responsive environments” across the disciplines of architecture, urban design, and human/building interaction.

Eight facets of the responsive environments’ notion are presented in the form of critical observations, enriched by contributions and discussions with leading scholars and professionals. These ideas are then translated in the form of urban interventions, architectural projects, and design artifacts that address the many ways of living, working, and playing in the city. Ultimately, at the core of Responsive Environments is an inquiry into the multiple ways in which the rapid pace of innovation affects how we perceive, respond, and adapt to our surrounding spaces. These mediated experiences will in turn influence the morphological development of our built environment, with profound repercussions on our society. The authors aim to reveal a glimpse of these transformations that are happening before our eyes.

Edited by Harvard GSD REAL Lab University of Bergamo Actar Publishers Graphic Design Dann Spann Actar Copy editing and proofs Cara Griffin Printing and binding Arlequin, Barcelona All rights reserved © Edition: Actar Publishers © Texts: The authors © Designs, drawings, and photographs: The authors, unless otherwise stated

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, on all or part of the material, specifically translation rights, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or other media, and storage in databases.

For use of any kind, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

The authors and Actar Publishers are especially grateful to the image providers. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright.

Should unintentional mistakes or omissions have occurred, we sincerely apologize and ask for notice. Such mistakes will be corrected in the next edition of this publication.

Distribution Actar D, Inc. New York, Barcelona.

New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor New York, NY 10016, USA T +1 2129662207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com Barcelona Roca i Batlle 2-4 08023 Barcelona, Spain T +34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com Indexing ISBN: 978-1-948765-44-2 PCN: Library of Congress Control Number: 2019951196

Printed in Spain Publication date: May 2021

RESPON SIVE ˉ ENVIRON MENTS ˉ An Interdisciplinary Manifesto on Design, Technology and the Human Experience Allen Sayegh Stefano Andreani Harvard GSD REAL Lab

Matteo Kalchschmidt University of Bergamo

With contributions by:

Edith Ackermann Amale Andraos Chris Bangle Burçin Becerik-Gerber John Boline David Cavallo August de Los Reyes Yutaka Hasegawa Mariana Ibañez Sanford Kwinter Kevin Lee

Adrian Massey Jae S. Min Remo Morzenti Pellegrini Paul Nakazawa Aaron Nather Hector Ouilhet Carlo Pesenti Antoine Picon Luca Sacchi Case studies by: Susanne Seitinger Isa He

Contents

Preface 10 Introduction 12 Part I: Situations

1 2 3

EMBEDDED INTELLIGENCE

22

URBAN GLITCH

36

TECHNOLOGICAL RESILIENCE

48

On integrating smartness at all scales

On embracing mistakes and unexpected errors

On standing the test of time

Case Studies I 58 Part II: Experiences

4 5 6

HACKED PERCEPTION 94 On shifting our understanding of space

MEDIATED INTERPLAY

On creating augmented conditions

106

TAILORED DYNAMICS

On empowering through technology and design

116

Case Studies II 128

9

Part III: Interactions

7 8

AUGMENTED SPATIALITY

158

On designing hybrid realms

ADAPTIVE CHANGE 170 On responding to contextual occurrences

Case Studies III 182 Epilogue: Evolutions 216 Case Studies IV 222 Notes 242 Contributors 250 Acknowledgements 253 Image credits 255

10 Responsive Environments

1

Embedded Built Responsive Intelligence Environments

EMBED DED ˉINTELLI GENCE ˉ On integrating smartness at all scales

22

Technology has always played a major role in the envisioning of urban scenarios as well as in affecting actual urban operations in order to achieve the optimal functioning of a city. In his well-known 1925 Plan Voisin for Paris, Le Corbusier portrayed “a picture of ‘the street’ as it would appear in a truly up-to-date city ...

You are under the shade of trees, vast lawns spread all round you ... Look through the charmingly diapered arabesques of branches out into the sky towards those widely-spaced crystal towers which soar higher than any pinnacle on earth ... Then the street as we know it will cease to exist.”1 While the father of modern architecture could dream of such an “up-to-date city” enabled by advanced materials and innovative building systems, he certainly would have never been able to imagine how computational technologies would impact the understanding and design of cities. It was only in the early 1960s, in fact, that the emergence of the first computers in conjunction with systems theory opened up exciting possibilities for urban planners, architects, and scientists to explore correlations between urban activities and design plans.2 One of these first pioneering experimental instruments was an “electronic calculator for the operational research,” developed by the Italian architect Luigi Moretti in collaboration with IBM. With the intention of leveraging what today we would call real-time data, this machine analyzed urban conditions based on “rational, coherent, and constantly-updated”

23 Embedded Intelligence

statistics and information. Moreover, the idea was to apply urban metrics to human activities. By introducing the concept of “human engineering” in urban spaces, Moretti had already understood the value of designing the “secondary elements” of an architectural or urban structure to respond to the “human user.”3 The use of computing technology to measure and quantify urban data was then explored in the cybernetic movement of the 1960s and ‘70s.4 Project Cybersyn, for example, envisaged a scenario in which information systems could provide insights about quantifiable urban situations, in this case as indicators for the Chilean economy.5 A futuristic space was purposely built to monitor events and collect information in a setting that looked like a control room.

Although never completed, this experiment— like many others carried out in several American cities—was based on the idea of being able not only to extrapolate and visualize information for the management of the city, but also to get “real” data to affect urban dynamics, spatial qualities, and social activities.

From the 1980s onwards, proposals for networked or computable cities began to emerge in urban plans, and in the 1990s the rapid development of network and sensing technologies found tangible applications in the built environment. In 2001, the National Academy of Sciences anticipated that “networks comprising thousands or millions of sensors could monitor the environment, the

battlefield, or the factory floor; smart spaces containing hundreds of smart surfaces and intelligent appliances could provide access to computational resources.”6 Welcome to the “smart” era.

It is not hard to imagine how these technologically-driven applications paved the way for the development of the “smart city,” or an “instrumented, interconnected and intelligent city”—as we read in one of the first attempts to coin the term.7 Based on the assumption that the city can be synthesized as an overlay of operational layers and quantifiable flows, or urban systems, today we can extrapolate data on almost every facet of these systems. Complex methods and tools allow us to capture key criteria, parameters, and indicators to depict and quantify the specificities of urban environments in order to better explain their functioning principles and evolution mechanisms—the so-called “science of cities.”8 The built environment then becomes more automated and embedded with sensors, and data gets generated in real-time as a byproduct of communicating the results of these automation processes. It is widely accepted that, by making urban operations more datadriven, big data improves city management and enables the development of fine-tuned regulations, a better allocation of resources, and even the prediction of future needs—or rather “delving deeply into the unknown unknowns of urban future experience,” as RMIT professor Mark Burry puts it.9 Yet, the translation of smart city visions into physical manifestations and urban implementations has been widely criticized, particularly with large-scale urban interventions.10 Although the smart city’s intent should be to offer its citizens the highest possible quality of urban life, technology is often implicitly employed as the major force that relentlessly pushes the evolution of the built environment. In this sense, optimization and performance seem to be the dominant logics among smart city definitions and models. Sensing, network, and intelligent

digital technologies are purposely strategized to optimize processes and operations, increase the efficiency of systems and resources, and monitor urban dynamics to ultimately gain precise control over the whole city for ad hoc interventions and quantified predictions.

Such a technology-oriented view of the established smart city concept eventually resulted in the contemporary understanding of this “ideal city” as one that is:11 – Predictable: a smart city comprises layers of urban systems that operate under specific rules and functioning principles.

Having control over these systems makes it easier to predict developments of the systems themselves and, by extension, of the whole city. For instance, the use of sensors to monitor and control traffic allows us to understand mobility patterns, make the infrastructures’ operations more efficient, and ultimately predict a city’s overall traffic spectrum in different time ranges.

– Overspecified/long-term planned: if a smart city is the result of the juxtaposition of complex systems, it then follows that those layers need to be designed very precisely to last for a long time. Such a level of technological specification implies that the smart city would be able to anticipate, from its design stage, the potential uses of urban spaces by its occupants and the related impact of their activities.

– Platform-based/top-down controlled: the monitoring and control of the intricate relationships between systems assume a centralized management process. This implies a top-down approach at the political level, whereas it calls for the use of a proprietary platform that can manage data flows at the technical level.

– Optimized: a smart city needs to operate at its best to be competitive with other cities. Therefore, all its mechanisms, processes, and players needs to be geared towards high efficiency and productivity.

Technology thus becomes a necessary instrument to optimize the performance of system operations. The result is seamless

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THE CHALLENGE OF INTEGRATING DIFFERENT URBAN LAYERS REQUIRES AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO THE SMART CITY MODEL Paul Nakazawa

25 Embedded Intelligence

DESIGNING ‘RESPONSIVE’ ENVIRONMENTS IS ABOUT CREATING INTERACTIVE, STIMULATING, THOUGHTPROVOKING, AND MEANINGFUL ENVIRONMENTS Antoine Picon

26

planning, monitoring, and coordination of activities and events across the city.

– Quantitative: in the smart city, sensing and big-data technologies allow us to capture and get insights about the behaviors of people in both physical and digital environments. As Siemens attempted to predict in 2008, “Several decades from now cities will have countless autonomous, intelligently functioning IT systems that will have perfect knowledge of users’ habits and energy consumption, and provide optimum service.”12 Indeed, it is unclear what an “optimum service” would be in the first place, and if the “perfect knowledge” of our habits is really what we should expect from a truly intelligent city. Harvard professor and strategy consultant Paul Nakazawa helps us shed new light on the smart city model. At the heart of his argument is that everyone is avoiding the main issue; it has been noticed and yet is being ignored. “Smart cities have identified different kinds of components of integration, or potential integration in the urban fabric and in the different aspects of the city’s layers.

But there is no methodology for the integration of the different layers that constitute a smart city,” he says. “The discussion is typically around each component of the smart city, without focusing much on a detailed methodology for integrating those layers.”

One of the explanations of this issue is the discrepancies of time calibration in relation to the embedding of technology in the built environment. Different technologies develop at different paces and are fully embraced by the citizens over varying time periods.

And this has a huge impact on the effective integration of urban systems. Another issue in the smart city model that Nakazawa is critical of is its economic feasibility: “If you were to actually implement it technically from day one, the amount of capital that each of the stakeholders would have to invest would be enormous. It would almost be without precedent in terms of understanding how that capital gets paid back over time.”

The unfortunate development of the

27 Embedded Intelligence

Sidewalk Labs’ project in Toronto is a good case in point. Google’s investment in one of the major smart city projects in the world was supposed to be feasible because it had been designed for a specific site—the 4.8-hectare Quayside neighborhood. Then the “unprecedented economic uncertainty” caused by the coronavirus pandemic brought to the surface existing challenges to implementing the ambitious plan.13 According to Nakazawa, the challenge of integrating different layers requires an alternative approach to the smart city model.

The solution may come by leveraging the role of architects in all the arenas that pertain to the smart city and by promoting an “interscalar discussion.” “Over the last few years, architecture as a practice has become so much of a ‘service business’ that it somehow masks the role architects play at the more strategic level for the built environment.

Today architects have a comprehensive understanding of the built environment as a way of tackling the challenges that we are facing—the biggest ones being climate change and, it seems, global pandemics.”

So the architecture profession has grown to meet the increasingly challenging demands of people in the built environment. To that end, Nakazawa argues, the innovation in architecture should be more methodological than technical.

Architects should then play a more strategic role in shaping the future of our cities. For that to happen, though, it is crucial that they are distributed in different places— from governmental institutions to private industries. “Rather than concentrating them in boutique practices all over the globe, which seems to lack agency, the embedding of those intelligences within the different institutional and business frameworks of society would lead to a meaningful impact,” he emphasizes.

The fact that there are architects operating in municipalities, city agencies, transportation companies, and many other sectors allows for a better understanding and promotion of an inter-scalar discussion. Architects can all be trained similarly to deal with the integration of

complex information and systems and to have the vocabulary and technical knowledge to interface with other professionals. “By making the right decisions, architects can transform this inter-scalar challenge into an opportunity for all of us,” Nakazawa concludes.14 However, according to his Harvard colleague and architectural historian Antoine Picon, “a big mistake would be for the architect or urban designer to have the attitude of being the super master of the world who designs everything.” Many of the things surrounding us need interfaces, which in turn need humanizing technologies. Sustainability is a good example. “The problem is not for designers to be better than engineers at figuring out which system works best; it is about making a meaningful, sustainable environment,” he points out.

Through this lens, according to Picon, designing responsive environments is about “creating interactive, stimulating, thoughtprovoking, and meaningful environments.”

In fact, an architect is somebody who gives meaning to the world. An architect certainly needs to know how to solve problems, but as he often jokes, “If you want to save the world, be an engineer. If you want to give meaning to the world, be an architect.”15 Both have to work together.

One of the areas of the city in which engineers and architects need to work together is surely urban mobility, particularly concerning the impact of new mobility systems on the built environment’s morphological aspects. The history of urban design shows the profound influence that the technology, economy, and culture of spaces of mobility have always had on the architecture of the city. “And most likely it will continue that way,” says mobility innovation expert Luca Sacchi. “However, in the short term, cities, particularly major European cities, are not going to change dramatically—also because most of these cities pre-existed vehicle mobility. The aspect that will dramatically change, though, is

how cities, as they are, will be used.” Trends that will foster such changes include a major reduction in the number of private cars, strong speed limitations in most city centers (and therefore a combination of different forms of mobility sharing the same spaces), more high-speed and high-capacity public transport systems, and novel last mile mobility solutions at disposal for the end-user.

“The combination of practicality, accessibility, and versatility will drive the design and implementation of those mobility solutions.” From reducing traffic congestion to offering multi-modal transport options, Sacchi believes that emerging technologies such as autonomous or connected vehicles offer opportunities to minimize structural and mechanical redundancies and infrastructures as well as to preemptively optimize and customize ergonomics, safety, and logistics.

“However,” he stresses, “those are simply technological enablers of opportunities.

The disruption of urban mobility will happen only if laws and regulations foster this change. If we are left just with autonomous and connected cars with the street laws as they are now, we are not going to see any major disruptions.”

Projecting into future scenarios of urban transport, in the short term we should expect a major unleashing of small personal mobility devices. In the midterm, autonomous “pods” carrying people to major hubs of highspeed/high-capacity mobility systems will be fully deployed; all transport of goods will probably be carried out by small to large autonomous drones. Finally, in the long term, Sacchi predicts that people will still move physically but mainly to “socially meet” other people rather than because of an actual “functional” need. In 50 years from the time of this writing, he believes that “public and shared mobility will be so predominant that cities will have changed morphologically in terms of streetscapes, public spaces, and transportation hubs, with major impacts on the experience of citizens.”16

28

THE COMBINATION OF PRACTICALITY, ACCESSIBILITY, AND VERSATILITY WILL DRIVE THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF DISRUPTIVE MULTIMODAL SOLUTIONS Luca Sacchi

29 Embedded Intelligence

ANTI-BUILDING Cedric Price 1959-1980 The so-called “anti-architecture” by pioneering architect Cedric Price was designed to adapt to several scales of change, from the city to programmatic transformations to creative desires. Much of Price’s work is a critique of traditional systems and addresses existing societal problems. He believed that buildings served the people, behaving in an ever-changing environment. His “anti-buildings” were designed to maximize flexibility and movement—not to assert itself in history, but a platform in which history can occur.1 The anti-buildings served to allow for the possibility of change instead of determining its uses. The Fun Palace, one of his most notable works and one of his earlier ones, was designed as a socially interactive work. It exhibits much of his desire for creating half designed spaces in which users can react to and shape space according to their own desires.

Featuring moving architectural elements, such as walls, floors, and panels, the Fun Palace was designed for it to change according to user desires. The proposal, composed of temporary and fluid structures, allows for it to be accommodating to all. Like most of his other works, his designs’ adaptability and flexibility stem from a structural foundation that serves as the frame that allows for changes.

Like the Fun Palace that challenged the traditional static building through mutable parts, Price’s other projects challenged the traditional system and were inspired by the technological possibilities. While the Fun Palace provided flexibility through movable parts and a minimal structure, the Potteries Thinkbelt re-imagined the traditional college campus and turned an abandoned railway track into an infinitely expanding education network.

The railway served as both transportation and mobile education units that could be moved according to changing education demands.

The Potteries Thinkbelt expanded the level of adaptability from the architectural scale to the urban scale.

Like his other works, the Fun Palace celebrates individual humans and their behavior and desires. Price’s designs account for the fluidity and movement of its users and its surrounding environment.

182

183 Case Studies / Interactions

The Fun Palace and the Potteries Thinkbelt served as the jumping board for his later designs and visions for a responsive architecture, which comes up in his later works as artificially intelligent architecture. In 1965, Cedric Price produced the City of the Future, a series of 14 perspectives that illustrated Price’s stance on the built environment as a type of artificial intelligence. The drawings envisioned a city that exhibited real-time responsiveness to their users, to adapt to the fluidity of its surroundings. As a quality of responsiveness, a building’s ability to move was necessary to enable flexibility and freedom of the people.

Zeroing on artificially intelligent architecture, Price continued to explore how the environment could adapt to its users for embracing flexibility. In 1978, Price speculated that the Generator would be a responsive environment and would help society heal. The responsiveness took the forms of cube-like elements with temporary structures operated by a central computer. The structure housed all service and communication channels. The minimalist nature of the structure gave users the ability to continuously improve and refine their own environment. The project went beyond previous designs by giving individual users the ability to change their own spaces. It gave them the agency not only to create their own environments, but also to generate creativity and nurture the arts.

Price’s desire to create artificially intelligent architecture cultimated in his project, The Generator.

The project was a dedication to provide an nurturing environment through a central computer programmed to make spontaneous changes.

With his various projects, Cedric Price envisioned anti-architecture as an environment that houses the flows and movements of the society and its people—a space that would be shaped by people’s behaviors and desires.

184

The Potteries Thinkbelt is an example of how Price used technology to create a flexible network to enhance individual freedoms. He challenged the traditional centralized university system through re-using an abandoned railway, turning cars into mobile education units.

185 Case Studies / Interactions

FLEXIBLE STRUCTURES: THE SHED Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) New York City, 2019 When talking about adaptive changes in responsive environments, we often investigate smart environments and possible real-time interactions. However, spatial flexibility that facilitates adaptive change does not always require automation or sensing technology. To design buildings for the future, today means to use contemporary technologies to execute designs for changing contexts. In the case of The Shed, DS+R uses conventional building systems to execute the kinetic movements of the shell. Through telescopic mechanisms and gantry crane technology, the shed can respond to preprogrammed movements in order to accommodate different indoor and outdoor activities. Although the structure does not respond in real-time to changes in user behavior and usages, it allows for enough spatial flexibility for a wide range of future uses.1 At a higher level, the adaptive qualities are usually aimed to not only satisfy the users’ basic needs, but also to open up possibilities and to expand the potential of the user.

The Shed’s adaptiveness employs the same kinetic technology to address both the back of house logistical needs, such as loading and unloading artwork, and the front-facing programmatic needs of the museum and visitors. Most importantly, the spatial flexibility allowed by the giant shell invites artists to push their artistic boundaries and showcase their artistic desires, unconstrained by dimensions.

This strategy accommodates a larger range of performances than more traditional spaces.

The concept of spatial flexibility is not only an anticipation of user needs, but the allowance of deviations to accommodate both predicted and unsuspected changes in user needs and behavior. Through a robust infrastructure that houses rigging, light, and sound control, the slidable shell can turn an outdoor plaza into a multifunctional space. The design acknowledges the ever-changing nature of human, art, and the urban context, creating a simple solution to respond to various scales of changes.

The Shed incorporates conventional building systems to provide the spatial flexibility necessary for the space to adapt to future unknowns.

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A moving shed requires a robust structure that can host a myriad of services to ensure adaptability.

187 Case Studies / Interactions

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189 Case Studies / Interactions

I M AG E C R E D I T S

l = left, r = right, t = top, b = bottom pp 25, 58-63 ©PCA-Stream; pp 39, 64-69 ©Felipe SS Rodrigues; pp 72-75 ©Domus, Stefano Andreani; pp 43, 76, 78-79 ©Alexandre Humbert; p 77 ©Maxar Technologies, ©CNES/Airbus; pp 54, 80-83 ©Foster + Partners and Heatherwick Studio; p 88 ©City of Los Angeles Public Works Bureau of Street Lighting; pp 128-129 ©Marc Yankus; pp 100, 130-131 ©Luca Casonato; pp 132-135 ©Myrna Ayoub, Tim Logan, and Ramzi Naja, REAL Lab; pp 108, 110, 113, 136-143 ©INVIVIA; p 144-145 ©Steven M. Johnson; p 146, 147 ©Fernando Guerra, ©Marchi Architects; pp 115, 148-153 ©MBAC; pp 182-183 ©Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood, ©Canadian Centre for Architecture; pp 184185 ©Cedric Price, The Museum of Modern Art; pp 186-187 ©DS+R; pp 160, 190-195 ©WORKac; pp 196-199 ©INVIVIA; p 200 ©SimCity Electronic Arts, Inc.; p 201 ©Prima Games; pp 202-203 ©Bumblebee; pp 204-205 ©INVIVIA; pp 206-207 (b) ©Trimble; p 208 ©Isa He; p 209 (r) ©Olafur Eliasson and Acute Art; pp 210-211 ©Corraini, Bruno Munari; pp 212-215 ©Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler; pp 222-223 ©Antonio Sant’Elia; p 227 (t) ©Haags Gemeente Archief; p 227 (b), 229 (r) ©Comune di Milano; p 228 © Gehl People; p 236 (t) ©Specta Films and Criterion Collection, (b) ©CBS; pp 238 (b), 240-241 ©Iwan Baan Studio. All other images are copyright free.

255 Responsive Environments

This book provides some key concepts in the form of a design manifesto. Critically articulated from the perspective of leading experts, scholars and professionals, the ideas explored are unpacked through speculative urban visions and design projects at different timeframes, contexts and scales ranging from interactive artifacts to augmented cities.

REAL Lab

REAL Lab

Drawing from a multiyear research at the REAL Lab at Harvard GSD and design work

by INVIVIA and other innovative practices, the book unfolds the experiential facets of our technologically-mediated relationship with space in the fields of architecture and urbanism, design and art.

RESPON ENVIRON MENTS SIVE ˉ ˉ

What makes an environment “responsive”?

RESPON SIVE ˉ ENVIRON MENTS ˉ An Interdisciplinary Manifesto on Design, Technology and the Human Experience

REAL Lab