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Saturday 9 March 2013

Interactive_Planning_Istanbul - MediaCities4 Workshop

On May, 3rd-5th Andrea Rossi and Lila PanahiKazemi are going to teach a workshop on urban simulations in the Processing environment @ MediaCities4 conference in Buffalo(NY). JOIN US!!!


Here are some more details about the workshop:

Brief
Traditional design and urban planning tools seem everyday less adequate to deal with the complexity and the continuous mutations of contemporary cities. At the same time, the major part of the contemporary research based on computational tools seems to become more and more detached from the complexity of real urban conditions, creating an independent ecology of forms, unable to influence the development of our cities.

The aim of the workshop is to attempt to bridge this gap, exploring the emergent ecologies of interaction between socio-economical relationships and the structure of a city. In this search, the use of computational design tools helps in simulating the underlying dynamics of formation and functioning of the contemporary urbanities, maintaining their plurality of interactions and correlations that give rise to their complexity.

The city of Istanbul offers a unique combination of geographical, historical, socio-economical and political factors that shaped its urban structure. In the last century, the city have been involved in an extremely rapid process of urbanization, that totally changed the aspect of the city; this process has been mainly powered from the bottom-up decisions and needs of immigrants, that built extensive squatter neighbourhoods all over the city.

Understanding the formation of these unique patterns of settlement requires the construction of a complex set of relational tools. The aim of the workshop is exactly to build these tools, that will allow firstly to simulate the urban growth of these settlements, and subsequently to build up scenarios of development. The final goal is the construction of an "interactive planning" tool, that twill enable to tackle the complex contemporary urban situations in a flexible and dynamic way.

This relational tool will be developed in the coding environment of Processing. The participants will be introduced to simple and complex techniques of urban simulation, and subsequently develop a simulation for a specific neighbourhood in Istanbul. At the end clues about the adaptation of simulations to different environments will be given.


Tutors
Lila PanahiKazemi and Andrea Rossi are two master students at the Dessau Institute of Architecture, where they are developing their thesis “Spatializing The Social” on computational design strategies for intervention in informal areas. Lila holds an Architecture bachelor from Leeds Metropolitan University, where she also attended one year of MArch on bioregionalism with Greg Keeffe. Andrea holds an Architecture bachelor from Politecnico di Milano and he participated to various workshops on computational tools for architecture. Together they founded Co_Des, a peerToPeer educational group based in Dessau, organizing free workshops for students on computational techniques of design. Their work have recently been presented at the XIII Venice Biennale, at the EnCodingArchitecture conference in CMU Pittsburgh and at the Performance-Driven Architecture exhibition in Budapest.
For an overview of some of their works: http://temporaryautonomousarchitecture.blogspot.it/

Required Skills
Previous experience with scripting software is not necessary, but preferred.

Tools & Equipment
Each participant should bring his/her own laptop with the necessary software installed (open-source and/or demo versions of the software will be available).


Schedule


Friday 3rd, May _ Morning
   Introduction
   Interactive Planning Strategies (lecture)
   Introduction to Processing (tutorial)
   Variables, Conditionals, Loops (tutorial)

Friday 3rd, May _ Afternoon
   Object-Oriented Programming for Urban Design (lecture)
   Functions (tutorial)
   Objects (tutorial)
   Cellular Automata: The Game of Life (tutorial, individual exercise)

Saturday 4th, May _ Morning
   Istanbul and the Gecekondu (lecture)
   Multi-State Automata (tutorial)
   Income-based Urban Growth (tutorial)
   Growth Constrains: Plots and Gardens (tutorial, individual exercise)

Saturday 4th, May _ Afternoon

   Potentials and Development: from Simple Attraction to Segregation Logics (lecture)
   Road-Network Attraction (tutorial)
   Social Segregation Patterns (tutorial, indivdual exercise)

Sunday 5th, May _ Morning

   Review of previous days work
   Formation of small groups and definition of research interest
   Group project development

Sunday 5th, May _ Afternoon
   Group project development
   Group project presentation
   Ideas sharing on possible developments and implementations


Additional Links:
MediaCities website
YouTube

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Spatializing The Social - Urban Growth Simulation WIP


Material Performance Studio by Krassimir Krastev
Urban Materials Team: Andrea Rossi, Lila PanahiKazemi
DIA Dessau _ WS2012/13