[NetBehaviour] Mapping Emergence 2012: The Outcomes « Mapping Emergence: Nomads, Nodes, Strings & Paths

[netbehaviour]

Mapping Emergence 2012: The Outcomes « Mapping Emergence: Nomads, Nodes, 
Strings & Paths

http://mappingemergence.wordpress.com/mapping-emergence-2012-the-outcomes/

Mapping Emergence: Past, Present, Future

Mapping Emergence has been an ambitious project, as it involved 
complicated concepts and challenges expanding into an interdisciplinary 
research field.

The outcomes have been highly successful & innovating in many ways, 
proposing key developments in response to important opportunities and 
challenges that characterise contemporary architecture, urbanism and 
interaction design.

The main focus of the project has been the relationship between flows 
and spaces as necessitating new spatial research strategies for 
advancing contemporary architecture and spatial praxis across a number 
of disciplines (Spatially Augmented Reality, smart architecture, 
cyber-theory, software engineering, site-specific art, performance, etc.).

Nomad Strata proposes hybrid spaces that alter the uses of the Trafalgar 
Square as well as its city and world-wide relationships. They combine 
weather-responsive canopies, pressure-sensitive tiles for generating 
energy – making a self-sustainable system - and creating social spaces 
through the fractal-like physical adjustments of the Square’s ‘floor 
grid’ depending on the size and activities of the public. Visual and 
textual information generated by visitors at the spot is projected from 
the Nelson’s column to the Square ‘floor’ and playfully combined. A 
‘city dashboard’ with information on the traffic, weather, pollution 
etc., is shown when the system is ‘idle’. Reversals between the 
interiors of the National Gallery and the Square with 3D projections 
facilitate a visual interplay of histories, uses, experiences and 
associations. Such interventions would also create hubs of common 
knowledge resources for fostering creative cultural exchange and 
activities. The Square can be thus experienced as a performative surface.

As a research outcome, Nomad Strata is highly successful as it 
constitutes a pioneering design tool, a method and an intervention 
strategy for contemporary architecture, urban & interaction design. The 
processes can be replicated and adapted to other locations worldwide. 
Nomad Strata intervenes into the city fabric not simply for making the 
invisible visible but to do so through new types of architecture and 
performative urban design, challenging past uses and the status of 
iconic localities and the passive role of the public, while opening up 
new opportunities for change.

Mapping Emergence has enabled participants to evaluate how their vision 
of and engagement with the city have changed, to position and evaluate 
their work both in terms of process and outcome, and most importantly, 
to carry forward the challenges and possibilities that stemmed from 
their participation in the workshop. As acknowledged by the 
participants, the project enabled them to gain a different understanding 
of datascape, space, place, interaction design, urbanism and 
architecture, inspiring challenging and innovative contributions towards 
advancing architectural research and practice and setting the 
foundations for undertaking Doctoral research in this field.

As stemming from the assessment of the outcomes during the participants’ 
Workshop Presentation, as well as from participants and attendees’ 
interest and enthusiastic feedback at the Urban Transcripts 2012 
Conference (UCL) the project outcomes have been of high quality and of 
promising potential for future expansion.


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