City project: Buildings

Master 2019/2020

Type: Compulsory course (Prototyping Future Cities)

Area of studies: Urban Planning

Delivered by: Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism

Where: Faculty of Urban and Regional Development

When: 1 year, 2 semester

Mode of studies: offline

Instructors: Vicente Guallart

Master’s programme: Prototyping Future Cities

Language: English

ECTS credits: 6

Contact hours: 76

Full Syllabus

Abstract

The course is project based and focused on specific scale in the city. It will allow students to learn the principles, impact and consequences of the technology integration into housing buildings and the urban space. The result will be a project on the intersection of building design and technology on the scale of a building or part of a building. Starting from the analysis of the Moscow housing over a period of the last century students will propose the definition of the new housing and the public space in the scale of one block. The project will emphasize the social use of the city and its productive character which encourages urban self-sufficiency and the empowerment of citizens and the city itself.

Learning Objectives

To teach students how to develop universal city prototypes that can be implemented in any project of any city.
To enhance students’ abilities in project work and to foster the development of students’ projects where the implied technologies will have a fundamental impact on city design at the scale of buildings and public spaces
To teach students how to implement recent technologies and information platforms in one project
To inform students about key strategies of urban regeneration based on the principles of a ‘distributed city’

Expected Learning Outcomes

To obtain critical thinking skills in the subject of smart cities and technological interventions
To develop ideas through the design and creation of the prototypes following the method "learning by doing"
To learn the principles, impact and consequences of the technology integration into the urban space on various scales
To use different technologies to collect and process urban data
To develop and integrate responsive connected systems based on data
To learn how to use different technologies to collect and process urban data
To develop ideas through the design and creation of the prototypes following the method “learning by doing”
To develop their ideas through the design and creation of the prototypes following the method “learning by doing”

Course Contents

Introduction to the Smart City concept and its outcomes
This lecture serves as a general introduction. It will explain the overall logic and composition of this course, lay out plans for individual and collective assignments, and present the main objectives of its more theoretical and more practical parts. During the lecture we will discuss the definition of “Smart City” and it’s possible applications.
Problems of technology driven society
During this lecture, we will discuss how technology bumps as forwards and backward, how smart technology can make urban space more sterile and add additional levels of social complexity.
Design workshop - how to start an urban research
Students will learn how to use the language of diagrams and schemes to analyse the structure of the building and built environment. After there will be a fast workshop for the presentations.
Field Trip
Students will analyze the existing types of panel housing in Moscow. The group will have a field trip to do research of the Moscow microrayon. The analysis will include the understanding of the evolution for the technologies for the construction, the plans and spatial design, the type and number of cells in the house, the supposed way of living, the economical impact, the premises of the following types. As the final result, there should be axonometric drawings, plans, and diagrams with main characteristics. Students will produce a comparative database using as reference to the buildings that they have studied.
Design Thinking
Group will try to define the conditions in the urban environment that will allow the cities of the 21st century to be inhabited in networked self-sufficiency. There will be a discussion of sharing societies and production with storage of the resources between those societies. Conditions that will make it possible for human beings to take charge of the organization of their existence. The project is centered on rehumanizing cities based on efficiency in the generation and consumption of resources and the creation of people’s quality of life, promoting local culture, from a global technological and economic foundation. A new economy of urban innovation. Buildings need to incorporate new systems and technologies which will change them into active entities in the interchange of the city’s energy and information. Students will try to describe a building’s anatomy, like an organism, (its form and its parts), its physiology (its function) and its metabolism (energy flow and systems). As the final result students will propose how to embed the existing types of buildings with technologies.
Communities in buildings
From local chat groups to management organization - we have different communities and organizational structures in modern buildings. How the property right is shaped by them? Can we stimulate or enforce different communities structures? How community structure mirrors the housing structure? All of these questions will be covered by introduction lecture and then discussed in class.
Project: Building Entrance
The first project in the course. We will imagine various upgrades possible in buildings entrances. These upgrades must be digital, but site specific and focused on the local community.
Project: Building Floor
During this practical workshop students will come up with ideas about possible projects targeting the scale of a building floor.
Sensor data collection
During this practical workshop we will dig into sensor-database object. Students will understand what is database structure, how we can store different sensor datasets and will produce a working prototype that will read sensor data, store it and transmit over network.
Networks, protocols and sensors in cities
During this class, we will look into building blocks of standard computer network and its applications in cities context. We will discuss how simple networked solutions can move us towards “thinking” and “remembering” space.
Data processing workshop
During this workshop students will study different data processing and analysis techniques. These techniques will be applied over sensor data. We will learn how to see sensors as time series devices, how to map them and collect statistics.
Building as an information system
Students will formulate their specific agenda for this course based on a definite place and conditions. This has to be done based on two principles. On the one hand, a detailed analysis of the systems and resources available in a specific place. And on the other, questioning the economic, cultural, environmental and social aspect. Then the investigation needs to be done using design as a mechanism to resolve the combination of all of the functions the building needs to provide and the mechanisms that need to be developed, with the aim of consuming as few resources as possible for the building’s operation. Students will learn how to read a built environment as a full ecosystem with different layers, such as: Eco materials Food production Energy for self-sufficiency Waste recycling Water self-sufficiency and distribution Smart technologies Sharing societies
Project: Building
At this workshop we will scale from a building entrance level to whole floor. At this stage, students will introduce new ways of digitalisation, according to the level boundaries and specific properties of a site.
Social data collection
During this practical course students will be introduced to the concepts of non-sensor or non-hardware data collection. They will learn how to collect data from various open and semi open data sources, will learn technical concepts like API, authentication and authorization, basics of HTTP protocol and JSON data format.
Anthropology of communities
This class will be about different methods of researching urban communities via digital end non-digital ways. Students will learn about basic principles, that used in any community research, how to structure this research and present its results
Project: Block
This is a project workshop on the biggest scale. Students will propose projects about digital analysis and interventions for a whole block.
Final project preparation
Together with students, we will select the best project propositions, done by students at project workshops (multiple projects for different scales). Then during the session of 3 classes, we will guide students to their final project presentation.

Assessment Elements

Classwork
Final Project Presentation and Prototype

Interim Assessment

Interim assessment (2 semester)
0.5 * Classwork + 0.5 * Final Project Presentation and Prototype

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Deyan Sudjic. (2017, November 30). Great design looks good and makes the world a better place. Evening Standard, p. 17. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=nfh&AN=126480432
Evans, B. M., Barry, M., Buchoud, N., & Vincente, G. (2016). Urban Environment and Resilience. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.14C48F0D
Vicente Guallart. (2015). From urban planning to Urban Habitat. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.F8B43F8C

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Boeing, G. (2019). Spatial information and the legibility of urban form: Big data in urban morphology. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edssch&AN=edssch.oai%3aescholarship.org%2fark%3a%2f13030%2fqt6mn025sb
Clark, W. W., Rifkin, J., O’Connor, T., Swisher, J., Lipman, T., & Rambach, G. (2005). Hydrogen energy stations: along the roadside to the hydrogen economy. Utilities Policy, (1), 41. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.a.eee.juipol.v13y2005i1p41.50
Deyan Sudjic. (n.d.). What makes the perfect city? Times, The (United Kingdom). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=nfh&AN=7EH1730777814
Eken, G., Bilgin, G., Dikmen, I., & Birgonul, M. T. (2015). A Lessons Learned Database Structure for Construction Companies. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.2A58FF4
Emmanuel Munguia Tapia, Kent Larson, & William J. Mitchell. (2003). Ubiquitous Sensors. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.887E1ABB
JACZEWSKA, B. (2019). Doing Global Urban Research. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin, 68(2), 187–190. https://doi.org/10.15201/hungeobull.68.2.6
RIFKIN, J. (2016). How the Third Industrial Revolution Will Create a Green Economy. NPQ: New Perspectives Quarterly, 33(1), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/npqu.12017
Rifkin, J. (DE-588)11548857X, (DE-576)162732341. (2011). The third industrial revolution : how lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world / Jeremy Rifkin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.352874635
Sion, G. (2019). Smart City Big Data Analytics: Urban Technological Innovations and the Cognitive Internet of Things. Geopolitics, History & International Relations, 11(2), 69–75. https://doi.org/10.22381/GHIR112201910
sudjic, deyan. (2012). Design City: Incubated Here. Architectural Record, 200(6), 76. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=asn&AN=78235544

Course Syllabus