ASSIGNMENT

Assignment

Assignment

The Body and the Urban Space

Designing for connection between the augmented human and the intensely technological environment. It is envisaged that the urban spaces of the future will be saturated with both visible and hidden media that gather and transmit information. How we as physical beings connect with, interpret and shape the increase of data residing in our environment will be a significant challenge.

Humans have always been in constant engagement with their surroundings, often without being consciously aware of the process or nature of this interaction. By investigating the activities that currently take place in this liminal space we may be able to identify important themes and issues. Taking inspiration from ethnographic design research methods, the workshop will take an experimental approach to the recording of these human activities. By using the everyday technologies that people have to hand, the participants in the workshop will be provided with a new perspective on the traditional techniques that designers have employed, such as the creation of scrapbooks, mood boards and sketches. It is envisaged this approach will widen opportunities for participation in the design process. These can assist the technologists and designers of the future as they work to shape physical and virtual environments in such a way that they can be made sense of and manipulated. Retrieved from http://www.commoner.org.uk/blog/?p=58

The forms in which this data will be presented, and how we decide to conceptualise it, is as yet unknown. Will the technologically enriched environment adapt to accommodate human/city contact points, and, in response, how will we choose to interact with and navigate through, this information landscape? Retrieved from http://www.commoner.org.uk/blog/?p=58

Today's urban experience is enhanced by technology that increasingly enables simultaneous existence in both the virtual and real worlds. Such technology offers a number of bridges between these worlds but in so doing places ...