Aircraft carrier Sergelstorg

No joke.
The aircraft I refer to is not Gripen or F22, but Hot air ballon!
Well, or something like it.
It’s well know that the sculpture in Sergelstorg has been haunted by technical problems, it never was able to deliver the intended visual output and - quoting Hall - "thus adds itself to the many projects within the [reconstruction of central Stockholm] that didn't endure confrontation with reality."

Today there are very few thing to do on the street level of Sergelstorg, the sculpture functions no more than a big traffic sign, and the big fountain can’t be accessed by pedestrian either. It’s only a place you pass by to reach some destinations. And even worse, many people don’t regarded as a pleasant place to pass by. My teacher told me a story, once in Sergelstorg, a foreign tourist talked to his Swedish friends:” Oh, it’s such a pity, I didn’t know Stockholm was also bombed in WWII.”

Why not make it a happy place? There are enough gray concrete and cubic buildings, there are enough dark shadow and cold wind. Let’s have a big Happy face!

Let’s change the roundabout into T crossing, and then we will have a square on street level, then we install a Hot Air Ballon launch base where you can find restaurant, info center and fly into sky! In the balloon you can have a real panorama view of the city!

The balloon can change every month, to keep fresh experience.



If the chain is long enough, oneday we can even get into aerospace!

.......I didn't know they have the same idea in Berlin---Balloon over Potsdamer Platz

Mobile hostel can shift Stockholm!

I have been working on a student project of Stockholm City center. Today if you go to the area around Sergelstorg, Brunkebergstorg and Gustav Adolfs torg( So called TreTorg zone), you will pretty much feel you are always at the back side of stores in many spots. and the waterfront area besides Parliament are left over and seldom regarded as a place for recreation. Well in other cities like Amsterdam the waterfront is creatively tailored to make the city life enjoyable and pleasant, you can always find cruise going in the cannel, people water flowers on the top of their boathouse and so on.
A boathouse in Amsterdam

Another problem is city center is pretty void during night. The reason can be found in this figure:
Over 40000 people in daytime but less than 1000 at night in this area so the street is not under effective surveillance of inhabitants. People who passing by this area might be scared because it’s so empty, there’s few people to get help in case of trouble!

I am inspired by this project made by 2 Swiss artist-duo L/B (Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann)., they designed a mobile pavilion called Hotel Everland, it is a Hotel with only one room. It includes a bathroom deluxe, a king-size bed and a lounge. It has been brought to Yverdon, Burgdorf, Leipzig, Paris and some other cities, and was put in different location by crane.

So this is my idea. Mobile hostel units!

In daytime they can be put on cruise boat and tourist can enjoy the beautiful waterscape around Stockholm. In the evening they will be moved and setup in different spot at city center, independent or aggregated, to make the area safe and colorful at night.

Later If I have time I will make a model of this idea.

Triangle planning process

I simplify the planning process into this model.

There are 3 main roles,
1. Planner, who create the plan
2. Communities, people in the city
3. Database, something like a info-center

And 3 sub-process,
1 .

2.

3.
In these processes, Database is vital to realize the fantasy. If we have a interactive and open source database, a Google earth equipped with real time dynamic flow of real city, something like the game “Simcity”, both planners and citizens can enjoy the benefit of it. This mirror of reality will make planning job more reasonable and convenient. The basic idea is planner can test their proposal before it’s utilized into reality, in this case big mistake could be avoid.

However, I do have a suspicion, will our life be like the fiction in ”Minority Report”, how much can we really predict the influence of a proposal in the future?

Agriculture in city

City is distinguished from village because citizens don’t grow there food like farmers.
But Why?
Why not?
Here you can say some projects and ideas making agriculture possible in the city, not only in suburb, but also in metropolitans!


1 Edible City (documentary film)
www.ediblecitymovie.com

Edible City is a documentary film that explores the issues of food justice, security, and sovereignty through a comprehensive view of urban farming in the Bay Area – a grassroots effort that sees people responding to climate change, rising food costs and gas prices, and increasing health concerns by strengthening connections to the food they eat and reaching out to their local communities.


2 Mini-cow in your backyard
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4547604.ece


Over 4,100 Dexter cows registered last year by the Dexter Cattle Society in the U.K. - double the figure for 2000. "With high food prices, they are actually quite an attractive option if you like producing your own food,” said Sue Farrant, owner of four Dexters. "Both my husband and I have full-time jobs so we’re keeping them on the side as an interest. They do largely look after themselves and they’ve been hugely popular with the children."


3 Guantang Chuangye Sustainable Conceptual Master Plan, William McDonough

Farmers grow food on roof, they can work here, live here, mobility is reduced to save energy.


4 Vertical Farm
www.verticalfarm.com

Scientists at Columbia University are proposing an alternative. Their vision of the future is one in which the skyline of New York and other cities include a new kind of skyscaper: the "vertical farm".
The idea is simple enough. Imagine a 30-storey building with glass walls, topped off with a huge solar panel.

Why Ecoblock failed in China?

On September 19, I presented at a presentation in KTH made by 2 renowned professors from US, Harrison Fraker (UC Berkeley)and Doug Kelabugh (Ann Arbor UMICH). Harrison Fraker showed his project which is called EcoBlock to us, he developed a whole self sufficient system to replace the popular super block which is widely built up by capitalist developers.

“China has been able to succeed in this incredible development process by developing what we call ‘superblocks’. These are roughly 1km2 residential developments where the city provides the arterial streets and then the developer buys the rights to build everything inside the blocks. Superblocks can have anything from 2,000 to 10,000 units of housing in them, and because the Chinese are so efficient, they’re building something like 10-15 of these per day. For 3 years my students and I at UC Berkeley have been trying to develop an alternative to the superblock which is completely off the grid, generates its own electricity, processes its own water and own its waste. Mass replication of a model such as ours is the key to China really becoming sustainable – I’m talking about ecoblocks as far as the eye can see – not superblocks.”
Harrison Fraker
You can find a video of EcoBlock here: http://www.greendragonfilm.com/qingdao_ecoblock_project.html

The technology is reasonable, and affordable. But he said up to now there is no developer want to make this experiment to build a EcoBlock in China. Why? It seems a huge business if someone can build this prototype successfully and spread it national.

I think Mr Fraker made a little mistake in his design, at this moment this kind of open up community don’t fit the social context in China. Superblock is gated community, which seems boring and not good for society integration, and not traffic efficient because all the cars have to access through a few gates.

But why it’s so popular?
Because it’s easy to secured, and people want to live in a block where their neighbors are of same social status.
Like many other countries, the development in China is unbalanced between urban and rural area and people in the same city vary from billionaire to beggar. And some poor people feel the rich people gained their fortune in unfair way, so they are stressed and angry, some even want to revenge. To protect their fortune, inhabitants don’t want strangers to enter their living area. If the inner streets are opened up to city, it will be very hard to keep surveillance and control safety. And also in one superblock the buildings have similar value so the inhabitants who choose to buy apartment there belong to same social status, they don’t feel comfortable to live with richer because they feel embarrassed, they don’t want to live with poorer because they don’t want to be envied.

What will future city look like?

Appleseed(animation)

Minority Report(film)

Infrastructure for cars will increase. They will also change the form of city. For example, in the future instead of parking your car beside the street, you will park your car in a 3D automatic garage, which can save lot of space for other purpose.

I Robot(film)

Robot will play important role in the future, so
I don’t think robot will replace human being for services in daily life, they will remain as tools.But maybe in the future buildings or urban blocks could change like Transformers to fit different sunlight, wind , weather or changed functions. Maybe they will also be mobile.

Simcity(game)

Energy will transfer into sustainable technology and be more efficient. Wind, Solar, Geothermal, water and so on.

Greenery evrywhere

Today you can also grow vegetable on your roof garden, but some architects want to widen the application of roof greenery. Like William McDonough’s plan for Liu Zhou.

Online community is burying the totalism

PSFK lecture bring us with the 3C method in megatrend promotion, they are creator, community and company.
He showed some online communities such as Facebook, Etsy. These examples are about leisure and fun, but there are also lots of other online communities which actually formed by inhabitants in particular area of the city, this is grassroot power which would dramaticly influence the future of urban planning.

Especially in a totalitarian country like China where formal political gathering of citizens is regarded dangerous for national security.

Community forum of Qingdao, China
Nowadays there are lots of gated communities in Chinese cities, well, I think it’s not so good for integration of the whole city, but anyway it’s good for security control, which is very crucial in a society of unbalanced development. Lots of these communities are online now, according to a survey made in 2003, there were cver 1000 online communities and over 200,000 active user in Beijing, today even more. They discuss on various issues from cooking to carpooling. These internet forums are also used as a tool to unite the inhabitants to negotiate with developers and government. Compared with formal political appeal, government are much more tolerant to this kind of activities and regard it as people’s legal demand.

So together with other NGO and volunteer union, in the future they will grow into a power which will promote the democracy of society.

When it comes to urban planning, they will also be the main player in the decision making process. With the help of “dynamic Google earth” I imagined before, they can watch the simulation of planning proposal in their city and give their opinion directly, and also add information to update the virtual city. In return the “dynamic Google earth” will also provide them with lots of services ranging from GPS to yellow page searching.

All the communities of the world, unite!

Ultimate personal accessory ---iPen and iPaper

Sven Tollmien gave us lots of interesting method of using mobile phone in creative ways on the lecture.
I found that it seems most of his examples are about consumption and entertainment. But in order to enjoy the flawless experiences of new lifestyle, we must be able to create products, living environment and knowledge. Share a video with your friends with your Iphone can make you happy but won’t help you much to create new value and fortune.


You are lucky, we will have iPen and iPaper!


Everything you write, no mater what you write on, will be immediately recorded and transferred into digital form and stored, you can review them on your iPaper .







Well, if you use iPaper, you can also choose different effect of your pen, sketch pencil, watercolor, oil painting, even curve a relief sculpture.















Feel tired of reading? Ok, you can put your iPaper on desk to make a 3D projection of virtual game, then hold your iPen and play a tennis with your classmates!








Catch a cold? Don’t worry, put your iPaper in front of you and follow the instructions showing on it’s screen to make acupuncture on your body with iPen!


















What to make up at the last minute before show time? Use iPaper as a mirror and use iPen as a lipstick, you can choose different color and scent!










And also use iPen as microphone, play a karaoke!

And, do you have other new idea for this magic tool? We will customize it to fit your demand!

Experience virtual reality in your dream!

In last blog I made an imagination of future model making technology, now I have a further daydream based on it.

This is inspired by an American fiction series called “Jake 2.0”. In a episode, the main role played in a room made of Virtual reality stuff, he perform a combat with terrorists in this room, just like in the real city. By the way in this film this guy is also implanted nanotechnology mini robot in his blood so he got super ability, can even fix a electronically broken TV. What ever.


The same scene is also showed in Matrix and many other fiction movies. There are some technologies make us believe it’s possible, today we can play golf towards a screen which showing the view of golf field, we can watch a 3D projection movie, In the previous lecture of Sven Tollmien we also learned some scientist have invented some machine make it possible to control a virtual game or speech by mind but not action.

Then I have a crazy fantasy again. If we can experience a virtual reality when we are wake, can we also experience it in our dream? It’s said during a typical lifespan, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming[2] (which is about 2 hours each night[3]).

EEG showing brainwaves during REM sleep

This means a lot!
For urban planner, they can make their virtual urban design model into virtual reality format, and put in a machine connecting to volunteer’s brain( by brainwave maybe), so in his dream the volunteer will enter the virtual city( the whole city will be mirrored into a virtual version too), then they can experience the new city life before the proposal is implemented into reality. Then they can give feedback to planner to adjust and improve something in their proposal.

Well, the question is, will we still have reality world after 50 yrs?

Fantasy of Model making in urban planning

As a urban planner, we are designing the physical environment to fit people's life. In this working process model making is very important for designer to test and demonstrate their idea.

Today we work on these 2 kinds of models:

Handmade physical model

Virtual model on 2D screen


How about future?

In the film X-men, I discovered a scene, people gathered around a round table, and a digital dynamic model apears on the table and chang its content,orientation, and scale as people want.

It's awesome!

I believe it could be realised in near future, today we already have some 3D projection technology like this:




As inspired by the user friendly interface of Microsoft surface and the powerful fuction of model making software Skechup, let’s imagine in the future, we can edit directly on the virtual model showing in front of us with our hand, like we do today on the screen of computer. We can make a shape, add floor and windows on it, edit its details, paint the wall with different pattern, choose various premade street furniture and place them on street, turn on the sunlight to see if the inner garden is totally under shadow of building, attach information of construction, energy consumption, water circuit in each building model, even simulate different weather and season change of greenery, and so on.
All in this Virtual Model!

It will be a mirror of reality!

New tools for designers

The lecture about mobile phone inspired me. Most examples given by Sven Tollmien are about entertainment and consuming, but how these personal Mobile Terminal can help creating products and fortune?

What is the most frequently used tool to study,record info, create idea, make design?

Pen and Paper!

Everyone use them almost everyday, and their thousands of years usage history have proven them as crucial tools for creation. Nowadays they both have great potientials to be updated digitally and become magic tools!

As an architect I have used various kinds of pens for sketching, drawing, rendering and recording. They do help me a lot, they are not only objective tools to illustrate things, they also give me confidence and pleasure when I use them. Today lots of designers have to use mouse to make drawing on computer, but they definitely prefer to use pen directly to do it, like the older generations. The best masterpieces in human history are all made by hand originally, even some new products or architectures get it's origional appearence by sketch on paper.

Now we have chances to throw away mouses and go back to the adorable pens again!

Here are some new(or potential) technologies could make this happen:

Stylus for Iphone touch screen

This stylus and the touchscreen give you experience as normal paper and pens, you can write note and also make sketch with it.

Tablet and painting software

Some laptop company such as Lenovo and Fujitsu, and Pen Tablet maker Wacom have designed various products, with the help of some outstanding software such as Corel Painter, artist can make painting like on paper.

Tablet by Wacom:
Corel Painter

If the screen could be expand to bigger size then it could be utilized more broaderly, maybe in the future we can just put a thin tablet like paper on desk and then draw architecture plan on in, then zoom freely by fingers just like in Iphone, and edit it like in Autocad, make 3D model in it like in Sketchup, then designers don't need to use mouse and keyboard anymore, they will enjoy the fun of working like Leonardo da Vinci, creat the future of city and lifestyle with flawless experience.

It's not a fiction!

Touch interface like Minority Report

Now we have: Microsoft Surface

You can also watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9j_tYP-kzc