11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 2 | Experiential Simulation | The sensory perception of the built environment

A sense-archive of urban space

ABSTRACT

How to fix and collect specific moments and conditions of the evolving life of the urban environment? How to record these accurately for future studies? How to share these properly? These are some of the questions we wanted to face when we started our research on sense-archives for the urban space. This is part of a wider research program we are developing on the themes of perceptual simulation for urban design. Traditional urban representations are in many cases poor in describing the sensory stimuli generated by the urban environment, and often these elements are treated individually and in a quantitative way. The designer has to refer to other kinds of sources, as writings and photos, in order to indirectly understand the perceptual conditions. Even if this kind of information can be very useful, this data needs to be interpreted in order to envision an environment. In this process the risk of misinterpretation is high, and the envisioned image is difficult to share. So, is it possible to accurately record urban conditions, in order to create an archive of public space useful for the urban design practice? And mostly: is it possible to build this collection in order to grasp and reproduce, at least in a partial way, some sensory conditions of the urban environment? We argue that this is possible, and can be useful to inform urban transformation projects. Following this premise we developed a method to collect a number of urban conditions of the visual environment in a qualitative way. We focused our attention on that sensorial aspect, without forgetting that sight alone is not enough to properly describe the real condition of a place.

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AUTHORS

Barbara E.A. Piga

Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politenico di Milano

An Architect by education, Barbara E.A. Piga is Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at the Politecnico di Milano(POLIMI) since 2011, where she is also research fellow (since 2010). She is research scientist at the Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana 'Fausto Curti' (DAStU) since its foundation in 2007 and holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from POLIMI (2010). Her research interest is urban design and perceptual simulation. She works in particular with dynamic simulations of the urban environment as a design and evaluation tool.

Laura Cibien

Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politenico di Milano

An Urban Planner by education, Laura Cibien is research scientist at the Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana "Fausto Curti", Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, since 2007. Author of the master thesis: 'The 'Tavolo Luminoso': how to built a new tool suitable for supporting representation, communication and participation', she has developed with Francesco Secchi a tangible user interface called "Tavolo Luminoso"; its aim is to make people interacting in real-time through physical objects, such as a 3-D model, with the rich content that the computation is able to provide; it should analyze in real-time the impact of a design project supporting the communication between the different actors involved in the decision-making process. In 2012 she has been research fellow for the PRIN research "SENSE - Sostenibilità ambientale urbana e involucro edilizio".

Anna Legnani

School of Architecture and Society, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Simona Mungo

School of Architecture and Society, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Davide Zappa

School of Architecture and Society, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Valerio Signorelli

Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politenico di Milano

An Architect by education, Valerio Signorelli holds a Ph.D. in Territorial Design and Goverment from the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU) at the Politecnico di Milano. He is a research scientist at the Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana 'Fausto Curti' (DAStU) since 2007. His research interest focuses on urban design, sensory urbanism and digital simulation tools. He works on the role of the various sensory stimuli (mainly auditory stimuli) for defining well-being in urban open spaces, and the employ of 'game engine technology' as design, evaluation and communication tools.

Eugenio Morello

Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politenico di Milano

An architect by education, Eugenio Morello is Assistant Professor in Urban Design at the Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) since 2010. He is also research scientist at the Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU). His research interest is urban environmental quality and urban morphology. He works in particular with digital simulations and prediction models for the integration of environmental aspects and energy systems within the design of sustainable neighborhoods. He was previously a Roberto Rocca postdoctoral fellow at the Human Space Lab, POLIMI (2009) and at the SENSEable City Lab, MIT (2008). He was also adjunct professor at POLIMI since 2006, where he taught urban design. He holds a Ph.D. in environmental design and building technology from POLIMI (2006).

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