EXPO.015

Un esempio di progettazione di servizi di mobilità – del comune di Sesto S. Giovanni – che analizzando le problematiche dell’area, identifica i vari interventi e opportunità da attuare, tra cui anche il servizio “a piedi”

Un progetto per un’area della città di Palermo, che identifica aree e necessità di utilizzo dello strumento tapis roulant come infrastruttura per lo spostamento di persone

Qui il pdf del progetto

novarev2007-02-romeo

Cluster magazine describes plans in China for the world’s first urban biomedical hub. Sascha Haselmayer, one of its advisors, writes that Fenglin Biomedical Centre will concentrate life science, medical care services, medical education, business incubation, and medical exhibitions, in the Xuhui district of Shanghai. Haselmayer says Fenglin is about building a healthcare system that has to almost instantly provide for more than one billion currently unprotected people. Fenglin can become a global biomedical hub, he says, that will increase productivity, and speed up the process from scientific discovery to bedside product”. Emerging trends such as lifestyle diseases, preventive medicine, and bio-informatics, have further stimulated interest from international partners. And there, for me, is where FMC is misconceived. It’s an urban development project, not a health service one. As I discovered in Korea a while back, biomedical clusters (here’s a map of them) like Fenglin are popular with investors and multinationals. Large inflows of capital are attracted by tax breaks and what Haselmayer describes as an inclusive yet visionary governance that, in Fenglin’s case, includes a Patenting Center to assist in interrnationalisation/localisation of patents. But the latest thinking on health favours the radical decentralisation of care – not its concentration, and not its technological intensification. A business model based on the privatisation of medical knowledge is also unlikely to benefit China’s population. Investors will probably get sick, too, when the wildly over-egged promises being made for biomedicine turn out to be chimeras. For more details, please refer to the website: http://www.shfmc.com/ 

Pdf

Evento di portata internazionale, inserito nel contesto della Biennale internazionele di Design, Sant’etienne  , che si terrà dal 15 al 30 Novembre 2008.

Di seguito una lista delle iniziative, alcune delle quali avranno sede, nello stesso periodo, in tutta Europa.

VELO WALAS
Avinash Kumar on the story behind velowala.org, a media installation made by a
team in Delhi that brings the bike-based commerce of the streets of India alive
- in St Etienne. (Saturday 15/11)

ECOSOFT; WORLDCHANGING
New economic models, complementary currencies, local economy trading schemes,
alternative trade networks, community supported agriculture: Bethany Koby &
Ellie Thornhill talk about their eco-soft shop. They are followed later that day
by special guest Alex Steffen, editor of Worldchanging. (Sunday 16/11)

DESIGN IMPERATIVES; ENERGY
Allan Chochinov, editor in chief of Core77.com, gives a keynote on “design
imperatives”. Later, a worskhop on design and energy will discuss: can design
help us choose among the growing number of green energy offers ? (Tuesday 18/11)

COMPOSTING; DE-MOTORISATION; MANZINI
Clare Brass + Flora Bowden from SEED Foundation talk about their neighbourhood
composting service. Later there’s a design clinic : Design for mobility, or for
de-motorisation? There follows a special keynote by Ezio Manzini on “design
strategies for the small, local, open and connected”. Oh yes, and the French
edition of In The Bubble is launched at 18h. (Wednesday 19/11)

OPEN SYSTEMS AND INFORMAL TECHNOLOGY
A sustainable world will be densely networked – but not by closed, proprietary
networks. Juha Huuskonen (Pixelache, Piksel, Pixelvark, Afropixel, Pikslaverk,
PixelAzo) and Jean-Noel Montagne (CrasLabs, Paris) discuss how self organisation
and technological autarchy will be crucial in the coming years. (Thursday 20/11)

EDIBLE GARDENS ON LYON BROWNFIELD SITES; KIMCHI AND THE CITY
Emanual Louisgrand talks about l’Ilot d’Amaranthes – his gardens on brownfield
sites in Lyon. Later, a design clinic on Food and the City features Matthieu
Benoit-Gonin (Jardinethic); Debra Solomon (culiblog.org); and Francois Jegou
(solutioning.net). (Friday 21/11)

DESIGNING SUSTAINABILITY EVENTS
A Doors of Perception lunchtime discussion. If you are serious about hoping to
do an event City Eco Lab (or Dott 07) in your own region, Doors cannot fund it -
but we can help with the strategy and process. (Saturday 22/11)

RE-LOCALISATION AND SMALL BUSINESSES
Design clinic for and with local companies. (Monday 24/11)

NURTURING A REGION’S HARD AND SOFT RESOURCES
How to find and document eco-materials – and human savoir faire (Tuesday 25/11)

WATER AND THE CITY; SUDS
Re-connecting a city with its natural systems: projects for St Etienne’s River
Furan. Plus a design clinic on sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS).
(Wednesday 26/11)

MAPS OF THE FUTURE
Pirjo Haikola from the Why Factory (NL) a research institute on the future city
founded by Winy Maas and MVRDV, shows how maps are used in rethinking,
researching, reshaping and enhancing images of future urban life.
(Thursday 27/11)

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS AN ECO NEIGHBOURHOOD?
Citizens and designers involved in one of St Etienne’s “eco quartiers” (eco
neighbourhoods) discuss what functions make a place eco – or not -
and how to measure their performance. (Thursday 27/11)

LESSONS OF CANTEEN 80KM
The City Eco Lab restaurant, Cantine80km, serves food sourced within a 80km
radius – the maximum distance food may travel in France without being
refrigerated (Friday 28/11).

TRANSITION CITIES CONFERENCE
Transition Towns groups are growing like wildfilre. The transition model
“emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the
eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers
to a big question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs
in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to rebuild resilience
(in response to peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response
to climate change)?” The Transition Cities conference will share ideas and
insights, tools and techniques, and explore what works and what doesn’t.
November 27-28 Nottingham.

ECONOMIC ASHES TO ASHES
The policy think-tank Demos is launching a new book in London called After the
Apocalypse. The report asks, “what we do when the (financial crisis) dust begins
to settle?” When, or if? The speakers listed are heavyweight inside-the-tenters
- but I wish Demos could also have invited Ilargi from Automatic Earth.
6pm, Wednesday 5 November at Demos, London.

ONE PLANET, ONE DAY
A sustainability event hosted by BioRegional in London will focus on real life
developments and businesses: One Brighton urban living; Sonoma Mountain Village
mixed-use community; B&Q One Planet Living retail (sic); Masdar City zero carbon
city; One Planet 2012 London Olympics; Mata de Sesimbra eco-tourism and
conservation development, Portugal. Is building eco cities like Masdar from
scratch in the middle of a desert appropriate, or even viable?
The debate could be lively. 3 December, London.

WEB-BASED TOOLS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE.
Social Innovation Camp is looking for the best ideas for web-based tools to
create social change. From 5-7 December the camp will connect software
developers and designers with front-line practitioners to develop six web tools
to change the world. Idea submissions are required by Friday 7 November.

MASTER OF ADVANCED STUDIES IN DESIGN CULTURE
A new masters at the interface of science and society has been launched at the
Institute for Design Research in Zurich.
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NORWEGIAN JOURNAL FOR DESIGN RESEARCH
invites articles in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English.

SERVICE DESIGN CONFERENCE
Speakers include Shelley Evensen (Carnegie Mellon University) Rory Hamilton and
Sean Miller (Live|work), Jamin Hegeman (Nokia), Oliver King (Engine), Craig
LaRosa (Continuum) and Denis Weil (McDonalds). 24-26 November, Amsterdam.

450 FILMS ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
I’m not sure whether this counts as a threat, or a promise, but the new website
of Rotterdam’s Architecture Film Festival lists a staggering 450 movies. The
next festival (it’s biennial) begins 29 October 2009.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Rob van Kranenberg (with Sean Dodson) has published a a timely book about
“ambient technology” and the all-seeing network of Radio Frequency
Identification Devices (RFID). Anyone living in a city is exposed daily to
dozens of closed-circuit television and camera-phones – but in a few years’ time
even more pervasive and technologies will take their place as consumer goods are
assigned IP addresses, just as web pages are today. Are designers, architects,
policy makers equipped to deal with these fundamental issues ? They will be
better prepared if they read this book. It’s downloadable for free.

CURRY STONE DESIGN PRIZE
A South African architectural firm whose ingenious, yet simple design
re-envisions low-income housing for a Cape Town shantytown, was named the
winner. Luyanda Mpahlwa, 49, and Mphethi Morojele, 45, received the $100,000
prize, administered by the University of Kentucky College of Design. The prize
is given annually to breakthrough design solutions with the power and potential
to improve our lives and the world we live in.

NUBIAN VAULTS
In the Sahel, desertification is a major threat to the local people and their
environment. The traditional use of raw timber as a construction material,
particularly for roofing, is no longer feasible. Population growth,
deforestation, and desertification have contributed to a shift in rural areas to
importing building materials, including sheet metal, to be used for roofing. To
address this problem, the Nubian Vault Association (AVN) has adapted an age-old
construction technique that has been used in other parts of Africa and
throughout the world. To date, AVN has trained 110 builders, is currently
training 100 more, and has built 550 vaults in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, and
Togo. AVN needs money to establish new partnerships and bring its “Earth Roofs”
program to other countries in the Sahel. We know the people – which is why we
urge you support AVN if you can.

CYNICAL ABOUT SYNTONY
The Royal Society of Arts asked me to fill in a survey: “Can Cynicism be good
for Society and Democracy?” The survey was so repetitive that I gave up half-way
through. I should have known better – and stopped earlier – when I saw the word
“syntony.” A significant cause of the cynical society is surely the creation of
synthetic buzzwords. But one thousand of my fellow Fellows, being made of
stronger stuff , completed the survey – and cynicism is indeed infecting the
very fabric of our society. Top of the list was politics (51 per cent) compared
with 31 per cent for “general cynicism of life” and 30 per cent for business.
What a surprise!

Residential streets in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco suffer from urban blight, lethal gang violence, factory pollution, speeding cars, sewage backup and flooding, and disassociation with the rest of the city. The Bayview Model Block project reconfigures the streetscape of just one block—the 1700 Block of Newcomb Avenue—in attempt to support residents’ efforts to reclaim their neighborhood. The proposed project would install trees and other plants along the to enhance the streetscape, reduce storm water runoff, calm traffic and create community gathering places. Working directly with residents in a serious of community design workshops, Architecture for Humanity San Francisco designed a number of small innovative changes to the streetscape of 1700 Newcomb Ave that taken together will dramatically improve the qualify of life and increase safety for the families living on this block. Those changes are now underway.

http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/node/165

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_neuwirth_on_our_shadow_cities.html

Una visione per il futuro da Robert Neuwirth, autore del libro “Shadow Cities”. Lui considera gli “squatter city” di oggi, in veloce diffusione e condizioni difficili di vita, un modello per “le citta del futuro” per il senso di comunita’ che esiste in questi modelli, la velocita’ di innovare e di sviluppo anche se in modo tutto illegale, informale..

The following proof of concept studies are intended as future visions of the utilization of CUD pilot programs in urban environments. These visions of connected and sustainable urban development were created by MIT Mobile Experience Lab in collaboration with Cisco Systems – Internet Business Solutions Group.

Connected Home

The Connected Home of the future will incorporate an integrated approach to buildings and their interaction with occupants, the local community, and beyond. This demonstration of the Connected Home of the future incorporates smart energy solutions, automated services and efficiency measures to aid citizens lead more sustainable lives. Technologies such as a Personal Travel Assistant, energy monitoring tools, TelePresence and social networking interactions, and energy grids for micro generation of energy across the urban community illustrate how citizens can play a positive and sustainable role in their urban landscape. 

Video

Connected Urban Development

Connected urban environments couple ubiquitous broadband with open standards and increased information transparency to promote public, private, and people partnerships which reflect local, regional, and global perspectives on environmental, political, and economic landscapes. By encouraging the development of information and communication technologies (also known as ICT), city governments can enhance both citizen experiences and city management.

This increased information transparency, coupled with ubiquitous broadband and connected environments, promotes improved customer experiences, while open standards enable greater integration with social networking and other lifestyle applications.

This demonstration of a future vision of Connected Urban Development incorporates urban transportation options such as vehicle sharing and journey planning through interacting devices and information sources. Smart energy solutions, microgeneration, community generated urban information sources, piezoelectric energy generation are presented as scenarios for a pervasive, integrated vision of cities of the future.

Video

Personal Travel Assistant

The application of a Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) in three scenarios; commuter, tourist and student is applied to various media through which the PTA can be used. These range from a character based, physical interface (in the scenario presented here, as a Koala), a travel opportunity map (TOM), presented graphically by time and distance. Other applications such as an Ecopet, where low carbon travel can earn eco-points, and a web based tool further develop the device agnostic nature of the PTA.

Video

Curitiba, la città brasiliana che negli anni Settanta ha rivoluzionato la propria struttura viabile in pochi giorni, implementando l’efficienza del trasporto pubblico e inducendo i cittadini a non avere più bisogno dell’automobile.

Curitiba è la capitale dello stato del Paranà, in Brasile, ed ospita circa 1.8 milioni di residenti. In questa città, già dagli anni Sessanta , si cominciarono ad adottare riforme sostenibili in tema di mobilità. Da un giorno all’altro il sindaco della città, Jaime Lerner, decise di ripavimentare le strade carrozzabili, piantando aiuole e alberi, sostituendo le piante man mano che queste venivano abbattute dagli oppositori. Nel giro di pochissimo tempo la viabilità è stata completamente rivoluzionata.
La seconda operazione fu quella di creare un sistema di trasporti con strade riservate ai bus , rampe coperte per il passaggio pedonale, piste ciclabili. Dopo un breve periodo il sistema dei trasporti divenne così efficiente che la gente cominciò a non usare più l’automobile.
Un nuovo sistema di trasporto pubblico fu creato dopo l’adozione di 5 arterie cardinali. Il Bus Rapid Transit (Transito rapido di Autobus) sfrutta le caratteristiche positive di un sistema metro, ma con il vantaggio di utilizzare autobus di superficie: in questo modo il sistema diventa più flessibile rispetto ad un LRT (Light Rail Transit, o metropolitana leggera ) ed anche notevolmente più economico. A Curitiba l’adozione di fermate tubo e stazioni su modello del sistema della metropolitana hanno evitato i problemi di controllo dei biglietti e quelli delle code. Il pagamento avviene sempre prima dell’entrata nella stazione o fermata (tubo). L’alta frequenza degli autobus fa in modo che il volume dei passeggeri trasportati, nella rete integrata di Curitiba sono più di 2 milioni al giorno, sia simile a quello di un sistema di metropolitana vero e proprio, ma ad un costo strutturale notevolmente inferiore.

La prima comunità in Italia, che si propone come laboratorio di ricerca e sperimentazione per un lifestyle sostenibile, servendosi delle tecnologie più innovative sul tema dell’utilizzo di energia rinnovabile.
Leaf community, in provincia di Ancona, è la prima comunità ecosostenibile in Italia. E’ alimentata interamente a energia pulita, ed è definibile come un “laboratorio” di tecnologia, integrando diversi aspetti/elementi che contribuiscono alla definizione di uno stile di vita sostenibile.

L’intero progetto è stato realizzato grazie al contributo di aziende partner, che hanno svilupato sistemi ad hoc per il raggiungimento dell’obiettivo “verde” di leaf community . Tra queste si possono citare Whirpool, Enel, Loccioni, Ikea , Iguzzini e altre.
Leaf comunity si propone come un laboratorio internazionale aperto, di ricerca e progetto, per studiare ed analizzare i consumi e la fattibiltità di un possibile ampliamento su scala urbana.
(continua…)