snark space making

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project and implementation of a new public service of movable wifi benches

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chairsharing is like common bike sharing, but offers a movable seating system instead of bicycles. the regional services card allows users to access the chairs for free: they can be used and displaced in the city at the user’s convenience, for a maximum of 6 hours. every chair can be used to work, as a public working desk, or simply rest on. the chairs are modular: they can be combined in order to work or relax with other people. every seat is equipped with wi/fi antenna that provides a free internet connection.

accessing chair sharing through the regional service card, automatically enrolls participation in a simple rewards  system. this way, not only the user can benefit from the service for free, but they can also gain points. the accumulated points can then be redeemed for discounts, promotions and special offers in shops, cultural venues and service providers in the neighborhood. chairsharing aims at triggering an acceding cultural shift towards a sustainable lifestyle in the neighborhood,  with the involvement of all the actors at stake. this can happen through the production of places, their inclusion in the main circuits of the neighborhood, the development of a civil consciousness.

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web portal and sustainable platform

chairsharing also includes an online multiuser portal, called the “sustainability platform”. this platform allows to view and manage not only the chairsharing services, but also additional  services offered within the project, and other services linked to its sustainable identity. these services include, on one hand  the fidelity card (for the collection of points, the economic  regeneration of the neighborhood, and the logistic management of the chairs), and on the other hand CSA –Community-Supported Agriculture-, bike-sharing, car-sharing, car pooling, diversified harvest , couch-surfing, and every other possible strategy for a sustainable lifestyle.

this sustainable platform is therefore a virtual square that optimises and amplifies, from a territorial marketing point of view, the sustainable concept underneath chair sharing project, and a virtuous use of the public space. it organizes on a weekly agenda and on a interactive map, besides a management tool that can be shared even if autonomously manageable, both for pulic and private actors, at  individual or collective level.

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chairsharing integrated communication

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The underlying principle is the research for a grammar made of pictograms representing and communicating the variety of urban situations that chair sharing generates. We draw the entire chair sharing communicational apparatus from this basic unit, conceived to be reproduced through the punctures on the chair covering, working in this way like a pantograph (an out-of-date instrument capable of reproducing drawings at different scales).

The apparatus, by definition interactive and multimedia is made of:

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- bench scripting (1:1)

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- design patterns for paving (10:1)

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- murals (100:1)

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- luminous projection (no scale)

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- TV and web communication (no scale)

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- printed communication (1:1)

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arrangement proposal for vartov square, Copenhagen

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applying the “shadow play” concept, our proposal conceives  vartov square as a galanty show. a galanty show of city life and its narrations. lights and shadows can be seen as indicators of  the vital activities in a city. light works as an attractor for both daily and nocturne practices, and organizes activities in public spaces. this duality is present in our proposal, and effectively structured. the pavement of the square is designed  for TX concrete (a special type of concrete, see the shadowplay page). covering the area with this material, we inscribed the shadows of the surrounding buildings and their overlapped areas during equinoxes and solstice  on the pavement

this allows to spot the most lighted areas during the year and draw the pavement pattern.this pattern matches the maximum ecological efficiency of the material.

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the plan of the square  will therefore be organized within a trade off between the maximum ecological performance and the maximum comfort for users. the pattern will be realized with prefabricated tiles, in order to grant the maximum sustainability even during the building process, in the construction site. each tile will have a different amount of black additive, to cover the efficency scale of the pavement. the tiles have a triangular shape and are used as a unit of measure for public space. sixty four tiles will cover two square meters, what we consider a minimal  area for activities in public space.

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collaborating with:

antonio scarponi (conceptual devices)

jorg frank seeman (light design)

mirko usai (economic feasibility)

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Okobici: project for a 3.0 bikesharing in Copenhagen

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we offer a multifaceted service addressing the cycling-community.

okobici is an alternative typology of bikesharing. It is based on reaching the maximum possible degrees of flexibility in infrastructures and on a management device working with mobile technologies. in other words it deals with advanced technologies, widely accessible to any laptop or smartphone. The physical side of the infrastructure is made of a simple egg shaped device: the application of “the egg” makes any normal bike a bikesharing bike.

every okobici is equipped with a locking system, a GPS transmitter (that allows to locate the bike in real time), and a transmitter (to establish a virtual dialogue with phones and laptop computers).

a web portal acts as interface where all the services offered by okobici can be easily and quickly managed. but the site is more than a mere management device: it is also the social network of the cycling community.

bikers can use it to manage services but also to communicate and share ideas and recommendation with other users, like facebook on two wheels.  Moreover, all can be displayed on Google maps.

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the main services offered are:

- management of personal profile (reservation of bicycles, accessories, data management, bikers log, maintenance, planning, configuration etc)

- full integration into the public transport system

- availability of integrated tickets (ex: bikesharing+bus+train) in view of a mixed and flexible displacement culture

- many augmented reality applications: guides, Wikipedia content, location of available bikes in the nearby, activation/deactivation of bikes, mixed transport systems…)

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proposal for social housing in milan

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“labor” can be a unifying issue rather than a dividing one. it can be a potential catalyst of aggregation, sharing of skills, versatility of users and inclusion in the surrounding neighborhood. cenniworks gives the chance to give work to people who have the time or the necessity to do it. this work can be fulltime employment or part-time, according to one’s capabilities and availability. cenniworks is a democratic community founded on work.

work is the constant element that underlines the endogenous and exogenous dynamics at stake within a community.

the internal organization of cenniworks is a peer2peer community, an open horizontal model that allows sharing and mutual exchange (of information, objects and work performances).

contact with the outside environment of the neighborhood will be based on the transparent provision of services and professional figures, aiming at beginning a strong relationship catalyst.

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the project consists of two structures:

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-the physical structure, a building, supports an organic residential system dominated by the proximity between work and residence. it is designed as a support allowing operational flexibility, multi-layered accessibility, economic and environmental sustainability. the management of public spaces, both private and collective ones, as well as the organization of services, are designed to organize in space a cohesive, flexible and open community, according to the principle “one community=one building”.

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-the virtual structure made of a web portal, a necessary tool to manage the many services offered (both internal to the community: “potluck”, exchange, time banking, CSA, work supplying, etc. and linked to the neighborhood: GAS, work etc)

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the combination of the two infrastructures intends to grant administrative continuity with the new services plan of the city of milan. It is also focused on a process of inclusion and coordination in the urban surroundings that will at first “listen” to the neighborhood and will take into consideration the level of satisfaction of inhabitants and city users, monitored through info-points and UGC [User Generated Content] technologies.

an internal mutual company (community manager) will be delegated to manage functions, programs, demand and supply. each component will have its mirror device in place. the circulation of information and situations is intrinsic to the architectural project, its virtual splitting, the services-spaces-actors matrix offered.

the city enters the building, transforming it into a multipurpose complex and open system.

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cenniworks: community development process

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cenniworks is a processual project. its articulation creates a dynamic circle of information, relationships with the territory, services, and feedback. this circle begins with a start-up phase and allows then virtual and physical architecture to implement its functions, depending on the needs emerging from the neighborhood.

the mapping process that lies underneath the whole project will, thanks to a physical and virtual platform of sharing and content generation by city users (UGC), engage a synchronization process between territorial supply and demand (of work and, in general, of services).

the community in cenniworks grows with its surrounding: the community influences the surroundings and vice-versa. the physical spaces of the main building are designed to ease the operational flexibility, while the  virtual architecture of the portal makes information and relationships circulate within the building and the whole neighborhood.

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urban inclusion is an important side of the project.

cenniworks plans four steps to set the implementation of new geographies and territorial identities of the neighborhood. The last of these steps is open, without temporal boundaries.

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1. start-up [creation of the participative platform, communication campaign, creation of info-point, mapping of professional demand].

-actors involved: neighborhood, external actors, designers, public administration

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2. community selection [finalization of mapping, portal structuring]

-actors involved: district, candidates for community, candidates for community manager, PA, designers

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3. physical and virtual building [community manager creation, finalization of community, portal, on demand workshops, WiFi and ubiquitous computing]

-actors involved: residents, community, community manager

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4. integration with the neighborhood [cenniworks portal start-up, feedback monitoring, profiling uses]

-all actors involved

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mapping and strategic design for the new cultural district in lomellina

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the greatest resource lomellina can rely on is its territory.

as a matter of fact, it is an anthropic landscape where nature is inextricably linked with human practices and actions over time. a qualitative atlas is the best possible tool to increase the value of this critical resource in a strategic plan. the atlas fulfills different goals: showing relationship, through interactive maps, underlining their thematic pertinences and suggesting the design of the strategic axes of the project. building an atlas from a quali/quantitative mapping of the tangible and intangible heritage of the urban place enables to plan thematic itineraries – on a differentiated scale – and to build an operational visualization of charts explaining the development/implementation of the project. thanks to these features, the atlas becomes a tool for a territorial governance. moreover, the project of building an online portal for the atlas of lomellina could be a key step for the implementation of the Inspire European Directive aiming at harmonizing, sharing on line and planning the territorial cartographic data.

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proposal for the city of children in frattamaggiore

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la città del sole is a social project advocating sustainable, transparent and multi-faceted public space.

It’s a project on the disappearance of the barriers or architecture. At its crux, it involves transcending architecture beyond walls, promoting the permeability of aggregation rather than isolation. The purpose of this technological plan is to revitalize and expand the community beyond its own universe with anticipated development trickling down to other cities. It suggests a deliberate mobility core, where the alternative periodicity between motion and inactivity is suspended. It communicates transparency as an idea of an open society, without obscurity.

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It is a city for children that operates controllables with out having a controlling environment.  It’s beyond thinking outside of the box, it’s experiencing outside of walls. It views the urban sprawl and aggregation as a latent potential to extend its use, rather than limit; these dynamics are seen as a chance to implement a new sense of place, based on the symbolic power of land as creator of virtuous differences. It plugs into a network-city, and wants to become its reference for a new idea of public space.

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It’s a sustainable city that emphasizes the natural generative power that characterizes the sun and the earth. It contains a new museum space involved in ground breaking technologies and international sustainability programs. It hints a social model making the territory a crucial aspect in culture. The public space becomes therefore realm of pedagogical learning.

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observation of an ethnosemiotic investigation in frattamaggiore

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the ethnosemiotic analysis is a fieldwork focusing on the mixture of various elements. it starts from observation and data-mining, mainly qualitative (interviews, field recordings, photos, etc.). it’s based on the disclosure of phenomena with human science instruments: it therefore goes on by reporting, underlining and analyzing discourses, narrations, shared values, pertinences shown by the inhabitants. It is a “listening” process of individual opinions and common sense, of ways of living the space. It’s a systematization of notes useful in the process of urban planning. Fieldwork in Frattamaggiore lasted ten days. during this period, researchers discussed their first impressions and ideas about CIBAF’s first concept (la città del sole) with different players – man on the street, institutional and non institutional actors.

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the diary is a reconstruction of the development of the concept of la citta del sole made thanks to the fieldwork. It’s a way to discover non-obvious sides of the “città del sole” with the analysis of phenomena observed on field and told by habitants both of fratta and of the atellanian. the order of the topics considered is not precisely chronological, but follows the reworking of events and their guidance through experience, meetings and speeches.

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technological infrastructure for the city of children in frattamaggiore

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La città del sole promotes the use of technology as a social connector and connection interface, the landscape a further extension of scale and number of users. Technology supports experiential features in Cibaf museum activities. It’s a mechanism allowing re-appropriation and definition of a semantic connotation of the space in the “città del sole”. Technological Architecture – RFID and Local Positioning System- offer a communication system interacting with mobile technologies and interfacing with a hi-tech management system to keep costs down and ensure transparency. All this is integrated in a web portal that will become a CIBAF virtual portal.

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The function of technologic architecture is the management of permeability, access, and possibilities of use. Its aims are the differentiation of the access depending on the user (resident, visitor, and administrator).

User profiles can be created from the available information. In order to build an ongoing experience, we provide new information and content, add space for varied access or interest of users, and boost usage of customized users. CIBAF focuses on sustainability. Energy savings linked to people’s presence/absence in spaces and installations will be carefully managed. Preparations, access and lighting actively respond to the presence of subjects, to create a comprehensive furniture system. A reporting system monitors the effective use of space and services, in order to adapt the space to the needs shown by people, and enhance the services and the museum offers. The web site keeps contents and systematizes the offers in the museum space.

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abstract_Urban Design: Bike Sharing, Public Space and Ubiquitous computing. how to address the issue of light urbanism and sustainability

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Emanuele Bompan, Gaspare Caliri, Marco Lampugnani, Beatrice Manzoni

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How to plan the next bike sharing system embedded to a multimodal transportation infrastructure that is a flexible infrastructure that enhance the sense of community and respect the environment? We present ØkoBici a community-bike-sharing system related to public transportation multimodality, ready for post-carbon cities.  It’s based on user-oriented strategy and ubiquitous computing system developed on an interactive map-based platform. Technologies and mobile devices have an active role in representing urban space, create mixed virtual and real communities, help management of public transportation and bikes sharing, monitor use and problems related to the services.

In this illustrated paper session we will detail how this project could change the public space and mobility in the city of Copenhagen, as well its small business economy and tourism. The project has been developed in the frame of the urban prize promoted by the municipality, involving private companies, as Abici, a stylish Italian bike designer to offer new. We will point out especially how ubiquitous computing and user-generated data produce reliable information on transportation and public space use, allowing light urbanism devices to be easily reconfigured in the urban spaces. Public space today change faster and adapt do different lifestyle, biopolitical process and socio-eco urban configuration (due to high-mobility). Tactical design of transportation system Is required to meet the need of the XXI century post-carbon city.

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Theoretical background derived from Marc Auge, Ivan Illich, Bruno Latour, Micheal Foucault, B.H Bratton, Allen J Scott

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The work is part of Interactive Short Paper Session topics in urban and medical geography, 2010

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http://communicate.aag.org/eseries/aag_org/program/AbstractDetail.cfm?AbstractID=33468

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modello snark: network, creatività, progetto, territorio

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Gaspare Caliri, Sonia Fanoni

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Non c’è nulla di nuovo, oggi, nel parlare di interdisciplinarità, o di multidisciplinarità, specie nel mondo della progettazione per lo spazio pubblico.

In questa sede si vogliono esporre le peculiarità di “Snark – Space making”, network multidisciplinare orientato alla collaborazione, ma de facto azienda di progettazione urbanistica e territoriale, dedita alla messa a punto di servizi per la governance e di policy design dello spazio condiviso, fortemente caratterizzata da un flusso organizzazionale “creativo”, dove i know-how delle varie discipline implicate (architettura, management, geografia, semiotica) trovano cittadinanza in istanze operative, più che teoriche, e operano una performance creativa e progettuale in un terreno neutro generato proprio dall’occasione di progetto.

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Article for ticonzero, may 2010

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full version on:

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http://www.ticonzero.info/articolo.asp?art_id=3432

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abstract_active participatory urban design: an approach to bottom-up process in urban planning. the case study of modenacambiafaccia planning prize

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Emanuele Bompan, Gaspare Caliri, Marco Lampugnani, Beatrice Manzoni, Michele Restuccia

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Participatory planning, participatory GIS, shared urban policies: Those words have became fundamental as urban politics moved towards bottom-up decisional processes. However these processes often fail due to corporate real estate interests, lack of political intervention, obsolescence of participatory technique or lack of tool who can actively produce meanings, uses and new urban vision.

This paper aims to propose an alternative that can parallel Participatory Planning. We call this tactic Active Participatory Urban Design (APUD). Through which devices (conceptual and concrete) can people take direct action on shaping the city they desire? We will show how APUD can work through the case study of the urban design prize ModenaCambiaFaccia (Modena, Italy), created in 2008 to request new ideas in planning.

Slowness is the core concept we adopted, derived from the concept of slow urbanism. Slow cities allow people to know their cities deeply and think about the use and narratives of their space. We used light urbanism, ephemeral urbanism and new technologies (such as *r-fid, Bluetooth, GPS, etc.).

Our aim is to make people active players in producing public spaces configuration, create narrative on specific places, invent new uses of existing place or produce critics on normative urbanism. Through cross feedback, mobile urban street furniture and active multidirectional communicational systems, people can effectively take urbanism into their own hands. In other words we aimed to induce slow tactical modification of the urban structure.

We conclude that tactical participation is an everyday action and is an approach that could help  stimulate adding new frames of intervention and political representation.

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this paper is part of the paper session: spatial politics of urban planning

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abstract_invito all’indugio

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Gaspare Caliri

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Questo articolo parla di semiotica, etnosemiotica, architettura, progetto, urbanistica, light urbanism, Modena, sedie mobili, chair-sharing. Parla di un discorso possibile per la “semiotica e il progetto” a partire dall’analisi congiunta di un caso specifico di intervento urbano leggero e del metodo di lavoro che l’ha reso possibile.

L’oggetto della nostra analisi è un progetto “corale” proposto e successivamente realizzato in risposta a un “Concorso di Idee” di riqualificazione urbanistica di un quartiere del centro storico di Modena. Verranno affrontate le fasi della progettazione (comprese le riflessioni semiotiche sottese ad alcune di esse) e il modo in cui essa è espressione di un network interdisciplinare di lavoro, che comprende semiotici, architetti, geografi, esperti di management urbano.

La prima intenzione è di parlare dell’utilità dello sguardo semiotico nei confronti delle discipline del progetto architettonico e urbanistico; si vuole però anche dare qualche elemento di riflessione circa l’andirivieni di competenze che si crea quando la prospettiva semiotica va a incrociarsi con altri punti di vista.

Intendiamo qui cioè suggerire una “modalità” specifica – e calata su un ambito preciso di interesse – secondo la quale la semiotica può apportare giovamento all’operatività progettuale, ma non solo: ciò che si cercherà di abbozzare è il lascito che la semiotica, una volta concluse le varie fasi di messa a punto di una proposta di progetto, si ritroverà tra le dita, come arricchimento ricevuto dal bagno multidisciplinare.

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in uscita su semiotica e progetto 2, franco angeli

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abstract_interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies to planning: the case of modena, italy

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emanuele bompan, gaspare caliri, marco lampugnani, beatrice manzoni, michele restuccia

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Existent literature shows that cities’ councils recently recognize that sustainable city’s problems transcended conventional disciplinary boundaries, presenting a new and distinctive type of research problematic (Haughton and Hunter, 1994) which can be successfully addressed through an interdisciplinary approach (Evans and Marvin, 2006).

Various municipalities (see Evans and Marvin (2006) for UK councils’ projects) ask for interdisciplinary approaches to city planning. Doing inter-disciplinarily disturbed the conventional relationships between researchers, users and funders, breaking out of traditional disciplinary boundaries and developing integrated approaches to complex problems.

The aim of this paper is to reflect on how interdisciplinary groups and approaches facilitate a governance process instead of a government one (Tanese et al., 2006) and bottom up/network based strategies instead of top down ones (Nieh, 2005). We are interested both in the results of the urban design transformations deriving from the multidisciplinary approach and in the on going planning process.

The case study analyzed in this paper presents, both in the municipality’s preliminary competition guidelines and in the groupwork methodology, the need for a triangulation between theories and methods different disciplines (architecture, urban design, geography, semiotics, economics and management) bring to the problem. The competition aimed at renovating the image of the district Porta Saragozza/Porta San Francesco in Modena which is a middle city in the north-centre of Italy, through urban design and marketing actions. Porta Saragozza and Porta San Francesco quarter mainly suffers a lack of coordination among available resources and local stakeholders. A network and a ready-to-use tool kit of social, communicative and economic tools to investigate identity, economy and space are needed.

We adopted a methodology involving semi structured face to face interviews to local public and private actors, residents, etc., urban structure analysis (mobility issues, etc.) and psycho geographical analysis, which are all methodologies pertaining to different branches.

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scritto per la conferenza ‘Art, Culture and Public Sphere’, 2008

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abstract_digital ethnography

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gaspare caliri, marco lampugnani

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Bruno Latour’s Pétite philosophie de l’énonciation (1999) introduced the idea of “proxy”, a delegation of “speech act” from a (non-human) actor to human ones. Our research wants to apply this concept to the city, in a constructional approach that mixes up semiotics, ANT and latest theory of architecture. City is a device which communicates and which needs city-users to communicate. We propose that city could delegate city-users to produce its “communication acts” and discursive expressions.

The so-called city users receive proxy from city and try to carry it out, for example through urban-crossing.

City uses many devices to suggest the way in which city-users could obey the proxy: traffic signs, barriers for pedestrians or means of carrying, and also urban planning, in terms of distribution of spaces for categorized actors. But, in nowadays cities, another crucial way to structure and implement delegation could be ubiquitous computing. According to Latour’s doubts about the terms included in the expression “Actor-Network Theory”, we don’t want to study ubiquitous computing as a network, but as a “worknet”, looking for a discursive projection that “textualize” the relationships between actors. In other words, we don’t care about ubiquitous computing as a given network but as a catalyst for links, relationships, and, in a deeper view, for actanctial weights.

We want to discuss this approach focusing on two specific projects we designed: an ubiquitous computing-community for a social housing in Milan and a cyclists-community for the next bike-sharing in Copenhagen. We will develop this case studies underlining how urban technology, ubiquitous computing, devices, maps, light urbanism and human actors interact creating a discourse. We look at the public as a consequence rather than a premise, the product of a constant negotiation among subjects/places/power. Our aim is to highlight how a material semiotic approach succeeds in unfolding the construction of public as a result, where human and non-human actors, tangible and intangible devices and organizations are as the same potential level of intervention. We are interested in studying the split between virtual and real spaces, related to neighborhood practices. Moreover, we would like to underline how in ubiquitous computing cities it could be important to uphold and keep an ethnographic process of observation. Ubiquitous computing is a new arena for public actvism, in which brand new behaviors and relational patterns took place. As this happens realtime and 1:1 scale, the need for an ethnographic approach is – once more time – fundamental to track, understand and interact iwith those processes. We call it Digital Ethnosemiotics: the disciple which could watch, analyse, and explain the proxy in ubiquitous computing cities and public spaces. We will try to argue how it is basic, in our perspective, to mesh up fieldwork and profiling systems, UGC (User Generated Content) devices and physical practices. In the end, we will account for ub.comp. cities’ relationships just to look for ANT and semiotics mutual contribution in “closing” and defining observable texts in the urban discourse, with no added sociological terms and categories, outside the observable processes.

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contributo per la conferenza EASST_010, proposto per la categoria “are we still halfway of the turn? practicing semiotics, performing science and technology studies”.