About NN_CITY

The installation explores the transformation of the existing Seoul city plan based on extrapolating currently proposed or already implemented smart city technology.  The specific focus of this transformation will be how digital forms of governance and perception allow us to rethink traditional boundaries within cities. These boundaries include between urban and wilderness, public and private, and the different program types within the city.  As digital sensing and governing become more prevalent what sorts of alternative thresholds can be established in place of traditional city designs. Can zones of wilderness safely integrate into cityscapes mediating climate impacts? Do traditional strategies of zoning and program distribution still matter in an era where navigation is aided through smart phones, and where place of work and place of living become conflated?  Two media pieces will explore these questions at both the masterplan and pedestrian level.

The first piece is a master plan scale simulation of a proposed evolution of Seoul utilizing a mix of 3D printed speculative superstructures and machine learning driven digital media. An animated site plan beneath a 3D model of a reimagined central Seoul, will represent the transformation of the city afforded through the acceleration of proposed smart city technology.  The most visible aspects will be a rethinking of transportation infrastructure, and the intrusion of rewilded areas and agriculture into the city center.  The rewilding proportion of the project proposes an alternative to ideas of conservation or picturesque nature. Instead, these regions of the city are defined by their hostility towards human habitation.  The simulation will explore the performative benefits of  integrating potentially hazardous environments for climate mediation, waste cycles, and energy resources. This close integration of these uninhabitable spaces is made possible only through the liminal systems of constant machinic perception and digital governing structures which allows for an erosion of traditional urban boundaries.  Similarly, new infrastructure for mobility will be explored, which questions the need for legible, totalizing master plans in an era of ubiquitous digital navigation.  The new masterplan will order itself along alternative organizational priorities, eroding the traditional urban grid.

The second piece is an interactive exploration of the design opportunities afforded by ubiquitous sensing within the urban environment. Rather than focus on dystopian tropes usually associated with the pluralistic panopticon embodied by the smart city, the piece will leverage surveillance space opportunistically as a new design space for architects.  Contemporary cities are ordered both through the material devices traditionally deployed by architects, but also increasingly through digital platforms. This portion of the installation will utilize a combination of depth sensors, streaming cameras, machine vision applications, and neural networks to assemble a new perception of the urban space generated from the surveilling of the exhibition viewers.

The two pieces work in concert, exploring the speculative impacts of smart city technology at two significantly different scales.  One emphasizes the contingent nature of city design on user behavior, while the other looks at the cities definition through its interfaces to large scale complex systems.