Architecture, Urbanism and Planning

Tag: parametric urbanism

  • The Future of Smart Cities?!

    The Future of Smart Cities?!

    Image by Tom Glover

    Want a smarter city?

    A new planning tool in development will let governments & people put forward, vote on and see – via virtual simulation – how new ideas, interventions and planning proposals will affect their city.

    Please visit this link to read the Guardian interview: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/17/want-a-smarter-city-then-its-time-to-indulge-in-time-travel

    Architecture, Planning & Complexity 

    The new research in SOftgrid Limited (and Manchester School of Architecture) focuses on complex urban situations produced by the rapid rate of urbanization today and the resulting extreme changes to the physical fabric of many cities. This looks more closely at Planning & Complexity research (a new framework for cities and governance beyond the ‘smart cities’ definition). The Complex Systems framework encompasses current theories referring to Smart Cities, Big Data, Computational Modelling and Digital Development and Participation. The Research is about how to design and manage our cities in the future through collaborative platforms based around real time geo-spatial systems. Our research points to open online platforms and gamification and moves beyond the simple idea of sensors updating a data models towards optimisation.

    Image by Tom Glover

  • European Urban Summer School 2012 – London


    Eric Cheung & Ulysses Sengupta of Softgrid Ltd have BEEN CONFIRMED for PRESENTATIONS & WORKSHOPS on New Computational Methods for Urban Design and Planning – Within constant change  at:

    TIMES OF SCARCITY & RECLAIMING THE POSSIBILITY OF MAKING

    Please find more details at:http://www.scibe.eu/category/euss/

  • Exhibition – Unplannable City: Approaches to Urban Emergence & Complexity

    Exhibition – Unplannable City: Approaches to Urban Emergence & Complexity

    Some images from the exhibition Unplannable City recently curated at Studio X Mumbai.  The work included excerpts from Design Unit 5 at the University of Nottingham, who are a postgraduate research unit looking into complex urbanity and new tools to address traditionally ignored situations. Working with KRIA, Rachna Sansad, TISS and Mumbai University, the projects addressed issues of informal and formal building. The exhibition was accompanied by Lectures (Rohan Shivkumar, Shivani Singh and Ulysses Sengupta) a Workshop (Postgraduate students from KRVIA and NMIMS).

    Please see the parallel academic blog designunit6.com for the video lectures shortly.

  • Mao Shan Temple Masterplan

    Mao Shan Temple Masterplan

    Mao Shan Temple Masterplan from softgrid_limited on Vimeo.

    This is a short video describing our investigation attempting to integrate the formalistic relationships of the Forbidden City grid into a natural topography, which is the site of a new Taoist temple and masterplan. The investigation was inspired by an interview with the Taoist Abbot in which the shortest desrciption he provided of Taoism was ‘nature’. This brought up questions about the possible manifestations of the formal basis of the religion which is inherited from imperial associations (and historically intertwined with royal rites), when applied to a natural site such as this one.

  • Emergent Ecologies | Agent based simulation

    Emergent Ecologies from softgrid_limited on Vimeo.

    Emergent Ecologies

    Emergent Ecologies from softgrid_limited on Vimeo.

    A digital exploration into parametric urban design methods by John Lynch while he was a student in Post-Graduate Unit 6 at the University of Nottingham. Please see the following link for more detail:
    http://designunit6.com/

    Student: John Lynch
    Research Leader: Ulysses Sengupta