Street Swap

with:
  Viki Sandor & Mathias Bank

#streetgame #kpi #hybridplanner #unreal #nocars

In this workshop, we will develop a new ‘Street Swapper’ game that allows us to create fresh visions for the streets of Vienna by converting physical sketches and models into virtually rendered, computed environments.

While concepts like 15-minute cities, superblocks, traffic calming and the pedestrianization of streets are gaining popularity in Vienna, practical visions for street redesigns and activations remain limited. This workshop aims to tackle this challenge by developing innovative co-design tools that empower people to collectively repurpose and arrange urban objects on sites and streets while immediately evaluating their potential along key environmental performance indicators. 

The workshop will loop and iterate around four actions: Material sourcing, Asset assembly, Game Setup, Play & Explore. 

1. Material sourcing: We will search for and capture (3D scan) available materials and objects in the city of Vienna.

2. Asset Assembly: We will combine our found materials and objects into urban elements with a variety of functions and identities.

3. Game Setup: We will create digital compositions of the found objects, transforming them into assets for tactical urbanism.

4. Play & Explore: As soon as the first assets are ready, we will start co-designing the streets using physical gadgets and sketches. The real-time rendered atmospheric feedback and Rhino-Grasshopper computed key performance indicators (KPIs) such as square meters of shade, access to parking, and embodied carbon will help us explore and rethink design options. This iterative tool and street design workflow will facilitate dialogues around the visions within the workshop and in public spaces.

The outcome of this workshop will be new visions and designs, each with a set of KPIs for selected streets in Vienna. At the end of the workshop, the created games and results will be shared with activist groups like Agenda Gruppe, local schools, and neighbourhood management hubs for further use. A summary video will be also created.

Although the workshop will include skill-building sessions on Rhino-Grasshopper, Speckle, and Unreal Engine, there is no need for prior knowledge in these beyond 3D modelling skills.


Viki Sandor is a Vienna-based architect, currently holding a senior scientist position at the University of Innsbruck-Integratives Design while working as a research engineer in the field of computational urban planning at the Austrian Institute of Technology. She earned her Master's degree in architecture from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, in 2017, where her thesis on ‘The Permanently Temporary: in the age of gravity independent architecture’ received distinguished reviews, scholarships and awards. Since then, she has worked as Geometrist at the Studio Olafur Eliasson,  has led design studios and workshops across Europe (Berlin, Kassel, Bergen, Lichtenstein, Tallinn, Graz, Stuttgart, Vienna, Innsbruck) and has been involved in research projects with the primary focus on computational design, machine learning, point cloud notation and co-design. 

http://vikisandor.com/

Mathias Bank is an architect and researcher based in Innsbruck, Austria. His academic background includes studying at the Aarhus School of Architecture, The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, where he earned his master’s degree with distinction. Currently, he is conducting his PhD research at the Institute of Structure and Design at the University of Innsbruck where he is part of the interdisciplinary SFB Advanced Computational Design research project. Here he investigates methods for integrating AI tools and co-design within design-oriented workflows within the subproject ‘Computational Immediacy.’ Previously he worked for Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen, taught design studios and workshops across Scandinavia and Central Europe and was a lecturer at the postgraduate program “Designing Future Realities” by Werkstätte Wattens. He is also a Co-Funder of Artefact Mixed Reality Studio.

http://mathiasbank.dk/

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