Mobile formation city
Whenever we try to describe or even explain its existence in a unified language, its rapid changes always catch us off guard. The city is a tidal wave that moves day and night, constantly exchanging resources, information and space. The people living in the city and their appendages are not only the endpoints of these exchanges, but also participate in the implementation process and ultimately use and suffer the results of these exchanges. These substitutions are made in the same way - by moving. Whether it is people, information, transportation, resources or capital, they move according to a certain order, but at the same time they redefine the space and order of the city through the feedback of each movement process.
Let's define all movement as a "receive-execute-give-back" process. In this seemingly simple process, a large number of movements are carried out spontaneously and unconsciously. Some of these movements are actual spatial transformations, which take place within space and give meaning to the existence of space, and even to the soul of space. And those invisible movements and transformations, by changing our habits of existence and our sensory composition, eventually act in the city we are in. These movements constantly influence and even determine the next changes of the city. In general, the current state of the city can be seen as the result of the superposition of these movements at a specific point in time and space. Moreover, cities are never created in a desert, but the aggregation of resources brings about the flourishing of civilization and the enrichment of information that eventually leads to the shaping of a specific spatial form called "city", which is the process of creation, development and demise of each city, and which is created in the historical memory and gradual accumulation of It takes place in the context of the self. Therefore, our cities are the result of the superposition of different eras, places, functions and creatures. And each process of design and final construction is a scale on these dimensions, they are continuous, and our urban space moves slowly on these dimensions.
Interpreting the City of Mobility from the Trajectory
The first question that must be answered to explore movement in the city is: "In what form does movement exist in the city?" If we accelerate or exacerbate the interaction between transportation and urban form, i.e., if we look at the relationship between the two in a higher dimension, the actual space is squeezed and magnified by its trajectory and the time represented by the trajectory, and we can obtain an urban form that is more in line with the actual senses, so the study of movement in the city should start with the trajectory of the movement and its resulting form.
The trajectories generated by movement also represent the serialized experience of moving. In these narrative sequences organized by episodes, time and space exist as dependent variables of movement. And at each moment in the move, the continuation, erosion, acceptance, and interrogation of all the preceding experiences maintain the possibility of a dramatic period of change, even containing the opportunity to elicit another completely different sequence. The stimulus that initially begins to move has its own aesthetic and visual qualities; the trajectory, which is a by-product of its other level, is used as an index to complement this aesthetic and visual quality. The development of the city is dynamic, and all of our urban experiences and reflections of the city are a fixation on the city, and design is based on these numerous fixations.
When we look at the city as the main body of traffic that moves the city in the traditional view, the space of the city, and even the buildings, can be seen as expanded and squeezed by traffic, and traffic can be seen as movement trajectories that are solidified by experience. And within the constraints of the existing traffic structure, it is also possible to remeasure and understand the urban structure by depicting the trajectories of movement within the established traffic system as actual users. Mobility generates cities: people, information, transportation, resources, and even capital, all complete their ecological cycles throughout the city through their own mobility, and cities are shaped by mobility. These tangible and intangible movements are one of the most important criteria for evaluating and interpreting the aesthetics of the city.
The original understanding of movement in these cities within the context of urban and architectural design has remained more in the physical, materialized spaces and the sense of experience created by the connections between the materialized spaces. This approach to research and design is no longer sufficient to address the increasingly complex trajectories of movement in the city. The innovation for urban design will be carried out by digital design in the context of big data. The new information and digital technology brings the practical ability to manipulate the huge amount of data. We will not only be able to completely build the originally redundant relationships in the computer system, but also to re-materialize them into images and even spaces. And the movement patterns of various elements embedded in the relationships help us understand complex systems while penetrating into practical operations as the smallest operative elements.
Not only that, but in the era of highly developed information, each person also has an image of an individual in the virtual network world. These virtual individuals complete a process similar to "movement" through information exchange - the dependent variable of movement changes from distance to information. In these virtual cities, infrastructure, buildings, roads, and other elements of the physical city are disassembled and aggregated to re-exist in a different structure and form. This process is also reversible, as the virtual world is constantly intersecting with the real world we live in, and during these intersections, the virtual space is materialized into spaces, products, services, images and experiences that we can more intuitively perceive.
Special design object - "see and feel" the movement of the track
Unlike traditional urban design, the design of movement in the contemporary city is no longer confronted with objects that can be controlled by physicalization or the designer's precedent experience. The trajectory of movement is often characterized as "invisible" due to its variable physical speed or virtual existence. Therefore, it is necessary to visualize the trajectory within the range of human perception, to materialize and form the design object before designing. Therefore, the author tries to present a series of exhibits in the exhibition, which will depict and present this "invisible and intangible" trajectory in a "visible and tangible" way through different perspectives from life, using digital technology as a technical platform and a large amount of research as a basis. They depict and present this "invisible" trajectory in a "visible and tangible" way, using digital technology as a technological platform and a large amount of research as a basis, so that the audience can understand a multi-dimensional city and urban life, as well as the movement through these dimensions.
The first part of the exhibition, "Moving Shadows", firstly presents the large scale data brought by the digital age and our ability to manipulate these data, and at the same time combines artistic expressions to analyze the city and its movement and the problems caused by movement from a macro perspective, through the sum of countless individual movement trajectories formed by accumulation and repetition, and to study the tangible or intangible trajectories of movement and the causes of these trajectories. In this way, the city's form and space are redrawn, and the understanding of the moving city is constructed from different dimensions. For example, Mahir Yavuz's "Urban Trajectory Patterns" critiques the traditional urban design's perception of density in physical space and explores the real urban density in the fixed pattern of the city by depicting the number of times people move, arrive and use the area in the otherwise cold urban space. A series of urban maps are drawn with human brushes to depict the usage, density and accessibility of urban space through these superimposed trajectories.
"Moving Shadows" also returns the perspective to each active individual in the city, focusing on their daily experiences of movement and linking them through specific sequences of events and timelines, thus forming a city of movement in individual dimensions from the bottom up. In reading these works, it is easy to see that the experiences depicted by the authors are indeed present in our daily lives, but at the same time they are often overlooked or simply passed over. But the details of these experiences are also important factors in determining the design of future cities, that is, cities are shaped, upgraded and transformed by the attention to the details of these experiences. For example, the MIT SENSEable City Lab's work "Road Frustration Index" systematically collects real-time emotional data and physical sensations from drivers by installing a large number of sensors in the car, and combines these intensive micro-data with real-time road data flow, emergencies, and weather to depict a complete driving experience in multiple dimensions. At the same time, they collect, analyze, and compare different road driving experiences in thirty major U.S. cities and regions to find solutions on how to optimize the driving experience in these areas. In today's and tomorrow's cities, as infrastructure improves and problems solidify, the trend is toward bottom-up design improvements that are also more humanistic on an individual level, rather than open-hearted infrastructure renovations.
The designers of these exhibits are not designers who create art in the traditional sense, but rather a variety of university laboratories, research institutions or independent researchers. The diversity of exhibitors reflects the synergy between research institutions and the design industry that is needed in the contemporary urban mobility context.
Multidimensional design for mobile
IF "THE SHADOW OF MOBILITY" IS MORE OF A NEW WAY OF KNOWING AND INTERPRETING THE DESIGN OBJECT, THE SECOND PART OF THE EXHIBITION, "DESIGN FOR MOBILITY", PUTS THE DESIGN INTO THE ACTUAL, MATERIALIZED SPACE AND PRODUCT DESIGN. THE SECOND PART OF THE EXHIBITION, DESIGN FOR MOBILITY, PUTS DESIGN INTO PRACTICAL, MATERIALIZED SPACE AND PRODUCT DESIGN. THIS PART OF THE EXHIBITION PRESENTS FORWARD-LOOKING DESIGNS THAT ATTEMPT TO SOLVE AND IMPROVE THE PROBLEM OF URBAN MOBILITY, RE-EXAMINING THE WAYS, CONCEPTS, AND EVEN THE SUBJECTS OF MOBILITY, DEMONSTRATING THE FUTURE OF THE CITY, AND DISCUSSING THE ROLES THAT DESIGNERS AND DESIGN WORK CAN PLAY IN THE MOBILITY OF THE CITY. THIS PROCESS IS EXTREMELY CHALLENGING, AS THESE DESIGNS CAN CHANGE VERY SMALL ENTITIES, YET HAVE TO REVOLUTIONIZE ENTIRE CITIES WITH LESS POWER. FOR EXAMPLE, THE GRADUATION PROJECT FLEX RETRACTABLE ELECTRIC VEHICLE BY THE 2013 INDUSTRIAL DESIGN STUDENTS OF CHINA ACADEMY OF ART IS A VEHICLE THAT CAN BE RETRACTED WITH A VARIABLE BODY STRUCTURE, EVENTUALLY REALIZING THE COMPRESSION OF THE LENGTH OF THE BODY, THUS PROVIDING MORE ADVANTAGEOUS BODY VOLUME WHEN PARKING THE CAR. THE WHOLE DESIGN MAXIMIZES THE UTILIZATION OF EXISTING PARKING SPACES BY SETTING UP A SMALL SCALE MODEL, WHICH CAN MORE THAN DOUBLE THE PARKING AND ROAD SPACE FOR THE CITY.
The design of mobility is no longer limited to the design of physical space. In the second chapter of Design for Mobility, the exhibition provides a series of smart mobile terminal software related to urban mobility, which visitors can directly scan the QR code and install. The design of these software connects the supply and demand relationships in the city to each other, allowing both parties to communicate directly and improving the efficiency of these supply and demand related movements. The exhibition hopes that when visitors leave the exhibition hall, their own movement has been changed and optimized by these software. For example, FastSmart's work, "Fast Taxi", is a smart taxi mobile application customized for taxi passengers and taxi drivers. It provides an accurate and concise communication between users and drivers, and offers a variety of taxi options, which greatly improves the efficiency of taxi-hailing. This type of design work, even for the design of the terminal, needs to be based on the actual urban interface, the distance between users, etc., so these cross-border synergies will eventually be implemented into the physical space.
The sequential experience of movement is an intuitive feeling of movement, and this sequential experience is itself an important aspect of the representation of movement. While shaping this sequential experience in space, this exhibition further explores different levels of interpretation, explanation and perception of the mobile city in relation to the theme of the city, and ultimately attempts to allow the visitor's own way of movement or trajectory to be changed after the exhibition ends.
Conclusion: cross-border and innovation from the bottom up
Cities, so to speak, are a complete man-made ecosystem - more than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and by 2050, cities will account for three quarters of the global population. So we have to focus on the development and future of cities, the environment, social relations, politics, etc., but the core concern is the people who live in cities. Therefore, in conjunction with the description of the exhibition, the participants in "City on the Move" include not only experts in the fields of architecture and urban planning, but also politicians, social activists, dissidents and ordinary citizens. The serialized experience of everyday life in the city is an intuitive experience of mobility, and this serialization is an important aspect of the representation of mobility and a basis for exploring the different dimensions of interpretation, explanation and perception of the mobile city.
How to fulfill the promise of cities to people so that they make life better. Since entering the modern city, we have designed the development of cities through urban planning, and the thinking and doctrines of design in each era have had a profound impact on cities. The rationality and judgment of the planner's overlooked perspective may not be fully applicable to the people living in the city. To truly stand in the streets of the city, to focus on each surviving individual on the ground, and to let the city change their lives, should be the original starting point of urban development and aesthetics.
Designers, planners, and policy makers emerging from modernism need to reflect on and stop obsessing about urban zoning underpinned by cold logic and judgment, and begin to design and plan for real, everyday life, incorporating a variety of digital design platforms and research tools that make the city more welcoming to the people who inhabit it - not just providing amenities and sanitation, but also taking into account their opportunities for development and individual dignity. They make the city more friendly to the people who live in it - not just in terms of amenities and sanitation, but also in terms of opportunities for development and individual dignity. The Copenhagen Wheel, for example, not only raises the status of the bicycle as a mode of transportation, but also redesigns its form and function to make the city a better experience for its users. At the same time, the people of the city are also taking part in the construction of their own city through their own initiative.
Another layer of reflection that the exhibition attempts to bring about is that in a design field swept by the wave of globalization, more and more people are beginning to look at localization and realize that urbanization is not only the rapid development and construction of cities, but also the continuation and development of communities. When a huge city is made up of vibrant communities, it is no longer a cold industrialized product, but an organism with its own bloodline and unique dna. Another example is the work "waste recycling project", which optimizes and organizes each step and participant in the recycling process through a simple cell phone application that allows the city to speed up the recycling process. We can see that by involving city residents in the planning process instead of being planned, the result is more communication, responsibility, and change in action, and less disagreement and conflict. And this change is planned from the bottom up, not from the top down.
City on the Move aims to explore a design paradigm that is no longer a one-man operation for each design segment, but one that combines research and design, virtual and real, present and future, authority and people. Urban planners and designers, after standing on the ground, have to go out into the community and into the daily movement process, and combine with more design and research fields, so that design can connect with movement and life in the city, instead of planning people into the urban space with mechanical rationality.
