Report TUW

Discussion with TUW, Wednesday 080807

In this meeting, we discussed about what we are going to prepare for our workshop in Vienna.

Shortcut: The workshop will still take place 1st, 2nd of October 2007.
The “urban rules” are our contribution to the IP-City project.
The workshop will not take place as a field trial, although the subject will be the Aspern site. In the framework of the EU-Project we diminished it from a “field trial” to a “technical prototyping session”.

The topics that we addressed were the following:

- Technical content; the urban rules that have to be developed and scripted.
- Interaction at the table: what kind of discussion we expect from the workshop
- Site: how we deal with the vastness of the Aspern Flugfeld and the perception of it on screen.

I presented the rule series you can find in the blog “summary 2”, and your material in the blog.I also showed some images of the “Aspern Flugfeld”: Birdview and views.

1. Technical content

Status quo:
The rule series I presented was quickly comprehended, although they expected another degree of development.
The question rose if the dynamic transformation of the volumes confuses the participants. For the TUW the potential of dealing with this layer of urban realty in this way was not convincing in the beginning. We discussed the general meaning of the urban code, and its meaning and dimension in urban planning and design. After a while, we figured out two possible ways of manipulating the volumes.

a) the one I presented: dynamic transformation of the volumes according to their interrelations.
b) manual manipulation: the system tells (writes) the participants if the limits are exceeded, and they have to change the volume with the barcode.

We decided to keep the idea of dynamic transformation because it seems that more people are involved in the discussion; the change of one object affects all its neighbours. So the scene keeps it manipulability without always having to use the barcode - scanner. The dynamic transformation enables other perceptions and potentials in dealing with the given restrictions, by primarliy discussing the possibilities instead of the limitations. (dynamic masterplan)

To do:
The TUW people need a more composed set/ scene of rules.
We will “design” it in a kind of game, where one foresees to certain extends the possibilities - and defines them by its limitations. The whole thing is about what happens if? We have to decide what could happen and what not. Summary 2 is the basis for any further development. These 6 rules have to be worked out.

Here are a few underlying coherences
- geometry, math.: the urban code of Vienna the abstract -law.
- space, arch.: volumes, solid, voids, typologies
- program: programs are related to specific cubature (void or solid)
- people: numbers and kinds of people are related to typologies and dimensions


2. Interaction at the table
We have to think about how people will use the colourable and the given content to discuss about what they do and what they see.
We have to be aware that a negotiation that solely sticks to the following issues is not sufficient:

1. technical: problems in understanding the technique (which object on the table represents what on the screen, barcode …
2. aesthetic: people discussing about what they personally likes and what they don’t like.


To do.
In our case - what should they discuss? - density ? - The imagination of it will influence the way we set up the rules.


3. Site, Aspern

I reported about our Sunday - discussion on the problem of scale, and perspective: On the colour-table itself we have a kind of aerial view condition, but at the screen we see only a specific angle of the site. To be able to understand what is done on the table it is important to see the scene from several angles.

TUW will prepare some 360° or 180° panoramas, that serve as an underlay, and we will have the workshop either at TUW or at Angewandte.

To do.
We have to define the points at the Aspern field from which they will take the panoramas. - where, how many, day/night? etc.