Catalogs
I was inspired to think about types of public transportations found within cities. These are examples of the different types of buses you can find. Considering a place that is constant but mobile - what if buses could be designed as a type of home? Or place of work? Like a City of Camper Vans and Buses.
This catalog is a study on the connection between stairs and social class. As I documented stair cases I started to notice that each example looked different depending on location. An expensive hotel or whether I was at a hidden stairway in LA next to a homeless encampment each one had a uniqueness to it. Not only are they a connection to different levels, but they serve as a connection to status within the city.
City Excursion Takeaways
I found myself inspired by stairs. I saw stairs as a type of bridge to different interfaces. Stairs can be a place for gathering, community, and listening. Stairs can be a place for tourism and people watching. Stairs can take you to monuments, vistas, history and culture. Stairs can be behind bars, tucked away leading to places unknown. Stairs can also appear different depending on social class. Stairs can be political.
I found glimpses of what I like to think of as the guts of a city. Wires sticking out, weird plastic cylinders with numbers labeled on them. A metallic skeleton with attachments everywhere. I wonder what the a city would look like if everything else was stripped away except for the wires and guts that light it up at night.
I remember as a kid playing with my toys and pretending to build cities out of them. Sometimes I'd make homes for my toys out of dirt, legos, twigs and leaves. Little cars going through tunnels built out of sand, action figures scaling tall furniture imagined to be buildings.
Imaginary City Drawings:
City of Bus Life
City of Transitions
The City of Transition is made from photogrammetry scans of stairs and bridges. In this city the people are constantly in a state of transition as they are moving down, up, and across to get to where they want to go. The city is fragmented as if it was permanently in a state of loading, the ethos of the city.
City of Disrupted Views
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The City of Disrupted Views is constantly in a state of flux. Its citizens are always on the move as they slide from wire to wire. The city cannot function without the kinetic energy as it fuels the city with electricity. Although everyone is on the move and seemingly headed somewhere their view of a destination is disrupted by wire and movement.
Piecing Projects Together...
Collaborating Designers: ALAN AMAYA, ALISON CHANG, GUOWEI LYU, RONGDA TAO, ZEYU WANG, QIANYUE YUWENThe Eye of Providence City, named after the "All-Seeing Eye of God,” to symbolize a benevolent order; Maintained by the eye machines who keep a watchful eye over the lower corners of the city. The all seeing machines are not allowed in the upper half of the city because residents who live closer to the "Great Architect Of the Universe" are least likely to commit crimes...so they say.
This photograph was taken by one of the all seeing machines in the lower level of the city. It depicts the development of the city. Made from old transportation vehicles called buses. Residents who are considered working class live in the lower level people here are always under the watchful eye.
This image taken by a passing residents show the way in which machines detect suspicious behavior. Whispering is considered suspicious and the machines work to identify people who are to be kept under heavy surveillance. This couple has been missing since this photo was taken.
The eye machines follow residents throughout the city, always knowing where and what they are doing. This is designed to control citizen behavior and prevent actions that may be considered a threat to the ruling class.
Project Brief:
Your brief is to create a city, a metropolis. This is, of course, an absurd task to try to tackle literally. Your project - your city - will be a creative and radical abstraction, a speculative imagining where certain conditions or situations are reinterpreted and amplified. Crucially, rather than taking a top-down approach to designing your city, you will create it from the inside out. You will let its form emerge through the act of combining custom parts which you will formulate. Consider your city as a condition which spreads out in all directions, an immersive environment without beginning or end. Your custom kit of design elements – the building blocks of your city – will emerge from your group's shared and individual investigations, interests, subjective experiences. Your city will ultimately take the form of a composite multimedia drawing, which you will collectively engineer, annotate, and imagine inhabiting.