Reconsidering Connections
Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon
Proving Grounds: Machine Scenography and Staging the Future View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Constance Vale
Employed chiefly in the military and automotive industry, "proving grounds" are exclusionary testing spaces designed by and for government agencies and corporations. This paper presents a brief history of proving grounds and examines one such testing space designed by an architect—the author—a 1:8 scale model city for testing autonomous vehicles (AVs) that breaks from this problematic legacy. The project proposes opportunities for collective agency in creating sociotechnical narratives in inclusive testing environments that become sites of public imagination. Moreover, the project examines how emerging technologies like AVs and AI be integrated into cities in ways that improve public health and safety, encourage equitable transit, and support climate resilience. Key questions include: (1) What interfaces might designers use to facilitate interactions between humans and autonomous agents in ways that increase public safety? Research explores modulating urban accessways and apertures shared between humans and machines. (2) What opportunities does autonomous mobility offer designers to innovate in the built environment in ways that improve public health? The study examines how networked traffic might reduce roadways, increase green space, and promote healthier cities. (3) How can cities implement AVs in sustainable ways that support climate resilience? This project examines connecting AV ridesharing with transit hubs to encourage multi-modal travel, reducing energy consumption, congestion, emissions, and sprawl.(4) How can cities incorporate AVs in ways that encourage equitable access to public transit? This project assesses how AVs can connect public transit to those living outside existing transit routes, especially people with disabilities and lower-income citizens.
Hangar 11 – Adaptive Re-use Project: Betting $90M on Sustainable Living and the Creation of Community Vibrancy View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tim Antoniuk
In 2018 the author of this paper began an arduous process to save one of Canada’s most important historic buildings. Voted by the National Trust of Canada in 2017 as, “One of the Top 10 Most Endangered Places in Canada”, this building and the deeply important land that it sat on was slated to be torn down because the City that it rested in had neglected its upkeep. Like so many cities throughout the world, this building and the place and space that it occupied needed a new vision. It needed leadership, stakeholders, visionaries, architects and designers that would fight to tell people about its history. It needed a new presence and physicality that would allow the building to tell stories about ‘its’ past and its hidden contribution to winning WWII. In truth, the preservation of his building needed something substantive that would allow it to become a springboard for creating human connectivity in this area and for (re)creating community. 4-years later, this paper and presentation will relay the story of how this humble 1922 purpose-built WWII airplane hangar was saved and how it is evolving into a significant 200,000 sf. adaptive re-use, mixed use building with 272 residential units and 25,000 sf of CRU space. It will convey the design and financial/political strategies that were used of who, and how a variety of statistics from major reports such as those from the UNEP Creative Economy Reports helped to get this $90-million dollar project off the ground.
