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https://vimeo.com/623446741
Five cities. Five stories.
Here is a short film by Nils Clauss and Neil Dowling, which recently premiered at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. (If you can't see the embedded video above, click here.) The film is named after this year's Seoul Biennale (which is going on right now until the end of October) and focuses on five crossroads of city life that were put forward by French architect Dominique Perrault: above/below, heritage/modern, craft/digital, natural/artificial, and safe/risk.
To illustrate these urban crossroads, the filmmakers visit New York, Seoul, Mumbai, Paris, and Nairobi. But instead of interviewing so-called "experts", these crossroads are examined from the perspective of people just living through them. The documentary is very well done. And having just come back from Paris, I can say that I think they chose the right city to tackle the heritage/modern crossroad.
To close things out, I would like to share one screenshot from the film. Here you can see an ingenious little urban table that slips over a street bollard. It's just perfect. There is so much that can be done to better activate our streets and public spaces.
On September 2, 2017, a research project by several MIT laboratories – called Gangnam Poop: Underworlds in Seoul – will debut at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
Here’s an excerpt from the exhibition description:
A vast reservoir of information on human health and behavior lies in our sewage, and this resource is untapped. We imagine a future in which sewage is mined for information that can inform policy makers, health practitioners, designers, and researchers alike. Such is the idea behind Underworlds: a cross-disciplinary data platform for monitoring urban health patterns, shaping more inclusive public health strategies, and pushing the boundaries of urban epidemiology.
For this exhibition and “proof of concept”, they analyzed three distinct neighborhoods in Seoul, using an aptly named sewer robot called Luigi.
Gangnam-gu (shown above) is an upper-class high-rise residential area. Mapo-gu is an emerging artist and designer enclave. And Seongbuk-bu is a hillside village with detached houses and an older demographic.
In each case, they mapped out the bacterial populations found beneath each neighborhood. Interestingly enough, the different areas revealed different bacterial occurrences. You can see those diagrams here.
I often think of healthcare as being very reactive. A future like the one this exhibition is imagining would be far more proactive. And that would be a very good thing.
Image and project by MIT Senseable City Lab. Gangnam Poop: Underworlds in Seoul. Commissioned by Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
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