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Cities are constantly evolving, the change of road networks, infrastructure and built forms leading towards the reconfiguration of urban spaces. In the age of information, with the large amount of data transmitting through the urban environment daily, such changes are largely invisible, seeing as the ‘ghost’ twin of our city – the shadow. The fluidity of city and the beauty of its shadow, both physically and metaphorically, should be revealed and praised in the design process of the urban environment.
Shadow-Shaped City explores both the figurative and physical aspects and qualities of shadows by proposing a new type of infrastructure crossing the River Thames that will connect the O2 Centre to Canary Wharf. The final design consists of a dynamic bridge, made up by different moving parts, which reconfigure to adapt to the flow of the river and the fluctuation of activities in the area. Most importantly, Shadow-Shaped City dynamically reacts to the distribution of digital and physical shadows in order to create connections through actual and virtual networks. Crucially, the research poses the question: how do the shadows shape the city?
The computational algorithm finds negative datasets to identify the macro scales most affected by negative conditions. The above images show the original values for analysing.
The result of Principal Component Analysis. It is important to associate the analysis with its actual geolocations. The brighter colours indicate such cells are more influenced by our selected datasets.
The site we chose for the next step contains six clusters, which indicates that the choen areas have the potential as they are applied with multiple dimensions from our negative urban conditions.
We used layers of fundamental datasets we have gathered, and the results of our data analytics of principal component values and other algorithms.
This is a simulation to track the urban dynamic processes. The agents are understood as a representative of a selected number of environmental participants in terms of particular urban distribution flows.
Custom Vector based algorithm was created for the agents to move weighed by vectors that deviate them from the light to the dark zones to determine the destinations.
The geo-locations from last step are chosen as the attractors and the ending points to get the defragmentation of 3D shadow.
The points from the vector dominated simulation reach the most agminated parts where shadow is located. The point cloud generates the results.
The initial design formed by the voxels, is read as the traces of floating platforms travelling through time, redefining the connection as the bridge with our shadow-oriented definition.
'Game of Shadow’ acts as the quickest connection across the river with the richest programs. The rest of the platforms remain as supplementary connections.
When you walk through ‘Game of Shadow’ and enter a darker place, you are able to see the distorted reality with VR devices, while you get immersed in the dense shadows.
Our design encourages exploring: ‘Paths-Into-The-Shadow’ as smaller gathering spaces; ‘Shadow-Exploratory Rooms’ as galleries; 3D-holograms form digital screen structures.
As a smart adaptive structure, the bridge movement is categorised into: 1. movements when necessary; 2. movements with set paths; 3. movements with real-time data.