Urban Visualization Architecture and Computer Science

1
Urban Visualization Architecture and Computer
Science

• Understanding urban environments geometrically,
  informationally, and cognitively
• There are hundreds of years of research in
  Architecture
• But Architects tend to be qualitative in their
  theories
• On-going discourse on urban theories
• Urban theories in Computer Science
• Navigating Virtual Worlds 1
• Building Virtual Worlds 2
• Information Visualization and Data Organization
  3
• Procedural Building Generation 4

1 Darken, RP, Allard, T. 1999, Spatial
Orientation and Wayfinding in Large-Scale Virtual
Spaces II. Presence 8(6) iii-vi. 2 Parish, Y
and Muller, P 2001, Procedural Modeling of
Cities. Computer Graphics ACM SIGGRAPH
301-308 3 R. Ingram and S. Benford. Legibility
enhancement for information visualization. In
IEEE Visualization, 1995. 4 P. Müller, P.
Wonka, S. Haegler, A. Ulmer and L. Van Gool.
2006. Procedural Modeling of Buildings. In
Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2006 / ACM Transactions
on Graphics (TOG), ACM Press, Vol. 25, No. 3,
pages 614-623.
2
Urban Visualization Urban Environments

• Size
• By 2015, 1/2 the worlds population will be urban
• More than 20 cities larger than 10 million
• (until 1750, only Rome had ever been 1 million)

3
Urban Visualization Urban Environments

• Dispersion
• End of compact city
• Space over building
• Rise of Transportation technologies, especially
  automobile
• The city is every where.

4
Urban Visualization Urban Environments

• Buildings, Media, Meaning
• Use of mobile devices
• Electronic way finding

5
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Survey of Alternate Urban Theories
• Cognitive Mapping (Lynch, Sitte)
• Space Syntax (Hillier)
• Experiential (Cullen)
• Typological (Krier, Rossi)
• Rule (Alexander)
• City.Org (Venturi, Koolhaas)

10 Allen, Stan. Points and Lines Diagrams and
Projects for the City. New York, Princeton
Architectural Press, 1999. 11 Mitchell, William
J. City of Bits. Cambridge MIT Press, 1995 12
Mitchell, William J. Placing Words Symbols,
Space, and the City. Cambridge The MIT Press,
2005. 13 Koolhaas, Rem et al. Mutations
Harvard Project on the City. Barcelona ACTAR,
2000.
6
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Cognitive Mapping
• Kevin Lynch, Image of the City
• How do we mentally simplify complex urban
  environments
• paths
• edges
• nodes
• districts
• landmarks

7
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Experiential
• Gordon Cullen, Concise Townscape
• How does the experience of movement, uncovering
  and texture make a city?
• optics
• place
• content

8
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Rules
• Chris Alexander, A New Theory of Urban Design
• How can one principle be iteratively applied to
  all levels of the city??
• Recursive
• Growth of large wholes
• Centers at all scales

9
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Typological
• Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City
• Rob Krier, Urban Space
• How do individual buildings or spaces grow into a
  city?
• Types
• Laws of combination
• Buildings or spaces

10
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Space Syntax
• Bill Hillier, Space is the Machine
• How does human occupation connect through space?
• Measuring movement
• Connectivity and Integration
• Modified graph theory

11
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• City.org
• Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas
• Rem Koolhaas, Mutations
• Stan Allen, Points and Lines, Diagrams for a
  City
• How do non-physical networks interact with city
  form?
• Movement
• Information networks
• Fields

12
Urban Visualization Urban Theories

• Implications for UrbanVis
• Geometric modeling
• Space Syntax,Typological
• Run-time Model Simplification
• Cognitive, Experiential
• Information Visualization Overlay
• City.org