Simple City @ Plan 12

Abstract model and concrete playing field, metaphor for analogue digital complexity and animated display of projects: these are the functions amalgamated by  Hybrid Space Lab, in the installation entitled Simple City.

Here is how Sikiaridi, professor for Design at the Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe – University of Applied Sciences, and Vogelaar, professor for Hybrid Space at the Academy of the Media Arts Cologne, describe their model city consisting of high-resolutions prints, Lego structures and animations:

Lecture Simple City @ plan12, Cologne, 22 September 2012
Exhibition Simple City @ plan12, Cologne, 21-28 September 2012

Simple
City

It creates a modular environment, thereby corresponding to the serially produced, global, generic city – with all the instabilities and breaks. At the same time, it forms an environment for interactive collaboration and for communication of process-oriented urban and architectural projects.’ It was recently exhibited for the first time in the Museum of Applied Arts Cologne as part of the Architekturteilchen [Architectural Particles] show; an extended version of the work can now be seen at plan12. Part of the installation consists of a presentation of five projects by the Hybrid Space Lab: City Kit, an interactive computer game that relies on modular components to plan urban spatial interventions in a neighbourhood; Wir essen für das Ruhrgebiet [We’re Eating for the Ruhr], a vast, public banquet event held along Germany’s Autobahn 40 motorway that was part of the programme for the RUHR.2010 European Capital of Culture; the further development of the Tschumi Pavilion in Groningen through urban strategies and visionary architecture to create a new media and art centre; the DIY Pavilion, a mobile do-it-yourself pavilion for the 2009-2010 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, and Shrinking Car City, a project for the integration of electromobility in the cityscape in which cars shrink and the public space grows again.

The Lego bricks of Simple City are sponsored by the Danish company Lego.

City
Kit

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