Design4D Blog

Nik Hilton  //  www.design4d.co.uk
Young Architect of the Year Nominee 2009, 2010, 2011
Finalist in the British Homes Awards 2009
Finalist in the Design awards 2009

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Dec 20 / 1:29pm

Networked Communities

The link below is to an interesting article which looks at the impact of social networks by 2015. Is technology an enabler or an alienator or both? How can modern supermarkets trigger community connections and relationships that the local butcher, baker, post office, chemist and pub once organically enabled? The human race has an amazing ability to adapt and survive in almost any surroundings but what are the financial costs to the State of a society that has no community?

I sat on a design review panel last week where we were presented with a council masterplan that despite its scale had no sense of place, public facilities or adequate open space for play. While density targets need to be acheived and a site's value maximised aspects of community mustn't be forgotten if a masterplan is to be truly sustainable

http://pulsene.ws/y3YH

Image003
 Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Filed under  //  Design4D   communities   urban design  
 
Nov 26 / 1:07pm

The Sustainable City of Sensors

Meeting with a friend from Arup last night we discussed how there is still a large separation between the aspirations of a sustainable society and the quality of data available to achieve our goals. Below is a link to a noise monitoring project which is being used to affect the design of the urban realm.

Much modern city planning has forgotten the lessons of history where the street patterns were designed as part of a holistic environmental strategy. Street widths and orientations were designed to create the necessary positive and negative pressure to shade and draw cooling and ventilating air through the streets. Hopefully a 'City of Sensors' will enable us to regain this lost knowledge and generate masterplans once again based on sustainable principles.

http://tendernoise.movity.com/

Filed under  //  Arup   Sustainability   sensors   urban design   urban realm  
 
Sep 27 / 1:58pm

Nokia developing 3D rival to Google Street View @newscientist

Not quite sure how this will work but would be excellent if architects had a full 3D city model to be able to plug their models into and explore the environment.

It is great being able to check out a site on google street view before visiting, but a full 3D model would really open up new virtual reality design possibilities!

http://tinyurl.com/36wzptd

Filed under  //  Google   Nokia   Virtual reality   urban design  
 
Sep 6 / 1:51pm

What impacts will social media have on the built environment?

Last week I spoke about the idea that we need to be reusing and recycling items in construction as much as possible. In response one of our readers, Maciek Weyberg sent me a link to www.freecycle.org. This is an online mechanism for trading unwanted items. I was surprised to see this organisation has over 7.5million members. Although Freecycle works more on a domestic scale there is no reason why this couldn't be upscaled to the construction industry. Social networks are engaging larger groups of people over greater distances. This is  affecting both the way business is done but also the environments best suited for working within whether they be physical or virtual.  What other impacts will social media have on the built environment?

Filed under  //  Architecture   social media   urban design