Research's IaaC - Research Group - Groups

The impact of new information technologies on living space is explored here. We will construct real-scale prototypes in order to experiment with the integration of communication technologies into the physical spaces of the domestic environment by means of new interfaces using advanced data networks, integrating information into everyday life and approaching the construction of new spatial and information structures through the optimum combination of intelligent logic and physical form. Media House Project: Metàpolis / MIT Media Lab / Fundació Politècnica de Catalunya / Escola Elisava / I2Cat.

This research group takes as its dual basis the production of models for effective forecasting and evaluation, and the exploitation of the benefits of transportation network administration and analysis, database management, statistical analysis, mapping software and graphic software. The aim of the topic Strategy Simulation for Evolutionary Design is to analyze the ordering patterns underlying the processes of transformation of space at different scales. Natural forms are not the product of any prior design; they are the effect of an ongoing evolution and adaptation. Living forms have fractal geometries and their structures are self-regenerating. Natural geometry is not so much a formal design as a strategy. In contrast, artificial forms are designed in line with finalist visions, with artists imposing a new cultural order on nature. The most interesting developments in the field of artificial intelligence consist in designing not systems but strategies, capable of enabling artificial systems to acquire intelligence through their interaction with the environment and other systems.

With the concept of new habitats, the IaaC puts forward a line of research that ensures the definition of habitable environments in keeping with a new mixed conception of the city. Here the city becomes a habitable place, different and diversely adaptable to people and to a new interaction with the environment. This is a cluster city where the concepts of culture, ecology, nature, solidarity and sustainability are interwoven to make a high quality of communal life a reality; to improve living standards through a process of hybridization and revival of the landscape and the recycling of our surroundings; to increase environmental sensitivity in order to work with renewable energies and intelligent systems for environmental treatment; and to create social awareness for a better and richer human interaction.

Agenda 21 for the Industry of Architecture is oriented towards the development of a R+D program for sustainable, ecological, advanced construction. The challenge is to generate an agenda for the architecture industry ranging from the development of new materials and the intelligent use of the natural environment to the application of new research and production technologies in the definition of habitable space. This means involving manufacturers, major trade sectors and industry-based researchers in order to create points of reference for the development of new concepts such as eco-construction, self-generation of energy in proximity to its consumption, and energy efficiency in production processes and the recycling of materials.

A new kind of ‘geo-urban’ territoriality defines the city today, resulting in a high degree of complexity and an infrastructural diversity that proclaims its own multiple nature of interlinked events and spaces. Just as we recognize the existence of a plural city, we also have to recognize the existence of a multiple city: a multi-city. The definition of the ‘metapolis’ goes beyond the modern metropolis, involving the existence of a vibrant territory, similar at the general (global) and diverse at the particular (local) level. The contemporary metapolis is defined as a dynamic and mutable system made up of collisions, encounters and intersections that end up yielding an extensive variety of combinations and scenarios, both real and virtual, specific and plural. This city can no longer be defined as an island: it must be seen as a wide spectrum of situations — ‘cities inside the city.’ This is the essence of the contemporary metapolis: that is, to become a ‘hyper-place,’ a ‘place of places.’ The study of its strategic orientation, its network of articulation, its evolutionary capability and its qualitative development will be the objectives of this line of investigation.