Critical Modeling 2.0: Inventive Infrastructures

Projekt im Sommersemester 2022
Prof. Frank Petzold
Tutors: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Petzold, Ivan Bratoev M.Sc., Ilayda Memis M.A., Nick Förster M.A.

Urban data platforms, sensor networks, and simulations should not be considered as abstract and disconnected representations of urban worlds. Instead, they are an integral part of the city, and influence how we conceive, anticipate and remake urban environments. While Smart City initiatives often present digital technology as an „objective“ method to „optimize“ urban planning and management, we must understand these tools as contextual, political, and contingent.

Practically digital infrastructure is coupled with urban planning processes which address diverse urban issues – from social problems to regimes dealing with environmental crises. Hence we must recognize urban digitization as an architectural and urbanistic design brief. At the example of the ongoing replanning and transformation of the late modernist grand-projet Neuperlach (cf. Stadtsanierung, Handlungsraum Neuperlach), we will explore digital technologies as architectural objects and media. Concretely, we will explore the potential of digital tools to…

…explore spaces and problematize urban issues.
…design and narrate architectural and urbanistic imaginations.
…concretize and enact these visions.

Climate Changing Neuperlach

Nadine Rott, Liubov Kniazeva, Lena Keßler

The project focuses on the topic of resources and energy on different levels - personal and political, local and global. Data catalogues and the concept of a Digital Twin were analysed to create a special game. This critical computer game explores the dependencies of energy consumption and production. From a local development area in Munich, the project traces energy issues and conflicts to different regional and global conflicts.

See Booklet on ISSUU

The Urban Story Teller

Léonie Hubert, Sophia Knapp, Elina Volz

As a modernists settlement built in the 1970s, Neuperlach suffers – just as many other sattelite districts of Germany – from a variety of stigmata, ranging from supposed crime rates, critical social indicators such as poverty and unemployment as well as poor architecture. The aim of the project was to find the urban identity of Neuperlach, by exploring it both in analogue as well as in digital form. An interactive website was created using social media content, Instagram hashtags and internet stories. It presents the urban stories in the form of a heatmap defined by the distribution of hashtags.

See Booklet on ISSUU

The Way Home at Night: Percieved Safety on the Streets of Neuperlach

Kaiwen Yang, Haoyang Wang

The project explored the issue of safety in the urban context. After surveying the residents and discussing the most important factors influencing safety, it was possible to create a catalogue of the roads perceived as safe. Further steps included pedestrian simulations, analysing attraction and repulsion forces of various objects, and creating a game where residents may rate object for safety.

See Booklet on ISSUU

Contra- Immobilien

Carlos Ivorra, Ece Tamer

The goal of the project was to create a collaborative interactive platform to amplify the problems and realities of the housing market as well as to find/discuss possible solutions. Focused on housing discrimination, the topic was researched with the use of workshops, surveys and interactive mapping. This way, a counter cartography was established - an alternative way to collect, share and archive the data on discrimination in the housing market to reflect real life.

See Booklet on ISSUU

Lowering Thresholds

Minna Radakovits, Samuel Blaschke

The project deals with the topic of citizen participation in architecture and city planning with the special focus on the young people. With the use of devices called Access Points, placed in various locations in Neuperlach, a relationship with the population is established and people can be more involved in participation.

See Booklet on ISSUU