Auteur archieven: martinpot

Conference IoT, Build Environment & Smart Cities

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Last April 9th. 2014 on WW-IoT-day, the 3rd. IoT & Build Environment Conference was held; once again in Rotterdam, this time at ‘the Gouvernestraat’.

This location, with its history of over a hundred years of music, dance, theatre, poetry and meetings provided an excellent venue in the city-centre for both conference and parallel Hackaton, organised by Hogeschool Rotterdam, section Media & Communication. Additional theme for 2014 was Smart Cities; with some fine presentations/lectures which illustrated the sometimes contemporary values of earlier projects and visions. Lees verder →

microtopia

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On April 24th. 2013, the Dutch television showed a documentary about other forms of dwelling/living. Many of them tend to a originate from a form of escapism; they concern small units of housing which will be difficult to create and organise on a larger scale. That does not imply that the results, based on inventivity and creativity, are useless of course; mostly however they do not offer achievable solutions for growing cities and large populations but provide options for an – assumed – increasingly nomadic life.

art and/or architecture

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Yesterday, Sunday March 16th. an interesting exhibition was opened at RAM-Galeries in Rotterdam. Works of Luc Deleu (TOP-Office), Kas Oosterhuis (ONL/Hyperbody), Tomasz Jaskiewicz and others illustrate the possibilties for an adaptable and ‘interactive’ architecture; an architecture as interface. Especially revealing is the fact that part of Deleu’ work was already actual 20 years ago and is maybe more relevant today. the same evening the ‘Canvas Connection‘ showed Deleu’s work and personal choices on tv.

dreams and science

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Dreams or science?

For many people a new year tends to set off with dreams, expectations and good intentions. Just before the turn of the year, on Dec. 14th.2013, the Dutch writer/columnist Bas Heijne read his so called ‘Huizinga’-lecture; a yearly presented text based on the works of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga who lived from 1872 till 1945. The title of his fine and thoughtful lecture was “the Enchantment of the World” and is – so far, alas – only available in Dutch. (http://uitgeverijprometheus.nl/index.php?option=com_pac&view=boek_detail&isbn=9789044626377) Lees verder →

smart homes?

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Yesterday, Jan.19th, the New York Times; the next article in a long row about our homes becoming ‘smart’. What usually is forgotten in all of these wishful-thinking business-oriented thoughts is that a home is more than the sum of bricks, mortar and technology. Our house is not a home because we can automate the lights and the refrigerator, but because we live in a sphere we call our own. Technology in our homes should focus less on practicalities and more on adaptability, experience, imagination.

a sense of awareness

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a sense of awareness.

“If the wind starts to blow, swarms of leaves turn out to be subtle bioengineered robots that harness that very wind to propel themselves into an emergent shelter that surrounds you”.

Jaron Lanier, ‘Who owns the Future’. (2013, p.9)

The recent announcement of a 2014 IoT-conference states that “the Internet of Things (IoT) has been considered an innovative and imminent information infrastructure enabling to ubiquitously network various machines, physical devices, and objects, denoted as things, for environment sensing, information sharing and collaboration in intelligent and autonomous manner.” (italics MP)

Our homes are, next to the place to which we keep returning, also the environment where we are surrounded by memories of – past – experiences, dreams and images. Many of these are closely related to objects: many of us occupy houses that have a history of sometimes ages. These houses have witnessed generations of inhabitants, each of which has left their personal signs, marks and traces. Since decades our housing is simply ‘functioning’ , meaning that it does not ‘communicate’; a house remains a passive structure which was not ‘responsive’, let alone communicative. Lees verder →