The Master in City & Technology’s academic structure is based on IAAC’s innovative, learn-by-doing and design-through-research methodology which focuses on the development of interdisciplinary skills. During the Master in City & Technology students will have the opportunity to be part of a highly international group, including faculty members, researchers, and lecturers, in which they are encouraged to develop collective decision-making processes and materialize their project ideas.
1. Introduction 1.1. Abstract Autonomous Vehicles are vehicles that employ driver assistance technologies to remove the need for a human operator within the vehicle. These new technologies into automation have been researched in contexts like the United States of America, Middle-Eastern Countries and some European Countries. Planners and architects are designing for these cities including … Read more
Mobility Hubs for Edge Cities to Reduce Car Demand Ticket to Ride gamifies public transportation to reduce car trip demand with a single ticket for all rides at the mobility hub: the new heart of the conceptual Edge City. Why the Edge City? The Edge City is a global suburban spatial condition constructed in the … Read more
Can speculative science fiction ground us in reality? In an age where technology and urbanization shape the contours of our reality, the role of theory as a form of critique becomes ever more crucial. The consequences of centuries of colonization, globalization, and exploitation are evident in our sprawling cities and degraded environments. The 2017 sci-fi … Read more
The idea of a ‘car-free’ city is not as easy as just banning cars but about reducing car reliance. The private car has undeniably revolutionized mobility in the 21st century. It has offered convenience, job creation and an increased freedom of movement. While a world without cars might seem unimaginable, cities globally are strategically transitioning … Read more
Science Fiction is a literary genre known for creating future worlds that emerge as the consequence of today’s cultural and technological realities. It is in this worldbuilding -where societies, their functioning, and the dynamics that govern them are imagined- where Sci-Fi shows similarities to the disciplines of design and architecture. To explore the design possibilities … Read more
In our third scenario, Building Information Modelling is exceedingly advanced, seamlessly integrating urban society into a complex technocracy. Cyborg citizens, embodying the fusion of human and machine, and Human citizens, both, thrive in this environment. It is trivial to lay emphasis on software coding, regulation, decency, fairness, justice, and endless niggling confrontations with the networked … Read more
Finding stories in an ‘altered’ normal of a digitally blended reality. IIn “Ready Player One,” directed by Steven Spielberg, the OASIS Corporation controls a vast virtual reality universe that serves as the film’s central setting. This digital utopia offers an escape from a dystopian reality predominated by the prevalence of the emergent over stacking of … Read more
Sterling, B (2015) imagined four fictitious scenarios of how future skyscrapers might be, differentially equalizing the state of technology and the economic-political climate: Future skyscraper 1: Huge, lopsided pyramid Future skyscraper 2: No-nonsense, mil-spec fortress Future skyscraper 3: Colossal, awkward tower Future skyscraper 4: Postindustrial, digitized monster In our last scenario, the Smart City has … Read more
In this project we focused on analysing how future skyscrapers could look like and comparing that with the urban imaginary of the film ‘Blade Runner 2049’. In “Blade Runner 2049,” the skyscrapers of the future loom like monolithic symbols of corporate power and societal decay. Their towering structures cast shadows over the dystopian landscape, reflecting … Read more
Skyscrapers are human achievements that require innovation in the extraction of land to tower over its neighbors. The third skyscraper future reflects the past imaginary of Fritz Lang’s, Metropolis. This visualization aims to highlight the economic disparities and labor oppression depicted in the film, contrasting them with the modern logics of rentism as embodied by … Read more
In this project we focused on analysing how future skyscrapers could look like and comparing that with the urban imaginary of the film ‘Ready Player One’. “Ready Player One” depicts a dystopian future where urban sprawl is transformed into crowded, vertical stacks. This bleak reality drives people to escape into the Oasis, a virtual world … Read more
In the realm of speculative urban design, the fusion of cyborg skyscrapers and utopian visions offers a captivating journey into the convergence of reality and imagination. Inspired by Fritz Lang’s timeless sci-fi masterpiece ‘Metropolis,’ I embark on a deep dive into the intricate relationship between design, urbanization, and speculative fiction. Metropolis, Fritz Lang (1927) “Metropolis” … Read more
“Blade Runner 2049” is a good example of how urban landscapes will be shaped differently in response to environmental collapse and societal stress. Designed by communities dominated by fear of losing their stability under an authoritarian social logic, the film features Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Reimagined as part of Bruce Sterling’s, What skyscrapers might … Read more
Sterling, B (2015) imagined four fictious scenarios of how future skyscrapers might be, differentially equalizing the state of technology, and the economical-political climate: In our third scenario, the advanced use of technology allows and fosters the consolidation of a colossal, idealistic, god-like skyscraper. Advanced Building Information Modeling fuels a technocratic society, where towers stand as … Read more
Ready Player One presents a contrasting scenario between real world urban environments and virtual urban environments. This setting is shaped by a culture of video games that promotes individual competition, gendered imaginaries, conflict narratives and a militarized mindset. Real world urban skyscrapers are depicted as loop-sided pyramids designed to house large numbers of immigrants in … Read more
Introduction According to the World Health Organization, around 1.19 million people die each year due to traffic accidents, and another 20 to 50 million suffer non-fatal injuries, many of which result in disability. Beyond the human toll, the economic costs related to treatment and care for those involved in traffic accidents are significant, estimated to … Read more
“Can we understand urban environments and street characteristics from Google Street View panorama images using Machine Learning and Stable Diffusion techniques?” Project OverviewThis computational design project aims to develop a pipeline utilizing Grasshopper and Python to visualize clusters of panoramic streetscape images. The project leverages t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) for dimensionality reduction, facilitating the … Read more
Grasshopper is an incredibly versatile tool that in recent years has expanded into fields far beyond the origins in three-dimensional parametric design. One of these fields is that of GIS analysis, which has traditionally been approached through software such as QGIS. The advantages of Grasshopper and Rhinoceros3D over QGIS include the versatility and customisability of … Read more
Objective | Information from a Photo Photos are widely used to quickly capture context but are not easy to relate to spatial data. To remedy this challenge for users of 3D modeling software, we created a tool that integrates Python and Grasshopper to extract the location and time information from a photo and output variable … Read more
Introduction to Bicing Bicing is the bike-sharing service in Barcelona, Spain, providing residents and tourists with an eco-friendly, convenient, and affordable means of transportation. Launched in 2007, Bicing has grown to include thousands of bicycles distributed across hundreds of docking stations throughout the city. Users can pick up a bike at one station and return … Read more
Introduction This presentation outlines the development and evaluation of machine learning models aimed at predicting the availability of bikes at various bicing stations in Barcelona. We’ll discuss the variables involved, the modeling techniques used, and compare the performance of different models. Python is a friendly environment for preparing, training and forecasting machine learning algorithms within … Read more
Introduction Urban transportation planning relies on data science to explain the conditions driving mobility patterns. This exploration of bicing, Barcelona’s resident bike rental program, analyzes the actors impacting discrepancies in bicing data to select machine-learning strategies able to predict biking station vacancies across Barcelona for the year 2024 with an accuracy of 0.02387. With this … Read more
Exploring future cities through balancing global & local agendas Located on what’s called the ‘Coromandel Coast’ of South East India, Chennai is home to a population of over 10 million people, approximately. Earlier known as Madras, Chennai is part of the top 5 populous cities of the country and is located within the second most … Read more
Abstract Dakar is Senegal’s capital city and rapidly urbanizing economic center. Today, Dakar’s urban area is home to 3.54M people, half of Senegal’s population, and generates 55% of the Country’s GDP. This growth is artificially constrained by an urban growth boundary, where new homes are informally built, and due to the city’s topography, a peninsula … Read more
