IAAC’s Master in City & Technology (1 or 2-year program) is a unique program oriented towards redefining the analysis, planning, and design of twenty-first-century cities and beyond. The program offers expertise in the design of digitally enhanced, ecological and human-centered urban environments by intersecting the disciplines of urbanism and data science. Taking place in Barcelona, the capital of urbanism, the Master in City & Technology is training the professionals that city administrations, governments, industries, and communities need, to transform the urban environment in the era of big data.
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
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 fourth scenario, the advanced use of … 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
“A Guidebook on Urban Degrowth” delves into integrating degrowth strategies within urban planning to foster a shift towards an equitable urban future. This study centers around a pivotal research question: How can current literature on degrowth be translated into practical applications in city planning to guide urban areas toward enhanced social well-being and ecological equity? … 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
Bicing was launched in 2007 as a viable eco-friendly alternative or complement to traditional private and public transportation. The mobility network has also allowed for increased physical activity and better connectivity between neighbourhoods of Barcelona. It is aimed at anyone with a NIE, over the age of 16. The Bicing 2.0 models were released in 2019 to … 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
