PANEL DISCUSSION : CONNECT Heritage City

Modérateurs: Laurent Duport & Guillaume Girod (ENSAM KAAU)

Participants: Nicola Canessa (UNIGE KAAU) // Oriol Biosca (MCRIT KAAU) // Andrea Caridi (DARTS KAAU) // Chiara Farinea (IAAC KAAU) // Clotilde Berrou (ENSAM) // Alix Achard, Agathe Decortiat & Clément Saidou (Etudiants MDS ENSAM).

New forms of city planning offer to its users more communicating elements and connected moments. This ambition makes possible to foresee a future where cities will be able to effectively inform its inhabitants on its way of life. It aims to make life easier, to offer more services and more information.

Implementation of existing or future active technology will enable this ambi¬tion to be achieved. These connected tools obviously exchange and collect a great amount of information. This is the so call ‘big data’. Cities get a benefit from this ambition. They can more finely define the behavior and ambitions of these inhabitants by a precise data processing analyze. Obviously, these data are also mainly processed by private entities and inhabitant becomes a consumer.

Inhabitant as a citizen can also wish to be disconnected. Isolated, unrelated to any system, enjoying pleasure of being invisible in a system. Urban plan¬ning must be able to respond to this legitimate desire.

This theme proposes to consider several issues:

– What is the added value for inhabitants of connected tools in the city? Is it a real evolution in the way of planning the city?

– How can the city in its smart dimension also ensure a life out of all networks and connections?

Nicola Canessa : The immaterial technology can change the space : for example the Car sharing. This change the mentality to use the car. In Milan there is a multiplication of public spaces or vectors, a need of space to absorb invisible technologies, like the delivery of food by bikes for example.

Chiara Farinea : I would like to introduce the notion of participation which began in the 60ies. There is nothing especially new except the necessity. For example, last year in Italy there was 1% less students in the university because people can afford to be students. So there is a very new urban question and participation could partially solve it or can be a tool to solve this problem. The Fab city is one way to share knowledge and to learn

Oriol Biosca : Today anyone can do and interact regardless of where he is and everyone can be reached at this place. This has never happened before. I can organize a plenty of participatory activities and have very quick answers instead of a rigid participatory process always with the same people.

Clotilde Berrou : Today we talk about participation, but what is the goal : is it only to accumulate knowledge or is it also to change the point of view ? Connection by social networks but also by a fixed telephone is one example we did experiment at the “Friche de la Belle de Mai” construction site internationally known but not locally. The construction site can be also a way to attract people, to build links and relationships mixing memories and ambitions of the project, to collect stories, to be able to make people go to each other.

Andrea Caridi : Concerning the conception of new cities with new technologies, there are two levels of technology. First level, the sense, the Sencity, able to retrieve the data, and the second level as a capacity to create services for the city. Today it is possible to access to a high level of information but also to get technologies to interpret, to manage, create solutions in order to take decisions.

Laurent Duport : One question is also, as the topic of the panel, the new technologies, to think about the future but also to reinvest the process of reversibility of heritage

Chiara Farinea : On that topic we worked on a project of empty rooms and virtual reality and network of empty rooms. But the virtual experience cannot replace the real experience, the goal was more announcing the level of knowledge to create a network to share real experiences.

Nicola Canessa : There are two levels : virtual reality can give more informations on the city and its history. We had open in Rome a visualization of the old Santa Maggiore as it was colored. There are also applications where you can see places as in films with part of the motion picture and other applications with which you can design directly, and one day can change the approach of the creation.

Chiara Farinea : The new technology has to see also with ubiquity : how to be in two places at the same time ?

Andrea Caridi : The new technology can show something which doesn’t exist anymore but does not change necessarily the way of living the city. Obviously, there are add values with the virtual reality but there are also technology limits.

Laurent Duport : On the Fondation LUMA construction site, there is a “House of the project” where there is a augmented reality visit of the buildings with glasses. But this projection of future also has these disadvantages. For some people, and it may be related to the physical aspect, these technologies destabilize them completely, to be physically affected. One can ask the question, if everyone is connected, if there are adverse effects.

Manuel Gausa : One point is the new technologies can help to increase your relations as people need to be together and at the same time to multiply yourself as a new condition. For the heritage, beyond the first thing (at the beginning) was the restoration (the form) then the rehabilitation (the program), there is a lot of heritage buildings waiting for new programs: space for encounters for strange and unexpected completing the need to be togethe