Urban Design Intervention
South Bank, London (2009)
This design intervention was created as a final project for an urban design course called PPD 644 Shaping the Built Environment in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development. The goal of this project was to diagnose an existing public space and design an intervention that would make the space more useful or habitable. Instead of knocking down buildings or moving roads, I designed a set of context-specific responsive/interactive installations for London’s South Bank arts centre. My intent was to use ubiquitous and physical computing technologies to transform the South Bank into a playful space that introduced passers-by to the activities that took place within these structures.
Though the South Bank is already a well-used public space with a beautiful tree-lined riverside walkway, benches, and a number of art centers, the buildings that line parts of the South Bank are often criticized for their brutalist mid-century modernist architecture, predominantly constructed of concrete and glass. One main point of criticism calls attention to the lack of human-scale buildings, instead consisting of concrete behemoths which overshadow the users of the space. The focus of this project is on the site directly surrounding Waterloo Bridge, which includes a short stretch of the riverside walkway that provides access to the Royal National Theatre, the British Film Institute Southbank, The Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Royal Festival Hall heading from the east to the south-west
This project presents a visual public-art based intervention that transforms the urban landscape using projection, cinematic images, sound and responsive architecture. This intervention considers the history of the area, as well as contextual information related to the arts and cultural institutions directly surrounding this section of the South Bank. By using cinematic and media-based elements to augment this site, the South Bank will become a dynamic, human-scale space designing art installations on the exterior of the buildings and around the riverside walkway. These installations are meant to inspire interaction between the people who traverse this public space and the built environment itself. The buildings and walkways will become dynamic screens, and instead of transforming these spaces through physical changes, technologies will be used to digitally enhance the urban landscape.
PPD 644 Final Project PDF
PPD 644 Final Slides PDF