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![An article from the reframed constitution and its matching urban canvas]()
![Madrid city map of reframed constitution articles and their matching urban assets.]()
![Segments labeled with words then converted to sentences mapped on the SOM]()
![Updated UV map adorned with stickers derived from the reinterpreted urban asset segments]()
![The freckles of site 01]()
![voids text]()
![Renderings showing the overall explored experience]()
A Samizdat Atlas of 'La Pepa'
Project details
Programme
Cluster
RC11
Year
1
Urban space reflects society and culture, and is cast from the movement of the public. The complexity of society thus leads to the complexity of our urban environment, which should not be simplified by the rule of authority. Through this project, the team aims to reintegrate the complexity of society and provide a more comprehensive and resilient understanding of the urban environment. The team aims to reveal the legacy of the digital age – a fast evolving culture that is leaping behind the dominant narrative, appreciating digital technology, and emphasising individual experience to shape a broader participation in the urban environment. By recontextualising authority, the urban assets that resemble it can also be reframed.
Architecture thus becomes a profound metaphor for the theory, in which the theory explains the architecture. The team has gone beyond mapping legal texts and historical narratives onto urban spaces, also demonstrating how architecture can be a living, breathing representation of theory. As a result. the urban fabric becomes a dynamic canvas that reflects and embodies the ideas and narratives that define it.
Students
- Abdulaziz Mohammadghazali M Khayat Year 1 Urban Design Gold Prize
- Jiaqi Xu Year 1 Urban Design Gold Prize
- Yi Lu Year 1 Urban Design Gold Prize
Dynamic Urbanism: Reinterpreting Complexity in the Context of the Digital
Dynamic Urbanism: Reinterpreting Complexity in the Context of the Digital
Urban environments, shaped by cultural complexities, struggle to adapt to fast cultural shifts. Re-contextualisation reshapes spaces, with public engagement and digital platforms accelerating the transformation.
The Reframing: Constitution vs. Reframed Constitution
The Reframing: Constitution vs. Reframed Constitution
What if the current model of governing cities changed? The team took the Spanish Constitution as a metaphorical experimental ground representing authority and reframing each article using ‘The Anarchist Library’.
Build Your Constitution!
Build Your Constitution!
Through ‘Build Your Constitution’, users can review options and reframe each article of the Spanish Constitution. This method generates endless versions of the text, enabling every citizen to craft their version based on their unique context.
Urban Assets
Urban Assets
The team built a dataset of textual descriptions of Madrid’s urban assets. It is a catalogue of the components of the city that represent authority or the dominant narrative. Each urban asset is represented by an image, text, and location.
Mapping the Constitution
Mapping the Constitution
Each of the 324 articles in the Spanish Constitution is linked to a unique urban asset. The urban environment is conceptualised as a ‘text’ that can be ‘read’ to gain insights into the physical, social, cultural, and historical dimensions of a place.
Urban Canvas
Urban Canvas
The urban canvas identifies places with independent or autonomous counter-narrative characteristics. and the urban environment surrounding them. Each urban canvas is represented with text and a location.
Urban Canvas and the Reframed Constitution
After vectorising the descriptions of each location, using a text search algorithm, each reframed article generated through 'Create Your Constitution' is used as a query to select the best matching sites.
Mapping the Reframed Constitution
Each reframed Constitution article has an urban canvas to represent them visually.
Digital Reproduction
Digital Reproduction
Utilising photogrammetry, mesh models of selected sites were generated based on keyframes of 360-degree aerial videos. This step was followed by the production of a UV map of that model, schieveing a unique reading of the digitally reproduced city.
Unfolding the City Through UV Maps
Unfolding the City Through UV Maps
By producing a UV map, a unique reading of the digitally reproduced city was achieved. This new dimension, born from digital reproduction, combines different readings to provide a richer understanding of the urban landscape.
Segment Anything Model (SAM)
Segment Anything Model (SAM)
At this stage, SAM is used to segment images of urban assets and their corresponding urban canvases, then label them using computer model. This modelling process can be shaped and sculpted to express biases.
Locating the Segments on the Self-Organising Map
Segments of the urban asset image and UV map were labelled with five words and used to query ‘The Anarchist Library’ for matching sentences, thus creating anarchist interpretations of the segments.
Self-Organising Maps (SOM)
Self-Organising Maps (SOM)
The SOM enabled the team to link the urban asset and UV map segments. Using each segment's sentence, its position on the SOM was mapped. By calculating distances, UV map segments were replaced with their closest corresponding urban asset segment.
Updated UV Map
The UV map of the site is updated and bombed with stickers derived from the reinterpreted urban asset segments.
Re-Apply the UV Map onto the Urban Canvas
Re-Apply the UV Map onto the Urban Canvas
As the urban asset was projected onto the city, reinterpreting it through its new meanings, the new UV map is reapplied back to the original model. In its context, the urban asset becomes diluted, influencing the existing urban fabric.
The Freckles
The term ‘freckles’ refers to the extracted fragments of the mesh model. These are parts of the mesh that have landed on site, representing the segmented urban asset that is being recontextualised, that once represented the dominant narrative.
The Voids
The Voids
Bounding boxes were designed for all the ‘freckles’, which were then used to subtract parts of the city. This defines an urban strategy to create voids across the environment, for ‘freckles’ to be edited and interpreted further.
A Reframed Madrid
The mesh freckles are digital reproductions of selected segments of the city. Voids hold endless data, including sentences and articles, vertices with colours and directions. They resemble reframed text, translated into tangible expressions.
Embracing Mesh Data
Embracing Mesh Data
A ‘freckle’ is packed with data; it is a mesh model containing vertices, and each has attributes like colour, direction, position in 3D space, and possibly others. Through Python code, they were investigated as 3D geometrical shapes.
The Samizdat
It would have cast images in which the architecture becomes functional or programmatic, in which architecture becomes a metaphor or a picture of the theory, and in which the theory explains the architecture.
– Riccardo M. Villa, ‘Upon Entropy’
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