Abstract:

The built environment in today’s hybrid cities is changing radically. The pervasiveness of networked mobile and embedded devices has transformed a predominantly stable background for human activity into spaces that have a more fluid behavior. Based on their capability to sense, compute, and act in real time, urban spaces have the potential to go beyond planned behaviors and, instead, change and adapt dynamically.

These interactions resemble improvisation in the performing arts, and this talk presents a new improvisation-based framework for thinking about future cities. Kristian Kloeckl moves beyond the smart city concept by unlocking performativity, and specifically improvisation, as a new design approach and explores how city lights, buses, plazas, and other urban environments are capable of behavior beyond scripts.

Drawing on research of digital cities and design theory, he makes improvisation useful and applicable to the condition of today’s technology-imbued cities and proposes a new future for responsive urban design.

This talk is a preview of the forthcoming book, "The Urban Improvise. Improvisation-Based Design for Hybrid Cities“ by Kristian Kloeckl and published by Yale University Press. http://www.urbanimprovise.com/ 

Speaker Bio:

Kristian Kloeckl is a designer and associate professor at Northeastern University’s School of Architecture and Department of Art + Design where he heads the graduate program in Experience Design. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the University IUAV of Venice and a research scientist at MIT, leading the Real Time City Group at Senseable City Lab, and establishing the lab’s research unit in Singapore. Kloeckl’s work probes the boundaries of interaction design in the context of today’s hybrid cities and investigates the role of improvisational frameworks for design. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Urban Improvise. Improvisation-Based Design for Hybrid Cities” published by Yale University Press and his work has been exhibited at venues such as Venice Biennale, MoMA, Vienna MAK, Singapore Art Museum. Kristian Kloeckl is a frequent speaker at international conferences such as Montreal World Design Summit, Hybrid City Conference, MIT Platform Strategy Executive Symposium, World Bank SDN Forum, Red Dot Design Museum Singapore, Austrian Innovation Forum, ICA Conference Taipei, eGov Global Exchange Singapore.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2019