Workshop at Media Architecture Biennale 2012

Image by Wolfgang Leeb

Here’s a very recent Intuity-Scandinavia adventure: Roman and myself visited the lovely city of Aarhus, Denmark to give a workshop at this year’s Media Architecture Biennale 2012. The event was a 3-day conference bringing together architects, designers, academia and industry from around the globe.

The conference focused on the subject of “participation” within media architectural practice and how this inclusive field at the intersections of digital media, technologies and urban environment can actually cope with the diverse stakeholder perspectives involved. Organisers provided a wide spectrum of internationally renowned artists and speakers in the field, such as Ben Rubin (US), Jason Bruges (UK), Antonio Saggio (IT) to name a few.

In previous research at UAL I have been involved in that subject, so I was happy to follow the invitation to hold a workshop on interaction design practices within the field. Roman, our very own VVVV wizard at Intuity, joined in to share his expertise in rapid interactive prototyping.

The full-day workshop at MAB12 was looking at ideation and prototyping methods from a perspective of early stakeholder involvement. About 15 international participants from various professional backgrounds (architects, interaction designers, students, representatives of local communities and lighting manufacturers attended our session and produced an exiting range of ideas and concepts, to be further elaborated as quick, low-tech models and functional prototypes for interactive urban situations.

Here are some impressions and outcomes from the morning and afternoon sessions:

The Biennale was located at Godsbanen, a newly refurbished former freight yard now housing open spaces for cultural production in performing arts, visual arts and literature. An excellent venue for the main conference events, flanked by external sites like Arne Jacobsen’s Aarhus City Hall, where the award ceremony took place.

Here’s how Aarhus looks in November:

Many thanks to the organisers of MAB12, CAVI, MAI, as well as the workshop track coordinators Alex and Martin and all participants. It was a privilege and a pleasure!

Workshop participants

Eva Eriksson (Chalmers University of technology), Wolfgang Leeb (realitylab), Ben Stricker, Carsten Primdahl (CEBRA), Flemming Svendsen (CEBRA), Erik Champion (DHLD), Mikkel Toksvaerd (Martin), Roger Shin (Galaxia Electronics), Valentina Amara (VIA University), Moritz Behrens (UCL, Bartlett)