In the rush to match the growing demand for areas to live post industrialization, many designers and builders have overlooked the impact our living environments have on psychological and physiological health. While evident in all of society’s different living environments, the lack of mentally and physically healthy living conditions is especially evident in the city. The city’s focus on efficiency and frugality has generated a stressful environment that has largely ignored design and experience at the human scale. Using the suggested methodology of speculative late-Modernist architects and artists, transforming and improving existing conditions through designed responses to these stressors can influence a more stable level of health in urban environments. Through consideration of the human scale, design can generate feelings of empathy, relieve stressful conditions, and increase the quality of life amongst the city’s large population.

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“Living For The City” is a study in generating a higher quality of living in urban environments through understanding the city from a new perspective. Initially, the goal of each design study was to mitigate stressors caused by the urban environment; however, as larger modules began to develop from these studies, the approach to stress mitigation also shifted. Through reconnecting people with their social and natural environments, they can begin to understand the city. Several designs encourage person-to-person interaction through indirect means and promote understanding amongst strangers. Meanwhile, the last module featured, “Talk to the Wind,” serves as visual connection between the remaining natural forces in the city – wind and light. These modules are meant to give the subject a moment of respite and deeper understanding of the environment to combat the stressful unknowns of urbanism.

 

This project implemented several levels of technology to develop each stage of design: using parametric modeling software to analyze maps and create diagrams, using digital fabrication tools for rapid prototyping study models, and using Maya and parametric software to properly present larger possibilities for kinetic modules. This project also utilized less advanced forms of technology, ultimately repurposing parts from found items, such as umbrellas and blood pressure monitors. Most visible in the final full-scale model, umbrella parts were put into the parametric software Grasshopper to simulate new paths of movement that would be used in designing many of the displayed modules for this project. Scan the QR codes on the last page of this section for a few of the animations showing the kinetic modules.