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Location: Salvage, Newfoundland, Canada Photographer: Jim Watters Event: Best Of 2008

Location: Houdan, France Photographer: Lucile Doré Event: Forgotten Places

Game Engines such as Unity make the perfect platform to create a virtual exhibition space. Spaces where architecture, urban models and urban furniture can be displayed and viewed alongside movies and sound-scapes to provide a sense of place.


Google SketchUp is our current tool of choice for modelling internal spaces, the combination of quick and easy modelling with lighting simulation via LightUp provides the perfect work flow.


LightUp is remarkably easy to use, you can simply click on any textured shape and allow it emit light, opening up the way for quick and easy renders out of SketchUp.


Of note is the ability to run LightUp in the free version of SketchUp allowing models to be exported in .fbx without having to upgrade to the pro.

Head over to http://www.light-up.co.uk/ for full details. We will have more on our exhibition space as it develops.

Location: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA Photographer: Dean Karamehmedovic Event: Marketplace

Google has announced the new features available in SketchUp 8. The highlight in our eyes is the integration of Google Building Maker direct into SketchUp.



Any building maker building in Google Earth can be imported, combine this with exports to Unity/Crysis etc and just think about the possibilities...

Download for free at http://sketchup.google.com

Duncan Smith here at CASA and Andrew Crooks, an assistant professor in the Department of Computational Social Science, at  George Mason University have just finished a new working paper entitled "From Buildings to Cities: Techniques for the Multi-Scale Analysis of Urban Form and Function."
Below is the abstract :

The built environment is a significant factor in many urban processes, yet direct measures of built form are seldom used in geographical studies. Representation and analysis of urban form and function could provide new insights and improve the evidence base for research.

So far progress has been slow due to limited data availability, computational demands, and a lack of methods to integrate built environment data with aggregate geographical analysis. Spatial data and computational improvements are overcoming some of these problems, but there remains a need for techniques to process and aggregate urban form data. Here we develop a Built Environment Model of urban function and dwelling type classifications for Greater London, based on detailed topographic and address-based data (sourced from Ordnance Survey MasterMap).

The multi-scale approach allows the Built Environment Model to be viewed at fine-scales for local planning contexts, and at city-wide scales for aggregate geographical analysis, allowing an improved understanding of urban processes. This flexibility is illustrated in the two examples, that of urban function and residential type analysis, where both local-scale urban clustering and city-wide trends in density and agglomeration are shown. While we demonstrate the multi-scale Built Environment Model to be a viable approach, a number of accuracy issues are identified, including the limitations of 2D data, inaccuracies in commercial function data and problems with temporal attribution. These limitations currently restrict the more advanced applications of the Built Environment Model.

The full title of the paper and reference is:
Smith, D.A. and Crooks, A.T. (2010), From Buildings to Cities: Techniques for the Multi-Scale Analysis of Urban Form and Function, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (University College London): Working Paper 155, London, UK.
You can download the paper direct (2.8Mb pdf) or view the complete 156 strong CASA Working Paper Series.

Back in the heady days of 2008 when Neogeography was the 'in thing' we looked into importing geographic, urban and climate information within Second Life. Progress was swift and we demonstrated how output from ArcGIS could be not only imported but also manipulated on the fly, along with step inside panoramas and live data feeds:



That was 2008, since then our land with NATURE in Second Life has sadly timed out and nowadays its hard to justify resources to rent virtual space. As such our thoughts are tuning to OpenSim, nothing new there of course but the clip below from Intel has got us thinking.

The movie demonstrates the progress in scaling the capabilities of the ScienceSim virtual world and features a collection of projects aimed at expanding the web to include interactive 3D applications.



ScienceSim is interesting and with the possibility of running several 1000 avatars on a server brings about interesting possibilities for virtual simulations.

For more information, see www.sciencesim.com

Location: Sassenheim, The Netherlands Photographer: Henk Keijzer Event: Forgotten Places

For the timelapse below we mounted our Go Pro HD Hero on an outside window and pointed it towards the sky. On a late summer London day you can see the planes shoot across the sky, the clouds form and the sun set.

The movie consists of 10,863 images captured one every 5 seconds (it is best viewed in 720p, fullscreen):


Music: Brent Freeman Blair, I Must Fly, over on MP3 Unsigned.

The Go Pro HD was secured using a suction cup to an outside window and powered throughout using a simple iphone charger, the complete sequence filled a 16gb card over 12 hours. The timelapse was constructed using After Effects CS5.

Back in May 2010, The Edinburgh College of Art ran a workshop to explore the publics apprehension fortagging technologies. It was very successful and provided insights in to the fears and concerns around RFID and the tagging of objects and people.

The day was organised in such a way as to allow participants to take part in semi-structured discussions that were interspersed by presentations and demonstrations to further inform debate. Debate was complex and opinions upon the benefits and threats for tagging became more subtle throughout the workshop, with individuals views swinging dramatically from blind enthusiasm to extreme paranoia.

Since then the workshop was documented and written up to create a 66 page book on the outcomes of the workshop.

You can download a PDF copy here first, whilst ECA head off to blurb.com and start printing.

The book is well worth a download, it covers topics ranging from the Internet of Old Things through to RFID and Privacy. For more on tagging and related technologies take a look at http://www.youtotem.org/.

iClone combines 4 video production with 3D real-time animation, the software integrates with various 3D packages, including SketchUp and provides a quick and easy way to add animation to scenes.

The clip below provides an overview:



Of particular note are the city expansion packs, allowing complex cityscapes to be built quickly and easily.

City Blocks Vol. 1-Skyscrapers in Metro City:



For more information head over to http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/

Also take a look at Reallusions uploads to the Google 3D Warehouse, there are a range of useful street, park and city elements.

Location: Planet Earth Photographer: Yoshiyuki Kaneko Event: Diversity

Location: Oratia, Waitakere, Aotearoa/New Zealand Photographer: Michael Bajko Event: Best Of 2009

Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Photographer: Francis Fougere Event: Diversity

Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Photographer: Jerry J. Astary Event: Transportation

Location: Slussen, Stockholm, Sweden Photographer: Lennart Mollerstrom Event: Diversity

AMV in this case stands of Animated Music Video, a scene where users mashup animated shorts and link them to music.

The track in question 'This is My City' is by Timothy Victor:



We really like the track and the good news is you can download for free from Timothy's iLike page.

Location: Flour Bluff roof top, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA Photographer: Patrick Born Event: Elevation

Adrian Short, the person behind the fantastic Boris Bikes API which serves live data about bike and docking station availability has created a visualization in Google Earth detailing current bike availability across London:





To view the live version and see full details on how it was done - head over to Adrian's blog post. For more about design, citizenship and city keep an eye on http://adrianshort.co.uk/

While working as Associate Creative Director at Shilo, Changethethought partner Mike Slane co-directed and lead animation efforts for this fun and playful broadcast spot for the 2010 U.S. Census. Focused on the latino audience, this spot combines live-action, character design and inventive animation to create a city made of clay.





The advert targets America’s Latino population, which consists of nearly 47 million people and comprises the country’s second largest (and fastest growing) ethnic group. It would be nice to see a similarly creative advert for the forthcoming UK Census, perhaps developed by squintopera or such like...