Taking place in the capital’s most exciting venue, the Truman Brewery, a vast reclaimed industrial site in Brick Lane, Tent London is the most comprehensive and diverse design event of the year, showing art and architecture, vintage and contemporary design by emerging and established designers from around the world.

Open Tables is a software application and a spatial environment, which researches and facilitates collaborative working between individuals and groups. The core purpose of Open Tables is to explore the potential for new kinds of collaborative working to emerge in spaces that combine analogue and digital modes of interaction: engaging both the mind and the senses in the navigation and production of information.

Come and see us at Tent London to talk to us about the project. We will be available at the stand throughout the exhibition.

Tent London opening times:
Thursday 18 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Friday 19 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Saturday 20 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Sunday 21 September: 11.00 – 17.00hrs

For more information on Tent London, please visit their website @ www.tentlondon.co.uk
To find out more about our project, please visit project’s website @ www.opntables.com

Open Tables (OT) is an experimental new kind of collaborative working environment. For the Tent Urbantine installation we have defined four research topic areas, looking at contemporary design issues around sustainability, workplace environments, and ubiquitous computing. However, OT can be set up to research any topic depending upon the needs and interests of the client/participant/co-designer – whether bike design or stock markets – and we anticipate producing many OT variations in the future.

At the heart of Open Tables is the OT WebApp, the central repository of discussion material. It’s purpose is to organize information in a way relevant to the topic discussed. Items are collected off the web from a number of defined web feeds. Items are collected and collated into topics using the tags that the describe those items. The WebApp allows OT participants to browse items, filter by topic, tag and mark relevant or rejected depending upon whether you think this item is relevant to the discussed topic or not. You can also leave comments for each item.

Within the OT physical installation the content is interacted with through a series of physical spatial interfaces. The WebApp has a number of XML outputs which allow interface devices at the installation to communicate to one another. Item modified in the physical installation is automaticly updated on the webapp. This also works vice versa. Whilst the information displayed on the webapp is in a particular, already familiar web format, the same information in the installation is displayed through a series of spatial and physical conditions, aimed at promoting social interaction.

On the web, the OT WebApp can be engaged with through the OT website. Feel free to browse/tag/relate items. All information is collected and displayed in the space relevant to generate discussion. If you register you are also able to add items yourself as well as subscribe to our newsletter to be notified where next physical installation will be taking place.

The four research topics that OT is currently running are:

SUSTAINABILITY IN EDUCATION

RESEARCHING RECYCLING

GLOBAL NETWORKS AND THE INTERACTIVE EVERYDAY

COLLABORATIVE WORKING ENVIRONMENTS

If you have a blog, or would like to recommend a website which addresses any of these issues, and you would like to have your content fed into the OT system for the Tent Urbantine installation, then please submit your feed to info@opntables.com

The feeds that you submit to the Sustainability in Education topic will be feeding into a live EU funded research project into design education, and will be shown at the DEEDS 360 degrees conference (http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/events/deeds-360degrees) in Brighton on Saturday 20th September 2008.

For more information about Open Tables, please visit http://www.opntables.com or our blog http://blog.opntables.com or drop us an email at info@opntables.com

Open Tables is a Working Architecture Group [WAG] project. http://www.wag-architecture.co.uk

The exhibition documents WAG’s winning scheme for the Workspace Group Urbantine Project®Tent competition, and the runners-up schemes

The exhibition is launching with a panel discussion at 7.45 pm on September 11th, which should be interesting. I will be contributing to the discussion with the other invited contributors listed below. The discussion will address issues around new craftsmanship, the analogue space of virtual communication, sensory environments and adaptive structures.

Panelists:

Lesley Gavin [BT futurologists]
Olivier Geoffroy [untothislast]
Jon Goodbun [winner of the Workspace Group Urbantine Project®Tent), WAG]
Usman Haque [Haque design and research]
Alvise Simondetti [Foresight & Innovation at Arup]

Chair: Christian Derix [nous, Aedas R&D]

If you would like to follow Open Tables development, we have set-up a blog that is regularly updated.

http://opentables.tumblr.com/

You can also read more about this year’s Tent London here and about our project here.

Open Tables Ecology is a study in contemporary interaction theory, or Ubiquitous Computing.

Ubiquitous Computing is based upon using the particularities of real places and spaces to provide the basis for our interactions with digital media. It explores how everyday objects and familiar places can help us to interact with and create ‘local’ information in a global network. This is the opposite of the old concept of ‘cyberspace’, or indeed the current experience of being on line, which is always the same where ever you are…

We started this project by asking how can we create a physical space which facilitates the navigation, selection and creation of ideas. For us, this is in fact part of a bigger study, into creating a hybrid real space/web platform to facilitate the production of open source design (analogous to open source software).

The proposal is for an environment which will facilitate open source thinking, between individuals and groups working and playing in the installation space (and perhaps others working in other places, and online). We would like to really test this by hiring the space for a few hours each day to local companies to use for brainstorming workshops.

The installation is conceptually organised into digitally enhanced ‘tables’ and ‘walls’. In addition, there are hybrid objects: these are found and recycled everyday items, bought from architectural salvage yards and the like, which are physically and technologically manipulated and adjusted to create usable hybrid objects which channel and interface RSS feeds. These are categorised as ‘Wall-Objects’ and ‘Table-Objects’
The ‘tables’ are for working on individually and collectively, and the ‘walls’ are for displaying the work of the ‘tables’. For example, a workgroup at one of the tables or ‘table-objects’ start writing some ideas. The computer (actually a piece of RSS aggregator software) identifies keywords on the table (inputted on the table or by mobile), and starts to search RSS feeds for posts tagged with the keywords. As these feeds start to display or get projected onto the various table-objects, the workgroups can tag and cross reference them. This primary amended content then gets displayed on the walls and wall-objects, to be seen and responded to by the larger community.

Graphic material in images, source: http://www.visualcomplexity.com

Competition team:

WAG: Working Architecture Group are Jon Goodbun, Filip Visnjic and Cordula Weisser.
WAG is an eco-innovative design and research practice, whose interests range from urbanism and ecology to architectural furniture and computer aided manufacture. We believe that the architectural research that WAG has been involved in, produced through our teaching, writing and built practice, enables us to articulate, explore and develop the core aims and values of our clients, in interesting and powerful new ways. Our office is near Spitalfields Market, in East London, and our portfolio includes residential, retail, exhibition, bar and branding projects, for clients including BBC, YMCA, German Embassy and British Museum.

For Open Tables WAG are leading a cross-disciplinary design team, which includes students from Schumacher College ( Fabio Barone (software developer) and Amalie Lauer (engineer)), and interaction designer Alexander Kohlhofer (plasticshore.com).

WAG/Jon Goodbun general quote:

“Whenever I try to describe the ideas behind our work at WAG, or my broader consultancy and academic research, I tend to use words like holism, ecology, and cybernetics a lot. These ideas are able to capture and describe the notion that we live in a globally networked, modern world, but that this ‘space of flows’ is fundamentally interconnected to the ‘Spaceship Earth’ that we are travelling on. We rely upon the biosphere for vast inputs of Natural Capital every year into our production and consumption economies/ecologies, and we need to find conceptual and practical ways to conceive of ourselves as personally networked into these natural and technological ecologies, in a ‘local’ way. We need to build bridges between the local and the global. The fact that both ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’ share the same etymological root from Greek oikos ‘house’, suggests that they are both in fact inextricable from the very concept of architecture – both effectively meaning ‘the science of the house’, or ‘the science of managing the home’. “

Alexander Kohlhofer (plasticshore.com) blurb:

As a designer Alexander Kohlhofer embodies strong artistic sensibilities with a passion for and expertise in contemporary technologies. He has worked on projects with the British Council, the Tate Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the Arts Council, Amnesty International and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) and many others.

He has presented at international venues, conducted workshops abroad and has lived and worked in the US, UK, Germany and Austria. Until last year he was creative director of Bafta Award winners Soda Creative, world renowned for Soda Constructor. He is also a founding member and director of Munich based Schoene Neue Kinder in Germany.

His fascination for social software is expressed in his current start ups: the award winning online multiplayer-strategy game Weewar (http://weewar.com) and the agile team ware No Kahuna (http://nokahuna.com).

You can learn more about Alexander Kohlhofer at http://plasticshore.com

Submission Sheets:

Jury’s report:
The project explored social structures and an approach to tenure rather than architecture or built form. Housing is grouped in small courts with shared community gardens and clustered communal resources. The jury welcomed this holistic consideration and positive vision for medium density housing in the 21st century.

The Milton Keynes Social Ecology by WAG is an urban cohousing permaculture project, aimed at meeting a growing niche demand in the housing market. The proposal is an opt-in community for individuals and families who want to take the next step in sustainable modern living. The Social Ecology is organised through the collective ownership and management of a community freehold, with private leaseholds for dwellings. There are shared car pools, rather than private car ownership, and instead of roads, a network of cycle routes and footpaths cross the site. There is an ecology of green spaces – from public to private. The dwellings are clustered into groups of twenty units, organised around a linear public park, permaculture based community school, market hall and democratic billboard mediaspace. Each co-housing cluster overlooks shared garden, organic food growing and playground spaces. The individual dwelling units are organised around private courtyard gardens, which are treated as an external living rooms.

Click images to enlarge

About Europan:
Europan is a biennial competition for young architects and urban design professionals, under 40 years of age, to design innovative housing schemes for sites across Europe.

WAG: Architects

Project Description: Ideas competition for development of a derelict but listed island resort and bridge/pier for UrbanSplash.

Estimated contract sum: N/A

Our latest competition submission for this exciting new project. Unfortunately, WAG was not shortlisted to procure project further. To see other entries/winner please visit RIBA competitions office.

Click to Enlarge (Full Screen)
Site Analysis:
Weston-Super-Mare operates efficiently during the holiday season, but has a lot of spare capacity for the rest of the year. Part of the brief we set ourselves is to develop a business model for Birnbeck Island that can use this spare capacity as an opportunity.

Strategy:
Create a destination that supports and attracts the existing tourist market during the summer season, providing cafes, restaurants art, live music etc. For the rest of the year, the island operates as a new university and business think tank venue, specialising in ecology, new media art, IT – partnering with local hotels to use spare capacity as student accommodation..

Tactics:
1. Renovate the pier and the listed buildings on the island to provide cafe and restaurant facilities, fully online etc
2. Remove concrete pillars and platform, and build a new, state of the art, semi submerged auditorium – acting as a music venue in season and a lecture theatre etc for the rest of the year
3. Insert a new crane/funfair like structure, which can unfold to provide lighting, AV, umbrella etc functions as required
4. Create a field of wave/wind powered lights, across the local bay

Philosophy:
The geographer and cultural theorist Manuel Castells has argued that our contemporary condition can be described as a “bipolar opposition between the net and the self”, and he has suggested that if we are to take control of our futures, and the futures of our cities, then we need to build what he calls “bridges” between what he calls “the space of flows” (ie global information and capital networks) and the “space of places” (ie the real, local world and its ecologies). He argues that places that do not robustly plug themselves into the global space of flows risk economic and social stagnation. Our approach bridges these spaces, by working with ecological models that combine and synergise natural and social ecosystems.

Sustainability:
In developing this proposal we have applied best practice thinking regarding sustainability, which is defined as working to the triple bottom line: People, Planet and Profit. We have developed a business model that turns problems with the local economy into opportunities, generating new business, culture and training.
The light field is a self powering system. We have maintained all of the important existing fabric, and have only introduced new structure where it can provide most value (all detailed specification will be according to Cradle2Cradle principles). We believe that there are opportunities for site micro energy generation – probably solar water heating and wind power… but to be determined….

Networks:
Birnbeck Island Bridge Ecology is an IT hub… kitted out with the latest AV, on-line and media interface gear
Media of all kinds are organised across the island according to Democratic Billboard principles: partnerships are formed with local councils, business and indeed multinational corporations. Space and time usage of the media infrastructure is allocated as:
20 % Art
20% BIBE
10% Local news/information
30% Local advertising
20% Global advertising

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=528&storycode=3066225

The project that David Littlefield refers to is the Interspace proposal, which has been published in one form in Medium Architecture (Bauhaus University Weimar Press). Filip Visjnic has recently been relooking at the project and WAG are planning to go for funding for it in the near future.

The initial version of the project can be found at http://www.wag-architecture.co.uk/?p=284
Another review of the conference can be found at http://morfogen.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_morfogen_archive.html

As part of my involvement in organising a book and exhibition proposal (with Nic Clear, Murray Fraser and others), for the PODnet Spatial Interface project (which started as a conference at the University of Westminster, co-organised by the Polytechnic group at Westminster, the AVATAR group at the Bartlett, UCL, and SIAL at RMIT, Melbourne), WAG are revisiting this proposal. This project was published recently, as a manifestation of a few ideas that we have been working on, many of which are still ongoing. It was submitted to David Greene as a contribution to his request for proposals for departments at the LAWUN Invisible University, entitled the ‘Department of Immersive Environments’. Versions of this project have also been published as part of WAG’s Democratic Billboard project, entitled ‘InterSpace’.

The project explores architecture’s role as an organiser of media, technolgy and bodies in space. We described the proposal as :

A servicing frame in a field, and marked out territories on the ground.
An immersive 3D cybernetic forest. A cross between Nam June Paik’s TV gardens, and Piranesi’s Carcieri.
A servicing framework that assembles and coordinates other machines and devices.

For more information visit www.thepolytechnic.org: