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:

For more images see http://www.wag-architecture.co.uk/?p=365

WAG personnel: Architects and urban planning

Project description: urban planning competition for Old Street

Estimated contract sum: £200,000

Award: awarded runner-up

Publications: partially published as Democratic Billboard in Architectural Design

This scheme came runner up in the second round of the Architecture Foundation organised, ‘Any Old St’ urban design competition. Our response to the brief embodied at an urban scale much of our thinking into ‘ecologies’ of material form, social space, living vegetation, signage and media technology.
The site was characterised by competing user groups. A few harmless and homeless ‘professional drinkers’ tended to spend all day occupying the few seats available. Local mothers with children would compete for the remainer, whilst the temporal rhythms of the site included periods with a strong movement through of local office workers and commuters. We felt an obligation to find a spatial solution that would be accessible to all of these social groups, whilst equally ensuring that none could dominate or devalue it for others.
The basis of our proposal were alterations to the ground plane of the pavement, to create what we call archetypal conditions. These included an ampitheatre and terracing, which shielded pedestrians from road noise, and organised seating in part towards the gigantic graphic surfaces of the current advertising hoardings on Old St roundabout. We proposed that this advertising hoarding, together with others on the site, be taken under local control, and used for local art, information and entertainment (such as showing World Cup football etc), perhaps part financed through advertising. This idea, which we call the Democratic Billboard Manifesto, has conceptually driven parts of much of our urban thinking.
The ground plane was further subdivided by a ’social landscape’ – a patterned field of plinths that could be sat on, and used to define territories. By positioning a pram and a shopping bag, it is possible to create a temporary playground enclosure. By occupying some seats off of the main pathways, it is possible to spend all day with a can of Special Brew, and not alarm anyone, nor be excluded from this public place.
Buried between paving slabs accross the entire space, we proposed to have sensor driven and choreographed fountain nossels. These would provide cooling and spectacle in the summer, and would wash down the entire place regularly – removing spilt beer and worse.
Within the trees we proposed to suspend lighting and media rigs, as previously discussed, and also ‘tree sculptures’, cones of branches and foilage which would be cut out from the heavy summertime tree cover – rather like an arboreal Gordon Matta-Clark piece. These cones would allow shafts of light to penetrate what is currently an overshaded place.

Playground @ Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London
Year: 2004
Project description: Bar, Club, Cultural Centre
Estimated Contract sum: £2,000,000
WAG: architects/ project managers/ business consultants
Other Consultants: Atelier One, At Large
WAG were asked to complete a feasibility study and design a new type of cultural space. The project guru, David is currently raising funding, and will hopefully be realised. The venue would run on a non profit basis, funding arts activities and supporting charities. The brief required a flexible space that could at different times run as a bar, concert venue, cinema, market, and more. The solution was to design a fixed, ‘archetypal landscape’ within the space, which would house the fixed requirements such as fire escapes, toilets, kitchens etc. Above this landscape there will be a gridwork which would support flexible, moving elements, ranging from lighting ad screens to ‘pods’ containing cinema and bar spaces. The interaction between the fixed landscape and flexible machine would catalyse a broad range of events.

Year: 2003
Project description: Feasibility study for entrance canopy and visitor experience
Estimated contract sum: £250,000
WaG developed a new entrance experience for audience visitors as part of the ‘This is Television’ feasibility study, lead by graphics consultants Lucy or Robert.