IAAC- Master in City & Technology
Google Urbanism Seminar
Lecturers: Nicolay Boyadjiev – [email protected]

On Ambient Crowdfunding: An Update on GoogleUrbanism

2018 has been a bad year of PR for our platform overlords. From EU vs. Google to Apple vs. FBI to Uber / Tesla’s UGV deathtoll back to Amazon vs. Trump, public mistrust is at its very peak, with the still lingering Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal scripted almost too conveniently (like an Aaron Sorkin sequel…) to set up Europe’s rollout of GDPR earlier in the spring. All in all, it’s pretty obvious that what was obvious to many is now obvious to most when it comes to the alleged lofty humanitarian promises and democratic virtues of the tech sector.

Yet, for designers, it’s not particularly interesting or useful to join the militant crusade of the #deletefacebook movement or other such bandwagons. Rather, this particular moment is an opportunity to seriously revisit some of our most entrenched design habits and ideological blind-spots; from user-centric design, to data and privacy rights and returns, to the comfortable but ultimately flawed strategic conflation of ends and means in the efforts to tackle surveillance at the scale of the so-called “Smart City”. The emergent digital polity and ensuing physical transformations of the urban realm is an open architectural challenge, in need of more than the current cheerleading of reductive, lazy and ultimately complacent opposition…

This 3-part intensive speculative urbanism seminar will tackle themes ranging from data-municipalism, derivative spatial products such as capta and attention , the notion of ambient crowdfunding and the strategic leverage of existing / as-of-yet-inexistant composite platforms at urban scale. It is based on ongoing research by architect, design strategist and “The New Normal” Program Design tutor Nicolay Boyadjiev as part of his collaborative 2015/16 “GoogleUrbanism” project at the Strelka Institute for Media Architecture and Design. Rooted in the specific context of Barcelona, students will expand traditional “ sites” and “scopes” in urban design and produce alternative conceptual, architectural and narrative models to reflect the necessary shifts of urban agency and practice at the turn onto the next decade.

Schedule:

Part 1: Introduction & 3-Day Intensive Seminar
Friday 9th November 2018 – 15:00 – 19:00
Lecture: From 1998 (to 2015) to 2018: An Update on GoogleUrbanism
This lecture will focus on GoogleUrbanism and recent developments (including but not limited to:
Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Alphabet’s
Sidewalk Labs’ project in Toronto, the shifting advertising landscape, developments in UGV / Urban
I.o.T, federated machine learning and the evolution of platform feudalism)
Potential structure:
– From Surveillance to Addressability
– From Micro-moments to Neural-extractivism
– From GU to GDPR
Seminar Discussion
Introduction of Design Brief: Urban Stacks ( name still TBD )
Team Formation and Site Selection

Saturday 10th November 2018 – 13:00 – 17:00
Lecture: From (Data) Mining to (Capta) Agriculture: The Site as a Composite User
This lecture will focus on the “site” of intervention (including but not limited to: directive and
derivative forms of data / “capta”, site-subjectivity and the site as a potential user / legal person /
recipient of rights and returns, and the notion of ambient crowdfunding)
Potential Structure:
– From Data to Capta
– From Ownership to Hospitality
– From Peer-to-Peer to Peer-to-Part
Field trip: Student-led field trip & site documentation
Debrief & Drinks

Sunday 11th November 2018 – 13:00 – 17:00
Lecture: From BIM to CIM (to SIM): On Design Agency & The Agency of Design
This lecture will focus on the agency of the design practice in this new context (including but not
limited to: software vs. hardware, the convergence of the urban governance and data modeling, the
politics and ethics of urban simulation and the archive as design medium)
Potential structure:
– From Program to Program
– From Plan to Plan (or Plot to Plot)
– From Code to Code
Group desk reviews
Collective mapping presentations
Stack Matrix templates & final assignment presentation

Part 2: Mid-Review Check-in + lecture
Monday 19th November 2018 – 15:00 – 19:00
Stack Matrix presentations & feedback
Lecture: From Critique to Recursion: On Medium Design and Idea-Technology
This lecture will focus on media, design as designation and strategy as urban output.
Potential structure:
– From Declaration to Disposition
– From Prescription to Projection
– From Aesthetics to Access
+ Public Lecture at IAAC : Software / Cinema / Strategy / Protocols

Part 3: Final Presentation
Tuesday 20th November 2018 – 15:00 – 19:00
Final Presentations & discussion
Recombinations & drinks

Curated reading list:
Will be divided in 2 parts (Required / Recommended) and shared 1 week before each part