Seminar: Augmented Realities (2019)
Urban Build-Up
Tim Levi Keller
I'm discussing the current state of housing in Switzerland and its consequences. I want to address the controversy of living in a detached house as a middle-class citizen of Switzerland. This ideal of growing up in a single-family house is still intact, but outdated and not at all future-proof. The urban sprawl not only endangers nature and its inhabitants, but is also highly old-fashioned.
Urban sprawl in Switzerland has its facts and figures:
Per second, 1sqm gets built up.
Per day, twelve football fields get built up.
Per year, the size of lake of Brienz gets built up.
In 1980, the average living space per citizen in Switzerland was 34sqm.
In 2014, this number rose to 45sqm.
I want to create a fictional application, which extends already built houses and increases the living space of a single house. At the same time, I want to show how much culture surface gets saved and how much more people would be getting a living space by the extension of the house. The extension works smoothly by dragging the roof of the house up in the air. The appartment extends itself floor by floor. On top of that, a layer with additional typographical elements shows the increase of inhabitants.
As a second layer, I'm implementing the social aspect. I want to create an archive for all of the interactions by the users. A map shows, where people interacted with the reality and created new houses. Therefore, the archive also has a library of pictures of the modified houses.
With this application, I want to point out the dangers of urban sprawl and encourage people and architects to look for more future proof and compact living scenarios. At the same time, next to all the seriousness, the application can also be used to just play around a bit.