PHILADELPHIA MASQUE
The manner in which cities and its occupants produce and understand urbanism is the last part of this research on cities. There was also an interest and reference to the projects by John Hejduk in Vladivostok and Riga and how he could speculate on an entire city through singular characters. Strategies of language, narrative, and semiotic totems in architecture were addressed.
In Philadelphia, a city that was reported to have more derelict lots that any other city in the USA, an exploration in re-mapping its urban markers became relevant. Isolating empty sites and applying lessons from Vladivostok gave form to various characters. In a MultiAgent System, these characters were allowed to draw values from location as well as zoning and remake the map to their locations.
Design Team: Qiyao Li, Shulei Weng, Michael Wetmore, Ying Xu, Josef Musil, Christopher McAdams