Illuminating LEGOs with Digital Information to Create Urban Data Observatory and Intervention Simulator
Mohammad K. Hadhrawi, Kent Larson · 2016
Traditional scale models of cities are used to display existing, or proposed urban settings. Unfortunately, these models are static, fixed, and hard to modify. Urban planners use these models in a later stage of the planning process. They negotiate the trade offs of their proposals through sketching, and before physical models can be built. This paper describes a novel framework that employs LEGOs (modular bricks) and a system of high definition projections, to substitute the traditional static models of cities with new interactive, dynamic ones. The proposed framework combines physical and digital mediums: it projects precise sets of data on tangible, physical constructs made out of LEGOs. In this paper we describe the main components, outline the basic interaction features, and discuss a case study employing this framework in a collaborative research context.