The CitySpaces project has the objective of conceiving a multichannel
digital media approach for exploring, learning about and interacting with the layered histories of city spaces. A CitySpaces is a virtual-real system for exploring cities overlaid with their rich geo-history, including the diverse histories of people, architecture and the urban environment, as well as the social and cultural history.
Technically, the CitySpaces challenge is that of designing a sophisticated mash-up built on interaction devices, Web Geographical Information Systems, integrated with augmented reality worlds, sitting on top of distributed content repositories and user-generated media streams, organized in space and time. The design takes into account four principal axes: the locations, their geography and history, the available content, either user-generated or preexisting, the user experience and the technology mix supporting the envisaged experience. The CitySpaces design takes the city of Milan as a showcase, focusing on its rich economic, environmental, architectural, demographic, agricultural and gastronomical history, thus building a concept that can be made available for further exploitation in the context of Expo 2015. The design teams encompass a range of complementary skills: urban planners and architects provided their capacity of “reading” the city space and history; ICT engineers contributed knowledge of tools and software platforms supporting the design concepts; environmental engineers focused on the problem of managing geo-referenced data, user position and tracking; industrial designers participated in the definition of the user experience; media engineers looked after the story-boarding and video prototyping of the interaction concept.
Principal Academic Tutor
Piero Fraternali
Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano
Academic Tutors
Maria Brovelli
Environmental, Hydraulic, Infrastructures and Surveying Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
External institution
Radio Televisione Italiana
CEFRIEL
Stanford University
University of California Los Angeles
Carlo Gavazzi Space
External Tutors
Silvia Negri
Radio Televisione Italiana
Team members
TEAM A
Can Umut Ileri [Team controller], Computer Engineering
Veronica Arianna, Architecture
Francesca Corà, Architecture
Lucia Marengo, Engineering for Cinema and Methods of Communications
Xiaofei Yan, Telecommunication Engineering
Anita Maria Cinthia Sala, Architecture
TEAM B
Alberto Quattrini Li [Team controller and Project Communication coordinator], Computer Engineering
Clara Arango, Architecture
Adriana Cavagna, Architecture
Alessandra Grassi, Engineering for Cinema and Methods of Communications
Diana Pagliari, Environmental and Land Planning Engineering
Martha Karina Santos Olano, Urban Planning and Policy Design