BMW Guggenheim Lab: Berlin

Carlo Ratti: The Senseable City
There’s a different level of comfort when things in the environment actually are starting to adjust and talk back and respond to you. It’s something that we couldn’t do before that we can do today, thanks to technology, and something that goes back to a very primordial human drive, kind of like Michelangelo’s dream of having things talk back to us.

Corinne Rose: Urban Micro-Lens
I would love to inspire people to investigate their city and also dive into these processes; to reveal things or observe things, or follow things they want to understand, or create a portrait of something they experience every day, and just grab this phenomenon and visualize it, work on it, or work on how to change it.

I hope that they [visitors] see some aspects of their city with new eyes. I hope this will open new resources for them or empower them to solve things, and just give them some understanding of certain phenomena, and a better relationship to certain parts of the city, or certain experiences.

José Gómez-Márquez: Empowerment Technologies
Instead of creating a design solution, we create a design space so that regular people can participate in it. I’m more interested in what somebody off the street comes up with as a solution to their problem by using technology, than understanding their problem so well that I come up with the technological solution. So Empowerment Technologies is about taking advantage of how there are a whole plethora of new and exciting devices and approaches that allow every person to invent.

What’s been lost in this whole revolution is often: how do we get everyday people—your mom, my grandmother—to participate in these things, instead of just relying on the star architect, or designer, or engineer from MIT to address it?