Two intriguing examples of prototyping in the urban environment. The two pictures above (taken in Geneva and Lyon) depict another form of trying to represent the upcoming colors of a building. Different colors are presented (stand-alone or with a combination of others) to the people who will take a decision.
The pictures below that I've already shown here is a basic model of how a soon-to be skyscraper would look like in Zürich, Switzerland. An intriguing steel structure that represents the volume which will be occupied soon by a new building.
Different range of representations using shapes and color. Although the color example quite minimally shows the future of the building, the steel structure is impressive.
Why do I blog this? interesting documentation of a certain design process and how certain elements can be prototyped to evaluate people's reaction to a certain change. These elements acts as a sort of prototyping the near future of the urban fabric using shape and color probes. Very important in terms of user acceptation since colors and huge shapes can be problematic for city-dwellers (say, in continental europe).
Tangentially, it also shows that physical and situated artifacts can also be employed to design the city of tomorrow. It doesn't mean however that digital techniques such as 3D modeling or augmented reality cannot be employed.