How to open up our solid towers? PoroCity at Mori Art Museum
The Why Factory exhibits 81 porous towers at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. @moriartmuseum as part of the exhibition Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life - How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow.
The towers were built during a five-day workshop organized in collaboration between The Why Factory, TUDelft and Chiba Institute of Technology @chibakoudai Students proposed a method to prove that urban porosity is socially, environmentally and economically valuable. By looking at how to measure urban porosity, this method aims to promote the capacity of the three-dimensional pixel (the so-called ‘voxel’) for both measuring and evaluating the relative porosity of any built form as well as for negotiating design.
Our current cities are comprised of enclosed, distant and introverted architecture equally isolated from urban life and ecological context.
How might we open these spaces? How might we introduce pockets of space capable of triggering social encounters, multiplying circulation and facilitating the introduction of flora and fauna?
This installation gathers the research conducted by The Why Factory on urban porosity. Using both analogue and digital approaches, researchers and students explored ways to open up our cities.
What can we image in order to to open towers or entire city blocks?: stepped floors? Public stairways? Grottos for residents to meet?...
Can we manipulate building envelopes in order to increase the façade area? Can we perforate built volumes and create pocket parks?
Each of our hypotheses led to a series of step-by-step interventions that materialized in the form of a vast collection of towers built by our students using LEGO blocks. When gathered together, the resulting “army” of LEGO towers shows how far we can—and cannot—go. How much can a tower bend before it collapses? At what point does a porous tower become financially impossible to build or maintain?
PoroCity shows the way to the construction of a more open city and society. Why wait to build it? Welcome to the open city! Welcome to PoroCity!
The 100 towers displayed in this exhibition were built during a five-day workshop organized in collaboration between The Why Factory and Chiba Institute of Technology. Students proposed a method to prove that urban porosity is socially, environmentally and economically valuable. By looking at how to measure urban porosity, this method aims to promote the capacity of the three-dimensional pixel (the so-called ‘voxel’) for both measuring and evaluating the relative porosity of any built form as well as for negotiating design.
PoroCity is an invitation to bring more qualities to the development of our built environment and to look critically at the ongoing processes leading to the densification of our cities.
Credits:
The Why Factory, TUDelft
Winy Maas, Javier Arpa, Adrian Ravon , Leo Stuckardt, Lex te Loo
Chiba Institute of Technology
Professor Souhei Imamura
Students:
Yu Kikuno, Asahi Kimura, Masaharu Kobayashi, Misa Kobayashi, Asumi Kokai, Moe Koyama, Atsushi Nakamura ,Kaio Moriguchi, Muneyuki Muraoka, Shun Mutoh, Asuka Nemoto, Kohei Nonaka, Naoaki Obi, Kyou Okui, Daichi Takagishi, Reika Taki, Yosuke Tsuruta, Takayoshi Ueshima, Yu Sasaki, Hojo Song, Asaka Suzuki, Koh Seki, Koji Suzuki, Keita Yanashima
Photo: Tayama Tatsuyuki
Photo Courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo