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The methodological sensibility that will lead to the consideration of the new forms of cybersociality is advanced. Cybersociality refers to the new expressions of "being together," sharing emotions, and communicating in networked social environments. Social interactions in the wired city of Blacksburg, Virginia are analyzed and three groups of users are examined, from a sociological approach, to see how they use the new forms of network communication. (Author/AEF)

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It is described a prototype residential unit ensuring comfortable interior conditions at minimum energy cost through the interaction of three autonomous architectures: a) a spatial arrangement of tectonic elements; b) an assembly of sustainable material components; and c) a cognitive architecture of control systems. The prototype is an experiment on sustainability and connectivity, integrated within the context of a city that is envisioned as an energy efficient grid. This paper offers insight into the dynamic interactions between the material elements of the physical architecture, and the attributes and events of the control architecture that are associated with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the design and development of a prototype, connected to a sustainable home project, which is at its final stage of implementation in Trento, N. Italy. The paper specifically focuses on the design ends and the technological means deployed in the process of implementing the prototype. Design ends outline the technical premises underpinning the development of the house systems. Technological means refer to the methods and technologies that had been deployed to satisfy the premises. Emphasis is given to the properties of the reconfigurable façade and the autonomous control system of the house, where variable transmittance materials, AI methods for building control and digital simulation are used in combination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explicate our research on technology-mediated urban experience specific to two hyper-local tests in which the space of the 'public' is transformed into a virtual network by connective broadcasting. The first case study presents collective mapping in Rio de Janeiro toward increased civic engagement and sustainability, the second tests documentation of political demonstrations for strategic and archival purposes for Occupy Boston. Grouped under the term "participatory urbanism," the projects intend to explore how an individual activates interstitial space (between the physical city and hovering networks, between public and private) by engaging technology and civic media to affect change in the built environment. The physical and virtual environments serve as reciprocal sources of information, engendering a collective practice of shared encounters. We investigate how such encounters of user-centered activity through mobile and web-based media support or implicate the perception and manipulation of the built environment over spans of time and locations, and will highlight qualitative elements of a mobile and web platform designed for successful civic engagement and participatory urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the challenges to redesign sustainable urban transit. It cites the need to improve transit systems and to achieve controlled and sustainable development thru a systemic and integrated approach that considers society as a whole. It mentions the sustainable solutions on the use of transport system including the user understanding of the system, the human factor and transit quality and social networks. It notes the chance offered by the transformation of technological progress on the establishment of the policies that have been adopted at the European level for improving urban transit systems while protecting citizens and the environment.

In this article, the relationship between the development of digital media and memory, community, and urban spaces is discussed. It is based on a project sponsored by the European Commission-i3 and developed by a consortium of five partners between 1997 and 2000. The project's name is Living Memory (LiMe), which is a communication system prototype. LiMe aims to provide members of a locality with means to capture, share, and explore their collective memory and experiences and is an intelligent network of interfaces embedded within the physical fabric of the local community, supporting the creation and distribution of informal content within that community. LiMe interfaces are in natural meeting and crossing points, such as cafes and bus stops. People do not have to sit behind computers to create and find information but come across local knowledge incidentally and peripherally in everyday locations. LiMe is about discovering, expressing, and getting out in the local physical neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a generative grammar producing a language of patterns for the south façade of a prototype sustainable house. The patterns are produced through the activation of the electrochromic material that is applied on the windowpanes of the façade. The class of the performatively effective configurations of the façade is approached as a visual language and the productive (generation), combinatorial (enumeration) and performative (verification) attributes of this language are examined. Random, performance driven, patterns could supply sufficient interior daylight without acknowledging the visual potential of façade pattern generation. The uniqueness of the chosen approach is that the shape grammar encodes the performative constraints pertaining to the generation of façade patterns in a visual manner by associating principles of two-dimensional pattern generation to levels of illuminance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]