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The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry globally has a long history of prudently adopting novel technologies to improve products and services. Yet the rapid development of digital technology currently taking place is threatening to produce a more disruptive inflection, or substantial jolt. This paper explores the state of readiness of the AEC industry for such anticipated transformation. We illustrate our conceptual arguments with evidence from an explorative study across a sample of AEC organizations in Australia. At the core of this paper, we offer six provocations that highlight what we consider major challenges for the AEC industry-across multiple levels of analysis-related to the increasing role of digital technology. We then turn to lessons learned from other industries in order to propose a framework consisting of four leadership thinking schemas to enable digital transformation readiness: future thinking, strategic thinking, capability thinking, and experimental thinking. For these four schemas, we present practices and initiatives that may help AEC firms to better adapt-or to proactively create and shape a sustainable future.

Community engagement has been widely discussed in both academic and practitioner literature, in particular around the types of tools, techniques, and methods used to undertake engagement. The practice of community engagement is at risk of becoming fragmented if there is a disconnection between the engagement objectives, the mechanisms used for people to interact, and the outcomes that ultimately contribute towards decision-making. Building on their previous work, including an established set of dynamic design patterns for situated, digitally augmented community engagement, authors propose a smart engagement ecosystem as a conceptual model that has the ability to connect people through physical, digital, online, and hybrid engagement approaches. The model postulates that participation between these various approaches are non-linear and reactive; where each approach can be used individually or collectively within the ecosystem. The chapter discusses how this capability can be leveraged within our smart engagement ecosystem model to connect, engage, and interact with local communities.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore through a project the feasibility of testing Carpo’s preposition of the second digital turn. It further argues that if media architecture could progress into a new digital design that makes use of large amount of data, the ability of computers to filter through these data and the computers capacity to generate a physical output based on data enabled through a “digital trial and error” process and “age-old problem” in media architecture design could be addressed—in the following called Master/Slave relationship. Its breakdown is then consequently a result of applying second digital turn thinking to media architecture. Design/methodology/approach The paper outlines two aspects to discuss the design of a media architecture installation: first, a qualitative method using the e-mail trails between the research team developing the installation to uncover trends in thought and opinion to identify if a Master/Slave outcome could have been avoided, thus it has the second digital turn thinking provided a “neutral judge”. Second, a design research approach where the designed outcome of the installation is discussed and evaluated. The scope of the chapter only allows for a short overview of the design process as such. Findings The authors could demonstrate that the design approach using second digital turn principles had overcoming the problem of a Master/Slave relationship in media architecture. Further, media architecture provides to the second digital turn, the advantage of providing input variables is of a technical nature and a clear set of objective relationships between the technical variables and constraints. Hence, it is easier to design x-number of design options. Media architecture also has advantage that the aesthetic judgement is potentially easier (which option to choose), as the primary function of most media façades lies in communicating dynamic text, graphic or images. Originality/value The paper understands its value in opening up and contributing to the question on how to judge objectiles. When designers are now in a position to develop computer programs that can design objects how does one judge which is the best object out of all the potential options? The paper argues that if the aesthetic quality of the outcome is understood a later judgement might be easier.

Population growth in cities has led to unprecedented pressure on urban infrastructure services, such as electricity supply and public transport. As a consequence cities need to find sustainable solutions to maintain the availability of services while keeping them economically and environmentally viable. One traditional approach is to expand infrastructure, but this can be expensive, take years from planning to realization, and be politically frought. In this paper we discuss the concept of “infostructures” as cost and time-effective complementary approaches that leverage digital layers and urban digital media channels of the cityscape. Through four case studies and their analysis we illustrate opportunities for addressing different types of “unhealthy” situations with digital technologies.

Large digital screens are becoming prevalent across today’s cities dispersing into everyday urban spaces such as public squares and cultural precincts. Examples, such as Federation Square, demonstrate the opportunities for using digital screens to create a sense of place and to add long-term social, cultural and economic value for citizens, who live and work in those precincts. However, the challenge of implementing digital screens in new urban developments is to ensure they respond appropriately to the physical and sociocultural environment in which they are placed. Considering the increasing rate at which digital screens are being embedded into public spaces, it is surprising that the programs running on these screens still seem to be stuck in the cinematic model. The availability of advanced networking and interaction technologies offers opportunities for information access that goes beyond free-to-air television and advertising. This chapter revisits the history and current state of digital screens in urban life and discusses a series of research studies that involve digital screens as interface between citizens and the city. Instead of focusing on technological concerns, the chapter presents a holistic analysis of these studies, with the aim to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of the sociocultural potential of this new media platform, and how the digital content is linked with the spatial quality of the physical space, as well as the place and role of digital screens within the smart city movement.

This paper presents an essay aimed at prompting broad discussion crucial in keeping the interaction design discourse fresh, critical, and in motion. We trace the changing role of people who have advanced from consumers to producers, from stationary office workers to mobile urban nomads, from passive members of the plebs to active instigators of change. Yet, interaction designers often still refer to them only as 'users.' We follow some of the historic developments from the information superhighway to the smart city in order to provide the backdrop in front of which we critically analyse three core areas. First, the issue of echo chambers and filter bubbles in social media results in a political polarisation that jeopardises the formation of a functioning public sphere. Second, pretty lights and colourful facades in media architecture are increasingly making way for situated installations and interventions fostering community engagement. And third, civic activism is often reduced to forms of slacktivism. We synthesise our discussion to propose 'citizen-ability' as an alternative goal for interaction designers to aspire to in order to create new polities and civics for a better quality of life.

Techniques that enable groups of people to control or influence digital system applications collectively have been greatly facilitated through the emergence of faster and better image processing and sensing technologies. This paper considers design issues that relate to crowd or group based user interfaces. One key difference when comparing group interface design with one-on-one user interfaces, is that a group format raises issues of digital political determinism within the system algorithms. These include the impact of an individual's weighting within the group; problems relating to inclusivity across certain user groups; and communication of appropriate user interaction to a diverse audience. These issues were explored by the authors' research using an anamorphic, anthropomorphic experimental display screen in a public location. An input mechanism was developed employing human facial expression analysis, to deliver emotionally expressive visual feedback.

Ubiquitous computing uses three basic forms for ubiquitous system devices: tabs, pads and boards. Whereas tabs and pads where early topics in post-desktop models of HCI research, the third one, boards, in particular in its extreme form as media facades, is only recently subject of discourse. The chapter works on two levels: Firstly, it offers an overview of media facade technologies and content and introduce Microsoft Kinect, a technology that enables gesture-based interactions for boards. Secondly, it lists projects and companies that have successfully used Kinect as a ‘computer mouse’ for interacting and introduces examples where Kinect is used for large screen interaction. The chapter contributes through providing an outlook of potential future directions through introducing the Polymedia Pixel, a technology that applies the concept of combined sensing and displaying in one device. Lastly, the chapter concludes by discussing implementation potentials of the above for ubiquitous cities.

The research presented in this paper is an investigation into how ubiquitous computing technologies can contribute to improving the quality of existing public transport environments through the integration of responsive technologies. The paper argues that given the significant challenges associated with transport infrastructure expansion including cost, disruption, energy use, and implementation periods augmenting existing transport environments offers alternate measures to manage demand and improve the user experience. The paper proposes improving transport environments by integrating smart, or responsive, digital information into the existing physical fabric in a coherent architectural and spatial context. This approach offers an opportunity to shift away from the static nature of public transport infrastructure to the dynamic notion of public transport 'info'structure. The research uses an architecture graduate studio as a foundation to investigate the objectives. The contribution of this paper is an investigation of ways in which digital technologies and networked communications can transform and augment public transport infrastructure, allowing new forms of intelligent, adaptive, interactive and self-aware architecture to be developed. ©2011, Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA).

We present a pilot study aiming to explore the use of biometrics sensing technology within a semi-immersive VR environment, where users face architectural spaces which induce them sensations close to fear of heights, claustrophobia, frustration and relief. Electrodermal activity was used to detect users’ emotional arousal, while navigating in VR. Navigation conditions and participants’ expertise with games were controlled. Main results show that physiological measurement of user’s perceptions can discriminate well "positive" from "negative" spaces, providing designers with basic information on people’s emotional state when using the buildings they design. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

In an increasingly technological, informed and demanding society Architecture should be able to answer to its space require-ments using materials and technological resources that today has at its service. Kinetic systems have been used by architects as an approach that embeds computation intelligence to create flexible and adaptable architectural spaces according to users’ changing needs and desires. This paper describes one possible way of exploring kinetic systems to develop a foldable surface with geometric patterns based on the rules of rigid origami. This surface aims to take advantage of the elastic ca-pacities given to a planar material by its folding. After folding the sur-face can assume different forms in order to create a range of spatial configurations ordered by a user through a remote control. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Presently there is a progressive tendency to incorporate parametric design strategies in urban planning and design. Although the computational technologies that allow it are recent, fundamental theories and thinking processes behind it can be traced back to the work conducted at the Institute for Lightweight Structures (IL) in Stuttgart, between the 1960’s and 1980’s. This paper describes an ex- perimental urban research work based on Frei Otto and Eda Schaur's thoughts on unplanned settlements, and on the form-finding experi- ences carried out at IL. By exploring the digital development of para- metric and algorithmic interactive models, two urban design proposals were developed for a site in Porto city. Out of this experience, this pa- per suggests that today the act of design can benefit from a deeper un- derstanding of the natural processes of occupation and connection. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion