Dan Hill | University of Melbourne (original) (raw)
Papers by Dan Hill
Architecture and urbanism, 2014
Architectural Design, May 1, 2020
Journal of Urban Technology, Apr 1, 2012
This paper investigates the concept of urban visualization, the visual representation of an urban... more This paper investigates the concept of urban visualization, the visual representation of an urban environment through its intrinsic or related data, where its display is also situated within that physical environment. It describes how the principles behind public and urban displays can be combined with those of social visualization and persuasive computing in order to create discursive as well as pictorial representations that provide a better and potentially actionable understanding of urban issues to its inhabitants. We introduce the role of several related research fields, and analyze a set of representative case studies, taken from current best practice, academic research studies, and an experimental design studio course to highlight the typical issues involved in conceptualizing and implementing an urban visualization. Lastly, the paper proposes a set of design constraints that typically characterize an urban visualization, in order to guide the future design and evaluation of useful applications within the field.
Our contention is that the city is a rich collection of urban micro-ecologies in continuous forma... more Our contention is that the city is a rich collection of urban micro-ecologies in continuous formation that include information types outside the traditional boundaries of urban design, city planning, and architecture and their native data fields. This paper discusses working with non-standard urban data types of a highly granular nature, and the analytical possibilities and technical issues associated with their aggregation, through a post professional masters level research studio project run in 2008. Opportunities for novel urban analysis arising from this process are discussed in the context of typical urban planning and analysis systems and locative media practices. This research bought to light specific technical and conceptual issues arising from the combination of processes including sources of data, data collection methods, data formatting, aggregating and visualisation. The range and nature of publicly available information and its value in an urban analysis context is also explored, linking collective information sites such as Pachube, to local environmental analysis and sensor webs. These are discussed in this paper, toward determining the possibilities for novel understandings of the city from a user centric, real-time urban perspective.
Housing is a fundamental human right, our core social foundation. As such, hous- ing intrinsicall... more Housing is a fundamental human right, our core social foundation. As such, hous- ing intrinsically integrates the challenges of both social and environmental justice. Yet its current trajectory, defined by financialisation, extraction and inequality, mit- igates against achieving either goal. We are at a critical juncture as a result, and we must fundamentally rethink our approach to housing. Could we reverse our extrac- tive approaches in order to produce housing that is dignified, durable, beautiful and adaptable, and made available for all, as a common good? And could the way that we make common good housing happen also produce clean, safe, healthy, conviv- ial and nourishing shared environments?
A coherent strategy would see the interdependent dynamics of making housing
– building and retrofitting – realigned, redeployed and interconnected across an integrated global approach, and redefined by a revived common good frame- work. It would recognise that the way these dynamics play out in the Global North directly affects the Global South and vice versa, and that this symbiotic, entangled relationship must work within planetary boundaries. It would recognise the right to housing, but also the rights of the environment. It would recognise the right of people to remain in place, as well as the increasing need to fulfil migrants’ rights to housing.
This requires a transformation in practices around housing in terms of design, construction, care, economy, and more diverse forms of shared living, tenure, ownership and governance. At the larger scale, the industry behind housing must shift towards retrofit, reuse and redistribute, cultivating new and old skills with circular materials from regenerative sources designed for assembly and disassem- bly via modular fabrication. At the smaller scale, genuine participation in making and re-making housing can be unlocked through self-build, adaptive, open building systems. A redistribution of existing living spaces must meaningfully counterpoint the extractive practices of building. In all this, engaged, publicly led planning and policy can be complemented by a revived public and social housing, which can create and direct sustainable and affordable housing markets outside extractive financialisation.
Housing policy and practice could powerfully articulate and demonstrate a new policy framework for ‘reviving the common good.’ This would be oriented towards the rights of the environment as well as people, and based around principles of purpose and directionality, co-creation and participation, collective learning and knowledge-sharing, access and reward-sharing for all risk-takers, as well as trans- parency and accountability in decision-making.
Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore... more Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore interactivity, technology and media-to reclaim authorship and ownership of technologies and the social and cultural worlds in which we live. Hackability implies more than customization or adaptation-it calls for redefinition. In a world where technologies are increasingly mobile and invisible, designing for hackability means allowing and encouraging people to make technologies be what they want them to be. It cultivates reciprocity between users and designers and supports transparency and graceful responses to unanticipated uses. Before entering into a broader discussion with the audience, panelists will discuss tensions between people and artifacts, technology and play, the creative use of readily available resources, subverting traditional functions and uses of networks, and the everyday realities of corporate design practice. These discussions will be used to generate a design for hackability manifesto to guide further explorations in designing interactive systems.
Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore... more Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore interactivity, technology and media-to reclaim authorship and ownership of technologies and the social and cultural worlds in which we live. Hackability implies more than customization or adaptation-it calls for redefinition. In a world where technologies are increasingly mobile and invisible, designing for hackability means allowing and encouraging people to make technologies be what they want them to be. It cultivates reciprocity between users and designers and supports transparency and graceful responses to unanticipated uses. Before entering into a broader discussion with the audience, panelists will discuss tensions between people and artifacts, technology and play, the creative use of readily available resources, subverting traditional functions and uses of networks, and the everyday realities of corporate design practice. These discussions will be used to generate a design for hackability manifesto to guide further explorations in designing interactive systems.
Prototypa! : Bygga platser tillsammans, 2023
Strategiskt prototypande är en praktik som just nu växer inom stadsutvecklingen. Strategic protot... more Strategiskt prototypande är en praktik som just nu växer inom stadsutvecklingen. Strategic prototyping is a practice that is growing in urban development. This chapter (in Swedish) outlines the possibilities and potential in strategic prototyping in cities, as forms of advanced citizen participation, informal and emergent processes linked to strategic and civic organisation and governance. It describes Vinnova's work with Street Moves prototype in particular, which was trialled in Gothenburg as well as other Swedish cities.
Housing and the city: Case studies of integrated urban design, 2023
The combined efforts of a not-for-profit developer and a socially committed designer have deliver... more The combined efforts of a not-for-profit developer and a socially committed designer have delivered a small but significant new residential intervention: an innovative, sustainable and affordable model which breaks the traditional mould of Australia’s housing system.
Making and Breaking, 2023
On the patterns of unsustainable housing development and land use in Australia, in the context of... more On the patterns of unsustainable housing development and land use in Australia, in the context of the climate and biodiversity crisis. The paper describes the situation of Shepparton, a regional town in Victoria, facing frequent inundation and uninsurable housing with significant social justice issues, and yet continuing to build unsustainable housing out of kilter with demographic patterns. The paper suggests different housing and infrastructure models, and references an indigenous Australian-led regional prosperity fund, as alternative possible futures.
The Journal of Architecture, 2021
From the perspective of architecture and urbanism, 2020 quickly laid bare the emptiness, fragilit... more From the perspective of architecture and urbanism, 2020 quickly laid bare the emptiness, fragility, and waste in much property development, in much physical retail, in centralised urban forms and homogenous commercial space, in the many broader patterns of living and working that segregate and diminish us in our abusive relationship with our natural environment. The year’s events, from bushfires to Covid-19 to Black Lives Matter, played out vividly on the infrastructures of everyday life around us. And it quickly became clear that these spaces, under such duress, speak too loudly of our destructive last four decades— perhaps even the last four centuries— rather than tomorrow’s possible futures. This is not something we can simply build our way out of. In fact, the quintessentially 2020 architectural intervention may be a form of un-building at the intersection of these events and these spaces: the retrofits of city streets that peaked over the summer, in cities as diverse as Bogotá ...
The Best Technology Writing 2009, 2017
Architectural Design, 2020
Architecture and urbanism, 2014
Architectural Design, May 1, 2020
Journal of Urban Technology, Apr 1, 2012
This paper investigates the concept of urban visualization, the visual representation of an urban... more This paper investigates the concept of urban visualization, the visual representation of an urban environment through its intrinsic or related data, where its display is also situated within that physical environment. It describes how the principles behind public and urban displays can be combined with those of social visualization and persuasive computing in order to create discursive as well as pictorial representations that provide a better and potentially actionable understanding of urban issues to its inhabitants. We introduce the role of several related research fields, and analyze a set of representative case studies, taken from current best practice, academic research studies, and an experimental design studio course to highlight the typical issues involved in conceptualizing and implementing an urban visualization. Lastly, the paper proposes a set of design constraints that typically characterize an urban visualization, in order to guide the future design and evaluation of useful applications within the field.
Our contention is that the city is a rich collection of urban micro-ecologies in continuous forma... more Our contention is that the city is a rich collection of urban micro-ecologies in continuous formation that include information types outside the traditional boundaries of urban design, city planning, and architecture and their native data fields. This paper discusses working with non-standard urban data types of a highly granular nature, and the analytical possibilities and technical issues associated with their aggregation, through a post professional masters level research studio project run in 2008. Opportunities for novel urban analysis arising from this process are discussed in the context of typical urban planning and analysis systems and locative media practices. This research bought to light specific technical and conceptual issues arising from the combination of processes including sources of data, data collection methods, data formatting, aggregating and visualisation. The range and nature of publicly available information and its value in an urban analysis context is also explored, linking collective information sites such as Pachube, to local environmental analysis and sensor webs. These are discussed in this paper, toward determining the possibilities for novel understandings of the city from a user centric, real-time urban perspective.
Housing is a fundamental human right, our core social foundation. As such, hous- ing intrinsicall... more Housing is a fundamental human right, our core social foundation. As such, hous- ing intrinsically integrates the challenges of both social and environmental justice. Yet its current trajectory, defined by financialisation, extraction and inequality, mit- igates against achieving either goal. We are at a critical juncture as a result, and we must fundamentally rethink our approach to housing. Could we reverse our extrac- tive approaches in order to produce housing that is dignified, durable, beautiful and adaptable, and made available for all, as a common good? And could the way that we make common good housing happen also produce clean, safe, healthy, conviv- ial and nourishing shared environments?
A coherent strategy would see the interdependent dynamics of making housing
– building and retrofitting – realigned, redeployed and interconnected across an integrated global approach, and redefined by a revived common good frame- work. It would recognise that the way these dynamics play out in the Global North directly affects the Global South and vice versa, and that this symbiotic, entangled relationship must work within planetary boundaries. It would recognise the right to housing, but also the rights of the environment. It would recognise the right of people to remain in place, as well as the increasing need to fulfil migrants’ rights to housing.
This requires a transformation in practices around housing in terms of design, construction, care, economy, and more diverse forms of shared living, tenure, ownership and governance. At the larger scale, the industry behind housing must shift towards retrofit, reuse and redistribute, cultivating new and old skills with circular materials from regenerative sources designed for assembly and disassem- bly via modular fabrication. At the smaller scale, genuine participation in making and re-making housing can be unlocked through self-build, adaptive, open building systems. A redistribution of existing living spaces must meaningfully counterpoint the extractive practices of building. In all this, engaged, publicly led planning and policy can be complemented by a revived public and social housing, which can create and direct sustainable and affordable housing markets outside extractive financialisation.
Housing policy and practice could powerfully articulate and demonstrate a new policy framework for ‘reviving the common good.’ This would be oriented towards the rights of the environment as well as people, and based around principles of purpose and directionality, co-creation and participation, collective learning and knowledge-sharing, access and reward-sharing for all risk-takers, as well as trans- parency and accountability in decision-making.
Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore... more Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore interactivity, technology and media-to reclaim authorship and ownership of technologies and the social and cultural worlds in which we live. Hackability implies more than customization or adaptation-it calls for redefinition. In a world where technologies are increasingly mobile and invisible, designing for hackability means allowing and encouraging people to make technologies be what they want them to be. It cultivates reciprocity between users and designers and supports transparency and graceful responses to unanticipated uses. Before entering into a broader discussion with the audience, panelists will discuss tensions between people and artifacts, technology and play, the creative use of readily available resources, subverting traditional functions and uses of networks, and the everyday realities of corporate design practice. These discussions will be used to generate a design for hackability manifesto to guide further explorations in designing interactive systems.
Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore... more Design for hackability encourages designers and nondesigners to critically and creatively explore interactivity, technology and media-to reclaim authorship and ownership of technologies and the social and cultural worlds in which we live. Hackability implies more than customization or adaptation-it calls for redefinition. In a world where technologies are increasingly mobile and invisible, designing for hackability means allowing and encouraging people to make technologies be what they want them to be. It cultivates reciprocity between users and designers and supports transparency and graceful responses to unanticipated uses. Before entering into a broader discussion with the audience, panelists will discuss tensions between people and artifacts, technology and play, the creative use of readily available resources, subverting traditional functions and uses of networks, and the everyday realities of corporate design practice. These discussions will be used to generate a design for hackability manifesto to guide further explorations in designing interactive systems.
Prototypa! : Bygga platser tillsammans, 2023
Strategiskt prototypande är en praktik som just nu växer inom stadsutvecklingen. Strategic protot... more Strategiskt prototypande är en praktik som just nu växer inom stadsutvecklingen. Strategic prototyping is a practice that is growing in urban development. This chapter (in Swedish) outlines the possibilities and potential in strategic prototyping in cities, as forms of advanced citizen participation, informal and emergent processes linked to strategic and civic organisation and governance. It describes Vinnova's work with Street Moves prototype in particular, which was trialled in Gothenburg as well as other Swedish cities.
Housing and the city: Case studies of integrated urban design, 2023
The combined efforts of a not-for-profit developer and a socially committed designer have deliver... more The combined efforts of a not-for-profit developer and a socially committed designer have delivered a small but significant new residential intervention: an innovative, sustainable and affordable model which breaks the traditional mould of Australia’s housing system.
Making and Breaking, 2023
On the patterns of unsustainable housing development and land use in Australia, in the context of... more On the patterns of unsustainable housing development and land use in Australia, in the context of the climate and biodiversity crisis. The paper describes the situation of Shepparton, a regional town in Victoria, facing frequent inundation and uninsurable housing with significant social justice issues, and yet continuing to build unsustainable housing out of kilter with demographic patterns. The paper suggests different housing and infrastructure models, and references an indigenous Australian-led regional prosperity fund, as alternative possible futures.
The Journal of Architecture, 2021
From the perspective of architecture and urbanism, 2020 quickly laid bare the emptiness, fragilit... more From the perspective of architecture and urbanism, 2020 quickly laid bare the emptiness, fragility, and waste in much property development, in much physical retail, in centralised urban forms and homogenous commercial space, in the many broader patterns of living and working that segregate and diminish us in our abusive relationship with our natural environment. The year’s events, from bushfires to Covid-19 to Black Lives Matter, played out vividly on the infrastructures of everyday life around us. And it quickly became clear that these spaces, under such duress, speak too loudly of our destructive last four decades— perhaps even the last four centuries— rather than tomorrow’s possible futures. This is not something we can simply build our way out of. In fact, the quintessentially 2020 architectural intervention may be a form of un-building at the intersection of these events and these spaces: the retrofits of city streets that peaked over the summer, in cities as diverse as Bogotá ...
The Best Technology Writing 2009, 2017
Architectural Design, 2020
Prototypa! Bygga platser tillsammans, 2023
Strategiskt prototypande är en praktik som just nu växer inom stadsutvecklingen. Strategic protot... more Strategiskt prototypande är en praktik som just nu växer inom stadsutvecklingen. Strategic prototyping is a practice that is growing in urban development. This chapter (in Swedish) outlines the possibilities and potential in strategic prototyping in cities, as forms of advanced citizen participation, informal and emergent processes linked to strategic and civic organisation and governance. It describes Vinnova's work with Street Moves prototype in particular, which was trialled in Gothenburg as well as other Swedish cities.
Designing Missions, 2022
Designing Missions is a playbook for innovating how we innovate. It describes a new toolkit of te... more Designing Missions is a playbook for innovating how we innovate. It describes a new toolkit of techniques for mission- oriented innovation, drawn from real experiments on the ground.
Mission-oriented innovation means not only fundamentally rethinking how innovation happens and what it is, but also the ways in which government, business and society interact. Yet although the theories behind missions have been pounced upon by hungry innovation experts everywhere, there are still precious few examples of mission-oriented innovation in practice. This book closes that gap, at least a little, by sharing the stories of how Vinnova, the Swedish government’s innovation agency, interpreted and explored mission-oriented innovation in Sweden between 2019 and 2022.
The book also explores the backstory: the origin of these new methods and mindsets, and why missions are important. Drawing from real-world prototypes and projects, it shows how people, places, and the public and private sectors can be central to these new innovation practices, and how it may be possible for governments at all levels to work together around these shared agendas and complex systems, changing from within in order to deliver on truly ambitious societal outcomes.