Sometimes what remains obscure is not an abstract concept. It is the complexity of interconnected factors what doesn’t let you see beyond the surface. In this project the adventure started when we understood the city as a living organism and tried to use that idea as inspiration for a thesaurus of related documents about urbanism. People would wander like a situationist between texts that reference each other.

Ciudad Viva final sketch step 1

Description

Can we navigate documents the same way we find our way in the city?

This is an interface for a Thesaurus catalog. It shows information about architecture and society books and the relationship among them under many key concepts (year, author, line of research, etc.). The data visualization was built using flash, XML and SQL. I worked on the graphic design (although the final layout is more the client’s requirements) and the code. You can see the final project (including my client’s design wishes) in la ciudad viva.

Motivation & Process

To propose a change of attitude and an alternative to face the new problems

Cities are in a process of change and transformation.
This should be the starting point to propose a change of attitude and an alternative to face the new problems: new growth model, the value of their urban and social resources, control over energy consumption, energy efficiency , respect for the environment, economic and social cohesion of its territory, among others.

Around these ideas hundreds of documents have been published and the team from La Ciudad Viva contacted us for a simple visualization of all these documents.

The process was difficult because public institutions had a different view of how things should look like so we went from graphically very ambitious sketches to a more conventional result.

Sketches and briefs

Preliminary sketches overview (Dani Aldarias)

Ciudad Viva final sketch step 2

Screenshot of final project

Image of the final project