Imagine Green Urban Futures at Places Festival 2021
Review:
Imagine Green
Urban Futures
Imagine Green Urban Futures: This was the motto of lala.ruhr’s programme at the Places VR Festival. Because: We need images for the future of our urban landscapes. Conventional plans and illustrations are difficult for many people to grasp. Extended Reality, on the other hand, makes visions come alive and vivid, as became clear in the programme around Bochumer Straße in Gelsenkirchen.
Three teams created their augmented reality applications especially for the festival, in which they each designed a section of Bochumer Straße – a 120-year-old street in Ückendorf – in a green and visionary way: Via smartphone and tablet, the festival visitors were able to see for themselves how powerful these impulses are when they are not only transported via paper, but become four-dimensional and thus come to life.
The respective offices, or protagonists, had previously qualified through a competition and pursued different approaches:
The respective offices, or protagonists, had previously qualified through a competition and pursued different approaches:
Anja Cambria Oellermann, scenographer from Hamburg, placed the discovery of urban nature and the curiosity of visitors at the centre of her vision for Bergmannplatz, including nature islands, a wildflower field and a small pond.
The Cologne-based firm Greenbox Landschaftsarchitekten invited visitors to discover the “Green Canyon” and transformed the street, which is dominated by car traffic, into a lively spatial installation that can be used on several levels, including details such as integrated photovoltaic elements and a charging infrastructure for e-cars.
The Berlin agency pimento formate focused on edutainment for sustainability and combined elements such as virtual palm trees, flowers and bubbling fountains with information on suitability under aspects of climate neutrality.
In a fourth section along Bochumer Straße, the visitors could become active themselves and not only provide greenery, but also wish for elephants, zebras and sofas.
In the courtyard of the Quartieroase, visitors followed impulses and panels on digitality in planning on both days. In the adjacent garages, which were transformed into lounges with the help of sofas, carpets and the like, our technology partner for the implementation of AR applications, the Aachen-based start-up Cityscaper, as well as pimento formate with the project “futureleafmission” and the team from Greenymizer with their vision of an app for more digital participation in the Green City of the future presented themselves – a very special reunion, as the team had formed at the hackathon at the Places Festival 2020 and won two awards with a prototype. In addition, a video loop in the Garage Lounge offered the opportunity to get to know other innovative XR projects.
The programme was complemented by a poster exhibition, through which the following international projects and offices were presented with references to the respective project pages:
- AVP (Düsseldorf): Presentation of complex real estate projects in virtual animation.
- Anja Cambria Oellermann & Shaouhan Hu: Ensō – Analysis of the Boundary
between water and land in Japanese temples and in the urban space of Kiel. - Form Follows You GmbH (Berlin): Digital Participation Bahnhofstraße Lichtenrade
- Green4Cities (Vienna): Developing Urban Green Visions
- Greenymizer: Vision of the app “City Greenymizer” for citizen participation
- Dr. Nadina Galle (Amsterdam): “Internet of Nature” for building smart green cities
- Jan Kamensky (Hamburg): Utopia for Bicyclists – Utopian animations
- LAND (Milan/Lugana/Düsseldorf: CariGO GREEN3 – Digital Landscape. Programme for the territorial development of the landscape Gorizia on the border between Italy and Slovenia
- pimento formate (Berlin): Futureleaf – AR-Mission on microplastics in the city
- Katie Patrick (San Francisco): Can Gamification save the planet?
“Imagine Green Urban Futures” was made possible by a grant from the E.ON Foundation and cityscaper, our technology partner for the development of the AR applications.
Sincere thanks also go to our speakers:
Stephan Muschick (E.ON Foundation), Stefanie Hugot (Head of the Department of Urban Planning at the City of Gelsenkirchen), Dr. Volker Settgast (Fraunhofer Austria), Hilke Berger and Immanuel Schipper (HafenCity University Hamburg), Matthias Funk (scape Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH), Burkhard Drescher (Innovation City Management GmbH), Prof. Dr. Ismeni Walter (University of Applied Sciences Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Ismeni Walter (University of Applied Sciences Hamburg). Dr. Ismeni Walter (Ansbach University of Applied Sciences) & Michelle Adolfs (Team Greenymizer VR), Elle Langer and Markus Mende (pimento formate), BIMa.solutions – Virtual Reality for Architecture, Sebastian Witt, Juliane Ebeling and Robin Römer (Cityscaper Aachen).
Imagine Green Urban Futures – a visitor uses the AR applications. Photo: Places _ VR Festival/Ole-Kristian Heyer
Our contribution to the Places VR-Festival - XR in urban planning!
Our contribution to the Places VR-Festival - XR in urban planning!
Under the motto “Imagine Urban Green Futures”, lala.ruhr invites you to discover the inner courtyard and the visionary garage workshops: We will present digital innovations in spatial planning with images, videos and animations, and in the garages you can meet the technology partners, programmers and artists at work. The green courtyard and its garages will be transformed into an inspiring green lounge for two days.
Opening on September 17th at 14.00 o’clock in the courtyard of Bochumer Straße 110 in 45886 Gelsenkirchen!
The project “Imagine green urban futures” is funded by the E.ON Foundation. Together, we want to test the concrete use of augmented reality in urban planning in order to give new impulses for participation and citizen involvement – so that the city of the future can be experienced and the debate about it becomes lively.
How do we want to develop our cities for the future? lala.ruhr invites you to the Quartiersoase and presents lots of inspiration around digital tools and interventions for planning and participation.
- Talk and exhibition on VR and AR in urban and landscape planning and for participation formats in urban development.
- Introduction to the AR project “Imagine Green Urban Futures” along Bochumer Straße
- Meet the artists
- Showrooms and workshops for digital planning tools
On-site participants include: Stephan Muschick (E.ON Foundation), Stefanie Hugot (Head of the Urban Planning Department at the City of Gelsenkirchen), Dr. Volker Settgast (Fraunhofer Austria), Hilke Berger and Immanuel Schipper (HafenCity University Hamburg), Matthias Funk (scape Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH), Burkhard Drescher (Innovation City Management), Prof. Dr. Ismeni Walter (Ansbach University of Applied Sciences) & Michelle Adolfs (Team Greenymizer VR), Jan Kamensky (Hamburg), Elle Langer and Markus Mende (pimento formate), BIMa.solutions – Virtual Reality for Architecture, Sebastian Witt & Robin Römer (Cityscaper Aachen)…
Friday, September 17, 2021
Opening hours 14 – 20
Saturday, September 18, 2021,
Opening hours 10 – 18 h
The Quartiersoase, in the backyard of Bochumer Straße 110 is one of the many extraordinary locations of the Places _ VR festival.
Imagine green urban futures: the teams have been selected!
Imagine green urban futures: the teams have been selected!
The participants in the “Imagine green urban futures” competition, which was looking for technology-savvy planners and designers, have now been selected: the teams of lala.ruhr and the Places _ VR Festival are pleased to welcome the agency pimento formate, the landscape architecture firm GREENBOX and the scenographer Anja Cambria Oellermann to Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf.
The jury, consisting of Sebastian Schlecht (lala.ruhr), Daniela Berglehn (EON.Stiftung) and Thomas Dietrich (Chairman of bdla NRW), decided in its digital session on the three applicants from a large number of submissions, each of whom brought exciting and different approaches to the task of developing a green and sustainable vision for Bochumer Straße based on 3D data.
The Berlin agency pimento formate, with its team led by managing director Elle Langer, wants to focus on edutainment for sustainability and playfully inspire people to articulate their ideas for green house facades, locations for urban gardening and the like and to record them with the help of self-shot augmented reality stories (AR).
The team from the Cologne office Greenbox Landschaftsarchitekten, led by Felix Brennecke, applied with the idea of thinking urban planning vertically with the help of an AR application and thus using the street or urban space on several levels.
Anja Cambria Oellermann, a scenographer from Hamburg, wants to use AR to promote the discovery of the environment, for example by showing changes in the city’s nature when it rains.
The three selected participants now have one month to realise their respective visions in 3D before cityscaper, the project’s technology partner, converts the data into AR applications. Visitors to the Places Places _ VR Festival (17 & 18.09.2021 in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf) can then explore the results via smartphone or tablet.
The project “Imagine green urban futures” is funded by the E.ON Foundation. Together, we want to test the concrete use of augmented reality in urban planning in order to give new impulses for participation and citizen involvement – so that the city of the future can be experienced and the debate about it becomes lively.
Division of Bochumer Straße
Apply: Imagine green urban futures - lala.ruhr goes places!
Apply:
Imagine green urban future
- lala.ruhr goes places!
Are you a tech-savvy (landscape) architect, urban planner, designer or innovator?
Then lala.ruhr in cooperation with the Places_Virtual Reality Festival in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf has a very special challenge for you, namely the competition “Imagine Green Urban Futures”!
What is it about? The task: You develop a green and sustainable vision for Bochumer Straße – a 120-year-old street in Ückendorf, based on existing 3D data. The 3D models will then be converted into real AR applications by our technology partner cityscaper and can be explored by visitors to the Places _ VR Festival (17 & 18.09.2021) via smartphone or tablet.
The process:
- You submit your application with the selected street section of Bochumer Straße by 11 July.
- A jury of experts will select three participants/teams.
- You will receive an allowance of 1,000€ and work on your vision for one month.
- Visitors to the Places _ VR Festival can experience your vision live in augmented reality on 17 & 18 September 2021.
The Places _ Virtual Reality Festival is Germany’s first, largest, freely accessible and free festival for virtual reality. In 2021, the festival will enter its third round. The Places _ VR Festival is aimed equally at a professional audience, but especially at a broad public audience, and has been taking place in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf since 2018. Places is a meeting place for the German and European XR industry as well as a contact point for many people interested in VR.
The project is realised together with cityscaper as a technology partner and the e.on Foundation as a sponsor. Together we want to test the concrete use of augmented reality in urban planning in order to give new impulses for participation and citizen involvement – so that the city of the future can be experienced and the debate about it becomes lively.
Apply now with your idea, become part of our “Imagine Green Urban Futures” project, work on your vision from mid-July to August and receive 1,000€ expense allowance and implement your 3D model, which visitors to the Places _ VR Festival can then test and experience in AR!
All information and the link to the application form can be found here.
lImagine Green Urban Futures – be part of the Places_Virtual Reality Festival with your vision! Photo: Cityscaper