Let’s dig into what each team created!

The Living Data District is a new district of Milan which unites Parco Sempione and City Life with a new data environment, celebrating the mixing of the city’s history and future, the built and the digital, science and art. Here, data is honored as the digital pulse of the people, and is represented as an ever-beating holographic form that weaves in and out of the streets and buildings. This pulse has different frequencies and information based on the individual’s setting when wearing augmented reality glasses, creating a custom urban experience. Information is collected throughout the city through Data Pylons. These fixtures serve as personal data collectors, sensor hubs for real-time urban tracking and backup data storage distributed throughout the district in a network of pedestrian and information pathways. The Pylons also contribute to the physical well-being of the city by creating shading canopies, storing solar energy and providing air filtration to actively reduce pollution. By distributing the opportunities for data interaction throughout the city, the public is given agency to actively contribute to the digital environment while inhabiting the physical one. The Living Data Tower serves as a data storage hub for all of Milano, providing high-speed internet and information access to all the people in the district. At the top, an observatory provides a panoramic view of the city, with an  augmented layer of spatialized data upon the built environment, illuminating how alive the city is.

A city can be understood as a complex collection of data – statistical and cultural, historical and contemporary. Each instance of urban change is contingent on the state of that information, and in turn adds new values to the flow. It follows that responsible, effective designers cannot be fulfilled by limiting analysis to isolated sites, or proposed solutions to one-off buildings. To harmonize all elements of a city into healthy, even delightful human experiences, we have to expose ourselves – and hold ourselves accountable – to the full complexity of the urban context. Ethical design demands the ability to respond immediately and intelligently to a city’s global criteria.

With their data made visible and harnessed, cities of the future may be made minutely responsive to the needs of all their residents. Real-time decision-making then becomes possible for the first time. Optimized through parametric modeling, temporal zoning, and responsive land-use planning, the shape of change can be thoughtfully directed to equitable ends.

Team 4 designed a system able to synthesize diverse sets of contextual information in order to generate actionable infrastructural responses. A master planning tool, the xGenerative Design definition, considers municipal datasets, as well as an imposed criteria of topological rules of scale and massing that reflect urban design best-practices. The system instantiates city blocks based on a polyline profile, providing an informed 3D baseline framework to host both master planning and design, collapsed efficiently into a single act of authorship. From the level of the urban block, the tool effortlessly scales to be instantiated along a corridor of thirteen sites. This results in a gradient of integrated and mutually cognizant massing, land-use, and programmatic outputs that shift responsively between the low-rise historic and high-rise contemporary districts of the test-set city.

Team 5: Building Extensions

Team 5 used the complete collaborative capacities of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, as well as the web applications portfolio –  xGenerative Design, xDesign, xShape, and xStudio – in order to automatically generate bars and restaurant extensions in Milan, using the City’s data. The global idea of the project is the creation of city-level template, which is able to automatically generate a new extension, in less than two minutes, and then instantly instantiate it where it is needed throughout the City.

To create these modular building extensions, Team 5 developed a specific methodology based on templates, allowing strong collaboration and parallel work at the same time. xGenerative Design prepares building location, according to city data and citizen needs for surrounding building and shadow projection. Multiple metallic parts for the modular structure with xDesign are then created, coupled with four different glass panels, created and refined thanks to xShape. xGenerative Design was then used again to generate the most adapted volume, and manage the randomized positioning of all glass panels and structural parts.

And the winner is…

We also invite you to view the video featuring highlights of the entire Hackathon.