possible questions & projects

• can we change the way we occupy and experience certain spaces? i would like to 're-design' the way we interact with spaces within a building. i find that sometimes a problem that arises is how people use spaces and the space efficiency to do with that. for example, there are 6 levels in the building and each level holds 50 people to study in. there are 20 people in the whole building, yet they occupy 4 of the 6 levels. why can't we place them all on the same level so the building can sustain electricity and other energy. with this in mind... can we use technology to help us exercise this idea? another way in which we can change the way spaces are occupied is to group people according to their interests, subjects, year, role (staff, student, visitor), age and etc. can we have a program which will help allocate spaces for these users? this all depends on the time and occupancy levels of the building as well. for example, if a group of students came into a building at 7pm (all from different years and such) and wanted to study in the building, how can we save space and help these users find a suitable place to study in? i'm proposing an idea which would help group people to certain spaces depending on what they study, what year they're in, interests and so on. this could also be linked to the idea of how social media can be used. depending on time and occupancy, if a person likes photography... they can be allocated to an available space within the building that has others with the similar interest. or even if they do the same subject... they will be allocated a space that would be filled with their classmates. thus, a system that analyses certain information and checks certain criteria to help you find a space within a building. with this in mind, if a building is full of students and no study spaces.. it would also save time and effort for the student to find a space to study. this could also help students know which staff members are 'in' on a particular day. through this proposed system.. it combines digital information/architecture with physical architecture... through the use of data from social media (or something similar) and spaces available in a building.. it helps us better interact with the building and its spaces, better utilize the building for energy consumption, and provides accurate data in how spaces are really used. although there are some issues such as privacy... its something that has sparked my interest.
  
  
• how can we analyse and interpret spaces/areas in the city to help us better understand how to improve them? i want to study the way in how the public use certain spaces or how often they occupy spaces. for example, if there is an area in the uni which is not being used or occupied as much.. how can we use this information to better improve the uni? what if there were too many people occupying the Quad? could we use this 'empty' space to design new seating areas for eating? how can we use technology in this sense? i would like to see whether i can use visualization and possibly social media/online means as a form of understanding how we can better use spaces. we can use technology such as the 'check-in' app within facebook to see where people are most. this can help us analyse data and understand where we can further improve other spaces depending on the 'needs' of the public. if we could visualize crowd density we can gain a visual understanding of what spaces planners can work on. i think we can use the idea of visualization to help generate thinkings about this topic. it can be in the form of real time or computer generated images which can show density within a set area.
  
  
• can online activity be used to digitally 3d a building? what i've been thinking is if we're able to create usable 3d models from 2d drawings... are we able to create 3d models from other sources such as online activity? the 3d model is not to create an exact replicate of the actual building but to show other information. information such as which areas do people mainly use the internet.. by obtaining this data... it would be possible to create a 'digital' space or building. a problem that i was able to come up with was the indication of where certain wifi hotspots were. since wifi is 'invisible' to us... how can we exactly know where is the best spot to be on the network? we can use this data of online activity to approximately map out the best wifi connection spaces. although it may not be a physical space... it may be a digital space (a space that can be defined by technology and data). this concept can help us view spaces in a whole new way as understand how there can be both digital space and physical space.