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Senseable City Lab :.:: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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SENSEABLE CITY LAB

Of Borders Selectively Crossed and Domains Carefully Bridged: Interdisciplinarity and Research-‐driven Design by Nashid Nabian, Luca Simeone, and Carlo Ratti

In recent scientific writings disciplinary boundaries are often seen as lines that can be selectively crossed in order to reach the multivocality and critical thinking needed to deal with the ambiguity and unpredictability of real-‐life problems, offering a wider spectrum of interpretive perspectives and better tools to operate within the complexity of the real world.1 Bridging differing knowledge domains and crossing the disciplinary boundaries are also among the main components of what has been defined as 'Mode-‐2' scientific production. Mode-‐2 has been proposed as a new form of knowledge production that emerged in the late 20th century in which the `context of application' is a crucial component of knowledge production processes and practices. Traditional research (defined as mode-‐1 knowledge production) is internally initiated in academic contexts by researchers and is carried out within disciplinary borders. On the contrary, mode-‐2 knowledge production is context driven, and involves interdisciplinary teams brought together to respond to real-‐world problems and challenges. 2 In this entry we would like to explore the impact of interdisciplinarity on design using MIT SENSEable City Lab's design experiments and its organizational culture as a case study of interdisciplinary research-‐driven design and design-‐driven research group. 3

Perhaps one way of exploring this shift from mode-‐1 knowledge production to that of mode-‐2's logic of operation is to study different maps and illustrations that try to represent different world views on the relation of various human knowledge domains: Circles of Knowledge or Maps of Science have always tried to illustrate how human knowledge is integrated through the arts and sciences with the use of relevant technologies. They provide interesting information on how in each historical period boundaries are drawn and different disciplines are delineated in relation to each other, the domains that they cover, and their application to finding solutions for real-‐life problems.

For example, In 17th century, William Ames's Philosophical treatise, Technometry , provided a synoptic correlation of the disciplines of the arts and sciences. With its configuration built on to the metaphor of encyclopedia, Ames' circle of knowledge systematically delineated the uses of each of the individual disciplines, adequately circumscribing their boundaries and their ends. It lays out a system of the disciplines (Theology, Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric, Math, Physics, and Theology), then, goes about illustrating their application to finding solutions for real-‐life problems (how to discourse well, how to speak and write well, how to speak and write ornately, how to quantify well, how to analyze nature well, and how to live well). Each and every

1 (Galison & Stump 1996; Nowotny et al. 2001; Nowotny 2003; Barry et al. 2008). 2 (Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001; ). 3 Notes (1) Extract from the description on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Senseable_City_Lab), accessed March 15, 2011. References Barry, A., Born, G. & Weszkalnys, G., 2008. Logics of interdisciplinarity. Economy and Society, 37(1), pp.20–49. Clifford, J., 2003. On the edges of anthropology, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Donaldson, A., Ward, N. & Bradley, S., 2010. Mess among disciplines: interdisciplinarity in environmental research. Environment and Planning A, 42, pp.1521–1536. Galison, P. & Stump, D.J. eds., 1996. The Disunity of science: boundaries, contexts, and power, Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press. Gibbons, M. et al., 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, London: Sage Publications Ltd. Hirsch Hadorn, G. et al. eds., 2008. Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research 1st ed., New York, USA: Springer. Nowotny, H., 2003. The potential of transdisciplinarity. Rethinking Interdisciplinarity, 1. Nowotny, H., Scott, P. & Gibbons, M., 2001. Re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty, Oxford-Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Papert, S., 1994. The Children’s Machine, New York: Basic Books. Pratt, M.L., 1991. Arts of the Contact Zone. Profession, 91, pp.33–40.

discipline is a discrete domain with little to share in terms of its tools, its methodologies and the problem sets that it deals with, with other disciplines separated from it with clear boundaries.4

Later on this seperationist understanding of natural sciences and technologies and their relation to human knowledgebase changed drastically. In 1948, Harold Johann Thomas Ellingham, a professor of chemistry at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London, produced a hand-‐drawn map showing the relationships between the branches of natural science and technology. The illustration was premised on the distance-‐similarity metaphor, in which disciplinary domains, more similar to each other, were more proximate in space, with additional cross-‐disciplinary relationships indicated by the direction of the labels on the map. Furthermore, Ellingham overlaid the coverage of each of the available index and abstracting services in the United Kingdom onto the chart to indicate which areas of science the indexes covered and how different disciplines negotiated the same set of scholarly references due to the fact that real-‐life problems they tried to address had similarities. Ellingham also intended that his two-‐dimensional map be wrapped to a cylindrical form to show the continued relationships of topics on the extreme left side with those on the extreme right side, somewhat recreating the encyclopedic metaphor of Ames Technologia. In Ellingham's map of science, the delineating boundaries of some disciplines, illustrated as adjacent domains due to similarities of the subject areas they addresses, was crossed or negotiated due to overlaps created via scholarly cross-‐referencing between these domains. Meanwhile, more distant disciplines (literally and figuratively) did not have much to share hence remained discrete from each other. 5

4 http://www.leaderu.com/aip/docs/scott.html#ref3 http://thenjournal.org/feature/116/ Lee W. Gibbs, "Introduction" in William Ames, Technometria, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 38-39. 5 http://scimaps.org/maps/map/a_chart_illustrating_124/ http://scimaps.org/maps/map/a_chart_illustrating_124/detail/ http://www.scimaps.org/maps/map/a_chart_illustrating_32/ Ellingham, H.J.T. 1948. “Divisions of Natural Science and Technology.” In Report and Papers Submitted to The Royal Society Scientific Information Conference. London: Burlington House. Ellingham, H.J.T. 1948. A Chart Illustrating Some of the Relations Between the Branches of Natural Science and Technology. Courtesy of The Royal Society. In “7th Iteration (2010): Science Maps as Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries,” Places & Spaces: Mapping Science, edited by Katy Börner and Michael J. Stamper. http://scimaps.org.

Another telling illustration, a more recent data-‐driven map of science, diverges fundamentally in its formalization of the relation of different disciplines by presenting it as an interconnected web with numerous overlaps, bridges cross all disciplines and rhyzomatic inter-‐connections. The visualization begins with all of science all at once, represented conceptually via 800,000 published papers. The circles represent papers that cite one another. They are associated with a string of phrases that relate to their fields, and are connected with lines of various heaviness and length, depending on the cross-‐linkages. There is no discrete boundary condition defining the extremities of disciplines in relation to each other but overlapping domains with diffused boundaries. The visualization focuses on the fact that with access to massive online databases, information is shared cross disciplines with ease and at unprecedented volumes. Here, Katy Borner, Chaomei Chen and Kevin Boyack highlight “domains of knowledge” by mapping the growing domain structure of scientific disciplines through citations indexes. The visualized web of inter-‐connections, less hierarchical and more natural, almost biological in shape, is based on hundreds of thousands of citations are analyzed and visualized to identify emergent paradigms of scientific knowledge domains. As a "Knowledge Domain” map, the visualization illustrates the radial patterns and connections between different types of knowledge, and relationships between disciplines where the branching connections and overlaps between research is highlighted.6

6 Emma Marris, "2006 Gallery: Brilliant display," Nature 444(21 December 2006): 985-991. K. Boyack, D. Klavans, W. B. Paley (data: Thompson ISI, commissioned: K Borner for http://scimaps.org ) http://informationesthetics.org/documents/scienceMapPrintMockupEd2.jpg http://shapeofthought.typepad.com/shape_of_thought/revisioning-trees/ http://wbpaley.com/brad/mapOfScience/scienceMapFullColorPrint2_lowRes_b.jpg http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090309/full/458135a.html

It is these intersections of fields that prove most relevant to today's condition. Nowadays complex problems with no easy solutions that transcends a particular discipline and need to be addressed scientifically challenge scientists to find new ways to integrate knowledge from multiple fields and diverse skill sets. Increasingly collaborative approaches are changing the way science is done and multifaceted questions are being answered. To this effect Many organizations, particularly academic institutions, have invested in educational programs, facilities, and enhanced resources to encourage interdisciplinary research. These institutions believe that it is only through the power of many and a diverse approach to today's problems that we may be able to realize lasting solutions.

Towards such goal, people from different disciplines need to start acquaint themselves with foreign disciplines, sit down, talk to each other, and share ideas despite the fact that they speak different dialects, use dissimilar methods, apply varied skill sets, tools and technologies in their problem solving endeavors, and have different cultures, different jargon, and different ways of thinking. Of course it takes both time and effort for people to internalize unfamiliar perspectives, to get educated beyond one's disciplinary training, and to truly start talking to and understanding each other and resolve the conflictual nature of their differing methods and concerns ranging from theoretical concerns to concerns regarding statistics and measurements and quantification or qualification of phenomena under scrutiny. Through this extra effort, preconceived

disciplinary boundaries are negotiated and selectively crossed to go beyond disciplines working separately on the same issue within defined disciplinary barriers towards a true Interdisciplinary research and teamwork, were scientific disciplines are mixed and different skill sets are brought together and multiple expertise are blend. To achieve such status the organizational culture of the research entity has to be specifically structured for true cross-‐fertilization to occur.7

Although a large part of academia praises interdisciplinary mode of knowledge production, there are still organizational and cultural barriers that slow down the actual implementation of a significant number of interdisciplinary research projects: there are practical difficulties in creating effective interdisciplinary research settings when much of academia is still organized in bureaucratic pyramids and disciplinary silos; the tenure system is still largely based on narrowly focused research in subdisciplines; and, differences in language, literature, ways of working and communication have often been considered serious limitations in situations where disciplines meet and interact.

One of the future challenges for the academia is trying to overcome these barriers and limitations, creating environments that favor productive, complex interdisciplinary interchanges. Disciplinary borders have to be selectively crossed in order to acquire a delicate balance between complexity and chaos. This is even more relevant when it comes to design and the institutions involved in teaching it and advancing research relevant to its different fields. SENSEable City Lab, a research group nested within the City Design and Development group at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tries to address these challenges through its organizational culture and interdisciplinary mode of operation.

As from its organizational culture, SENSEable City Lab acts as an initiative that coagulates multiple creative streams and productive energies coming from in-‐house interdisciplinary researchers and external collaborations with other institutions, laboratories, companies. Along these reactive and agile joints, SENSEable City Lab generates disruptive work that spans from innovative product design, such as The Copenhagen Wheel, a responsive system that transforms ordinary bicycles into hybrid sensors/actuators that provide feedback on pollution, traffic congestion and road conditions in real-‐time, 8 to urban scale, situated sensing systems, such as Trash|Track, an initiative that used hundreds of small location-‐aware tags to track different types of trash to reveal the final destination of our everyday objects, and the waste management practices behind the removal process. 9

7 Jill U. Adams "Interdisciplinary Research: Building Bridges, Finding Solutions," Science 23 (November 2007):1315-1318. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2007_11_23/science_opms_r0700032 8 9

At SENSEable City Lab in the past 7 years roughly 350 collaborators, representing more than 60 different scientific disciplines, have collaborated on more than 50 project. With its interdisciplinary, context-‐driven, problem-‐focused approach, the lab truly embodies 'Mode-‐2' knowledge production practices. SENSEable City Lab therefore represents a unique observation landscape to investigate organizational and cultural components that favor interdisciplinarity. An interdisciplinary spirit is woven across the laboratory's adaptive, self-‐organizing structure as temporary, lightly bonded interdisciplinary organizational structures emerge from processes of semi-‐spontaneous clustering.

More specifically, at SENSEable City Lab, interdisciplinarity seems to be favored by some peculiar organizational traits:

The front door of the lab is almost always open during the day. Lab members and collaborators constantly flow in and out. The lab follows extremely flexible engagement processes: hundreds of people have collaborated with SENSEable City Lab's projects over time, some of them for longer periods while others only for a limited period of time (even for merely a few weeks); some of the members live in Cambridge and have a specific (or exclusive) engagement with the lab, some others collaborate on a part-‐time basis, maintaining their affiliations with other MIT departments, other universities, other research centers or come from the industry or government bodies. The lab also relies on a widely distributed network of collaborators scattered across several countries.

In organizational terms, SENSEable City Lab is not structured as a bureaucratic pyramid with a traditional vertical reporting system. Small teams are the key elements of a more flexible organizational order. Each team is in charge of one or more projects. Some of the projects have a pre-‐set outcome and a clearly specified deadline. Others start as ideas that get shaped along the way and therefore are initially oriented towards less defined outcomes. Projects' lifetimes span from few weeks to several months or years. The number of members per team varies from few people for smaller projects to several dozens.

Although there are some management roles that are transversal to the entire group, teams are usually the key units for managing all these projects. A network of authority and control based on knowledge of the task replaces the traditional hierarchical structure. Within the team, tasks and responsibilities are distributed depending on the available personal expertise and the operational context. Mutual adjustment and redefinition of tasks are common within and across teams.

The organizational structure literally emerges from the interweaving of processes carried out by these distributed teams. A complex horizontal and vertical integration is constantly reshaped as a relational configuration drawn together by internal connectedness and emergent behaviors. Order is not imposed from the top down but appears as teams work together responding to internal and external inputs and changes.

Teams are usually managed by a team leader. This is not a rule that applies to all projects, though bigger projects tend to have a project leader. Team leaders are generally not professionals specifically trained in project management techniques but members of the lab who have knowledge and competencies for the task. Since some projects have a longer lifespan, there are cases where different project leaders have been in charge during different phases of the project. Teams are usually started and initially shaped by the lab's senior members but the distribution of roles is flexible.

Membership within the lab and among the teams is extremely fluid. Short and part-‐time engagements with flexible roles over time are rather common. The lab's current members reflect a combination of academic and professional competences. Some people collaborate at a distance, while others from the lab in Cambridge.

The organizational culture is also very effective in creating an environment where people think that they can give a significant contribution. The flexible structure of the lab and the subsequent decentralization of power across horizontal connections create a sort of 'distributed ownership': people know that they are contributing to influencing the lab in a significant way.

Ownership and trust mechanisms are also built through some important organizational rituals, such as the pecha-‐kucha meetings held every Tuesday, frequent brainstorming sessions, a yearly retreat for all the lab's members in a special location to collectively discuss and reshape the lab's vision.

The Lab is also involved in inquiry-‐ and discovery-‐based learning through offering graduate workshops and seminars at MIT. During the course of these semester-‐long seminars and workshops, students, researchers, and professors work together with external partners on real world projects, mixing theory and pactice, thus carrying out research activity in a 'Mode-‐2' knowledge production way.

As an interdisciplinary setting the Lab is a contact zone, a social space where disciplinary cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other,10 and coexist in a state of continuous tension and dialogue. This dynamic, energetic quality is what James Clifford refers to when he defines contact zones as “relational ensembles sustained through processes of cultural borrowing, appropriation, and translation -‐ multi-‐directional processes.”11

SENSEable City Lab's organizational culture, as embodied in its physical infrastructure, organizational patterns and cultural artifacts, could give some insightful suggestions on how research groups can foster interdisciplinarity and at the same time ignite people's imagination and passion. SENSEable City Lab's organizational culture is articulated as such so that disciplinary boundaries are meant to be selectively crossed in order to favor meaningful interchanges: SENSEable City Lab has hosted researchers with radically different disciplinary backgrounds: urban planners, architects, interaction designers, mechanical engineers, but also experts in theology, game programming, russian studies, medieval studies, sport, music, space science, Asian arts, economics, and culture, etc. The lab's adaptive and configurable organizational structure works as an active background for the processes of cultural borrowing, appropriation and translation from and to different disciplines. Individuals weave their knowledge, narratives, points of view into this complex, multi-‐layered system, fluctuating inside and outside their disciplinary borders. Meanwhile, the delicate balance between complexity and chaos is acquired within this polycentric multiplicity.

MIT SENSEable City Lab operates on the premise that finding design solutions for complex real-‐world problems call for truly interdisciplinary adventures, where both academia and industry need to build connections that profoundly reshape the way research that derives design is carried out. To this effect, Copenhagen Wheel and many other projects at MIT SENSEable City Lab that are envisioned, designed, developed and prototypically implemented as a result of truly interdisciplinary teamwork, push the boundaries of how designers may rethink the relation of research and design. Research by design and design by research: this is how interdisciplinary design projects should be implemented. The process of design starts with a vision

10 (Pratt 1991, p.34). 11 (Clifford 2003, p.34).

of how we can transform our interaction with the built environment using plethora of new technologies and scientific discoveries across disciplines. This is then developed into a partial implementation in the city –an ‘urban demo’– which allows the researcher-‐designers to gather feedback from people and study the impact of the project in creating positive lifestyles. Extensive scientific work follows this phase, where the main questions raised by the vision are addressed. At this stage the scientific exploration does not limit its range of activities to a particular discipline and benefits from trans-‐disciplinarity – from science and mathematics to design and sociology.

Nowadays, many new technologies and scientific discoveries are forcefully entering architectural design and drastically changing the ways in which we understand, design and inhabit space. The perimeter of our discipline is being redefined, transforming the discipline from a discreet one with clear boundaries to one with diffused extremities that its bridges across other disciplines need to be constantly provoked and negotiated. This allows the researcher-‐designer to envision an ‘architecture beyond architecture’ as new inter-‐disciplinary field.

The idea behind Copenhagen Wheel is very simple and addresses a real condition: thanks to pervasive electronics and ubiquitous computing our objects are starting to “talk back to us”, opening up unprecedented possibilities in the daily interaction between people and the built environment. What could this mean for a rather traditional object, such as a bicycle? We set forth to find out in 2009 as part of a interdisciplinary research collaboration with the City of Copenhagen. After several months of work in team – including designers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, programmers and interaction designers – we came up with the concept of the Copenhagen Wheel. The Wheel is a fully self-contained e-bike retrofit, that captures the energy dissipated while cycling and braking (as hybrid cars do) and saves it for when you need a bit of a boost. With no external batteries or wires, and no throttle, the wheel is controlled primarily through your feet, amplifying your torque, as a shadow cyclist silently multiplying each of your pedal strokes. The Wheel also collects data. Interfaced with your smart-phone via a wireless Bluetooth connection, information on location, speed and biked miles can be used for urban incentives – something similar to a frequent flyer program, but good for the environment. At the same time pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions, sensed in real time via an embedded sensor unit, can be shared onto the Cloud to create a fine-grained database of urban environmental information. Project Team: Carlo Ratti , Director | Assaf Biderman , Associate Director | Christine Outram , Project Leader | Rex Britter | Andrea Cassi | Xiaoji Chen | Jennifer Dunnam | Paula Echeverri | Myshkin Ingawale | Ari Kardasis | E Roon Kang | David Lee | Vincenzo Manzoni | Sey Min | Max Tomasinelli, Photographer | Mark Yen

*Screen Captures from The Copenhagen Wheel iPhone App, MIT SENSEable City Lab©

* Close up of The Copenhagen Wheel, Photograph by Max Tomasinelli , MIT SENSEable City Lab©

* The Copenhagen Wheel installed on a Bicycle, Photograph by Max Tomasinelli , MIT SENSEable City Lab©

* Close up of The Copenhagen Wheel, Photograph by Max Tomasinelli , MIT SENSEable City Lab©

Trash|Track, another project by MIT SENSEable City lab, again addresses a very real challenge of urban living: Promoting a culture of recycling both as an actual mode of operation and a cultural image of urban living can decrease urban waste. This is important to establishing a sense of ownership and belonging that contributes to the urbanite’s self-image as a member of a collective social entity. To this effect, cyber structures of social networking can provide various opportunities to incentivize recycling between their members. Additionally, situated technologies can be deployed in the waste management and urban removal chain to secure the maximum efficiency of waste treatment and waste recycling on a large-scale and centralized mode. To address this issue with partnered with Architectural The project consists of digitally enhanced tags that can be attached to objects and report their location to an Internet backbone infrastructure via the cellular network. Trash|Track makes use of these location-reporting tags to track urban disposal and study the efficiency of the urban removal chain. The platform allows designers and planners to make well-informed, high-level decisions about how a given constructed landscape is managed, by analyzing the acquired data. Therefore, a multiplicity of questions about the dynamics of urban removal chain can be addressed empirically: is our removal chain efficient? Is hazardous waste managed properly, or are there loopholes in our system that need to be taken care of? Is the recycled waste really recycled, or does it end up in dumps? The Trash Track system can have a great impact in the nature of the perceptual relationship that a city or region develops with their waste. Generally, people assume that once they dispose of waste, it is no longer their responsibility. Offering a real-time view of how the disposed items travel through the landscape of their daily lives will perceptually expand each citizen’s sphere of responsibility from the domestic space, to the space of the city. For example, witnessing that a pile of recycled paper ends up somewhere in a dump and is never actually recycled, can be quite an arresting experience. Perhaps such real-time urbanity can result in a more responsible urbanity after all. Yet, Smart Trash is but one possible scenario in a more comprehensive concept of a world populated with Smart Objects. Given the right technological platform, the only limits are those in our imaginations. This project was made possible with support of The Architectural League of New York as part of the Exhibition, Toward the Sentient City. To realize the project partnerships with companies such as Waste Management, Sprint, and Qualcomm was created and urban demos of the platform were conducted by soliciting collaboration from interested members of the public to tag their trash on one hand and City of Seattle as the test bed on the other hand. Not only an interdisciplinary team of researchers and designers were involved in the implementation of the project, but also the project was envisioned as a thoroughly participatory project where citizens would contribute to a fine grain sensing innitiative to better understand the relation of the city with its recyclable waste in the greater context of United States. Project Team: Carlo Ratti , Director | Assaf Biderman , Associate Director | Dietmar Offenhuber, Team Leader| Eugenio , Team Leader (Concept) | Musstanser Tinauli, Team Leader (First Phase)| Kristian Kloeckl, Team Leader (Second Phase)|Lewis Girod, Engineering | Jennifer Dunnam | E Roon Kang | Kevin Nattinger | Avid Boustani | David Lee Programming | Alan Anderson | Clio Andris | Carnaven Chiu | Chris Chung | Lorenzo Davolli | Kathryn Dineen | Natalia Duque Ciceri | Samantha Earl | Sarabjit Kaur | Sarah Neilson | Giovanni de Niederhausern | Jill Passano | Elizabeth Ramaccia | Renato Rinaldi | Francisca Rojas | Louis Sirota | Malima Wolf | Eugene Lee | Angela Wang | Armin Linke, Video | Rex Britter, Advisors| Stephen Miles, Advisors| Tim Gutowski, Advisors Lead Volunteers: Tim Pritchard, Jodee Fenton, Lance Albertson, Chad Johansen, Christie Rodgers, Shannon Cheng, Jon Dreher, Andy Smith, Richard Auger, Michael Cafferty, Shalini Ghandi.

* Diagram illustrating the information flow on Trash Track system, MIT SENSEable City Lab©

* Example of data visualization of trash track, illustrating the route that an aluminum can travels within the removal chain of the city, MIT SENSEable City Lab©

* Visualization of aggregate data regarding how recyclable waste travels throughout United States, MIT SENSEable City Lab©

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