Gradlab Orange group final work
Group project by
Arianna Borgeson, Eric Schubert, Enzo Li, Miaoqiong Huang, Yiran Mao, Yanyi Wang
(Click the image to see the introduction of the Modulo City)
Create a city
Your city will be a creative and radical abstraction, a speculative imagining where certain conditions or situations are reinterpreted and amplified. Crucially, rather than taking a top-down approach to designing your city, you will create it from the inside out. You will let its form emerge through the act of combining custom parts which you will formulate. Consider your city as a condition which spreads out in all directions, an immersive environment without beginning or end. Your custom kit of design elements – the building blocks of your city – will emerge from your group's shared and individual investigations, interests, subjective experiences. Your city will ultimately take the form of a composite multimedia drawing, which you will collectively engineer, annotate, and imagine inhabiting.
Design Process
Week 1
- Get out into the city – both literally (physically) and virtually – and creatively document your encounters. Undertake three inspiration excursions, ideally one of which is IRL/physical.

My inspiration from the bike sharing. I compared three bicycle sharing where I have lived. According to different cultures and topography, the distribution of shared bicycles in Beijing, Los Angeles and Boston is also different. In China, bicycle sharing are usually used to be a transportation in order to save time. In the United States, the use of bicycle sharing is more about tourist attractions for leisure.

Bike sharing is just part of a large sharing market: people are sharing cars, scooters, furniture, clothes, apartments even working space. . According to PwC, the global sharing market will reach $335 billion by 2025.

The design are helping us take mechanical things that we used to spend energy on -- like heating, cooling etc. -- and turn them into things that we avoid spending energy on.

My inspiration from the bike sharing. I compared three bicycle sharing where I have lived. According to different cultures and topography, the distribution of shared bicycles in Beijing, Los Angeles and Boston is also different. In China, bicycle sharing are usually used to be a transportation in order to save time. In the United States, the use of bicycle sharing is more about tourist attractions for leisure.
Week 2
- Choose three specific interest areas derived from their research excursions, and for each develop a catalog or kit of speculative design actors or elements, which expand on this interest.

In order to solve the problem of food waste, how to transport the food sharing from school canteens or supermarkets to local shelters.

Young people can share their free time to accompany the elderly and help them solve more problems.

In order to solve the pressure of urban area, cities can realize more functions for local people through space sharing

In order to solve the problem of food waste, how to transport the food sharing from school canteens or supermarkets to local shelters.
Week 3
- Create three constrasting 'imaginary city' drawings which utilize the kits/collections generated in week 2. Each drawing should be a representation of an "idea world", an entire world where everything in it, and everything that happens in it, relates to one idea.




Week 4
- Expand the depth, scale, scope and canvas size of your chosen drawing. Imagine that your drawing will be printed big – taking up the size of a wall. Your drawing should not represent a single scene, it should be an abstract spatial plan, and evoke ideas about how the urban fabric is organized.

(Combine the food delivery sharing, companion sharing, and space sharing together)
Week 5
- Work as a group. Create a composite city. Bring that city to life by taking us on a tour of some of the goings-on in your city.