Street in Office / Office on Street, [Data-Driven Design Research]

In the late twentieth century, American suburbs became disassociated with their host cities, giving rise to a new urban form, socially, economically, and functionally, homogeneous regions isolated from one another, and that brought along with it a new social ill, alienation. Jane Jacobs diagnosed the cause of this ailment as the loss of the street as the locus of an active community life. An employee of Microsoft at Redmond campus has little use for the street as a social space, and treats it merely as a means of conveyance. Recent trends have seen this process reverse geographically while maintaining a similar socio-economic segregation. The Twitter employee, while both living and working in a functionally diverse city, insulates himself from the social space of the street, and may not come into contact with people from a diversity of socio-economic background.

The Office on the Street / The Street in the Office
Street in Office can be a novel solution to reconcile the alienation between workers in an office and people on the street.
Through sites selected by data driven methodology, the Street in Office can revitalize the streets by designing the office environment through the following three points

(1) Street as a social mixer; where the street is a changing place to interact with people. For example, take the streets of NYC, known for its rich and poor,
“Street as a social mixer” would claim for all people to use the street regardless of social status enabling people to encounter others who are unlike them.
Thus, creating interaction and basic acceptance of those who are different as means of constructing a civil society. The street office should embed those social mixer values.
(2) Street as a depository; Street is a locale of history. We have to live with the decisions of the past on the street. Take for instance Rome, whom created a system
of streets that to date have instilled a sense of history for those who navigate the old roads. On the street, we can interact not only with each other, but also
by aggregating decision and creating history. In this context, Street become a depository of history.
(3) Street as a social platform utilizes the street as a platform, as a stage for performance, a site for potential expression; social, cultural and political voices.
Ex people giving a pamphlet as a social expression.

On the urban level, data-driven design methodology is utilized for data analysis and visualization of activity at an urban scale. Data in this project is crucial
because it shows patterns, and makes it possible both to perceive and understand the third emerging conditions about street in different angles of urban context.
The integrated data-driven mythology with GIS and Mechanical Turk can enrich the data sets and collect information about an urban environment, revealing diverse
interpretations of street’s potential uses or problems. This affects the site selections. In the architectural level, a module system, as a design agency, is shaped
by parametric rule based design to integrate a holistic design language from urban context to architectural scale. The system consist of three scales
(small, middle, and lager scale) that can be populated on the basis of data from urban or local levels. Design space exploration enables the agency to optimize
and generate design with the data as a form finding methodology, and energy analysis and optimization that defines the detailing of the modules