Processing Cities Seminar 2010:

In this seminar, students used computation to critically engage discursive models of cities from Kevin Lynch’s ‘Image of the City’ to Rem Koolhaas’ ‘Junkspace.’ The class created interactive applications that visualize these models, but also challenge them by opening the city to new computational interpretations. Students learned Processing, a simple, open-source programming language for visual designers, in order to image cities and make them legible in pluralistic ways. The practical goal of the course was to empower graphically-oriented students with basic skills in computer programming, which they can use to build an unlimited range of applications on future projects in school and practice. The intellectual goal of the course was to prompt students to ask how our images of cities, presented as interactive geometries, might be reconsidered in relationship to computation.