Designing Intelligence into our Cities

What does it mean to design intelligence into our cities? What do we mean by intelligence and how does this differ from the smartness that has often been used to describe future cities? What does intelligent design mean in a post-pandemic city? Which parts of our society are truly valued and valuable and how might we reimagine our places and mobility in the future? Do we want to get back to before or go forward to better?

Design researchers at the RCA will be hosting an online symposium to share visions of the future and to bring together an audience of designers, researchers and city-based organisations and communities. We will be running the symposium as three 2 hour sessions with talks, challenges and questions in the first session, smaller online collaborative workshops in the second session and an opportunity to present back proposals and gain feedback and potential partners in the third. 

Session 1: Talks, challenges and questions

Session 2: Collaborative design challenge workshops

Session 3: Presentations, feedback and partnerships

There will be three themes for the event that span the different interests of speakers and researchers across the college: 

1. What is the future for intelligent neighbourhoods – their shape, constituent parts, networks, governance and size?
2. How might we reimagine mobility hubs and networks as centres of community rather than purely functional transport systems?
3. How might digital tools merge technical data with social knowledge to enable better planning for sustainable futures?

We encourage participants to choose a theme and to contribute to the design research workshops by sharing your vision for the future and considering the partners and activities that you might need to make your vision happen.

Speakers include:

• Andy Martin – Transformational Schemes, Transport for London
  
• Dr Timea Nochta and Dr Li Wan – University of Cambridge, Centre for Infrastructure and Smart Construction 
  
• Dr Jiayu (Zoe) Wu – Intelligent Mobility Design Centre, Senior Research Fellow, RCA 
  
• Mike Saunders – CEO, Commonplace 
  
• Erica Belcher, Researcher, Centre for London
  
• Noel Hatch – Head of Strategy, Camden Council 
  
• Professor Dale Harrow –  Intelligent Mobility Design Centre Chair, RCA
  
• Richard Dilks, CEO -  CoMo UK
  
• Rob Naybour -  Weston Williamson
  
• Stephen Barrett – Partner, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners 
  
• Yudai Honma - Associate Professor, International Center for Urban Safety Engineering (ICUS) Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
  

The symposium aims to bring together researchers and colleagues from across the RCA – from architecture and environment, product and service design, robotics, inclusive design, mobility design and virtual reality technologies – to explore underlying mobility and living needs and conceive of collaborative research topics that cross disciplines and uncover new opportunities for knowledge and innovation development.

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Download the Designing Intelligence Symposium booklet (PDF)

Download the Designing Intelligence Symposium 202 Itinerary (PDF) 

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Recordings of Symposium

Theme 1

Theme 2

Theme 3