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• Hyperbody TU Delft

intuitive and logic planning tool for urban development. the park city of reitdiep is torn between being a city and an international ecological main route for migrating birds · the new city is conceived as a giant sponge · this sponge-city breathes through the cyclic absorbing and discharging of liquids, matter, people, impulses and information (data) · the existing site forms the breeding ground for the new park city · the new city will be synonymous with the landscape • reitdiep will not be built on top of the existing landscape, but will form an integral part of the newly developed landscape · the city will become a huge sculpture, an embossed image · the city will become an intelligent organism, absorbing a lot of energy, converting energy as efficiently as possible, leaving little waste · a new design tool has been developed to give shape to the multiple processes that govern the making of this new city: the attractor game · before playing the attractor game, a clear concept is chosen for a flexible and fluid development of the new habitats · continuity is the key factor · making connections, planning transition zones, streamlining the solid elements so as to emphasize the feeling of living in a stream of life · fluid architectural elements merge into the liquid planning of the process of accelerated growth · first the landscape is built in a complex layering of dissimilar structures · water is layered upon trees and allotments, solidified cultivation is layered upon vectorized growth of nature · after the initial stage of building the new landscape, the project developers have to take this new geology as the starting point of their work · they are not beginning with an empty lot · they are to build at a site already occupied by a complex ecological structure · playing the attractor game is done by placing attractors and distractors in the landscape · the number of parameters, their multitude, their range and power can be chosen freely, using random factors of one's own choice · the attracted dots are blurred into the new geographical image, and translated into a dxf file which can be imported into autocad · in autocad the data are given 3d shapes · the dxf links relate the intuitive placing of attractors to the exact calculations for future realization · playing the attractor game is knowing exactly how much water, how many trees, how many m2 of allotments you are playing with · the attractor game is a new programmed tool for interacting in the design process with non-experts such as the future inhabitants · the design process has become tranparent, flexible and fluid like ecology itself ·

Date: 1996

Site: Groningen Reitdiep

Project architect: Prof ir Kas Oosterhuis

Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Menno Rubbens

Client: Amstelland Vastgoed