Engineers might discover a lot from dance when creating transport

There is bit more vital for the sustainability of cities than the methods we move them. With transportation estimated to represent 30% of energy consumption across most of the world's most developed countries, reducing the need for energy-reliant automobiles is fundamental to dealing with the ecological effect of mobility.But as cities become the predominant environment for the majority of people in the world, it is very important to think of other sort of sustainability too. The ways we take a trip effect our physical and mental health, our social lives, our access to work and culture, and the air we breathe. Engineers are entrusted with changing how we travel round cities through urban style, but the engineering market still rests on the presumptions that led to the development of the energy-consuming transport systems we have now: The emphasis positioned solely on performance, speed, and quantitative data. We require new approaches in order to help engineers produce the radical modifications required to make it healthier, more enjoyable, and less ecologically harming to move cities.And my coworkers and I think that dance may hold a few of the responses. That is not to recommend everybody ought to dance their way to work, however healthy and delighted it might make us. Rather that the methods utilized by choreographers to experiment with and style motion in dance might offer engineers with tools to stimulate new ideas in city-making. To test this out, a project led by Ellie Cosgrave at UCL is bringing organizers and engineers creating systems for city movement together with choreographers to see how their practices could enhance one another.From reality to blueprint Sociological theory about the nature of work can help us to understand why choreography might help. Richard Sennett, a prominent urbanist and sociologist who transformed concepts about the way cities are made, argues

that urban style(including, we would argue, engineering and preparation as much as it does architecture) has actually experienced a severance between mind and body since the advent of the architectural plan. Methods used by choreographers

to explore motion deal engineers brand-new options to metropolitan transportation Whereas the medieval contractor improvised and adjusted building through their intimate understanding of products and embodied experience of the conditions in a website, developing designs are now conceived and kept in media technologies that detach the designer from the physical and social realities they are developing. The"disembodied style practices" created by these technologies are essential for managing the technical complexity of the contemporary city. However they simplify reality in the process.To show, Sennett discusses the Peachtree Centre in Atlanta, a development emblematic of

the modernist approach to city preparation common in the 1970s. Peachtree produced a grid of streets and towers intended as a new pedestrian-friendly downtown for Atlanta. This, according to Sennett, failed because its designers had actually invested too much faith in computer aided style to tell them how it would operate.They didn't comprehend that purpose-built street coffee shops might not run in the hot sun without the awnings typical in older structures, and would need energy-consuming cooling instead, or that its huge parking lot would feel so desolate regarding put people off from getting out of their cars. What seems totally predictable and controllable on screen has unexpected results when equated into reality. The Peachtree Centre 'stopped working' since its grid-based design relied too greatly on computer system simulations

The exact same is true in transportation engineering, which utilizes designs to anticipate and form the way people move through the city. Again, these models are essential, however they are developed on particular world views where particular assumed kinds of effectiveness and security are privileged over other experiences of the city. Styles that seem logical in designs appear counter-intuitive in the embodied experience of their users.The guard rails

that will recognize to anybody having actually tried to cross a British road, for example, were an engineering option to pedestrian security based upon designs that prioritise the smooth flow of traffic, directing pedestrians to specific crossing points and slowing them down through staggered gain access to points. In doing so they make crossings feel longer, presenting mental barriers considerably affecting those that are the least mobile, and encouraging some others to make harmful crossings to get around them. These barriers do not just make it harder to cross the road, they sever communities and reduce chances for healthy transport. As an outcome, many are now being removed, triggering disruption, cost, and waste.If their designers had the tools to think with their bodies, and picture

how these barriers would feel, could there have been a better option in the first location? We think so. In order to cause fundamental changes to the methods we utilize our cities, engineering will require to establish a richer understanding of what encourages people to relocate certain methods, and how it impacts them.Dancing through cities Choreography might not seem an apparent option for tackling this issue. It shares the aim of designing patterns of motion within

spatial constraints.Choreography is an embodied art kind developed practically entirely through immediate feedback in between improvisation of ideas with the body, and tactile feedback from those ideas.

It uses designs and forms of notation to plan movements that dancers will make, with qualitative as well as quantitative information. Choreographers have a very rich understanding of the mental, aesthetic, and physical ramifications of different ways of moving.Observing the choreographer Wayne McGregor, cognitive researcher David Kirsh explained how he"thinks with the body". Kirsh argues that by utilizing the body to replicate outcomes, McGregor is able to think of services that would not be possible utilizing simply abstract thought. This sort of embodied knowledge is provided fantastic value in numerous realms of competence, however presently has no location in formal engineering style processes.The value of all this for engineering is currently hypothetical. However what if transport engineers were to improvise design options and get immediate feedback about how they would work from their own embodied experience? What if they could design designs at full scale in the method choreographers experiment with groups of dancers? What if they designed for emotional along with practical effects?By comparing the techniques and world views of choreography and engineering, we aim to discover out.John Bingham-Hall is a researcher in urban design and culture at UCL. This post was originally released on The Conversation( theconversation.com) More about:< a href =http://independent.co.uk/syndication/reuse-permision-form?url=http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/design/engineers-city-planners-learn-a-lot-dance-choreography-designing-urban-transport-richard-sennett-a8092916.html target=_ blank >

Reuse material

Source

http://independent.co.uk/life-style/design/engineers-city-planners-learn-a-lot-dance-choreography-designing-urban-transport-richard-sennett-a8092916.html

source http://taxi.nearme.host/engineers-might-discover-a-lot-from-dance-when-creating-transport/