Tomas Diez Ladera

• Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia

This chapter presents the Fab City Full Stack framework, a conceptual model to guide the transition towards locally productive and globally connected cities and regions. The Full Stack is composed of seven layers, serving as an analytical, design, and implementation tool which ensures that projects align with the values and principles of the Fab Ci...

Guided by the research question "What are the differences between the emerging Fab City Hub (FCH) model and other hub typologies, and how does this new hub typology seek to overcome the gaps and challenges of previous hubs experiences?", this paper provides a conceptual discussion on the FCH model and empirical qualitative data based on four case s...

While technology and design have progressed greatly, they have also produced imbalances that affect the way we live and work. Additionally, they have also contributed to the use of the planet’s resources to fill our homes with unnecessary devices and objects. We must de-objectify and de-colonise the way we design technologies to make for more inclu...

It is not a secret that cities are the biggest creation of mankind, where most problems concentrate, where most national budgets are being spent, where more than 50% of the global population already live, and we will find the opportunities to create new models for our economy and society of the future. For many years, authors, architects, economist...

The rapid urbanisation process of the last century was made possible by the industrial revolution and the assembly line. Today, the fruit of the industrial revolution—standardization and the linear economy— continue to determine how urban dynamics operate: According to the United Nations, today’s cities consume most of the world’s resources and gen...

We produced this book as a part of the Making Sense project, which draws on nine citizen sensing campaigns in Holland, Kosovo and Spain in 2016 and 2017. In them, we have developed a form of citizen participation in environmental monitoring and action which is bottom-up, participatory and empowering to the community: this is called citizen sensing....

Design method (conceptual framework matrix) and workshop to help teams explore a wide range of future scenarios informed by research into potentially impactful sectorial and societal trends.

Crowdsensing or participatory sensing technologies are becoming increasingly available, allowing citizens to collectively monitor urban environmental factors. Initiatives that harness the potential of such tools are typically promoted by individuals, communities or organisations in a bid to foster bottom-up citizen participation in environmental ac...

Citizens are increasingly crowdfunding IoT based participatory sensing technologies that allow them to collect and share data about the environment. These initiatives are usually referred to as grassroots and are driven by a vision of widening access to tools for political action. In this paper we compare patterns of participation and user experien...

Low-cost sensing technologies that stream data into web platforms have become increasingly available for households, blurring the boundaries between the public and the private. In this paper we draw on our experience with the Smart Citizen crowdsensing project to present a vision of a future where households become city infrastructure through the d...

During the last decades, the relationship between technology and people has been continuously changing; the first computers and cnc machines appeared at the middle 50's, personal computers on the 70's, the popularization of Internet on the 90's, and more recently the smartphones (which combine both), produced an evolution on how and for what we are...

The “digital fabrication” revolution being lived today, both in knowledge creation and in technological developments will become more than a simple formal exploration in architecture and design, or a set of tools exclusive to advanced industries. New tools and processes are becoming more accessible to the masses and are being shared all over the wo...