Pachube For SketchUp: Designing Breathing Cities
Pachube, the online network for sharing of real-time data has come up with a plug-in for Google’s SketchUp. The plug-in connects the Internet of Things with the urban design process and enables SketchUp users to use real-time animated data while designing. Check out this page to learn more about connecting Pachube-enabled components inside SketchUp to live Pachube streams. The video below shows how it works.
“With this tool, you are able to view both realtime and historic Pachube data (i.e. sensor and environment data) inside the popular 3D CAD software package SketchUp. The incoming data can be used to generate or modulate a 3D model of a building or environment, and enables sophisticated design-decisions that are based on actual (and not simulated) sensor and environment data.”
The spatial design proces is about to enter a new stage. Planning, architecture, landscaping and urbanism do not longer merely deal with facades, bricks, spaces and roads, but also with flows, data, mobility, action and even activities — soft territorial capital. Anything measurable can be an active component of a design process. As often predicted here, the challenge for the next couple of decades will be to reframe our understanding of design. With projects such as Pachube that allow the urban designer to take into account the soft and breathing city, future design tends to leave the focus on hard, fixed and physical objects and move towards more flegmatic, moving and flexible patterns.
