UCS MANIFEST
Modern construction and urban development projects involve a diverse range of people with different competences – highly skilled architects, engineers and craftsmen, well-meaning developers and advisors, sharp experts, politicians, artists and many others.
However, one specific group of people that everybody wants to involve is often left without direct influence: the very people who will use the buildings once they are finished. In recent years, many attempts have been made to take advantage of end user competences, to include them in the processes to gain added value – economic as well as emotional - in construction projects. Despite mixed experiences and results, consensus is that effective user involvement has the potential to create the desired added value for all parties involved in the construction project.
Technology has opened new channels that ease communication between the man on the street and the decision makers; it enables a shorter planning phase and a longer development phase, and thus a much larger window of opportunity for user involvement.
What is missing is a platform where all involved parties can meet on equal terms – a place where one person's background knowledge, level of abstraction, communication and visualization skills do not block other people's perceptions – a tool that breaks down hierarchies, invites everybody to get involved, animates creativity and innovation and increases the pleasure of participating in and taking responsibility for the future.
That platform, that place, that tool is Utopian City_Scape.
Modern construction and urban development projects involve a diverse range of people with different competences – highly skilled architects, engineers and craftsmen, well-meaning developers and advisors, sharp experts, politicians, artists and many others.
However, one specific group of people that everybody wants to involve is often left without direct influence: the very people who will use the buildings once they are finished. In recent years, many attempts have been made to take advantage of end user competences, to include them in the processes to gain added value – economic as well as emotional - in construction projects. Despite mixed experiences and results, consensus is that effective user involvement has the potential to create the desired added value for all parties involved in the construction project.
Technology has opened new channels that ease communication between the man on the street and the decision makers; it enables a shorter planning phase and a longer development phase, and thus a much larger window of opportunity for user involvement.
What is missing is a platform where all involved parties can meet on equal terms – a place where one person's background knowledge, level of abstraction, communication and visualization skills do not block other people's perceptions – a tool that breaks down hierarchies, invites everybody to get involved, animates creativity and innovation and increases the pleasure of participating in and taking responsibility for the future.
That platform, that place, that tool is Utopian City_Scape.