Beta Blocks
Beta Blocks is a block-level technology experimentation zone and civic process that encourages communities to invent, adopt, and adapt urban technologies to become relevant to their lives. An inflatable pavilion serves as a portal for local data interaction and exploration before and during technology deployments.
Redefining the Classroom
Beta Blocks is a block-level technology experimentation zone and civic process that encourages communities to invent, adopt, and adapt urban technologies to become relevant to their lives. An inflatable pavilion serves as a portal for local data interaction and exploration before and during technology deployments.
StreetCaster
Supernormal explored an algorithm that integrates social equity as a key variable in prioritizing infrastructural replacements and repairs. The City of Boston Public Works Department (PWD) and City of Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) are working...
Eating Together
Two experimental dining spaces, located next to each other in a mid-block courtyard, explore the rituals of eating together in 21st century American culture. Tanám extends the dining timeline to let the stories of the strangers at the table unfold; Saus plays with the sometimes anonymous experience of the...
Eating Together, Alone
An endless dining counter plays with the sometimes anonymous experience of the American diner counter and the question of eating in public, alone. An expansive yellow countertop wraps the perimeter of the L-shaped dining space. Serving comfort food late into the night, the orientation of the countertop...
Third Spaces through the Lens of Data
The primary goal of the Third Spaces data analysis, visualization, and narrative representation project is to better understand and tell the story of Boston's third spaces, and to develop a clear set of data-linked metrics for the analysis of these socially generative places.
Urban Values Drive Charter School Locations
Rocketship Public Schools, a public elementary charter school network that is expanding from the...
The Marine Industrial Cloud
Having handed over labor to machines, human labor is unnecessary in the Marine Industrial Park in 2067. Society has shifted to a universal basic income to equitably and unconditionally distribute the unneeded salaries of the machines for human use, and Bostonians now...
Community Design Prototypes
Supernormal worked with Crescent Communities, a real estate development company from Charlotte, NC, to create a research and development platform for community design and development. This design, development, and assessment process is designed to meet changes in culture, market demand...
American City Metrics
The American City Metrics project is an in-progress interactive web atlas and system of metrics that uses open, commercial, informal, and emerging Internet of Things data sources to evaluate local places across time and location, assess urban form, and improve future development patterns.
SolBe Learning Center Prototype
The design and planning team is generating a design and set of urban values that enables the SolBe preschool concept to scale and engage across many local communities. The Boston Society of Architects recognized the project in 2016 with an Unbuilt Architecture and Design award.
Pittsburgh Urban Data and Development Process Analysis
With a rapidly growing set of open, controlled, and web-based urban data resources, the Heinz Endowments commissioned a study and set of recommendations on the improved use of these emerging resources for actionable community development and engagement efforts.
American Spirit Index
We want to measure things that act as a proxy for cultural change related to larger neighborhood change. While open and official data sources are essential to understanding the dynamics of urban places, informal data sources are a potentially powerful way to understand shifts in culture and other indicators of...
Downtown Crossing Public Realm Analysis
We analyzed anonymized mobile device data in aggregate to generate a high resolution view of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District.
Infilladelphia
We are working on a prototype for urban infill development that focuses on the planning and design process at the neighborhood and block scale. Infilladelphia is an award-winning competition proposal that tests out this decentralized development model in the Mantua-Belmont neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Big Data for Small Places
Big Data for Small Places is a growing body of applied research created to understand the implications and potentials of big data for the development of small places and the urban communities that create them.