Ctrl+i: Concealing Illicit
Team
Name: Anna Kondrashova
Nationality: British
Institution / Company: Pratt Institute
Name: Mariana Orellana
Nationality: Venezuelan
Institution / Company: Pratt Institute
-HONOURABLE MENTION of Street of Tomorrow Competition
The year is 2122 and the city of Yonkers has densified, mimicking the growing urban concentration of Manhattan. The uncontrollable sprawl of residential towers and commercial facilities have taken over. Yet, something appears strange, different. Dark alleys, empty lots, abandoned structures, all have adopted an ulterior intention. Instead of withering away, ignored by the city’s occupants, they have reclaimed a new purpose.
Ctrl+i is a realm that overtakes the grey zones of the city – fragments of land within the expanding urban fabric that have been left ignored and obsolete. This operation brings to the forefront these pieces of the city, injecting them with an exciting purpose. Ctrl+i acts as a symbiotic and parallel experience that grows through built environment, forming an enmeshed relationship where one cannot exist without the other. Through operations of concealment, the project holds a series of heterotopic programs ranging from licit to illicit, preserving not only the essential elements that users seek to experience in common urban scape, but also their illicit counterparts. By activating an agent of virtual reality, the user can reveal the concealed illicit zones. Through a particular access, an app for example, the otherwise hidden compartments are exposed. This act preserves the secrecy that illicit entails in the world as we understand it today, operating in an ‘if you know, you know’ nature, that is present in the gray zone as we know it.
#PublicSpace #Pedestrianization #StreetFront #GreyZone #Illicit #Concealed #VR #CityInCity
