At the end of last year, on 6 - 19 December, the Emerging City - Visions for Parramatta exhibition was held.

Coordinated by Marc Aurel Schnabel, the exhibition showcased architecture’s next generation of designers, exploring novel techniques to expand the horizons of human habitation.

Graduate students of the Faculty presented us with an architectural vision for Parramatta – the emerging city within the Greater Sydney Area. Exploring digital possibilities in architectural form, media and philosophy, they present a fresh and young city that allows life, culture, work and community to find a confident identity beyond its borders.

The above image is a proposal for Parramatta Cultural Centre (from education to exhibition), by Andrew Davis: 'the design was also a social statement about sustainability and the importance of longevity of life in what we build today through flexibility and adopting change. Views light, social interaction, flexibility and ambiguity of program are key factors'.

Here, in a proposal called 'Digitalics', Theodora Bowering examines a dialogue between the digital and the analogue.

Paul De Sailly's 'New Urbanism' attempts to instigate a new urbanism for the city of Parramatta that will incorporate a level of infrastructure to accommodate an increasingly urban population. It attempts to break down the hierarchy between city, building and people, and facilitate a future emergence of architecture designed at a personal scale.

Morphing pinkish-red cucumbers with Shimokitazawa (a suburban Bohemian district in Japan) urban fabric to explore form by digestion.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

At the exhibition, visitors could relax and make their selection from playlists of sound design works in the serenity of the lounge area.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

These collage images form an amalgam of large format graphic montages viewed in suspended vinyl pockets, knitting cosmic, hyperbolic, organic and atomic threads.

This was created by mapping Japanese anime onto an urban life experience.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

By Matt Young, Nijushi Sekki is a melding of organic and geometric model with creative technologies. This is a 3D visualisation of a haiku, in which each Japanese character is mapped to a value from the Fibonacci series.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Creative modelling and simulation of aesthetic lighting for interiors and exteriors of buildings using funky forms. This poster explores a redesign for the refurbishment of the USYD Union Holme Building.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

By James Kim, 3Doodle is a real time responsive multimedia performance demonstrating the immediacy of motion capture technology producing musical and geometric interplay. Spatial, gestural interaction for immersive spaces with human-scale display.

[Gypsy MIDI motion capture suit, MAX/MSP+jitter]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

An insight into the applications of digital media and design science research, from spatialised information sonification, generative sound design, hyper-instrument design to gestural spatial/interaction. From research conducted by Joanne Jakovich, Hong Jun Song, Sam Ferguson, and Kirsty Beilharz.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

An insight into the applications of audio and acoustics research, from architectural acoustics to sonification. These posters cross vast fields:
- Auditory perception of room size (image, above)
- 'AirQube' sound attenuation using Quarter-wave resonators
- Auditory alerts for air traffic control consoles
- Acoustic quality of a stadium audio system (image, below)
- Acoustical measurements of the Sydney Opera House
- Opera singer vocal directivity (poster, below)
- Anechoic lining design
- Acoustic shattering of fractal diffusers.

If you understand these fascinating terms, maybe you should be studying Audio & Acoustics!! =)

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

A collection of posters from urban design students, David Borge, Bianca Simpson, Elie Mrad, Yuval Fogelson, Georg Ackermann, Gabriela Fernandez, and Toshimune Suzuki.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Fluid Velocity encapsulates a cluster of intersections addressed in the digital media program: real-time responsiveness, informative music and sound design; gestural interaction departing from mouse, keyboard, and conventional interfaces in favour of intuitive, playful and natural modes of interacting with computers; wireless sensor technology for communicating between distributed or mobile users and the computer; generative design methods for procreating continuously morphing and adaptive content, biologically inspired design process, virtual creatures, physical computing.

Purpose-made for this exhibition, pedalling, pressure on the handlebars, rotation, and breaks modify the behaviour of a creature on the screen.

This is a light-hearted application of technologies that are also valuable for workplace contexts of spatial sonification and gestural interaction with dataflows, a topic in digital media research.

Modern modes of interaction for intuitive computing in the velocity of contemporary life.

[sensor-bike interactive multimedia; projection, bicycle, IRCAM wiSeBox sensors, max/MSP]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

This was a slide presentation featuring research about day light availability, sky models, solar access, overshadowing and glare, windows, and daylight in interiors and buildings.

The following is an example diagram which shows the shading plan for a skylight:

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Albert Tan invites us to look into social justice for volunteers and young workers under new industrial relations circumstances in his graphic design poster.

His storyboard investigates moving text and the notion of truth versus convention, questioning the truth, honesty, and reality of 'reality television'.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Mel Broe, in a graphic design workshop with teacher Teena Clarke, has created an intricate connection between historic, archival printed material and contemporary photographic images, lithographs and hand-drawn illustration. It explores the context of book making, illustration, mixed media, fontography, scale, space and integration.

[handmade graphic design book, A3]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Monika Hoinkis has created a self-expressive folding display; it is a style-neutral wearable visualisation device that can be worn in different ways to express one's personality in real-time. A set of integrated sensors keeps track of the weareer's activity profile, which is conveyed through the aesthetic folding of successive layers of fabric.

This personal information is hidden for onlookers, but becomes understandable over time for close friends and relatives.

[Wearable visualisation, felt, eletronics]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Welcome to the future.

The Precast Reality Studio for students in the Master of Architectural Design degree, investigated science fiction movies (Minority Report, The Matrix, Blade Runner) in search for a visionary capacity of future architecture, society, and media.

The studio aimed at integrating knowledge from selected specialists areas: psychology (medicine), virtual/animation (computer), biomechanics (medicine), robotics (engineering), laser (physics), etc.

Ji Yuli

Javier Duenas

Georg Ackermann

Emmanuelle Ratazzi

Tochi Suzuki

[Large format design prints, digital design]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

As a part of the urban planning program, Michelle Seamons, Robert Nagel and Ben Holmes created the Urban Planning Cube.

Elaborating on works that investigate urban planning in specific regions of Australia. The visitor is invited to participate in the constructivist vision of this project. Aeriel photographs from Google Earth are the basis for a playful discourse in planning a new environment. The work asks viewers to have your say, place a marker!

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Models for simulating sunshading techniques for window protection: solar insulation, models lit using the heliodon.

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

Trivet Fields, by:
- Alex Jung (Architectural Design)
- Dagmar Reinhardt (Architectural Design)
- Joanne Jakovich (Digital Media)
- Phil Grainger (Manager, Architectural & Technical Services Centre)

It is a a flexible installation constructed from interlocking modules that host a field of sensors and audio-illuminate displays, acting on a sensate memory system that builds on the interactions from visitors over time.

It is a purpose-created sculpture epitomising the veloCITY exhibition, a collaboration between architecture, the allied arts program and digital media program, supported by Phil Grainger's precision laser cutting in the workshop!

The disks are cut from a 2D suface (Perspex sheeting) and bent with individual curvatures. The signature form becomes a 3D module, interlocking into a spatial installation, equipped with computational electronics.

Hence the organism is an interactive adaptive perspex sensory machine (the englightened chandelier) in which memory is registered into a program, and replayed through an LED display: the traces of people who pass through are experienced by others over time.

[Art specs: lasercut, individually formed 3mm perspex discs with 38cm diameter, 110 specimen, black/clear wiring, LEDs. sensors, computer-programming.]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

At the end of last year, we launched the VELOcity graduate design exhibition.

The works spanned all disciplines, from audio design, architecture, digital media, illumination, sustainability, urban design, design computing, to urban and regional planning. It encapsulated the newest ideas in art and technology in the graduate design programs at the University of Sydney.

In the next few entries, we'll be looking at works featured in the exhibition.

veloCITY was exhibited at the Tin Sheds Gallery 148 City Road, Chippendale. Oct 12 - Nov 4, 2006. It was curated by Joanne Jakovich, Kirsty Beilharz, Anita Lever and Warren Julian.