Brawn and Technology under the Urban Canopy

摘要

Considering the growing variety of electronic tools being deployed by city and geo designers and researchers in fieldwork operations, we distinguish two main groups of users. The first group we refer to as 'aviators'. Namely: research teams who profit directly from a large range of high-end technology - satellites and their data, all sorts of flying super-technology and respective precise aerial imagery. The second group we refer to as 'foot soldiers' (REKITTKE, PAAR & NINSALAM, 2012). At this point we feel up to put forward the alternative term 'earthlings', due to political correctness and peer scrupulosity. Developing our research and fieldwork practice as data gathering and 3D modelling earthlings in the third year of a related research project, we continue in improving and optimizing our light, portable and inconspicuous equipment. We stand by our claim despite all the theoretically available remote sensing technology - that in order to build complete and highly detailed digital 3D models of complex terrain and urban territory, direct contact to ground and detail remains indispensable. Compared to the sophisticated machines and efficient methods in remote sensing, the craft of the earthling appears to be more intricate and laborious - but it can deliver unique results, which we subsume under the term of 'Grassroots GIS' (REKITTKE & PAAR, 2010). By now, we can be certain that the scientific and methodological niche of the GeoDesign earthling is located under the urban canopy and in urban canyons, where remote sensing technology is proven to be blind and ineffective. In this paper, we meticulously describe our most recent advances and let downs in the development of a method of on-site data and image gathering. This evidently creates a new kind of high precision three-dimensional puzzle, which makes a widely inaccessible and undocumented piece of under the urban canopy terrain visible, understandable and designable. The work we present focuses on the space defined by the Ciliwung River in the Kampung Melayu-Bukit Duri district, an informal urban segment in Jakarta, Indonesia. We bring ourselves, together with students, to this area in the course of the research module Landscape Ecology in the 'Future Cities Laboratory' (REKITTKE & GIROT, 2012), hosted and managed by the Singapore ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (CAIRNS et al., 2012). With our feet in the sludge, waste and faeces of the Ciliwung River, the help of a lot of brawn and some new tools, which are typically used by free fallers, bungee jumpers and other contemporaries tired of life, we also experimented with toy drones, featuring inbuilt cameras and representing the approaching armada of flying devices for the purpose of image data gathering in science, research and design.