01_visualizing infrastructure

the internet is a quintessential and taken for granted part of our everyday lives. it surprised me to learn that the “internet” is in fact a physical phenomenon, and exists as an urban network in the form of physically connected cables running across the world. in manhattan, many of these cables converge at “carrier hotels”, where global networks converge to form a single, larger network. in these inconspicuous buildings spread across manhattan, miles of cables link row after row of servers, moving an inconceivable amount of data at a ridiculous speed to enable everything from browsing reddit to high frequency trading.

i brought together data relating to internet speeds as well as the location of fibre optic cables and carrier hotels to create a spatial understanding of internet infrastructure in manhattan. of note is that the density of fibre cables is directly correlated to internet speed, which incidentally also gives an idea of the socio-economic spread in manhattan.

02_visualizing abstraction

on an urban scale, beijing is organized by a series of outwardly radiating ring roads based on the historic walls that used to surround and protect the city. within the innermost rings is a very dense urban fabric based on a logical north-south grid, but as one moves outwards, the pace and scale at which beijing has had to develop is reflected by fragmented and monolithic blocks. the purpose of this exercise was to analyze, dissect, and then abstract the urban patterns of china’s capital in order to gain a deeper understanding of the development of this urban grid.

GIS data on building uses and population densities were first aggregated to first map out different “nodes” of the city, consisting of concentrated areas of government, business, or historical significance. the observation that these nodes effected both the physical urban grid and cultural activities in the surrounding area was then studied through a series of parametric mapping exercises. as density decreases in the outer rings, the impact of the node increases, resulting in an increased intensity of distortion on the urban grid.

the final drawing iterates upon this idea by abstractly mapping the various nodes of intensity in beijing to reveal a contradictory city with one center, and simultaneously, multiple centres.

03_visualizing space

sleep no more tells the story of macbeth through a film noir lens. set in the mckittrick hotel (a block of warehouses in Chelsea), masked audience members explore a five floor theatre set and follow different characters throughout the storyline. because of the nature of this type of promenade theatre, every audience member leaves the performance with a different experience having visited each room in a different order, or interacted with the actors in a different way.

the whole plot of sleep no more can only be assembled by bringing together the fragmented experiences of multiple individuals. based on my own memory of the performance in combination with anecdotal posts found in online forums, this infographic was pieced together in an attempt to reconstruct said storyline.

04_visualizing experience

in a workplace survey sent out to 1,300 employees, respondents were asked to rate the performance of their office in terms of both the physical features, as well as how well the environment supported the various tasks they needed to complete throughout the day. results showed that the type of work seat and individual occupies dramatically impacted their experience.

an interactive report was put together on the powerbi platform to visualize these results while allowing the user to filter the findings based on key criteria. the specific areas that correspond to these results are highlighted on a typical floorplan providing spatial context. results from this report informed the strategic re-design of the spaces.