City Sense — Shaping Our Environment With Real-time Data.

This tiny book presents essays as well as graphics and technical details of selected best-projects from a Catalonian architecture and design conference. The theme was futurist designs for the 21st century. The pictures and projects themselves are remarkably bold, in no small part because they originate in response to the pressing need for more environmentally friendly design and responsive infrastructure. To that end, some essays focus on buildings, like self-sufficient communities with complex roof-top ecosystems, while others on theoretical points and strategies of design, such as the utilization of information technology to realize the city as a kind of organism. There are several essays toward the front of the book that introduce some of the more specific issues, like data-sensing and cultivating a post-machinic sensibility, that drive the architects, engineers, and designers featured. Selections are then organized according five sections on sensors and data-sensing, adaptive and reactive systems, the city as a behavioral system, parametric technologies, and theories and strategies. The participants are engineers, designers, and architects from around the world. Each entry refers to the participant's country of origin and a map in the back functions as a country index. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)