ACDF
Digital Design
2021
Mahalla
Urban Rural Living
La Biennale di Venezia
Mahalla: Urban Rural Living is an exhibition and research project about the urban neighbourhoods in Uzbekistan known as mahallas. The project, curated by Christ & Gantenbein, explores potential answers to the question raised by the 17th Architecture Venice Biennale itself: How will we live together?
We developed the Mahalla: Urban Rural Living app allowing users to browse authentic urban contexts in Tashkent, providing a 3D experience of these domestic spaces. The application takes users into six different houses in the mahallas, via point cloud models which can be explored thanks to VR. Informations, floor plans, maps and archive images, as well as local sounds specially sampled by the artist Carlos Casas, enhance the overall experience.
The interface is both simple and engaging, giving importance to the aestethic value of the point clouds and archive materials.
The official website of the Uzbekistan National Pavilion displays interactive objects taken directly from the point clouds, overlapping contents, images and some random and “glitchy” buttons.