Climatewalks
Video: vimeo.com/794800961
Climatewalks
Climatewalks map the microclimatic landscape people experience at the human scale with a high spatiotemporal resolution. During the microclimatic walks, we record conditions using a mobile weather station equipped with environmental sensors and GPS tracking data loggers to record and map transient conditions in different seasonal scenarios. The data collection is dynamic and cumulative, thus establishing the relationship between people and urban space.
During the microclimatic urban walks, participants express their thermal preferences, contributing to the representation of individual perceptions of the quality of urban space. In this way, subjective levels of perception are recorded, integrating the thermal measurements.
By linking individual subjective responses to the urban morphology, the experiment allows to measure the relationship between microclimate and people's thermal perception of urban space and mapping it both qualitatively and quantitatively.
The resulting mapping represents microclimatic conditions on the paths walked and detects variations with a high spatio-temporal resolution: the mapping can also highlight hot-spots as well as the cooling effect of certain features such as trees and green infrastructure. The values generate microclimatic knowledge combined with subjective responses that sets the basis for formulating climate adaptation strategies.
Climatewalks are inspired by promenadology, a cultural studies and aesthetic method developed by Lucius Burckhardt, as well as by experimental practices such as Alison and Peter Smithson's or Lawrence Halprin's walks.
The goal of these walks is to investigate the relationship between urban morphology, microclimate, and thermal comfort from the perspective of the user at two meters above the ground, to study the thermal diversity and quality of the city. The results visualize the interplay of physical, psychological, and physiological aspects of microclimate.
In the Zukunft Bau innovation program, the Climatewalks bring the focus to the urban space, which is shaped by the form and materiality of buildings and focus on the relationship between the building and its context. In doing so, they expand the significance of buildings considering them as parts of a complex system which informs microclimate, people's well-being, and the quality of public space.
The video documentation (https://vimeo.com/794800961) was supported by the Zukunft Bau Pop-Up Campus (Bundesinstitut für Bau, Stadt- und Raumforschung im Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung - Referat WB 3, Forschung im Bauwesen).