Who are the poor? Poverty is neither a number nor an index. It cannot be reduced to a line that divides those who are above and those who are below establishing a unique space for social exclusion. Poverty is a multidimensional and complex phenomenon. Its reduction to a unique representation can generate distorted visions of the phenomenon and create ineffective or counterproductive interventions.

From NewYork Times Interactive comes this simple visualization of the “common mood” during last SuperBowl. As the Steelers and Cardinals battled on the field, Twitter users across the nation pecked out a steady stream of “tweets.” The map shows the location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl related messages.

Often love affairs are instable, fleeting and unpredictable. It seems emotions change in a chaotic way. On this assumptions some mathematicians recently modeled a love relationship in terms of dynamic system. One of the case study of this kind of works is Jules et Jim, the autobiographical novel of Henri Pierre Roché and his cinematographic [...]

It’s a big pleasure to spread the link to a very recent work of Samuel Granados Lopez. He was part of the Density Design family as a student, and graduated here at Politecnico di Milano – Faculty of Design in 2008 with a Master thesis project titled “Infographics as a tool for social communication: a [...]

A close-up of the Earth Globe by Coronelli in which narration has a strong relevance. Extracts from Italo Calvino’s “Collection of sand”, 1980 The simplest form of a map isn’t the one we consider the most natural today, that is the map which represents the surface of the Earth as seen by an extra-terrestrial eye. [...]

A causal loop model has been developed in order to help understand the complex systemic structure of poverty in all its dimension. System diagramming is here a loose term used to describe the activity of conceptually representing and visualizing a system in its constitutive elements: the elements, the relationships and the system boundary distinguishing what does and does not belong to the set.
The assumption of this qualitative exercise is that poverty, and its dimensions, are the result of the dynamics between a wide variety of factors from macro-politic, to the personal behavioral patterns.
The key element of the visualization are the factors and the variables. They are the environment attributes and characteristics that have an influence level of poverty.

Density Design Lab, Knowledgecartography.org and ovrflw, under the nom de plume Writing Acamenic English, are proud to annouce that Murmur is one of the selected project for VISUALIZAR’08: DATABASE CITY.

The traditional monument is understood by its symbolic imagery, by what it represents. It is not understood in time, but in an instant in space; it is seen and understood simultaneously. Even in traditional architectures such as labyrinths and mazes, there is a space-time continuum between experience and knowing; one has a goal to work one’s way in or out.

I have been discussing a lot about quality of life in the last month in very different situations, and it made me thinking this is a key and imperative issue now.
I presented a paper in Changing the change conference in Turin. The conference was about design research for sustainability and was a very outstanding place for exchanging ideas and meet interesting people. I spoke with Chris Ryan

Complex Faces, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

TWDC – Designing connected places Summer School -
Thank you all, it was amazing.