BRIDGE

OPTIMAL PATH – PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE

SWARM INTELLIGENCE – PHEROMONAL STRUCTURES
// COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP ADVANCED STUDIO / 2009 / CRITIC: ROLAND SNOOKThe site of the project is the interchanges along EL Periferico – the big ring road of the Mecico City. This mega-scale infrastructure often destroys the suburban housing structure, and like a big multilevel wall it separates the inner city from the outer city. The task of the project was to create a new system of paths and bridges, a connecting landscape, in order to sew together the broken tissue of the urban fabric and restore the free movement of the inhabitants.

For that a new prototype was created, an adoptive system that on different sites would find an optimal path according to different conditions of each interchange. A system that would consider local parameters – density of housing, number of inhabitants, intensity of movement, number and placement of points to be connected.
The multi agent swarm system was be used to create a prototype, to simulate the optimal path between x number of points, the minimum path, both in 2d and 3d. Optimization of path was based on the logic of ant trails. (Ants use pheromones to mark their trail and guide following ants. If the trail is successful, more and more ants follow up the guidance until the trail becomes more intense and denser, whereas other trails fade out)

The Site – multitude of sites and the site catalogue: El Periferico, Mexico DF, intersection