Ima­gine a new kind of shel­ter in your city: a struc­ture which provides inform­a­tion as well as shade, which reflects changes in its envir­on­ment and responds to interest from people near and far, a struc­ture which is high tech but con­struc­ted as simply as possible.

People can send a text mes­sage with a zip code to the Liv­ing Light Hot­line and receive a text mes­sage reply with the neighborhood’s cur­rent air qual­ity. At the same time, the panel of the reques­ted zip code blinks and the facade becomes a register of col­lect­ive interest. | Photo by Liv­ing LIght

Artists David Ben­jamin and Soo-in Yang (aka “The Liv­ing“) have cre­ated a new kind of struc­ture as a per­man­ent out­door pavil­ion in Peace Park, across from World Cup Sta­dium in Seoul, Korea.

Sure, Liv­ing Light does what a pavil­lion does best — it shel­ters you from the rain and gives people a place to meet — but this pavil­lion goes futher. Liv­ing Light is com­prised of a smart facade which rep­res­ents the chan­ging air qual­ity of the city’s neigh­bour­hoods and which tracks pub­lic interest in the atmo­sphere of the city.

Every aspect of the design, con­struc­tion and daily applic­a­tion of Liv­ing Light draws on tech­no­logy in aid of a con­nec­ted “smart” city.

The city has sev­eral exist­ing inter­faces to real-time air qual­ity data, which are used by Liv­ing Light to track and present air qual­ity in an innov­at­ive way. | Photo by Liv­ing LIght

To begin with, the pavil­ion is an abstrac­ted map of Seoul, with the city’s 27 neigh­bor­hood (gu) bound­ar­ies re-drawn to be centred around the air qual­ity sensors the Korean Min­istry of Envir­on­ment already have around the city. Most of our cit­ies are already gath­er­ing this inform­a­tion, so in cre­at­ing Liv­ing Light Ben­jamin and Yang draw upon exist­ing tech­no­logy and read­ings and use this data as the basis for a new kind of interface.

The shape this inter­face took was again determ­ined by tech­no­logy, with the goal being to cre­ate an effect­ive, stable and strik­ing struc­ture with the most effi­cient use of materials.

An auto­mated test pro­duced 25,000 unique designs, many of which fall far from tra­di­tional ideas of shel­ters and pavil­lions, and the artists fol­lowed up this tech-led design with pro­to­types and test­ing to ensure the stru­ture per­formed well under stress. This plan­ning allowed the team to pro­duce the ele­ments to exact dimen­sions and sim­pli­fied the assembly, allow­ing them to erect the pavil­lion in under a week.

Each night, the neigh­bor­hoods light up if their air qual­ity is bet­ter today than last year. Every 15 minutes, the map goes dark and then the neigh­bor­hoods light up in order of best cur­rent air qual­ity to worst. | Photo by Liv­ing Light

Once in place in the park, Liv­ing Light becomes an inform­a­tion source, light­ing up in a sequence which reflects the air qual­ity of each neigh­bour­hood from best to worst, as com­pared to read­ings for that sec­tor the same time last year.

The dynamic facade responds to real-time air qual­ity data and to pub­lic interest in the envir­on­ment. | Photo by Liv­ing Light

The inter­activ­ity of the struc­ture begins when city res­id­ents check in on air qual­ity online, or when they send a text mes­sage with their post­code to the Liv­ing Light Hot­line. They receive a text mes­sage reply with the neighborhood’s cur­rent air qual­ity, while on the strutcture their neighbourhood’s panel glows brighter, regis­ter­ing interest in the environment.

As the artists note on their site:

“This struc­ture in a pub­lic park not only provides a can­opy and a tact­ile enclos­ure, it also sug­gests that a build­ing facade itself can become a new kind of pub­lic space. It can offer import­ant real-time inform­a­tion about our shared resources and our col­lect­ive concerns.”

The devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion pro­cess has been well doc­u­mented, and offers inspir­a­tion for any­one con­sid­er­ing how we rep­res­ent inform­a­tion about our envir­on­ments, or inter­ested in cre­at­ing enga­ging inter­faces for pub­lic spaces. View a video of Liv­ing Light below, or visit the web­site for more on this excep­tional work which sug­gests a new way of com­mu­nic­at­ing inform­a­tion in smart cities.

Liv­ing Light (Seoul, 2009) from David Ben­jamin on Vimeo.