Living Architecture Spring 2008 Columbia

Beijing is gripped by Olympic Anxiety. One is reminded that the clock is ticking, the games are coming, one world, one dream. And the frantic preparations continue. If you consider "time" to be a kind of environmental data then these olympic "sensors" are well dispersed throughout the city.

Beijing has committed to installing an array of air sensors throughout the city. What if the air sensors had the same kind of presence as the Olympic countdown signs? What if these signs provided real, timely air quality information to Beijing residents? And what if, through this kind of data presence, an incentive was created, especially after the games to continue to improve air quality?

I'm proposing this for the siting of my piece: an alternative version of the Olympics countdown sign that measures air quality. It is distributed throughout the city at a variety of air quality condition sites - in traffice, in the hutongs, at the Great Wall. In sum, they form a sensor network that provides a public image of the city's air quality.