The elective is a joint elective run by UNSW Built Environment (BE) and Art & Design (AD) in cooperation with the Ars Electronica Futurelab, a leading research and education facility based in Linz, Austria. The Futurelab engages students around the globe in learning and experimenting in urban interaction design using state of the art technology. The course teaches common topics and interests to students in both faculties under the guidance of Futurelab mentors towards the realisation of a practical interaction design project. The course is developed to accommodate BE’s Computational Design (CoDe) students in the fourth semester, with particular focus on Responsive Environments, while building on the learning experiences of Art and Design students in conceptual and design thinking. By adopting such a hybrid model, the course offers a learning path that can strategically position students for real world interactive art and design projects.

The course will introduce students to urban interaction design by teaching them principles of how human interact in the built environment with media technology through a suite of sensors. It will provide students with the conceptual understanding, technical skills and working methods needed to design a computer-mediated project that effectively explores a compelling spatial solution. Using low-cost open-source electronic hardware (Linzer Schnitte and Arduino), students will learn how to implement computational techniques to test and develop working design prototypes and situate them into the built environment. The projects designed in the course will therefore be installations bringing together electronic art, architecture, urbanism and interaction design.