According to Seoul-based architect Tesoc Ha, "A city is the integral place built by differential lives." Seoul? Integrated and differential, indeed. Ha asserts his conjecture through his exhibition “Differential Life Integral City: Collective Intelligence Urbanism,” currently on display at Seoul National University's Museum of Art.This isn't the first interactive exhibition based on a smartphone app that we've come across, but Ha’s project is unique for its meticulous attention to detail. A graduate of Sungkyunkwan University and The Architectural Association School of Architecture, Ha seeks to combat the civil discontinuities that result from urban sprawl. While identities get lost in the shuffle of the droning contemporary cityscape, the architect attempts to revive the concept of individual participation and influence on the local level.The installation combines an interactive digital multimedia projection with a smartphone app, providing a charming touch of social agency against the modern muzzle of urbanism. Ha suggests that the local environment—and, essentially, the city as a whole—can be shaped through a collective intelligence’s “bottom-up” technique. Ha designed a way to record our individual tastes and their effects en masse. The greater the participation, the greater the diversity, and, therefore, the greater perception of influence.
The impact of the project builds from a participation-encouraging smartphone app. As the social landscape shifts onto our handheld devices, Ha’s program affords us an opportunity to exert our influential individuality, and to interact with the world from the palms of our hands. You can download the 'Integral City' app for the iPhone or Android and have a go with your civil duties anytime, anywhere.By inputting various lifestyle factors–like whether you’re married or single, have children, make a steady income, or use public transportation–your choices will influence your virtual lifestyle, in turn rendering your home unique. Each housing unit varies architecturally and spatially according to your customized preferences. With greater participation, the mass-customization of housing units expands, resulting in the mapping of individual differences, and ultimately yielding in a visible landscape of recorded influence: an integral city of differential lives.
