"Interactive Atlas of Habitability": Learning on the Reconfiguration of Places

The concept of "ATLAS", based on the innovative methods from Aby Warburg's 'Atlas Mnemosyne', can be expressed as a heuristic-creative methodology demonstrating incessant labor to rebuild the world by finding meanings outside of habitual classifications. These results produce new types of knowledge and alternative models that call attention to unnoticed aspects of the world and approach the subconscious aspects of our perceptions. We are building an Innovative Education Project financed by the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid as a pilot project of the 'Interactive Atlas of Urban Habitability' investigative project involving the university community. Our goal is to investigate new methods within the process of designing architectural projects that are related to innovative configurations of living and sharing life in space and time. In our field of action we are considering the use of enhanced reality from the technology that sustains and generates a virtual space, makes it habitable, and creates a place that can be imagined, narrated, remembered and rewritten, thus broadening the students' perception of living space. We want to generate new meanings by incorporating the variables of action and narration of lived and shared spaces into the static method of a vision of objective and abstract space. We are aiming to develop diverse strategies that amplify the data used in the architectural project, that modify how it is both managed and interpreted, and that will further facilitate the interaction between citizens. This communication will be created by reconfiguring places with the use of technology and social networks. These developing strategies will also introduce new forms of exploring and experiencing the city as a positive encounter between physical and virtual spaces.