Integrated Design: Intelligent Environments Expanding Public Spaces

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies facilitate design solutions based on functional, ethical, and aesthetic parameters. However, predictions regarding people’s quality of life in relation to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are uncertain. Therefore, this study discusses integrated design resolutions and human-centered design. To this end, digital resources—algorithmic rule, the Internet of things, and artificial intelligence (AI)—are analyzed, targeting interactive digital systems. Specifically, this analysis seeks to identify the limits of AI’s capacity to solve human problems involving design-based learning (DBL) in three stages of development, namely problem analysis, problem solution, and project reporting. New attempts to resolve problems during the human–machine learning process are analyzed to address problems unsolved by AI by highlighting human values and goodwill in decisions, choices, and solutions regarding when and how a decision can be made. Theoretical and methodological approaches are developed to deepen design questions as social phenomena that incorporate meaning and materiality into creative solutions that enrich urban space, design, and architectural projects aimed at long-term goals. This qualitative research focuses on observations through direct interaction between the researcher and the object of study—namely, intelligent environments expanding public spaces and the mediation between humans and machines—as well as varied experiences of the perceptions, actions, and behaviors of the actors involved in smart city projects. Through a theoretical foundation, the responsibility of design concerning the global and local contexts of São Paulo and Berlin in terms of its potential for social transformation is discussed. This verifies the need for planning based on ethical and aesthetic aspects of public policies for urbanization solutions while considering integrated design.