ICAT Playdate — Public art design, data visualization, and communicating science

This in-progress art installation translates an NSF-funded interdisciplinary research project into an immersive, 1:1 data visualization that communicates science through design. The underlying study—Building Ecology: Examining Space-Place Dynamics in a Shared Indoor Environment—mapped movement and interaction patterns on the first floor of the Creativity and Innovation District Living Learning Community using lidar sensors. The research focused on two key spatial metrics: “collisions,” where individuals approach from different directions and pause in proximity (revealing moments of interaction), and “occupancy,” the ratio of time a space is inhabited versus empty (revealing patterns of movement and dwelling). By visualizing how undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff negotiate shared environments, the project makes otherwise invisible spatial dynamics legible to a public audience.

Beyond visualization, the work demonstrates how post-occupancy data from existing buildings can directly inform the design of future structures with similar functions. Integrating this type of analysis into architectural workflows could optimize volumetric use—ensuring buildings occupy only the space necessary for circulation and gathering—thereby reducing material use and overall footprint. The research also has implications for the placement of windows, artificial lighting, and entrances within the building envelope, grounding design decisions in real patterns of movement and spatiotemporal use. Computationally intensive processes, including point cloud analysis in QGIS and large-scale nesting operations, were strategically offloaded to specialized software, reinforcing the project’s intersection of art, data science, and architectural research.