KEITAI CITY
Duration/ Year
03 weeks- 2006
Competition Organizer
Shinkenchiku-sha and DoCoMo Corporation, Japan
Site Location
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Program
Blending of keitai and space, Significance role of keitai in everyday lifestyle, development of relevant lifestyle infrastructure, Development of user friendly- transparent-secured information and communication system
Abstract
No new tools have become as widely accepted in everyday life in recent years as cell-phones. Keitai ("portable"), the shortened term for a cell phone, has come to mean much more than a portable communication terminal; the keitai has become an indispensable tool for constructing the infrastructure of everyday life; the term has taken on a greatly expanded significance to mean new lifestyle media. In such a case, how is the city, our immediate environment, developing under these circumstances? What sorts of conditions will the city generate in the future, as the keitai becomes an integral part of our lifestyle? This is a spatial design competition seeking new proposals concerning the relationship between the urban environment and keitai in the near future.
A common man (as a character) of Mumbai city is selected to demonstrate the purpose. Main idea is conveyed through the way he navigates in the city by using Keitai. It becomes a medium for browsing information available in various forms from both, physical as well as virtual world. At urban scale, a keitai can be realized in various forms apart from cell phones or PDAs. A large building surfaces or specific hot spots/ kiosks can also be treated as keitai.