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Issue 29

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A Retroactive Introduction At the Biennial—BOLD and the Chicago Room BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago Make Bold Plans, or Something Along Those Lines Reckoning with Vacancy Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures Logistical Ecologies Filter Island The Big Shift Second Sun Late Entry to the Chicago Public Library Competition The High Life The Available City Making Architecture That Heals Forum Pavilion Cut/Fill KTC 234: Knowledge Trade Center Re-Imagining Wellness in Humboldt Park Chicago Boogie-Woogie South Chicago Collaborative Circle the Wagons: A Community Enclave Cluster Container Housing for the Disabled BOLD Studio Visits and Panel Discussions Second City’s Second Coast

Project

Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures

March 7, 2016

Project by Michael Pecirno.

Contributors

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Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © David Schalliol.

Over the past few years cities have rushed to quickly establish data stores and data portals; places in which anyone with internet access can log on, download a dataset, and often, visualize them directly in-browser. This data can be anything that fits neatly into a spreadsheet, and its topic can range from the locations of police stations to lists of “problem landlords.” But aside from an act of novelty or neat visualization, what does it all mean? Can these spreadsheets change the way we perceive our cities, or are they just a trend fueled by the buzzword “big data”?

Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures takes a dive into various data portals to find out what spreadsheets can tell us about our city, region, and state. What can happen when we begin to look at vignettes of the city with only a single feature mapped? Free from the ubiquitous political map background, can they tell us something more about our city? Through the abstraction and isolation of big data, we find that the city begins to tell a story too often obscured by geography, boundaries, and our own history. By refining the chaos of information into minimal statements, patterns never before seen emerge and perhaps a greater understanding of our landscape evolves.

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Urbanization, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Farms, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Water regional, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Water local, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Forest, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Impervious, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Landscape, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Movement, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Footprints, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

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Shadows, Of All of the Facts, and All of the Figures, BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, CAB, 2015. © Michael Pecirno.

Sources

USDA, USGS, NRCS, NASS, APFO, National Geospatial Center of Excellence, and the Prairie Research Institute.

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Contributor Bios

Contributor

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Michael Pecirno

Michael Pecirno is a London-based designer whose work focuses on storytelling through visual and built experiences. His work crosses the boundaries of traditional design disciplines in order to create enriched objects, spaces, and ideas. Pecirno has been an invited research fellow and scholarship recipient at multiple institutions, including the Architectural Association in London, and Archeworks School of Design in Chicago. His work and writing have been featured in Wired Magazine, Gizmodo, The Washington Post, and numerous other spaces and publications.