Reti e strutture tensegrali nei sistemi urbani / Networks and tensegrity structures in urban systems

Smart cities topics, carried in these years by EU Horizon 2020 research programmes, have made researchers questioning about the aspect of future urban systems, and what instruments can be used to gradually arrive at them. Always more frequently, however, a smart city is intended as an intelligent way to make mobile phones communicate with the urban centre, providing the user a certain amount of information depending on the context in which he moves and acts. But what can happen if certain parts of the city itself are given “consciousness”, coming alive? The aim of this work is to present different scenarios in which, thanks to the use of responsive tensegrity systems, is possible to create a city network of micro infrastructures, capable of interacting with the surrounding environment. By using a series of distributed sensors, this system is also able to analyze city needs in real time, coordinating all the smart structures that constitute the nodes of the network. These “micro smart structures” do not have a fixed position, but can be arranged, when necessary, in specific slots along city streets or squares. These slots, providing power supply and structural support, are the physical nodes of the smart network of the city. Every time that a smart structure is inserted into a slot, it transmit its presence to the rest of the network, which conveniently rearranges itself. In this way, it can be imagined a new set of structures capable to interact with citizens, with traffic flow and with people’s movement. New frontiers can be constituted by sheltering against variable weather conditions and by enhancing surveillance and security for the city.