PLP Labs’ investigated the potential of smart city technologies to solve issues within our urban environments. For instance, the research tackled the ability of smart cities to reduce environmental footprints, make everyday life easier for citizens, or incorporate resilience against future crises. PLP Labs continues to undertake extensive research in the future of Smart Cities, exploring how new technologies might change the form and function of our built environment.
PLP Labs’ researched the future of smart buildings. The work explores how next generation technology can enable buildings to be more efficient, creative, sociable and healthier. This work supports and informs PLP’s designs for Yandex’s new headquarters which will be heavily smart-tech-enabled in order to help the company function as a world leader in the tech industry.
PLP Labs and one of Japan’s most established construction companies, developed concepts and strategies for cities that float on the ocean, known as Green Float. The project explores the ways for humans to live symbiotically with the natural world, creating a positive environmental impact rather than a negative or even neutral one. The research evaluated how different elements of the city can contribute to positive feedback, exploring new technologies, construction methods, and relationships.
PLP Labs co-authored a report published by Knight Frank, titled “The Senior Living Survey” which explores the current state and the future of later living from the perspective of designers, investors and seniors themselves. PLP’s research piece investigates the evolving needs of senior citizens, new technologies and typologies – and projects how these could unlock new potentials for the future of design for senior living property.
PLP Labs developed Genetic Form Mining (GFM), a multi-parameter digital tool that ‘mine’ the most optimal architectural form for a building within a given set of planning constraints. The tool primarily uses height and setback compliance checks to determine results. It is influenced by constraints such as daylight compensation, which prescribes minimum and maximum base heights, sky exposure planes, and permitted encroachments and recesses.
PLP Labs has been investigating what the future of the rapidly evolving workplace environment and determining how it can serve us better. The workplace is undergoing seismic shifts thanks to rapidly changing technology, outlooks on wellbeing and productivity, and most recently the unprecedented impact of the global health crisis. This research has been ongoing for a number of years and become a common thread of study during numerous projects.
PLP Labs’, with a team of in-house experts, explored AR & VR technology. These tools aid the design process and are useful for visualisation. For instance, digital tools enable more interactive consultation with teams and clients & new ways to design. Labs experimented with a variety of tools, from life-size 3D holographic on-site projection, holographic façade generators, to structural blueprint projecting in AR within the practice.
PLP Labs’ introduces a boundary-pushing new university in India, known as Krea University. The academic hub aims to better prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of 21st century life. The project is backed by many of the country’s leading businesspeople and philanthropists, looking to cultivate the next generation of problem solvers and innovators.
PLP Labs’ presents IUMO/H— an automated, underground public transit option. This single transit protocol can free transport from its current two-dimensional restrictions, rendering the street, rail or lift shaft obsolete. This will impact location, as well as the way we negotiate and experience the city, including the form of our buildings, the organisation of public realm and the way we conceive real estate. Labs investigated what our cities will look like when freed from this legacy infrastructure.
PLP Labs’ presents IUMO/V—a vertical mobility concept set to revolutionise how we move around buildings and ultimately, the structures themselves. Closer to a train than an elevator, IUMO/V consists of an external track on the outside of a building with a pod that enables the tracks to curve over and around the form of the building. The IUMO transport protocol technologies allow the system to intelligently group travellers as efficiently as possible, allowing for greater efficient vertical mobility.