Copyright©ONE MILLIONth TOWER
We can often blame the web documentaries for an imbalance between substance and form. This imbalance can be usually pictured as follows: on one side a glut of content coupled with virtually no interaction on the other an object full of “Wow” effects but coupled with a skinny content. Well, the least that we can say is that this latter production from Canada, named “ONE TOWER Millionth” by Katerina Cizek, Mike Robbins + friends escaped from these pitfalls. Even better this web documentary succeeds to create a well-balanced creation between an innovative technology, based on HTML5 and WebGL and the issues that are tackle by the authors.
The purpose is simple, the increasing urbanization of humanity, has produced architectural monstrosities, towers that are almost impossible to rehabilitate. As a starting point, “ONE MILLIONth TOWER” ask a simple question: Why the people who live in these towers haven’t been asked so far to make proposals for solutions and improvements?
This is where the webdoc plunges us into a sweet utopia within the magical collaboration between architects, residents and the project’s designers. Therefore, the project flourishes literally and figuratively into gardens, game areas… all kind of improvements that were not thought before.
It is a way quite innovative and creative approach to issues affecting all major global cities. The experiment was conducted in the GTA, but it could be completely carried out elsewhere.
Far from these urbanistic teaching explained in this webdoc, in 3WDOC, we see also two major technological lessons for the future of HTML 5. What are they?
One of the lessons is far beyond the scope of what webdoc, the other is intimately linked to the achievement of this “interactive documentary experiment” as the authors called it.
Presentation of the project ONE MILLIONth TOWER
ABOUT ONE MILLIONth TOWER
The highrise re-imagined.
One Millionth Tower re-imagines a universal thread of our global urban fabric — the dilapidated highrise neighbourhood. More than one billion of us live in vertical homes, most of which are falling into disrepair. Highrise residents, together with architects, re-envision their vertical neighbourhood, and animators and web programmers bring their sketches to life in this documentary for the contemporary web browser.
The result of this unique collaboration is a lush visual story unfolding in a 3D virtual environment. Visitors explore how participatory urban design can transform spaces, places and minds.
One Millionth Tower is “hyper-local” documentary. It’s hyper-local because it’s grounded in a particular community — a highrise on Kipling Avenue in suburban Toronto, Canada — where the HIGHRISE team has worked with residents for over two years. The project is a concrete result of a community collaboration between residents, architects, documentarians and animators to re-imagine the particular spaces around these particular highrises.
Yet it’s hyper-lobal, because so many of the hallmark problems that these residents face are found in highrise communities around the globe: deteriorating buildings; physical and cultural separation from the downtown core; poor access to social services and commerce; poor public transit and long-distance commutes, resulting in a reliance on cars and long travel times; little or no community play space for children; as well as no community space and fabric between the residential buildings themselves. One Millionth Tower suggests these problems can be solved — it just takes some imagination.
Additional Features include:
a behind-the-scenes documentary about the collaborative process
a short documentary featuring international examples of tower revitalization
a short documentary exploring the open technology used to create the project
and a spectacular interactive feature that takes you to highrise neighbourhoods in more than 200 countries in the world, thanks to Google Streetview and satellite imagery. It’s based on our own original research to find and understand highrise communities around the globe.
One Millionth Tower is a story with global implications about how, with the power of imagination, we can transform the urban and virtual spaces that belong to all of us.One Millionth Tower is one of the world’s first HTML5/webGL documentaries.
Toronto, Canada
