The “Beyond Data” joint workshop, co-hosted by the Data and Intelligence Innovation Design Institute (DIID), Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University and the MIT Senseable City Laboratory(MIT SCL), explored how design thinking uncover the narrative potential and cultural meaning embedded in scientific data, opening new pathways for research outcomes to reach the public through science communication and knowledge dissemination.
Bringing together faculty and students from Politecnico di Milano, as well as Tsinghua’s Academy of Arts & Design, Department of Earth System Science, School of Architecture, and Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, the workshop fostered cross-disciplinary collaboration around five key topics. Participants were guided to leap from rational data analysis to visual-artistic expression, cultivating an innovative mindset at the intersection of data, art, and design.
Opening-up Lecture
On October 10, Dr. Fabio Duarte, Associate Director of Senseable City Lab, delivered the opening-up lecture titled “How to Tell a Good Scientific Story of the City?” He discussed how design thinking plays a crucial role in balancing the triad of scientific precision, narrative impact, and communicative clarity.
Dr. Duarte compared a scientific paper to a detective novel, both require a coherent narrative structure, a central tension, and a systematic investigation that leads to resolution. He further emphasized that the key to compelling urban research storytelling lies in identifying the unique core of a study and transforming its broader social implications into clear and purposeful communication goals.
Workshop Overview
Held over five days, the workshop brought together 19 students from China, Italy, Brazil, Vietnam, and Romania, representing diverse disciplines such as interaction design, interior design, landscape architecture, urban planning, and architecture.
The teaching team included Professor Wu Qiong, Postdoctoral Fellow Yao Yanhua, and PhD Candidate Xiao Lanxi from Tsinghua, alongside Associate Director Fabio Duarte, and Research Fellow Zhang Jingrong, and Dong Yinan from MIT SCL. The program featured data and case studies, group tutorial, and one-on-one supervision, culminating in a public review session held on October 14 at the Tsinghua University-Tsingshang Joint Institute for Smart Scene Innovation Design.
Students from different linguistic, cultural, and academic backgrounds are required to collaborate as a team to explore universal design languages based on raw data, and to create pathways and tools for “storytelling.” The workshop is organized around five thematic directions, which include climate change and health, spatial typology, informal settlements in Brazil, urban green spaces, and insect ecological diversity. The types of data used include images, road networks, street views, point clouds, and form data. Within a limited timeframe, each group needs to quickly interpret the data and transform it into visual forms, thus combining artistic expression with rational analysis for the representation of scientific knowledge.
The aim of the workshop is to promote interdisciplinary integration and innovation through design practice. In their final outcomes, the groups demonstrated unique perspectives and solutions, fully reflecting the innovative potential of cultural diversity and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Design Outcomes
Heat & Health
Rising heat, shifting lives the pulse of cities and the bodies within them.
Our project explores the impact of rising heat on human health in Chinese cities, highlighting a chain of climate change-driven consequences. Increased heat disrupts sleep, reduces physical activity, and strains immunity, escalating the risk of diseases and heat-related deaths. We conceptualize cities as living cells, with heat driving all processes. Excessive heat “sickens” the cell, affecting health and the environment.
Team Member
Catharina Dias Gao Bingjie Vasile Oanta Yin Shuzi Zhang Ziyu
To communicate this, we propose three outcomes: an interactive timeline showing each city’s evolution, a bubble shooter game demonstrating the impact of sustainable vs. harmful choices, and an art installation with arcs representing heat-related effects. These elements create an immersive experience, encouraging understanding and action toward sustainable solutions.
Outcomes
China Topology
a tale of two mega-cities
This project explores the morphological and infrastructural evolution of China’s two largest metropolises, Beijing and Shanghai, through a data-driven comparative lens. By integrating multi-temporal datasets of road networks, population density, and spatial development patterns from 1975 to 2025, the study constructs a unified urban topology model revealing the co-evolution of mobility structure and demographic distribution.
Using metrics such as edge length, node density, and orientation entropy, the analysis uncovers both convergence and divergence in their urban growth dynamics. The results demonstrate that while Beijing and Shanghai exhibit comparable total network expansion and population growth rates, their spatial logics differ: Beijing displays a polycentric diffusion, whereas Shanghai maintains a radial-grid hybrid structure.
Team Member
Li Dong Xiao Xingyu Cui Zongyang Dong Yan
Outcomes
This work not only provides a quantitative narrative of urban transformation but also contributes methodological insights for cross-city typology, sustainable urban planning, and data-informed design at the interface of architecture, engineering, and computation.
BRISA+
An Urban Wind Corridor Initiative Tool：THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
In global cities, densely populated informal communities face challenges of overcrowded buildings and poor air circulation, which negatively impact residents' health and comfort, while also increasing the risk of airborne diseases. The question arises: How can we improve air circulation in informal settlements with minimal disruption?
Team Member
Chen Lu Wang Jing Quoc Binh Trinh
Brisa+ was designed as an interactive interface system to address this issue. It simulates various building layouts and vegetation arrangements, visually demonstrating their effects on the community environment.
The system has been successfully applied in Favela do Vidigal, Brazil, where users can explore the wind dynamics within the community and understand how small spatial interventions, such as creating ventilation corridors, adding green spaces, or adjusting building heights, can significantly improve air circulation.
Inspired by the “Butterfly Effect,” Brisa+ illustrates how minor design changes can lead to major improvements. Through this project, we aim to provide innovative solutions for urban environmental optimization and sustainable development via an interactive approach.
Re-Leaf
The Shape of Shade
The shape of shade delves into how the distribution of shadows on Manhattan’s Upper West Side shapes the urban experience, particularly how individuals navigate and interact with their environment.
Team Member
Francesca Pozzi Xiao Wenli Leonardo Galli Gilioli Liu Xiaoyi
Through a visual exploration of tree and building shadows along Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, this project illustrates how these shadows influence the way people experience and move through the city. Tree shade offers a dynamic, calming refuge with its cooling, flowing shadows that invite pedestrians to linger, creating a sensory experience that connects them with nature in an otherwise concrete jungle.
In contrast, the dense, static shadows of buildings provide shelter but lack the comfort and movement of trees. The project shows how these differences can shape personal choices: on a sunny day, some might choose a shaded street based purely on the visual and emotional comfort it provides. This exploration goes beyond urban design, it’s about the human connection to space. By comparing the shifting patterns of shadow over time, we highlight how simple elements like shade can transform urban streets into places that nurture, calm, and engage city dwellers.
Ultimately, this project advocates for cities that prioritize spaces where people not only live but feel cared for and supported.
Sensitive Garden
How the diversity of plants keeps the insect world alive.
Sensitive Garden was conceived to make invisible relationships visible, connections that are known but imperceptible, complex dynamics, and ecological orders altered by climate change.
The research examines how the value of plant presence has changed over time and how these shifts impact the insect ecosystem, revealing their deep interdependence. As plant diversity increases, plants accumulate more carbon and less nitrogen, raising the C:N ratio and reducing food quality. However, this diversity also creates new food sources and habitats, supporting a greater number of insects and decomposers. This results in a more active and resilient ecosystem, with enhanced herbivory and accelerated decomposition.
Team Member
Edyes Pitrolo Giusy Catania Marija Kuzevska
Outcome
Through the video, we aimed to go beyond scientific data, using abstract visual and sonic languages to express the flow of energy, communication, and transformation that connects all living elements.
The ultimate goal of Sensitive Garden is to raise awareness of the fragile balance within ecosystems, inviting viewers to recognize the invisible network of relationships sustaining life and to reflect on how climate change is reshaping these delicate connections.
