🗂️ PROJECT OVERVIEW
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 | The Virtual Gazaplatsen Lab is an attempt at exploring how COUNTER-CARTOGRAPHY can inform the way urban digital twins can be used to challenge normative, market-driven, and often anti-democratic approaches to urban digital twinning. The project does so by exploring different ways of mapping a specific site, Gazaplatsen encampment, over the course of the 192 days of its existence thanks to the joined efforts of Gothenburg University Students for Palestine, Social Justice Chalmers, and support from various local organizations. This wiki, serves as a sketchbook and a repository for the development of COUNTER-TWINNING PROTOTYPES. In it you will also find a non-exhaustive GAZAPLATSEN DATABASE of videos, images, events, 3D scans from Gazaplatsen, which were used in various ways over the course of this project. The project was developed by me, Hugo Pilate, in the context of my Design Masters thesis at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg University. The full thesis can be found here. → Project contact: hugopilate(at)gmail.com |
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📇 TIMELINE OF VIRTUAL GAZAPLATSEN LAB DEVELOPMENT
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| MAY / 2025 Thesis defense and demonstration of COUNTER-TWINNING PROTOTYPES at the final exhibit. The ONLINE MEMORIAL was also shown on May 15th 2025 when Gazaplatsen re-opened for a handful of days. |     |
| APRIL / 2025 organized a workshop where participants were tasked with writing postcards from the ONLINE MEMORIAL. |   |
| MARCH 2025 / PENULTIMATE PROJECT REVIEW First public display of the three counter-twin prototypes side by side. The INVESTIGATIVE SANDBOX was on the cart. |   |
| FEB 2025 / HDK VALAND STUDENTS FOR PALESTINE EXHIBIT I participated in a student-organized exhibit in which many banners and artefacts form Gazaplatsen as well as original artworks were displayed. This occasion was used to test the ONLINE MEMORIAL. |  |
| JAN 2025 / MIDPOINT PROJECT REVIEW Interactive lecture exploring how to bring video footage and 3D terrain of Vasaplatsen together to question “what is missing” from the representation. |  |
| DECEMBER 2024 / RISE PRESENTATION I spoke about the early stages of this project at RISE earlier in 2025. It’s around that time the project became 3 twins | |
| NOVEMBER 2024 / FIRST PROJECT REVIEW Ten days before the eviction of the camp, I shared my first explorations with mapping digitally and analog the Gazaplatsen encampment. | (1).jpg)  |
| OCTOBER 2024 / Early mapping explorations Made the call to combine my involvement with the camp with coursework. Early mappings with Taha. | .jpg) |