When You Think of “Skin”…What’s the First Thing You Think Of?

Have you ever compared building skin to human skin? Well, with new developments like nanotechnology, smart materials and ubiquitous computing the time is ripe to revisit the inner-workings of the human body’s largest organ. After all, there is much to learn by taking a closer look at what lies beneath its surface — particularly as it relates to architecture.

What do you typically think of when you think of “building skin”? Does it primarily function to keep the exterior outside and the interior inside? Or do you use it to bring the outside in within certain parts like windows, ducts and doors? Perhaps you have a more avant-garde way of working with “skin” — using it as part of your architectural language that allows your building to communicate with both its interior and exterior at the same time.

Wherever you may be in your ideas and way of designing building skin, I’m sure that the human skin can help to reinforce and spark new ideas for your architectural designs. You might be surprised to discover that there are many similarities between these two “skins”, and in essence, they are both there to protect and to communicate.

Can Human Skin Inspire Your Designs?

For starters, I want to show you this simple video that clearly shows how the human skin operates physiologically. Now is a good time to watch this sneak peek:

Notice any similarities between what human skin needs to do and …[Read Full Article]…

Today, the spectrum between a part and its subparts can be vast and rather static, yet already, there are prototypes for architectural systems that can adapt to triggers to self-perpetuate their own form — and blur the boundaries between where their sub-parts begin and end. Such is the character of adaptive design.

As adaptive architecture evolves, systems will become more seamless and their behaviors will stream more fluidly. The idea of nesting, fusing and embedding behaviors into a design’s systems and sub-systems will require that you consider the in-between states of your form — slowing down real-time behavioral movements and speeding up that which appears to be standing still.

Of course, if you don’t have it already, this all will require a mindset shift from you, the designer; thus, calling upon you to think of …[Read Full Article]…

An amazing new prototype called Siftables, developed at the MIT media Lab, merges the worlds of digital media and physical interfaces. The main idea behind them is to get virtual information into your hands (literally) by using a “block-like” natural interface that transcends beyond our prototypical mouse and keyboards. Siftables are designed to be more in tune with the way we actually navigate through the world.

Each Siftable is about the size of a “cookie” that works and feels like you are, in fact, playing with toy blocks. Each block can sense the others as they are moved around and tilted by their user. Essentially, this allows for a type of collaboration between the Siftables so they can work individually and together within their group’s system.

To see Siftables for yourself, simply watch the following video and imagine how …[Read Full Article]…

Full scale architectural kinetic forms can appear to almost take off, float or flex in the most unexpected and beautiful ways.

Thus, it is no surprise that as an architect, you can use kinetic design to manipulate form in time, to give you a certain freedom to inspire and reconnect your building occupant with their surrounding space.

Kinetic form can do so much for your design when used in just the right ways. To get you thinking creatively about kinetics you can see the following video of a prize-winning art installation, where simple metal balls rise and fall smoothly and in a mesmerizing fashion.

To see for yourself, watch this video (It gets even more creative after the 1st minute.) …[Read Full Article]…

Does More Choice Yield Better Customization?

“Design on Demand” is becoming ever-more prevalent. With its surfacing, you and your client will be given more, and sometimes new, choice. Such customization is bound to change certain aspects of architectural design, perhaps even helping you to make your design better.

If you think about it, more customization is good when its quality and speed are high, and cost is acceptable. Since spaces would become more flexible, there would be greater variety with which to meet the needs of your occupant (particularly for those detailed levels of your building design). Thus, the added personalization would be a great way to boost happiness, health and productivity in individuals.

Corporate Culture: Paying Attention To Your Employees’ Differences

When it comes to building climate, and I mean business cultural climate here, it will be interesting to see how “Design on Demand” impacts employees. Culturally speaking, businesses could actually foster an environment where employees are encouraged to …[Read Full Article]…

E-Static Shadows — Making the Intangible…Tangible

Do you think architecture can make you connect with your own static energy? Well, the project E-Static Shadows found a way to do just that. In the video below, you will see how designers have taken a cross-disciplinary approach — ranging from Jackson Tan of Square Lab, to Prof. Zane Burzina from Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee and all the way to an international panel of researchers ranging from a NASA scientist in the United States to a material scientist based in London.

When watching users engage with this project, their behavior is quite different from the behaviors you typically see relating to most other interactive designs. With E-Static Shadows users move their bodies in more peculiar ways as they try to “feel” and “create” those charges that will activate this unique design.

Fusing Textile Practices with Technology

This experimental research project merges unique ways of thinking between both textile practices and more state-of-the-art technologies. It is great to see a pushing of the boundaries in this way. Seeing static energy in motion, and in real-time, should inspire other designers to …[Read Full Article]…

Designs are increasingly inspired by nature in novel and unique ways — inspiring not only architectural buildings, but also the objects within them. “Science inspired designs” are sparking some very innovative and practical solutions. Mathieu Lehanneur is just such a designer who, in the video at the bottom of this post, discusses some of his intriguing design ideas and projects.

Deeply inspired by science and investigations about human beings, including both the way they work and feel, Mathieu Lehanneur looks at issues like noise, living objects for medical treatments, air quality and healthy living.

Lehanneur’s Take on “Living Objects”

For example, in his “living objects” project, Lehanneur uses inspiration from an onion, utilizing its layer structure to help patients visualize their treatment, its duration, and what motivates them. Such “living object” projects are great for individuals, and especially children because they increase the relationship and dependency between the patient and their treatment. Thus, ensuring that they will complete their treatment and have longer-term healing and health benefits.

A “Brain-Stimulating” Office

The brain stimulating office is an interesting approach to the mind-body problem. This common “problem” is a place where architects and designers strive to create balanced environments that are good for occupants by tapping into many of their senses. Although not everything in his design may be the most obvious now, it is still nice to see …[Read Full Article]…

Nature and technology are often thought of in separate terms. Sometimes you see the two juxtaposed, but in more and more buildings today your are now seeing them work side-by-side, feeding into one another’s space — not struggling against each other, but working well together. This is the power of building green by using technology.

In the project called Vertical Eco-Cibernetic City, by Orlando De Urrutia, you can see all of this. This building, inspired by the base of a tree (which extends to look for light from above) is designed as an “alive machine”. The designer’s intent is to create building systems which are self-sufficient and bio-climatic. In short, this design takes advantage of the many aspects of nature and feeds them into the building, creating quite an amazing architectural display.

Putting Architectural Technology to Good Use

An instance of what I am talking about can be seen in this building’s skin, which uses nanotechnology through geometric façade patterns. Such a skin takes advantage of light and shade while also incorporating “vegetal panels”.

Technology is also incorporated into the building through communication networks, which can be seen …[Read Full Article]…

Many of the materials that we use in architecture today are rather static. For this reason, some buildings and even cities suffer. Venice, for instance, is sinking. The good news; however, is that people like Rachel Armstrong are coming up with new and innovative solutions — like architecture constructed from living systems.

Armstrong is working on metabolic materials for architecture. She is in the process of uncovering how nature operates so that, as architects, we can begin to solve design problems from the bottom-up. Instead of imposing structure upon matter (which she claims is the old approach), we can begin to use materials that actually can grow, self repair, and respond to environmental changes.

By studying such living systems, like cells, Rachel Armstrong is finding answers so that we can use metabolic materials within our built forms. She notes that, in the future, people will not be able to tell whether certain built forms have been …[Read Full Article]…

Interesting ideas are cropping up concerning how bedrooms of the future might look and feel. Certain design strategies target residential applications while others target accommodations away from home. Many of the ideas can be used in both scenarios.

So, a key emphasis of bedroom design has typically been for sleeping. The “bed” is central to what makes a good “bed-room” in applications like hotels, hospitals and homes. Sleeping in your bed is important – as it can help you heal, rest, de-stress and so on. It seems efforts to revamp bedrooms largely focus on what can be done to make this “heart” of the room optimal.

Bedroom Designs for the Future

So you have some basis for what I am talking about, here is a peak at a few prototypes for just such applications. …[Read Full Article]…