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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]…
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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]…
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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]…
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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]…
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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]…
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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]…
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I have heard much talk about kitchens and stores for the future, but as you will see, it is nice to see some prototypes. They actually give us something tangible to think about so we can begin to advance them, challenge them and seize upon great opportunity.
The two following videos explain how a future store and kitchen of the future can work together — integrating them toward a more seamless experience. If you watch both, you will get an idea as to what your own experience might be like if you were to live and use such environments.
Does Life Get Any Easier?
Although they are not exactly interactive, there is much that a user can control and specify. Additionally, due to RFID tags, many of the procedural steps that are necessary today may not be necessary in the future.
However, does life get any easier? I would say that it …[Read Full Article]…
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Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie
Image: wallyg | Flickr
An amazing artist is Piet Mondrian, who is known for painting Broadway Boogie Woogie. This painting is quite remarkable and one of its defining qualities is its ability to convey motion to its viewers. As if to deconstruct music, this painting makes use of color, pattern, geometry and sizing.
Consequently, Piet Mondrian has made an excellent and tangible example for us to better understand why we perceive motion when looking at his work. Much can be explained by delving into neuroscience.
Why We Perceive Motion in the Painting
In her book, Vision and Art
You see, the luminance in color plays a special role in …[Read Full Article]…
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How does your building behave? Does it engage in a performance? Does it communicate in some novel way? Things are becoming less static. With the proliferation of the internet, social media, new architectural technologies, improved construction methods and so on — it is good news that your architectural structures can perform anew (if you know how to design for this correctly).
When I speak about behavior and performance with regard to architectural design I am talking about an architecture that is transient — an architectural design that changes around the occupant.
Image: SNappa2006 |Flickr
Image: Mélisande* |Flickr
Take a look at the photos (left) and video (below) of the …[Read Full Article]…
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This video crossed my desk recently and I thought it would be fun to show you. Can you imagine a paint that you could apply to your building’s façade that would utilize the solar energy it collects to power the building itself? Researchers at the California Institute of Technology are working on just this.
Nanostructures would be engineered to capture sunlight in new ways to ultimately make solar electricity cheap. In turn, this would result in make solar energy more accessible to more people. Titanium oxide is a key ingredient that would make all of this possible.
Watch the video below to see …[Read Full Article]…
