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Image Credit: seier+seier | Flickr
Image Credit: seier+seier | Flickr
Building skin has the power to hide and protect while also serving to display and reveal. And in particular, building skin that is transient takes on the ability to do all of these things. For example, the Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen maintains a skin that uses screens which change their display dependent upon time of day and seasons. Such a versatile building skin makes for a building that is more adaptive — able to brighten dark days, and able to further “broadcast” inner productions.
Building skin must often accomplish so much, from energy efficiency to aesthetic appeal. And there is more that can be done. For instance, what happens when a building skin can appear and disappear in time? Suddenly, the interior becomes public as the building skin makes itself invisible. The building becomes chameleon-like, able to Read more
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Image Courtesy of: In Square Lab Ltd
There are many times when you are asked as an architect to design a building that harmonizes with its surrounding landscape — and as you make your attempt to not only harmonize, but to also integrate nature into your architectural design, you gain better appreciation for the surrounding context, community and even geography that brings forth the diversity of the native species. But now, with tools like augmented and virtual realities that are entering real world design, it is possible to incorporate nature in entirely new ways, where your architectural design can help to show its occupants nature as never before experienced.
A new project which takes a great step toward realizing this type of relationship between an architectural space and nature was created by the team at In Square Lab where their project called Urban Prairie is located within a relatively small physical space — but what it does with that small space is quite intriguing as it pushes the boundaries that define the relationship between architecture and nature, between inside and outside, and between the real and the virtual.
Image Courtesy of: In Square Lab Ltd
If you were walking down the street and encountered the Urban Prairie project, you would see “fields of grass” — where you, as a passerby, would engage and interact with physical grass that is equipped with sensors so as to create its movement as it sways in the imaginary wind — and this movement occurs in response to on-lookers that walk by or simply create motion with their body, thus activating the sensors and actuators that make up this interactive design installation.
Furthermore, the placement of the “real world” grass in motion in front of the “virtual world” grass (as seen in the monitors) which fades off into the horizon, takes participants into Read more
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Image: luisvilla | Flickr
When you walk through a building like a mall or an airport where there is a lot of signage, and often much of that signage is advertising, you might either feel somewhat interrupted as you travel to your destination, or you might feel helped by finding a “just-in-time” building directory, pertinent advertising or other relevant piece of information that you can use. Such wayfinding can exist at many scales…from being located within a building to being displayed prominently on a street as a billboard. And today, such signage is getting a facelift not only to become more digital, but to be more interactive — which is bringing with it a new kind of personalization for those passersby.
Of course, such interactive signage in the form of advertisements was taken to one extreme in movies like Minority Report. And while, on one hand, that brings with it all kinds of issues about what that kind of interactivity (where public advertisements appear personalized to you as you walk down the street) might do to privacy (as has been shown to be a concern by many people), there are some practical applications today which can be extracted from those Minority Report portrayals. And these can serve to improve not only the aesthetics of building signage, but also the usefulness and helpfulness of the information which appears on that signage.
Making wayfinding a better experience includes tackling issues that deal with timing, understanding the demographics of those that will experience that signage and a designer having a more intimate understanding of how people perceive, process, and respond. While more interactivity is emerging on the façades of commercial buildings, it becomes evermore important for designers to take a look at how such signage can better Read more
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Visualization of a hand in motion during a conversation
Image: jeanbaptisteparis | Flickr
Motion sensors are already all around us, they exist in certain appliances, mobile phones and even within your car — but what if nanotechnology and the miniaturization of these sensors down to the nano scale could have profound impact on the buildings in which we live?
With nanotechnology, development is in the works to make sensors 100 times more sensitive than sensors we have today. Here is a quote explaining this remarkable feat:
“Able to “feel” and sense the movement of individual atoms, the researchers’ new MEMS sensing device uses small carbon tubes, nano in size — about one-billionth of a meter long. Creating these tiny tubes using a process involving methane gas and a furnace, Prof. Hanein has developed a method whereby they arrange themselves on a surface of a silicon chip to accurately sense tiny movements and changes in gravity.”
- from phsorg.com, A More Sensitive Senor Using Nano-sized Carbon Tubes
The question now becomes, how can you as an architect make use of such significant advances in order to improve and uplift the lives of your occupant? And yes, I do believe that uplifting the lives of your occupants should be a primary focus for your work as an architect. Nevertheless, it is time to think outside of the box.
Where Would You Embed a Nano Motion Sensor?
Since MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) will be not only more sensitive, but also a lot smaller, your designs can make use of their ability to sense very slight motion. For instance, with architectural kinetic installations, perhaps your components which are in motion could respond to Read more
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Image: rootoftwo | Flickr
Image: rootoftwo | Flickr
Adaptive Design:
The Dialogue Between Building and Occupant
Adaptive architecture will embody behaviors that respond to human and environmental interactions. It is with this transience that architectural space will more fully interact — or “converse” with its occupants, in grand part due to converging architectural technology.
With adaptive design, architecture will take on “motion” in new ways. A new type of “dialogue” between a building and its user will ask new things of its occupants, while feeding back dynamic and real-time sensorial stimuli.
Instead of having somewhat truncated conversations as you can experience with present-day interactive installations, the adaptive architecture of tomorrow will be able to engage in a dialogue where “feedback from the environment” takes on new meanings.
Today’s Sneak-Peeks
In their book entitled Interactive Architecture
Clearly showing how it will be possible to “construct” adaptive design spaces, they explain how “miniature robots, new material compositions, molecular geometries, robotic prototyping, atypical geometries and shape shifting-architectures” will have a profound effect on Read more
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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 more
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In this video you will see an innovation called SuperCilla skin. This is an interactive and haptic building skin that serves as an energy source due to the movement of its small members. As you watch, imagine how the uses of this skin could vary greatly depending on the scale of the object around which this skin is wrapped. A small object with SuperCilla skin could move itself across the floor, while an object like a building could use this skin for an array of aesthetic, functional and sustainable needs. Also, it is interesting to imagine how our haptic interactions might affect such a design installation.
VIDEO REVIEW
SuperCilla Skin is described as an “array of magnetically actuated transducers that can record and playback physical motion”. This type of skin can be wrapped around any shaped object. It can be applied to many scales such as to a large building. In addition, SuperCilla skin is also a Read more
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In this video, Brian Blosser (a student from Georgia Tech) demonstrates his project entitled “Lost in the Bell Tower”. You will see his exploration about the merger between interactive sound and space. Just imagine what this type of technology might mean for those interactive environments where occupants can “play” with an entire space – beyond the traditional free-standing installations.
VIDEO REVIEW
Brian Blosser explores issues of spatialization where users can move sounds around them throughout an entire space. You can see in Blosser’s demonstration that 9 sound objects (represented by 9 circles) each represent a specific bell tone. As a user moves an active circle/bell tone object, the bell actually sounds like it is moving around in space. The medley of all 9 bell objects moving in space results in Read more
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The “Sixth Sense” is an MIT Media Lab project currently in development. I thought it would be good to show you this video so you can understand how ubiquitous computing is developing and then think of the various ways that architecture can make use of such emerging technologies. Projects like the “Sixth Sense” will greatly affect our daily lives, and architecture is in a prime spot to make the most of such innovations.
So, without further ado – here is the video:
VIDEO REVIEW
The “Sixth Sense” is a project that brings easily accessible and relevant meta information to people as they go about their daily lives. With its seamless functionality, this technology strives to help people make better decisions in real-time.
It is amazing to hear Pattie Maes explain Read more
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Image: Markbeckwi... | Dreamstime
Sensory devices are being embedded in architecture to create interactive designs. Such ubiquitous computing arrangements will eventually propagate through our homes, offices and other building types. What remains fascinating is the advent when such architectural spaces will use technology to learn from its own experience. Already, robots are being designed to do just that. Let me explain…
In a Scientific American article entitled Can Robots Be Programmed to Learn from Their Own Experience, the author describes how Read more
