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 Rolling Bridge in London, England. You can see that the designers, Heatherwick Studio, thought about how this design morphs with its transient form. Starting off as a bridge and curling into an octagon, this bridge definitely gives a performance.

FROM PERFORMANCE TO BEHAVIOR

To design for an architectural performance, it may help you to think of how directors compose a film or how authors write a narrative. Both have beginnings, climaxes and finales. Both can have plot twists, subplots or even play with time.

As emerging architectural technologies surface, there will be more leeway for you to design interactive structures that are not as limited to a static existence.

This way of designing takes a particular type of mindset shift — you know your occupants behave and perform within architecture, so now you need to think of how architecture can perform to behave with and around those occupants.

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© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman