New interactive tools are surfacing to help architects do their job better. One such tool is a multi touch 3-D architectural application which can be used as both an interactive table device and a larger scale screen projection. While I can see such devices being helpful to architects for brainstorming, project reviews, coordination meetings, and client presentations, we really should ask — is this just another “cool” device? Or, does it really help architects like you to do your job better?

Before we go on to talk further about the application technology, I think it best to show you a glimpse of what such multi-touch devices can do:

As you can see, 3-D visualizations are developing past solely working with still renderings or even scripted and locked in place animations — which today mostly run as “replays” of camera movements that serve to walk someone through a space along a predesignated path. But what makes these new multi touch virtual reality environments even more helpful is that they give architects the ability to Read more

Image: Samuel Mann | Flickr

Sometimes it might be hard for occupants to really visualize their actions as they execute them. While not all actions need to be visualized, there are some interactions that could very well help occupants if they could better understand them as they occur. So, what in built environments could provide occupants with such insight, so as to give them real-time feedback on the key actions which they take? Could visualizations like these help them to live healthier? Be more productive? Have more fun? Learn better? Heal better?

In the following video, you will see a person simply moving through a space, and as they move, their actions are having some effect on a nearby interactive wall where there is an entire world of dynamic graphics composed to mirror their walking style. What is within this video is conceptually quite a simple premise. Yet, you can take some of the ideas within it to new heights, as you begin to interchange walking for other key occupant actions that may need to be mirrored — like someone working in Read more

Image: treehouse1977 | Flickr

Within architectural design, the notion of “building surface” and “building skin” are increasing in importance and are, thus, becoming elements which you as an architect can leverage to bring greater sensitivity to your built environments.

In fact, research is underway to develop new electric skins that are so pressure sensitive to touch that they are actually rivaling, and surpassing, human skin’s sensitivity to touch. And by using such pressure-sensitive electric skin in architecture, more meaningful ways for occupants to interact are likely to arise, where building installations become increasingly in tune with not only occupants’ needs, but also with the dynamic fluctuations of the environment which surrounds the building. Hence, building skin could serve as a bridge, sensing the touch “frequencies” between both occupants and the surrounding environment.

What Can a Building Do with Skin Data?

As more sensitive skin and installations become part of a larger architectural dynamic system, it brings with it greater ability to sense even the most subtle fluctuations in the environment, like wind, water or debris. And how might a building benefit by increasing its level of sensitivity to pressure in this manner? Well, it would move Read more

Image: midnightcomm | Flickr

As current buildings make their way toward becoming interactive architectural environments that increasingly gain capabilities to adapt, you can begin to imagine how that kind of building’s communication system will act like a “nervous system” that travels throughout the building infrastructure. But you may ask yourself, just how might this “wiring” take place? And how can we prevent that communication infrastructure from being redundant both in the labor it takes to build, and in its ability to sync with dispersed sensors throughout the building.

According to the article entitled Turning HVAC into RFID, HVAC ducts are a very useful way to create a building wide antenna that can serve to help process incoming information from RFID antenna sensor networks that control various systems within a building. What this all means is that most of a building’s nervous system can go from being wired, to being wireless.

As was pointed out in the article, we have many systems within a building that work from sensors, including temperature control, fire and security systems. And while such wireless communication may prove to work very well for certain building needs, it may not quite work as well for others. But just as with any new technological ideas, there will be limitations and challenges. However, finding ways to make communication more efficient within smart buildings, is a step in the right direction.

Adding Functionality by Enhancing Your Building’s “Nervous System”

Today many buildings are rather static, depending on their own occupants to make them “operable” by physically adjusting so many of their components. Yes, buildings today have an array of Read more

Image: Verino77 | Flickr

New technologies are emerging like smart windows that are not only making it more energy efficient and cheaper for occupants to run their smart building systems during different seasons of the year, but are providing a way to make occupants feel more comfortable as well.

There is a new smart window on the market which is described as “tunable” in that it would give people a way to control how much light and heat come in through that window. The key here is that the smart window allows for occupants to make light and heat adjustments independently from each other. So for example, an occupant would be able to let heat in while simultaneously blocking out the light. This might be good in winter months, for example. (For more of a description about how these new smart windows work, you can check out the Technology Review article here.)

What Will Make “Tunable” Design Elements Desirable?

Such new smart windows are a good sign because they are Read more

Image: samuelbausson | Flickr

Buildings are much more than a surrounding envelope which merely exists in a state separated from its occupants and their objects and tools. Instead, buildings are part of the landscape which helps occupants to live better. And now, with more sensory technologies, architecture can connect anew with occupants to greatly uplift their lifestyle… through their objects and tools that they use everyday.

Much of this is done by making interactive surface design within your building highly effective.

Many times, people think of sensing technologies within architecture as a way for the building to pick up all kinds of cues from just the occupants, but that is only one part of how a building can read or interpret the language and context of what is happening within it. In fact, a key way for a building’s systems to engage with occupant behaviors is by sensing cues from an occupant’s objects — like a bottle of medicine that might need to be refilled or random food from the kitchen that might be calling for a good recipe so it doesn’t go to waste.

Such is the challenge being worked on by Intel when developing Oasis, an interactive surface design technology that can be used in many places throughout a home, or for any building type should the need arise. Really, it can work on a simple premise: as objects and their respective movements occur, sensory technologies gather Read more

Image: Tor Lindstrand | Flickr
The use of different game engines to explore interfaces between gaming and the production of space.
--- by Tor LIndstrand (Production of Architecture)

I think it is interesting for you as an architect to take a look at another dimension of something you use everyday — the computer. More specifically, think of how you typically work to design your own visualizations of a building design for the future.

Perhaps you start with real world challenges and work backwards from them to come up with your masterpiece. But what if, instead, you could just have a “design playground” of sorts, in which to hone your design skills and let your problem solving skills sharpen — without the constant constraints from your typical “real-world” way of working. What if you could engage in an “architectural gaming environment”?

In an interesting talk given by Jane McGonigal, entitled Gaming Can Make a Better World, she shares the idea that so many people are gaming today, and so many more will be gaming in the future, that it only stands to our benefit to capitalize upon this tremendous resource which is building exponentially right now. In the video below, you will hear how she describes the unique qualities that gamers have (like the ability to get up and try again when attempts don’t work, coupled with their “tight-knit social fabric” which can give them a collective edge).

In the video, McGonigal states that gamers actually are a resource with untapped potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. And since gamers have certain innate qualities that are developed and honed over so much time spent gaming, they develop certain characteristics or qualities that make them an invaluable resource to help with Read more

Image: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ | Flickr

The work going on over at the SENSEable City Lab at MIT will really make you think. You might start by simply asking yourself what would happen if little omni lights (think stars in the sky, but much much closer) could move around responsively and dynamically through space — and move transiently in coordination with one another. Well, this direction is what the group over at MIT is working on right now — and their project is called Flyfire.

You may already know what can happen when you start with just one pixel-like point when working with computers to design architecture in programs like AutoCAD or 3D Studio Max. But, what will happen when when that pixel-like point becomes more of an omni light in real life— a three-dimensional point in space that has the ability to harmonize with others of its own type?

For starters, these little hovering lights can be orchestrated to yield not only two-dimensional displays that light up in a rainbow of colors, but can further align themselves into three-dimensional free-forms or sculptures. It kind of gets one thinking about what might happen, from an experiental point of view, if people could literally walk-through light displays, where architectural boundaries become not only transient, but also Read more

With the redefinition of flexible space into what is now being called kinetic architecture, you as an architect need to go beyond movement to really think about what growth, expansion and contraction has the power to do. Furthermore, we can begin to bring forward what it might mean for architectural design when we think about a folding space — space transiently reconfigured through variation.

It is time to revisit walls, by really looking at them in section, and understanding how easily walls can turn into the ceilings, floors and transient windows. For this reason, I love the following image which shows you very clearly one way in which an architectural product called Metamorphosis Shimmer (by Philips Design) can make a simple, elegant and multifaceted design for kinetic architecture.

Image: centralasian | Flickr

Here is what Philips Design says when describing their Metamorphosis Shimmer product: Read more

Image: Eduardo Deboni | Flickr

Yes, findings stemming from the worlds of science and technology are painting a new era that we are already beginning.

When cutting-edge paradigm-shifts occur, like new perspectives on nature that make methods like Biomimicry and BioDigital Architecture possible, I still wonder how these, combined with other factors like culture, globalization, personal preferences, lifestyle trends and geographic land characteristics will impact what we, as architectural visionaries, paint for the future.

Well, the future is happening now and as different cultures help to mold, embrace and even reject what design visionaries bring forward, I find it fascinating to uncover how Read more