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 interact with their construction documents in new ways, that are a bit more interactive and intuitive as they are tools that can be used to answer possible questions that may arise or to spot potential problems that may need to be solved in real time during meetings or client presentations.

By making construction documents link to more comprehensive building “models”, they become a bit more of an immersive experience that not only helps architects “see” their designs better, but also helps them to “explain” them better as other members of their design team, consulting team and client teams seek to more fully understand the implications of certain design decisions…thus, preventing future problems that may arise.

Image: campuspartycolombia | Flickr

When presenting, such an interactive table or screen application might help clients or other reviewers to feel more “in control” as they travel through a space — being able to question it in the places where they think it needs questioning. In turn, this helps by making them feel more confident if they like what they see and experience, all because this interface helps architects to better communicate their most complex of architectural visions.

Essentially, such new and interactive tools that can be used within both architectural working environments as well as architectural presentation environments are quite important to keep developing. For when designing a building, it helps when tools are optimized so that they help bridge the gap between architects, the unrealized building, and their clients — helping them to make smarter decisions more quickly, prevent future problems from arising during construction, and ensuring that the client sees and is confident that they are getting what they want and need. Needless to say, I do think that there will be a bright future for such multi touch architectural design and presentation interactive tools. So what you think? How could such an interactive tool help you with your architectural design process?

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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 their office trying to brainstorm, or a teacher with their students who are trying to learn.

Here is the video, so you can take a look:

In the end, occupants leave their thumbprint upon a building just as much as the building leaves their impression upon its occupants. Both occupant and building must work together in harmony, and I think that if occupants could better visualize through their senses, about how their interactions within a space are carrying out through a narrative — then for those key moments that need to be mirrored, a building may better be able to help them reach their intended goals. For, each occupant has a unique thumbprint, and each action they take will yield certain results, some of which may be too complex for them to visualize without some help.

So, it is time to give more meaning to the way building interaction designs help their occupants. The key is to find those unique moments within their daily narratives where it would help them to receive cues, visualizations and prompts — which could support them, teach them, inspire them, or even give them better options. So think about what your building might “say” to your occupants. What does it say to them? And when? But most importantly, …Why? What is the interaction’s purpose — from the occupant’s point of view. Give meaning to interactions, do not just make things move when occupants move, simply because they can. Make them something of meaningful value for your occupants.

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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 toward being a dynamic system which reacts to more subtle cues by pulling from a smarter variety of reaction types that relate to specific locations in the building, where a “reaction” might be needed most.

In essence, the building would sense surrounding movements of change, and be able to respond more effectively and efficiently. Of course, syncronisation would be a big part of making such a design successful.

I do think that an innovative building skin, even in the smallest of installations, can bring great value to the way buildings function and serve their occupants — for it can be a breakthrough that brings greater sensitivity to the way buildings and their installations sense.

In the following video, you will see examples of how researchers are developing such pressure sensitive electric skins, with visual examples of how they work.

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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 wired technologies which give them certain capabilities; but still, they ultimately depend mostly on occupant control points — where an occupant must either go to a control device to make changes (like with a temperature thermostat), or be notified via some type of an alarm system (like a security system which may or may not be “tied” to a centralized call center to get help).

However, I think that we can take things much further, so that building communication systems do more than simply react with one-off solutions. For instance, what if a building system could use it sensors to detect patterns in occupants’ daily activities by analyzing multiple building systems at once (they could cross-talk) and then correlate those patterns with particular goals which an occupant (or architect) has specified? In this case, a building with an optimized nervous system could make better sense of those patterns to more efficiently and effectively make environmental changes for that occupant (or group of occupants) in real time.

Thus, bridging the gap between sensors and their central communication channels within a building by making more systems wireless will allow for increased opportunity by which designers can embed their sensors strategically to obtain necessary cues that might make an adaptive building work closer to its optimal potential. And, as with most wireless technologies, there will come a certain amount of added freedom for both the architect and their building occupants — if designed well.

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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 showing that the idea of something being “tunable” is slowly becoming possible. Of course, the word “tunable” is really a catchall phrase that I am using to describe how an architectural feature can fluctuate between a spectrum of “positions” as can be chosen, either directly or indirectly, by the occupant in real-time. You see, heading in this direction will allow for more personalization and efficiency for both the occupant and the building. Plus, occupants are likely to experience heightened comfort as well.

In addition to a smart window, another architectural feature that I think would benefit from being “tunable” is interior lighting. By being able to choose between different lighting types within one fixture, an occupant might have more variability from which to choose, so they could get more appropriate lighting to meet their given task at any moment in time.

In short, such architectural transience would allow occupants to work and play in healthier conditions, and with greater building efficiency. “Tunability” is one small step toward an adaptive architecture which will be able to respond with not just “one-size-fits-all” kind of design solutions, but instead will be able to respond by selecting from the best choice of a wide spectrum of options that it can provide.

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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 data and respond according to what it deems might be helpful to that occupant’s habits, trying to assist them is a multitude of ways.

A Step Towards “Just-in-Time” Architectural Response

As an architect, how might you begin to go beyond simply recording your occupants information as they experience your design, to fully pulling and making sense of that information in a way that can help occupants at just the right time? For, if a building system can respond to an occupant’s needs at just the right moment (when they need it most), then that design has a great chance of positively impacting and uplifting their lifestyle for the better — helping them to live healthier, happier and with greater ease.

To give you a better idea of what I am talking about, take a look at the following video which shows Intel’s innovative approach called Oasis which takes a step in the right direction. Not only does it recognize objects and gestures, but it also turns a surface into a way of responding to an occupant and their behaviors. Take a look:

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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 some of the world’s biggest problems like poverty, homelessness and even hunger.

I have to say that much of what she says does make some sense. And I cannot help but think about how this can be translated into our discipline where architecture plays a role that is inevitably tied in some of the “world’s biggest problems” as mentioned above. In some ways, I think architects are doing well and that we are using virtual reality to literally design a better world — with digital media software and hardware that we use to make our design solutions a reality.

However, I cannot help but think what might happen if we also engage in some type of virtual gaming situation where there is a certain freedom by which we can explore and test our design ideas — ideas which might not be possible to build today because of either inadequate technology, inadequate budget or inadequate time availability. Within an architectural gaming environment, perhaps rules can be set that challenge us to solve collective problems found in many buildings around the globe, and not just that one on our drawing board. Also, in a gaming environment, we have the ability to pool a larger massing of design professionals to both challenge our solutions as we come up with them, and to help us in a team-like manner.

So, would this all make us better designers? Would we all collectively strive to design even more amazing solutions than what we are seeing today? And might that help us to advance and speed up the architectural evolutionary process? Give some of these questions some thought as you watch the video below by Jane McGonigal:

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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 immersive — bringing what was mostly only possible in virtual worlds into real-world space.

In real life, these illuminated light points in space are no longer solely “fixed” due to gravity, being tied to a suspending cable or other means. Instead, they can fly by hovering and acting almost like a flock of birds — giving you, as a designer, a new way to think about the lighting design of an architectural experience.

Additionally, by adding other factors like color, narrative, personalization and so on, I see that the research developments of Flyfire hold tremendous potential for architects that may want to integrate a high-tech interactive fabric to immerse occupants by appealing to their senses in some fresh and exciting ways. I can see that such a collection of “flying” lights might make occupants feel like they are swimming above water, traveling through a beautiful display assembled just for them, which perhaps you as a designer created by quite literally embedding rules by which to move those geometries around.

To take a closer look at how Flyfire works, simply watch the video below:

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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:

“Shimmer is an architectural product concept designed to facilitate well-being through surprise, movement, natural noise management, air movement and natural light dispersion.
The „stripes‟ are based on flexible elements that emit natural light and channel air. They can transform to change the interior characteristics of a space in response to people and the atmospheric/lighting conditions outside.
The elements of the system are a composite laminate consisting of a light diffusing material; air/vapor capillary system, flexible audio membrane and structural and decorative elements. Space is transformed as the „stripe‟ elements are flexed, changing the volume, affecting the airflow and the sound characteristics. The tension is altered by a system of cables connected to small motors with a gearbox, allowing natural light conditions to be transported from the outside into the interior space.”

The Convergence of Many Transient Designs Working Together

I would like to show you the following video as a source of great inspiration to get you thinking about what can be achieved by injecting kinetics into the equation by which you design. As you will see, a unification of the senses to improve lifestyle for people can help them not only live healthier but in greater harmony with each other and our planet.

In the video below, the visualizations for future designs include many interesting and different ideas, going beyond the Shimmer project I talked about earlier. As you watch it, try to imagine a world where many of these transient designs adapt to your occupants and other surrounding conditions and situations — where not only one kinetic installation makes all the difference, but the harmony and balance between multiple and layered kinetics working together is what really has the potential to bring the human standard of living to a much better level (while also being in greater harmony with the planet).

Here is the video entitled — Philips Design’s latest Design Probe “Metamorphosis”:

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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 innovative designs emerge into (and from) different regions and respective populations in the world.

What Stories Will Biomimicry Designs Tell?

As architects take on a renewed and forward-looking slant when turning to nature for inspiration, will this “attuned” architecture reflect its contextual surrounding geography and culture? After all, nature found in different parts of the world maintain different forms of life cycle processes and response systems; thus, giving architects a plethora of sources from which to design for more advanced architectural function and beauty.

In looking ahead, I can’t help but envision what Biomimicry and BioDigial Architecture can do for our architectural discipline. On the forefront, I can see that architecture will gain a renewed closeness with nature that it has never consciously had before. I also can see buildings that metaphorically embody a piece of nature (take the simple example of a flower), where an architect studies a particular process or response system from nature and then builds an architecture stemming from this nature inspired “seed”. Thus, a literal flower species can metaphorically plant its “seeds” within an architect’s vision — so then, a bioDigital building becomes a metaphorical flower offspring.

So yes, I do think the emergence of more bioDigital architecture will reflect the very nature which surrounds a building (or at least, the architect). Architectural clues like material, fabrication method and occupant lifestyle preference are already inherent to buildings around the world. Thus, a building is like a time capsule holding within it not just its occupants while it is functional within its own time, but also holding within it an “archeological-type” find that serves as a multi-dimensional “treasure map” telling a story to all those who “read” it long after its occupants are gone.

What story do you think buildings will tell once new technologies and scientific breakthroughs have had a chance to take full effect in architectural advances like Biomimic Design? Will buildings tell a deeper tale about what extinct species and types of nature existed before in a specific region of the world? Furthermore, what story will architecture built using nanotechnology, bioDigital algorithmic design and ubiquitous computing methods?

One thing is for sure, I do think that new biomimcry design methods will implant new layers of information — making the visionary buildings of today, gem-like seeds for tomorrow.

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© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman