Archive for May, 2005
The Bix Website
In 2003 Peter Cook (co-founder of Archigram) and Colin Fourner (Professor of the Bartlett School of Architecture) used a low-res application of programmable skin technology called BIX to bring to life the Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria , a venue for multi-disciplinary exhibitions. The skin wrapped around the entire body of the building displaying constantly changing images designed by artist and curators. ‘BIX enables the institution to present a transparency of information and content and to further develop methods for dynamic communication between buildings and their surroundings, between internal content and outside perception.’ The structure of the walls no longer separates the inside from the outside but instead becomes a mediator to the public.
‘The skins and surface envelope of buildings become programmable surfaces, photo sensitive membranes that narrate, design and inform the spatial organization of the volumes and interpret their functions.’
May 25th, 2005
What I most like about the whole RemoteHome project is that it is a very personal kinetic tangible experience. I love the idea that sitting on furniture in one country could influence the shape of furniture in another. Tobi Schneidler and other members of SmartStudio together explore initeractivity and its impact on spatial environments.
The RemoteHome is a flat share that will exist in two distant cities at the same time: London and Berlin. Both spaces are electronically connected through the Internet, to turn furniture and architectural elements into tangible and sensual means of communication. Sensory and kinetic devices, as well as an interactive light installation allow for the exchange between this remotely living group of friends. A mobile wireless artefact, in the shape of a transforming interactive bag, can be taken on journeys to stay emotionally in touch with the RemoteHome.
RemoteHome was last exhibited at the Science Museum London + Raumlabor Berlin May 2003
Check Out SmartStudio
May 22nd, 2005
The proposal by Zaha Hadid Architects offers a big, single space wrapped by a snakeskin like envelope, which is animated by a large integrated media-screen. The quality of the skin proposed has a snakeskin-like pixillation that allows the formally coherent integration of various surface performances.
The primary cladding material would be large scale ceramic tiles (offering smooth surfaces and brilliant colours). These would be interspersed by light-boxes which allow further daylight to penetrate the space as well as acting as artificial light source at night. Further panels would be photovoltaic elements. Finally Zaha Hadid Architects are proposing to embed a large media screen - in the form of honeycomb based “smart slabs”.
The media screen would nearly be camouflaged into the overall animation of the skin. Internally the skin operates according to the same concept but is aesthetically much more muted. Here light, ventilation and heating is incorporated within the pixel logic.
May 17th, 2005
Tom Barker, an RCA graduate, runs b consultants ltd, an architectural consultancy responsible for the invention of an amazing multi media display system called SMARTSLAB™. While working with Zaha Hadid on the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome, Tom created a translucent, structural panel consisting of a honeycomb aluminium composite sandwiched between clear fiberglass resin. Fusing structure with media, he put LED‘s into the honeycomb cells creating a ‘high tech stained glass‘.
SMARTSLAB™ is an amazing multimedia display system providing a unique digital canvas for design and communication. It is the world‘s toughest modular structural tile: it can support the weight of an elephant. It is a 60cm square tile that is both modular and structural. Few or many units can be combined to create small installations to huge display walls.
The system displays moving and still images and can be integrated as part of any wall or floor surface. Richard Rogers Partnership who are considering it for Heathrow‘s Terminal 5 and their Barcelona Bullring project are one of the various architecture firms now considering it. The most exciting to date, however, is Zaha Hadid‘s Tokyo Guggenheim with its 600 square metre display - the largest video wall in the world.
May 13th, 2005
Klein Dytham Architects and Toshio Iwai developed the ICE (Interactive Communicative Experience) for the Bloomberg Headquarters in Tokyo.
A 5 x 3.5m interactive wall suspended from a ceiling running FTSE and NASDAQ data flow accross it like ticker tape. When the stock goes up it swells and equally shrinks when stocks drop. Infrared sensors detect peoples presence and begin to interact inviting the individuals to play with the various visual experiences it creates including games such as volleyball and playing virtual instruments.
“Bloomberg is about communication and information - and we had to find away to showcase this in away which would appeal to all age groups - all walks for life in this very public space opposite Tokyo Station in the new heart of Maruonuchi.”
May 12th, 2005
Sky Ear is a collection of hundreds of helium filled balloons with mobile phone technology, electromagnetic sensors and colored lights that are activated by the sensors. by calling the phones attached to the balloons the electromagnetic fields created activate the lights creating interactive performances. The Balloons diffuses the light giving the lights a glowing aesthetic. A new space ‘Hertzian Space’ as Haque calls it becomes percievable.
Sky Ear September 15, 2004 at Greenwich Park.
Usman Haque Sky Ear Project
“As people using phones at ground-level call into the cloud (flying up to 100m above them) they are able to listen to distant natural electromagnetic sounds of the sky (including whistlers and spherics). Their mobile phone calls change the local hertzian topography; these disturbances in the electromagnetic fields inside the cloud alter the glow patterns of that part of the balloon cloud. Feedback within the sensor network creates ripples of light reminiscent of rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning.”
May 6th, 2005
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