Archive for March, 2006
image from trans_PORTs 2001 Kas Oosterhuis
With the ideas going on at Game Set Match II in interactive adaptive architecture an interesting bit of news has come from the MIT .
MIT engineers report they may have found a way for structures and materials to morph from one shape into another. The discovery could lead to an airplane that morphs on demand from the shape that is most energy efficient to another better suited to agility, or to a boat whose hull changes shape to allow more efficient movement in choppy, calm or shallow waters. The question is, could a building do the same?
via we-make-money-not-art
March 28th, 2006
One more project from the Hyperbody Research Group . I’ve been in Amsterdam for the weekend and now on my way to Delft for the Game Set Match II conference held by the Hyperbody Research Group and ONL Architects
One of the things that I’ve said before on interactive architecture dot org is that I really respect the way the Hyperbody Research Group and ONL Architects don’t just speculate on interactive kinetic architecture but actually build prototypes based on their ideas. Here’s Muscle NSA which was realized as a working prototype of the concepts Kas Oosterhuis explored in the Trans_PORTs project (2001).
Video of Trans_PORTs project
The MUSCLE programmable building is a pressurized soft volume wrapped in a mesh of tensile muscles, which change length, height and width by varying the pressure pumped into the muscle. Visitors of the Architectures Non Standard exhibition play a collective game to explore the different states of the MUSCLE. The public interacts with the MUSCLE by entering the interactivated sensorial space surrounding the prototype. This invisible component of the installation is implemented as a sensor field created by a collection of sensors. The sensors create a set of distinct shapes in space that, although invisible to the human eye, can be monitored and can yield information to the building body. The body senses the activities of the people and interacts with the players in a multimodal way. The public discovers within minutes how the MUSCLE behaves on their actions, and soon after they start finding a goal in the play.
The outcome of this interaction however is unpredictable, since the MUSCLE is programmed to have a will of its own. It is pro-active rather then responsive and obedient. The programmable body is played by its users. A constant play of conjointly effectuating (re)actions, of attraction and repulsion between all players involved. This game truly is a multi-player game. Now true communication is established, where the pro-active parties involved alternately sense, process, and actuate in this constant loop of mutual influence. The players experience this parametric game of architecture as a form of serious fun. The design is the formula, the playing of the game means setting the parameters.
March 27th, 2006
If you can’t make it to Game Set Match II in Delft there’s two days of a range of presentations coming up in London, including live robot demonstrations, academic papers, videos and art works exploring the many routes by which the interface between the individual, the social, and the ‘computer’ is developing as a spatial question.
Emanuel Vercruysse, Interactive Architecture, Bartlett
9.30am - 7.30pm Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 April 2006
School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Rd, London, M421
Phil Ayers , Richard Difford , Steve Hardy , John Bell , Murray Fraser , Beau Lotto , Halli Bjornsson , John Frazer , Alan Penn , Iain Borden , Stephen Gage , Pete Silver , Jason Bruges , Jon Goodbun , Marq Smith , Mark Burry , David Greene , Neil Spiller , David Cunningham , Penelope Haralambidou , & Vicky Watson
Spatial Interface: architecture and technology is organised by The Polytechnic group at Westminster, the AVATAR group at the Bartlett, and SIAL-RMIT jointly announce the first PODNET (post-digital architecture network) event.
Sam Hobson, Clinimanic Studies, Bartlett
Intensifying the more general historical tendency of communications media and technology to disperse themselves into the spatial environment, these recent developments are driven by technologies around the web, databases, media environments, popular technology and entertainment, and the need to navigate networks of assembled information speedily and intuitively. The configuration and organisation of information in space is increasingly achieved through integrated assemblages of physical and virtual environments, engaging the mobile, experiencing and technologically extended body of the user in the navigation of information. In these configurations, spatial environments themselves act as prosthesis, as extensions of the body.
March 25th, 2006
Following the theme of the Hyperbody research Group I thought I’d show a project of theirs from a couple of years ago which reflects the virtual side of their research into interactive adaptive architecture.
A time-based architecture for the augmented body
The Virtual Operation Room is a game developed for the Museum of Technology in Delft by the ONL office in association with Hyperbody Research Group . Both aim at the practice and the research on interactive and e-motive architecture. Just like cars, websites and other vehicles, buildings become more and more sensitive and intelligent and start to respond, act and surprise. In order to study and practice e-motive architecture we build parametric environments and interactive interfaces to communicate with active worlds. Actual architectural concepts like e-motive architecture, time-based architecture, programmable architecture, free form styling, swarm behaviour and genetic algorithms come together in a game.
The VOR features a responsive geometry, responsive to actions of the players of the VOR game. In each of its highly responsive and pro-active worlds the player learns about the bodily system by acting, by pointing at sweet spots, by shooting cells, by killing cancerous growth. After having gained insight in the dynamics of the complex adaptive system of the human bodily system by collecting points, you can transfer yourself to one of the other worlds.
March 24th, 2006
In the spirit of my up coming trip to the Game Set Match II conference I thought I’d show a bit of the work that the Hyperbody Research Group have been doing in recent times. I have to admit if I wasn’t at the Interactive Architecture unit at the Bartlett which is awesome, I’d love to be in Delft getting stuck into building large scale interactive kinetic architecture.
Video
The interactive & kinetic MUSCLE Tower II is a true HYPERbody. It reacts to its environment, and pro-actively determines the space around itself. This advertisment tower, attracting attention through its elegant moves, could actually become the archetype for a new kind of construction in building bodies.
VirTools
It consists of aluminium staves, connected flexibly to each other and the FESTO Muscles by iron hollow spheres. The FESTO Muscles are controlled by a running program in VirTools, which is aware of its environment through movement sensors.
Check out the more detailed documentation
March 23rd, 2006
Website (german)
Bitfall is an installation where water is being used to project images taken from the internet. A computer observes various news websites and chooses thereafter the images to be displayed. 128 nozzles are controlled by synchronised magnetic valves, and the water drops falling to the ground shape the images. The visual information is only tangible for a second before the drops merge to become water again.
via infosthetics
March 22nd, 2006
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