Article

• Digitally-Driven Architecture

  The shift from mechanical to digital forces architects to reposition themselves: Architects generate digital information, which can be used not only in designing and fabricating building components but also in embedding behaviours into buildings. This implies that, similar to the way that industrial design and fabrication with its concepts of standardisation and serial production influenced modernist architecture, digital design and fabrication influences contemporary architecture. While standardisation focused on processes of rationalisation of form, mass-customisation as a new paradigm that replaces mass-production, addresses non-standard, complex, and flexible designs. Furthermore, knowledge about the designed object can be encoded in digital data pertaining not just to the geometry of a design but also to its physical or other behaviours within an environment. Digitally-driven architecture implies, therefore, not only digitally-designed and fabricated architecture, it also implies architecture – built form – that can be controlled, actuated, and animated by digital means.

  In this context, this sixth Footprint issue examines the influence of digital means as pragmatic and conceptual instruments for actuating architecture. The focus is not so much on computer-based systems for the development of architectural designs, but on architecture incorporating digital control, sens­ing, actuating, or other mechanisms that enable buildings to inter­act with their users and surroundings in real time in the real world through physical or sensory change and variation.

  The shift from mechanical to digital forces architects to reposition themselves: Architects generate digital information, which can be used not only in designing and fabricating building components but also in embedding behaviours into buildings. This implies that, similar to the way that industrial design and fabrication with its concepts of standardisation and serial production influenced modernist architecture, digital design and fabrication influences contemporary architecture. While standardisation focused on processes of rationalisation of form, mass-customisation as a new paradigm that replaces mass-production, addresses non-standard, complex, and flexible designs. Furthermore, knowledge about the designed object can be encoded in digital data pertaining not just to the geometry of a design but also to its physical or other behaviours within an environment. Digitally-driven architecture implies, therefore, not only digitally-designed and fabricated architecture, it also...

  The shift from mechanical to digital forces architects to reposition themselves: Architects generate digital information, which can be used not only in designing and fabricating building components but also in embedding behaviours into buildings. This implies that, similar to the way that...

  Henriette Bier, Terry Knight

  1-4

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• Catching up with the Past: A Small Contribution to a Long History of Interactive Environments

  This paper documents the evolution of my thinking in the area of interactive architecture over the past 15 years with students and my office. The work is framed within an overview of a long history of work in the area by others. My personal development has taken a number of clear steps in a relatively logical progression.

  In summary, the work began with kinetics as a means to facilitate adaptation. Work in this area led to integrating computation as a means of controlling the kinetics. The combination of these two areas led to the use of discrete mechanical assemblies as a systems approach to interaction design, which led to the thinking of control as bottom-up and emergent. Consequently I became fascinated with modular autonomous robotics and the notion that actual architectural space could be made of such systems. This in turn led to the exploration of biomimetics in terms of the processes, which eventually led to the idea that the parts in a system should get smaller to the point that they make up the matter itself.

  The paper concludes with an explanation of how technical advancements in manufacturing, fabrication and computational control will continue to expand the parameters of what is possible in robotics, and consequently influence the scale by which we understand and construct our environments. The future of interactive environments will most certainly involve re-examining the scale by which things operate to the extent that much of the operations happen within the materials themselves. This scaling down is beginning to force a reinterpretation of the mechanical paradigm of adaptation.

  This paper documents the evolution of my thinking in the area of interactive architecture over the past 15 years with students and my office. The work is framed within an overview of a long history of work in the area by others. My personal development has taken a number of clear steps in a relatively logical progression.

  In summary, the work began with kinetics as a means to facilitate adaptation. Work in this area led to integrating computation as a means of controlling the kinetics. The combination of these two areas led to the use of discrete mechanical assemblies as a systems approach to interaction design, which led to the thinking of control as bottom-up and emergent. Consequently I became fascinated with modular autonomous robotics and the notion that actual architectural space could be made of such systems. This in turn led to the exploration of biomimetics in terms of the processes, which eventually led to the idea that the parts in a system should get smaller to...

  This paper documents the evolution of my thinking in the area of interactive architecture over the past 15 years with students and my office. The work is framed within an overview of a long history of work in the area by others. My personal development has taken a number of clear steps in a...

  Michael Fox

  5-18

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• Indeterminate Architecture: Scissor-Pair Transformable Structures

  Most traditional approaches to architectural design assume that the analysis of present situations and the prediction of future ones will offer unique answers that would ultimately define correct and unique architectural solutions. However, this approach is based on two questionable believes: First, that present situations are representative of a reality to be produced in the future, and, second, that these situations are fixed and invariable throughout time.

  The vision here is that an alternative approach is needed: a method that assumes and uses the uncertainties about present and future situations through the design of indeterminate solutions. Instead of analysing present and predicting future situations, designers should envision transformable environments able to offer a range of alternatives to be defined and redefined by the users in real-time – an indeterminate architecture, sympathetic to uncertainty, incompleteness and emergent situations that can neither be analysed nor predicted beforehand.

  This paper addresses the design of an indeterminate architecture, through proposing two main directions: Designing the Range and Enabling the Choice. While the former refers to transformable solutions able to offer a variety of states, the later refers to the selection of states by the user, within that range according to chance and emergent situations.

  The structure of this paper is organised around these two ideas by presenting an architectural background, some technical methods, and an empirical experiment. While the theoretical background investigates the original ideas and project about indeterminacy within an architectural framework, the technical methods analyse the range of states within the transformation of scissor-pair transformable structures, and study the real-time control and interaction within artificial intelligence (AI) robotic solutions. The empirical experiment uses the architectural background and the technical methods to materialise and radicalise indeterminacy by proposing a novel scissor-pair transformable solution. 

  Most traditional approaches to architectural design assume that the analysis of present situations and the prediction of future ones will offer unique answers that would ultimately define correct and unique architectural solutions. However, this approach is based on two questionable believes: First, that present situations are representative of a reality to be produced in the future, and, second, that these situations are fixed and invariable throughout time.

  The vision here is that an alternative approach is needed: a method that assumes and uses the uncertainties about present and future situations through the design of indeterminate solutions. Instead of analysing present and predicting future situations, designers should envision transformable environments able to offer a range of alternatives to be defined and redefined by the users in real-time – an indeterminate architecture, sympathetic to uncertainty, incompleteness and emergent situations that can neither be...

  Most traditional approaches to architectural design assume that the analysis of present situations and the prediction of future ones will offer unique answers that would ultimately define correct and unique architectural solutions. However, this approach is based on two questionable believes:...

  Daniel Rosenberg

  19-40

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• Kinetic Digitally-Driven Architectural Structures as ‘Marginal’ Objects – a Conceptual Framework

  Although the most important reasons for designing digitally-driven kinetic architectural structures seem to be practical ones, namely functional flexibility and adaptation to changing conditions and needs, this paper argues that there is possibly an additional socio-cultural aspect driving their design and construction. Through this argument, the paper attempts to debate their status and question their concepts and practices.

  Looking at the design explorations and discourses of real or visionary technologically-augmented architecture since the 1960s, one cannot fail to notice the use of biological metaphors and concepts to describe them – an attempt to ‘naturalise’ them which culminates today in the conception of kinetic structures and intelligent environments as literally ‘alive’. Examining these attitudes in contemporary examples, the paper demonstrates that digitally-driven kinetic structures can be conceived as artificial ‘living’ machines that undermine the boundary between the natural and the artificial. It argues that by ‘humanising’ these structures, attributing biological characteristics such as self-initiated motion, intelligence and reactivity, their designers are ‘trying’ to subvert and blur the human-machine (-architecture) discontinuity.

  The argument is developed by building a conceptual framework which is based on evidence from the social studies of science and technology, in particular their critique in modern nature-culture and human-machine distinctions, as well as the history and theory of artificial life which discuss the cultural significance and sociology of ‘living’ objects. In particular, the paper looks into the techno-scientific discourses and practices which, since the 18th century, have been exploring the creation of ‘marginal’ objects, i.e. seemingly alive objects made to challenge the nature-artifice boundary.

  Although the most important reasons for designing digitally-driven kinetic architectural structures seem to be practical ones, namely functional flexibility and adaptation to changing conditions and needs, this paper argues that there is possibly an additional socio-cultural aspect driving their design and construction. Through this argument, the paper attempts to debate their status and question their concepts and practices.

  Looking at the design explorations and discourses of real or visionary technologically-augmented architecture since the 1960s, one cannot fail to notice the use of biological metaphors and concepts to describe them – an attempt to ‘naturalise’ them which culminates today in the conception of kinetic structures and intelligent environments as literally ‘alive’. Examining these attitudes in contemporary examples, the paper demonstrates that digitally-driven kinetic structures can be conceived as artificial ‘living’ machines that undermine...

  Although the most important reasons for designing digitally-driven kinetic architectural structures seem to be practical ones, namely functional flexibility and adaptation to changing conditions and needs, this paper argues that there is possibly an additional socio-cultural aspect driving...

  Sokratis Yiannoudes

  41-54

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• Modulating Territories, Penetrating Boundaries

  Drawing boundaries, defining territories: these are terms one could use to describe the activity of an architect. Architects can create constraints through the use of designed elements that help determine the flow of movement, perception, and usage of space. Boundaries imply the absence of flow, territories control the freedom of movement, and both imply a predetermined constraint. Conventionally a territory is conceived of as being fairly static, or at least moving slowly, on a historical scale through time. However, when the spaces in and around the building body can be programmed and driven, time-based morphology becomes a subject for architectural design.

  Research at the Hyperbody group at Delft Technical University addresses the development of architecture in terms of changing paradigms indicated by new technology and dynamic forms through prototypes and experiments. Projects such as the InteractiveWall are driven by the advancements in cross-disciplinary technical possibilities, and inspired by profound and ongoing cultural changes reflected in the dynamic dissemination of knowledge and information in our daily lives.

  Drawing boundaries, defining territories: these are terms one could use to describe the activity of an architect. Architects can create constraints through the use of designed elements that help determine the flow of movement, perception, and usage of space. Boundaries imply the absence of flow, territories control the freedom of movement, and both imply a predetermined constraint. Conventionally a territory is conceived of as being fairly static, or at least moving slowly, on a historical scale through time. However, when the spaces in and around the building body can be programmed and driven, time-based morphology becomes a subject for architectural design.

  Research at the Hyperbody group at Delft Technical University addresses the development of architecture in terms of changing paradigms indicated by new technology and dynamic forms through prototypes and experiments. Projects such as the InteractiveWall are driven by the advancements in cross-disciplinary technical...

  Drawing boundaries, defining territories: these are terms one could use to describe the activity of an architect. Architects can create constraints through the use of designed elements that help determine the flow of movement, perception, and usage of space. Boundaries imply the absence of...

  MarkDavid Hosale, Chris Kievid

  55-68

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• Mediated Windows: The Use of Framing and Transparency in Designing for Presence

  This paper explores the fusion of architecture and media technology that facilitates collaborative practices across spatial extensions: video-mediated spaces. The example presented is a mediated extension of the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm to a neighbouring park area and archaeological excavation site in 2008, referred to as a mediated window, or a glass-door.

  The concepts framing and transparency are used to outline the significance of windows and glazing in architecture and art. The author then considers the potential contribution of architecture in representing the passage from indoors to outdoors and designing for presence. Presence design assumes a contribution from architects to presence research, a currently diversified field, spanning media-space research, cognitive science, interaction design, ubiquitous computing, second-order cybernetics, and computer-supported collaborative work, but in which architecture and artistic practices are less represented.

  The paper thereby addresses the potential of an extended architectural practice, which incorporates the design of mediated spaces, and outlines presence design as a transdisciplinary practice in which presence research meets architectural design, and spatial and aesthetic conceptual tools, derived from related visual practices, may be productively applied.

  This paper explores the fusion of architecture and media technology that facilitates collaborative practices across spatial extensions: video-mediated spaces. The example presented is a mediated extension of the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm to a neighbouring park area and archaeological excavation site in 2008, referred to as a mediated window, or a glass-door.

  The concepts framing and transparency are used to outline the significance of windows and glazing in architecture and art. The author then considers the potential contribution of architecture in representing the passage from indoors to outdoors and designing for presence. Presence design assumes a contribution from architects to presence research, a currently diversified field, spanning media-space research, cognitive science, interaction design, ubiquitous computing, second-order cybernetics, and computer-supported collaborative work, but in which architecture and artistic practices are less...

  This paper explores the fusion of architecture and media technology that facilitates collaborative practices across spatial extensions: video-mediated spaces. The example presented is a mediated extension of the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm to a neighbouring park area and...

  Charlie Gullström

  69-92

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