Surface change: Information, matter and environment

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in exploring the capacity of built spaces to respond dynamically and adapt to changes in the external and internal environments. Such explorations are technologically and socially motivated, in response to recent technological and cultural developments. Advances in embedded computation, material design, and kinetics on the technological side, and increasing concerns about sustainability, social and urban changes on the cultural side, provide a background for responsive/interactive architectural solutions that have started to emerge.This paper presents an ongoing design research project driven by an interest in adaptive systems in nature and a desire to explore the capacity of built spaces to respond dynamically. The paper underlines architecture's inseparable link to technology and projects a vision of architecture that, through its capacity to change and adapt, becomes an integrated, responsive, adaptive and productive participant within larger ecologies. © 2013, The Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong, and Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA), Department of Architecture-NUS, Singapore.