Starting from the micro: A pedagogical approach to designing interactive architecture

Abstract

The paper outlines a pedagogical approach whereby a number of technology-intensive skills can be quickly learned to a level of useful practicality through a series of discrete, yet cumulative explorations with the design goal of creating intelligently responsive architectural systems. The culmination of such explorations in creating full-scale interactive architectural environments leads to a relatively unexplored area of negotiation whereby individual systems must necessarily manage environmental input to mediate a behavioural output. The emerging area of interactive architecture serves as a practical means for inventing entirely new ways of developing spaces, and the designing and building environments that address dynamic, flexible and constantly changing needs. Interactive architecture is defined here as spaces and objects that can physically re-configure themselves to meet changing needs. The central issues explored are human and environmental interaction and behaviours, embedded computational infrastructures, kinetic and mechanical systems and physical control mechanisms. Being both multidisciplinary and technology-intensive in nature, architects need to be equipped with at least a base foundational knowledge in a number of domains in order to be able to develop the skills necessary to explore, conceive, and design such systems. The teaching methods were carried out with a group of undergraduate design students who had no previous experience in mechanical engineering, electronics, programming, or kinetic design with the goal of creating a responsive kinetic system that can demonstrate physical interactive behaviours on an applicable architectural scale. We found the approach to be extremely successful in terms of psychologically demystifying unfamiliar and often daunting technologies, while simultaneously clarifying the larger architectural implications of the novel systems that had been created. The authors summarize the processes and tools that architects and designers can utilize in creating and demonstrating of such systems and the implications of adopting a more active role in directing the development of this new area of design.