Adaptive kinetic architecture: A portal to digital prototyping

Abstract

This paper presents a definition for adaptive kinetic structures in architecture, generated from an examination of research in engineering and architecture. This characterization introduces the challenges presented both by modeling form and environment, and simulating their interaction. Adaptive kinetic structures react to a changing environment, as well as generate their own. These conditions make them appropriate subjects through which the design and implementation of tools for 'digital prototyping' may be explored. Digital prototyping serves performance and simulation-based design. In general terms, it is an interdisciplinary integrated approach for modeling, predicting, and analyzing the behavior of a system. It is at the core of virtual engineering. In the aerospace, automobile, and manufacturing industries, it is practiced extensively through discrete-event and continuous simulations, as well as simulation environments. This paper provides an overview of digital prototyping commercial software for engineering applications that can be transferred to architecture, and identifies some of the unresolved issues. It thereby extends the vision of the comprehensive building information modeling initiative.