The flourishing of experiments in responsive design is a direct result of designers and architects taking the means of production into their own hands, as technology becomes more accessible to them. For instance, many interactive devices employ Arduino microcontrollers, tiny circuit boards designers can program to read and respond to sensors. With these and other technologies, they are developing smart textiles that playfully change colour and pattern with the application of heat, or release fragrance or lotion with the use of chemical actuators; and bodysuits equipped with sensors to measure vital signs.
For the KAFD spas in Riyadh, starting construction next year, his firm worked with British architecture firm Buro Happold at their joint Adaptive Building Initiative to develop Tessellate surface modules composed from three layers of perforated titanium, two of which are motorized. Responding to the sun’s intensity, the way heliotropic plants such as sunflowers do, the screens move so that their perforated patterns overlap to regulate light and heat, ventilate and create privacy in a continual reaction to external conditions. Manufactured by the metal panel experts at Zahner, they can reduce the cost of cooling a building by 15 to 20 per cent.
A new highway system by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure will similarly employ responsive design to curb energy consumption, and could inspire many more projects that embed these technologies into the urban fabric. The highway incorporates interactive street lamps that come on as vehicles approach them and dim after they pass.
All of these innovations represent a paradigm shift from static to dynamic architecture and urban design, which requires a certain bravery from architects, planners and city officials as they confront the new realities of climate change. “There’s a kind of stasis of architecture deeply ingrained in us,” says Vera Parlac, architect and assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s faculty of environmental design. “You have to be ready to give up the notion of constant stability. There is equilibrium in motion, too, but as architects we don’t deal well with that. Embracing that concept has the capacity to slowly change the nature of the design process.”
Parlac leads the University of Calgary’s SKiN (Soft Kinetic Network) Project, which is developing a building material with embedded “muscle” wires that activate surfaces to follow people’s movements and activities, harvesting warmth and creating localized heated zones for greater comfort and energy savings. As with much research in the field of responsive design, the need for rigorous testing and the technology’s associated costs present obstacles on the way to commercial production."
Click here to read the full article by Susan Walker in Azure Magazine.
Image of Smart Highway, by Studio Roosegaarde and Hejimans Infrastructure, now under construction in the Dutch province of Brabant.