Search

Browse

• Communities
• Authors
• Year
• Titles
• Subjects

My Space

• Login

Rethinking the human: An educational experiment on sensponsivearchitecture

Ouggrinis Konstantinos-Alketas, Liapi Marianthi

Full record

---

Summary

Over the past 10 years, autonomy, adaptability, customization and communicationhave been the most common words used to describe the qualities of InformationTechnology devices that facilitate everyday activities. IT is now ubiquitous, integratedwith a multitude of objects in the contemporary, fast-pacing lifestyle. It is not strangethen that the spearhead of architectural research today engages with more elaborateand sophisticated issues aiming toward the integration of IT systems into the livingspace. The know-how to perform such a feature is available and the potential for architectureis significant. Already innovators in the field from around the world havecreated a test bed for the integration of IT into the core of the production of space.These research efforts open up the way for architecture to extend its inquiry beyondthe Vitruvian triptych and design spatial behaviors. Embedded interactivity in placesthat were long regarded inert exhibits new possibilities for the human experience.Intelligent control systems are able to enhance the functionality of space, createprovocative aesthetics and instigate radical changes in everyday life as we know it.Moreover, contemporary social conditions seem to be addressed better through theacquired connectivity.The development of more powerful and intuitive software as well as the ability toexperiment with ‘approachable’ electronic assemblies facilitated an ever-growing tendencyfor responsive environments. Virtual, actual or hybrid, they are the new excitingthing, becoming widespread and common globally through art installations and architecturalapplications. Particularly in architecture, the design tools aim to respond tousers’ needs, fabrication methods are developed to respond to design idiosyncrasiesand space is designed to respond to human behavior and environmental conditions.As we explore this ability and understand better how to control and how to apply ITsystems, we inadvertently reach a threshold. The animatic effect within a (retinal) informationalrich era may become a goal in its own. This fact marks a point where thedifference between recreation and architecture must be identified so that responsivenesscan be applied and have a useful, aesthetically appealing and symbolically richoutcome. Moreover, responsiveness must be carefully planned through time in orderto exhibit an intriguing multiplicity in its manifestation. The next logical step then isto put sense to this response and create a context for the way space performs and theway it learns from the past: a sensponsive architecture.

Services