Image: R. Butler | Flickr

Along with many other innovations that are surfacing today, the Responsive Environments Group at MIT is working on a prototype that, if successful, may make the light switch a thing of the past. (1)

Their new lighting technology will be responsive by being able to adjust both lighting intensity and color balance to the specific activities that are going on within an architectural space — it would work by being able to monitor the light reading wherever a user happens to put the sensors. So for example, if you place the light sensor within the space where you usually only need task lighting, then the light will adjust accordingly, making sure that you have enough light either from natural daylight, the responsive lighting solution or some combined ratio both. (1)

While this responsive lighting innovation may sound somewhat simple in principle, it does take an interesting step toward providing a tool for greater adaptive design approaches. There are so many parts within buildings today that are static, being made to function in almost binary terms, with only “on” or “off” choices — beyond lighting, think of how static building surfaces often are: including wall surface materials, window configurations and even floor and ceiling installations.

The Power of Transience within Your Design

I think that we are in an age where the onset of new adaptive design technologies will help spaces evolve to include more dynamic and fluid behaviors — which will help to make architecture more Read more

Image: sergis blog | Flickr

The Digital Water Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain dismissed the notion of using glass for the boundaries which mark the “separation” between the interior and the exterior. To make it even more interesting, this pavilion drops a sheet of water around its perimeter in a curtain-like fashion, but when it senses the movement and approach of a body that wishes to enter — it uses sensors to stop releasing water so as to create a portal through which a person can gain entrance into the pavilion. Yes, an early form of fluidity in action.

Carlo Ratti, the Digital Water Pavilion’s architect, uses choreography and “sensing” to bring the notions of entrance, boundary and threshold into new realms — and much of this is achieved by taking advantage of Read more

Image: jericho1ne | Flickr

Augmented reality and other virtual digital displays can revolutionize they way we interact within architectural spaces. When sitting in your office, experiencing a museum or simply learning in school, occupants already use digital media to carry out even the most basic of tasks. Just imagine what the evolution of augmented reality can do.

For starters, we can now see the beginning to how buildings can evolve internal “nervous systems”. Designers are beginning to think of “connections” in whole new ways.

Not only can spaces become less “local”, they can gain even greater dimension as real-time information gets processed through the building to provide visitors with a broader sense of where they are and what they can do.

YOU ARE THE BAROMETER

Similar to the glass evolution in architecture, real-time virtual “models” of information are making space less limited. Space is gaining Read more