Architecture and Interaction


Book Description

Ubiquitous computing has a vision of information and interaction being embedded in the world around us; this forms the basis of this book. Built environments are subjects of design and architects have seen digital elements incorporated into the fabric of buildings as a way of creating environments that meet the dynamic challenges of future habitation. Methods for prototyping interactive buildings are discussed and the theoretical overlaps between both domains are explored. Topics like the role of space and technology within the workplace as well as the role of embodiment in understanding how buildings and technology can influence action are discussed, as well as investigating the creation of place with new methodologies to investigate the occupation of buildings and how they can be used to understand spatial technologies. Architecture and Interaction is aimed at researchers and practitioners in the field of computing who want to gain a greater insight into the challenges of creating technologies in the built environment and those from the architectural and urban design disciplines who wish to incorporate digital information technologies in future buildings.




Interactive Architecture


Book Description

Recent technological developments in biology, computation, cybernetics, engineering, industrial design, materials, and robotics allow architecture to evolve beyond static functionality and become an active participant—with the capacity to perceive, react to, and connect—with humans and the natural world. The first process-based guide by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp introduced interactive architecture in 2009, and the past few years have seen its prototypical potential unleashed, manifest in the eighteen inventive projects featured in this follow-up, the latest in our Architecture Briefs series. Interactive Architecture: Adaptive World illustrates how structures can process information, make observations, and utilize tools to translate natural systems and create seamlessly integrated environments, from data-driven light installations, responsive sculptures, and performative materials, to smart highways, dynamic spaces, kinetic facades, and adaptive buildings. Ambitious projects from around the world, including Abu Dhabi, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Sochi, and Zurich, are illuminated by photographs, diagrams, and renderings.




The Architecture of Information


Book Description

This book looks at relationships between the organization of physical objects in space and the organization of ideas. Historical, philosophical, psychological and architectural knowledge are united to develop an understanding of the relationship between information and its representation. Despite its potential to break the mould, digital information has relied on metaphors from a pre-digital era. In particular, architectural ideas have pervaded discussions of digital information, from the urbanization of cyberspace in science fiction, through to the adoption of spatial visualizations in the design of graphical user interfaces. This book tackles: the historical importance of physical places to the organization and expression of knowledge the limitations of using the physical organization of objects as the basis for systems of categorization and taxonomy the emergence of digital technologies and the twentieth century new conceptual understandings of knowledge and its organization the concept of disconnecting storage of information objects from their presentation and retrieval ideas surrounding ‘semantic space’ the realities of the types of user interface which now dominate modern computing.




Buildings Used


Book Description

Buildings Used takes the reader on an exploration into the impact of use on buildings and users. While most histories and theories of architecture focus on a building’s conception, design, and realization, this book argues that its identity is formed after its completion through use; and that the cultural and psychological effects of its use on those inhabiting it are profound. Across eight investigative chapters, authors Nora Lefa and Pavlos Lefas propose that use should not be understood merely as function. Instead, this book argues that we also use buildings by creating, destroying or appropriating them, and discusses a series of philosophical, cultural and design issues related to use. Buildings Used would appeal to students and scholars in architectural theory, history and cultural studies.




Proxemics and the Architecture of Social Interaction


Book Description

Founded by anthropologist Edward T. Hall, proxemics developed amid cold war political tensions and social and civil unrest. Proxemics and the Architecture of Social Interaction presents selections from Hall's extensive archive of visual materials alongside a critical analysis that traces transformations in the fields of design and science.




The Collaborators: Interactions in the Architectural Design Process


Book Description

Illustrated by critical analyses of significant buildings, including examples by such eminent architects as Adler and Sullivan, Erich Mendelsohn, and Louis Kahn, this book examines collaboration in the architectural design process over a period ranging from the mid-19th century to the late 1960s. The examples chosen, located in England, the United States, Israel and South Africa, are of international scope. They have intrinsic interest as works of architecture, and illustrate all facets of collaboration, involving architects, engineers and clients. Prior to dealing with the case studies the theoretical framework is set in three introductory essays which discuss in general terms the organizational implications of partnerships, associations and teams; the nature of interactions between architect and engineer; and cooperation and confrontation in the relationship between architect and client. From this original standpoint, the interactive role of the designers, it examines and reinterprets such well-known buildings as the Chicago Auditorium and the Kimbell Art Museum. The re-evaluation of St Pancras Station and its hotel questions common presumptions about the separation of professional roles played by its engineer and architect. The account of the troubled history of Mendelsohn’s project for the first Haifa Power House highlights the difficulties that arise when a determined and eminent architect confronts a powerful and demanding client. In a later era, the examination of the John Moffat Building, which is less well known but deserving of wider recognition, reveals how the fruitful collaboration of multiple architects can result in a successful unified design. These case studies comprise a wide range of programmes, challenges, personalities and interactions. Ultimately, in five different ways, in five different epochs, and in five different circumstantial and cultural contexts, this book shows how the dialogue between the players in the design process resonates upon the works of architecture that their collaboration engenders.




Street-Level Architecture


Book Description

This book provides the tools to maintain and rebuild the interaction between architecture and public space. Despite the best intentions of designers and planners, interactive frontages have dwindled over the past century in Europe and North America. This book demonstrates why even our best intentions for interactive frontages are currently unable to turn a swelling tide of economic and technological evolution, land consolidation, introversion, stratification, and contagious decline. It uses these lessons to offer concrete locational, programming, design, and management strategies to maximize street-level interaction and trust between street-level architecture, its inhabitants, and the city. This book demonstrates that designers, developers, planners, and managers ultimately have to create the right preconditions for inhabitants and passersby to bring frontages to life. These preconditions connect architecture to its urban, social, economical, and technological context. Only the right frontage in the right context, with the right design, the right inhabitation, and the right attitude to the city will become part of the ecosystem of trust and interaction that supports public life. This book empowers the many participants in this ecosystem to build, inhabit, and enjoy truly urbane architecture.




Handbook of Research on Form and Morphogenesis in Modern Architectural Contexts


Book Description

As architectural designs continue to push boundaries, there is more exploration into the bound shape of architecture within the limits of spaces made for human usability and interaction. The Handbook of Research on Form and Morphogenesis in Modern Architectural Contexts provides emerging research on the process of architectural form-finding as an effort to balance perceptive efficiency with functionality. While highlighting topics such as architectural geometry, reverse modeling, and digital fabrication, this book details the geometric process that forms the shape of a building. This publication is a vital resource for scholars, IT professionals, engineers, architects, and business managers seeking current research on the development and creation of architectural design.




Architectural Intelligence


Book Description

Architects who engaged with cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies poured the foundation for digital interactivity. In Architectural Intelligence, Molly Wright Steenson explores the work of four architects in the 1960s and 1970s who incorporated elements of interactivity into their work. Christopher Alexander, Richard Saul Wurman, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte and the MIT Architecture Machine Group all incorporated technologies—including cybernetics and artificial intelligence—into their work and influenced digital design practices from the late 1980s to the present day. Alexander, long before his famous 1977 book A Pattern Language, used computation and structure to visualize design problems; Wurman popularized the notion of “information architecture”; Price designed some of the first intelligent buildings; and Negroponte experimented with the ways people experience artificial intelligence, even at architectural scale. Steenson investigates how these architects pushed the boundaries of architecture—and how their technological experiments pushed the boundaries of technology. What did computational, cybernetic, and artificial intelligence researchers have to gain by engaging with architects and architectural problems? And what was this new space that emerged within these collaborations? At times, Steenson writes, the architects in this book characterized themselves as anti-architects and their work as anti-architecture. The projects Steenson examines mostly did not result in constructed buildings, but rather in design processes and tools, computer programs, interfaces, digital environments. Alexander, Wurman, Price, and Negroponte laid the foundation for many of our contemporary interactive practices, from information architecture to interaction design, from machine learning to smart cities.




SQM, the Quantified Home


Book Description

The way in which we live is changing under the influence of different factors - be they financial, environment of respective, technological or geopolitical nature, quickly. What was equated with "home" has change, the "home" has turned into a Handeslware whose value is measured in Quatdratmetern. 'SQM: The Quantified Home' is less concerned with the house as a physical , protective shell, it presents it as a complex universe of overlapping cultural references, daily rituals, practical needs, unexpressed wishes and aspirations which develop steadily and flow together in an architectural space. The book presents the fundamental changes in the perception of the home, evaluates relevant data, makes assumptions and shows a selection of houses and interiors - from Osama bin Laden's fortress to examples of "living" in the era of Airbnb. In essays by architects, designers, artists and theorists will examine how the space in which we live, has become recognisable and yet so foreign. 140 illustrations