The contemporary built environment is increasingly being engulfed in a networked digital information exchange based paradigm. However, the interfaces that constitute this new paradigm are almost entirely confined to conventional graphical user interfaces comprising of keyboards, monitors and mouse. Bearing in mind that about eighty percent of information exchange in today’s world is non-verbal, the real potential thus lies in re-envisioning the physical environment itself as an interface to this very digital medium. It is in this context that the article explores the importance associated with information regulation and the creation of the much-speculated real-time interactive forms of architecture, which thrive on a purposeful fusion of the digital and material domains.
As, is also outlined in the agenda of this special issue, a creatively thought strategy for synergistically fusing the strengths offered by CAD, CAM, Robotics, Physical Computing, Additive Manufacturing etc. can result in the exploration of hidden spatial potentials, in this case: real-time interactive spatial behaviour. The traditional subject-object role-play, wherein architectural space is always perceived as an objectified container of activities can now be challenged. A subject-subject paradigm, wherein architectural space interacts and adapts in an associative fashion with its contextual conditions, human interactions, structural performance etc. is achievable in the contemporary. Pro-active behaviour, instigated by the space itself, in order to engage the user in a looped interaction process is also a merit associated with such spaces. The conception of architectural space as a closed system is thus seen as a complete contrast through this article, which perceives architecture as a subject for real time calculation, possessing a continuous state of activation, representative of contemporary socio cultural dynamism.
The illustrated systemic prototypes, developed at Hyperbody, TU Delft, operate as real-time inter-activating spaces and are conceived via multidisciplinary studies in the fields of ambient intelligence, material systems, embedded computation, sensor-actuator & control systems and natural systems based behaviours of self-organization and swarming principles. The created spaces emulate the aforementioned information driven, real time data-processing architecture. The resultant spatial bodies are thus visualized as complex adaptive systems, continually engaged in activities of data-exchange resulting in physical and ambient adaptations of their constituting components in response to contextual variations. Information exchange is actualized by means of multi-modal (sound, light, colour, tactility) variations of ambient and physical entities.
The prototype’s physical make-up operate as a collective of Interdependent nodal networks, where every node/junction of a spatial prototype becomes a potential information hub by means of its ability to collect, process and communicate contextual data apart from working as an actuated detail owing to its ability to kinetically re-position itself in three-dimensional space. These projects, at different scales, illustrate the manner in which multi-modal real-time communication can be integrated with material systems in order to fuse the physical and the digital worlds into one comprehensive inter-active spatial environment.