Essay

Adaptive Design

The Dialogue Between Building and Occupant

Adaptive architecture will embody behaviors that respond to human and environmental interactions. It is with this transience that architectural space will more fully interact — or “converse” with its occupants, in grand part due to converging architectural technology.

With adaptive design, architecture will take on “motion” in new ways. A new type of “dialogue” between a building and its user will ask new things of its occupants, while feeding back dynamic and real-time sensorial stimuli.

Instead of having somewhat truncated conversations as you can experience with present-day interactive installations, the adaptive architecture of tomorrow will be able to engage in a dialogue where “feedback from the environment” takes on new meanings.

Today's Sneak-Peeks

In their book entitled Interactive Architecture (my affiliate link), Miles Kemp and Michael Fox explore just how these adaptive environments could be designed and assembled.

Clearly showing how it will be possible to “construct” adaptive design spaces, they explain how “miniature robots, new material compositions, molecular geometries, robotic prototyping, atypical geometries and shape shifting-architectures” will have a profound effect on future built works.

3 Simple Mindset Shifts for You to Think About

Your Design Process — Think about how the possibilities of adaptive architecture would impact the way you design. Just imagine how that would change your programming stages alone.

Convergence –Think about how you would use the convergence of breakthroughs from disciplines like nanotechnology, neuroscience, and biomimicry to improve the lifestyles of your occupants in almost limitless new ways.

Sensemaking –Architecture which adapts could be coded with simple rules; thus, embedding within it an underlying thumbprint, predisposing its behavior. As an architect, you will need to have your built works “make sense” of a lot of incoming information (coming from your occupants and the environment).Your job as Sensemaker is only just beginning.

Image Credit: rootoftwo | Flickr