game, set and match II … non linear responsive environments

non linear responsive environments has been published in Game Set and Match II, a publication accompanying the correspondent conference in delft. this paper is the result of a one-and-a-half year long research on adaptive spatial organizations within the framework of the AADRL in London. Research conducted by Delphine Ammann, Karim Muallem, Robert Neumayr, and Gina Robledo. studio Instructor: Tom Verebes.

Donwload this paper via academia.edu.

Topotransegrity – Non-linear Responsive Environments

Robert R. Neumayr (London), 2006.

Abstract: Urban spaces and public spheres are reshaped by information and communication technologies. So far architecture however, has remained a frozen, static environment, incapable of adapting to changing contextual parameters. topotransegrity explores how a responsive architecture can be introduced in public spaces challenging long-held assumptions about architecture as a passive arrangement. It investigates today’s networked ways that enable architecture itself to operate as an intelligent interface that connects spaces, users and performance criteria in real time. It studies the capacities a reconfigurable structure has to react to, and more importantly interact with the people occupying a space, and to what extent it can become an architecture of reciprocity, developing patterns generated by the presence and actions of people.

topotransegrity is a piston-driven kinetic structure, which constantly evaluates its surroundings and re-configures according to these changing conditions. The structure is capable of various transformations, which range from small-scale surface articulations to large surface deformations, which can generate temporary enclosures. All these transformations are driven by a series of inputs from contextual and internal parameters derived from the environment. It works in three different modes of operation, which in turn influence different parts of the structure and are operating in different time frames.

These three parallel modes run simultaneously and add up to the structure’s complex, unpredictable user-dependent spatial configuration. The constantly changing three-dimensional space envelope interacts with its visitors in a permanent feedback loop, where the users’ reactions to spatial adaptation are fed back into the system to in turn update the spatial arrangements and individually customize the built environment to requirements at any given moment for any given pattern of use.

The data collected to inform the three modes of operation is also recorded, stored and analyzed in order for the structure to recognize patterns of occupancy and to start to anticipate changing behavioral requirements within the structure.

Keywords: Emergent Behaviour, Interactive Structures, Non-linear Systems, Responsive Environments, Real Time Behaviour.