Interactive Architecture: Adaptive World

Michael Fox

Softcover | 17.8 x 2.5 x 21.6 cm | 176 pp

Princeton Architectural Press | 2016 | 9781616894061

As we continue to embrace a world where the lines between the physical and digital are increasingly blurred, we are beginning to see a maturing vision for architecture that actively participates in our lives. Our architectural environments are becoming so inextricably tied to our technological living trends that they begin to define each other in a corresponding manner. Such is a physical world that is not only digital, but that is also seamlessly networked and connected.

IA: Adaptive World takes us inside the rapidly maturing landscape of projects and trends that have finally begun to catch up with the past. It encompasses both buildings and environments that have been designed to respond, adapt, change and come to life. The book highlights a selected number of groundbreaking projects with concise and simple descriptions that are beginning to define a new future of interaction.

The projects include insight into the technology that will be an inevitable and completely integral part of how we will make our buildings and environments in the future. The projects are appropriately organised therefore not by how they are made or how they look, but rather by what they do; they Exhilarate, Communicate, Mediate, Evolve and Catalyse. The projects integrate contributions from the worlds of art, industrial design, computer programming, engineering, biology and physical computing. The book as a whole is a processes-oriented guide to creating dynamic, interactive buildings and environments.

The built examples are presented in a way that they can be understood and built upon as a foundational toolbox whereby the processes of design can be useful to others interested in understanding more about the innovative intersection of interaction and our built environment. It is intended that this book serves to spawn innovation in interactive architecture by not just highlighting a series of projects and clarifying how they were designed but that it acts as a catalyst for thinking about how our buildings and environments can truly impact our lives.