Adaptive Systems Studio

2016

In our digital era, new technologies have fundamentally transformed the way in which designers approach building design with a shift in emphasis from form to performance, from structure to envelope. This class focuses on adaptive and responsive architecture through a multidisciplinary approach. The class aims at a more comprehensive design of adaptive systems in architecture. The framework for designing adaptive systems in this class incorporates computational methods in both design thinking and fabrication process as well as studying material behavior, transformative mechanism, programming, sensory environment, and robotics. The four key concepts explored are dynamism, Human-Computer interaction, transformability, and intelligent behavior.

Therefore, the course explores kinetic and responsive design solutions for creating tools, techniques, and platforms for the robotized self-adjusting building. By use of cutting-edge software and technologies such as Grasshopper, Firefly, Dynamo, Python scripting, sensors, Arduino microcontrollers, Shape Memory Alloy, etc. these projects respond to their environment and peoples around them. In these projects, students explored environments that can gradually morph based on various environmental and user inputs.

Type: Interactive Models and Responsive Buildings  

Instructor: Mona Ghandi, Saleh Kalantari 

Washington State University