Architectronics: Towards a Responsive Environment

Contemporary architecture can be seen as a dynamic system that causes change to its environment, or even as system that can modify itself. Interactive or responsive environments are not totally new to architecture however the possibilities in architecture have only been lightly referred to. This interdisciplinary design studio, with mechatronics engineers and architects collaborating, explored possible applications with real world equipment, sensors and knowledge. Development of responsive architecture requires architects to have a fluency in sensors, actuators and their control system programming. New potential application of technologies requires a re-framing of what that technology could do in a different social application. Together these issues challenged architecture and engineering students in a collaborative design environment. The resulting projects - kinetic architecture on control systems - challenge our understanding of what our built environment could be