Situated Technologies

Architecture's privileged position as the technology of space-making is challenged by the current proliferation of a wide range of mobile, embedded, networked and distributed media, communication and information systems. Our interactions with (and through) these location-based, context-aware and otherwise ”situated” technologies are beginning to alter the way we perceive, navigate and socialize within the built environment. Prompting a reconfiguration of material boundaries, organizational adjacencies, and public/private relations, these technologies (and the ways in which we engage them) have significant implications for how we conceive, design and experience space. In this paper, we identify three vectors for architectural research that explore the spatial opportunities presented by what we call Situated Technologies. Working across the overlapping boundaries of media, architecture and computing, this research attempts to articulate how architects might play a critical role in shaping evolving techno-social spaces increasingly governed by both material and immaterial processes. As exploratory research, it aims less to propose solutions to known problems than to arrive at precise questions that help us better identify and structure new problems for architecture presented by recent developments in ubiquitous/ pervasive computing