FORUM INTERACTION AND ARCHITECTURE

relation is the situation of two people walking toward each other in a narrow corridor. At some point, they must take action to avoid walking into each other. Often, they both move toward the same wall of the corridor. Then, realizing that this would again cause a collision, they both move to the other side, mirroring each other’s movements. This dance continues until one of them breaks the interactional coupling. In this example, the narrowness of the corridor shaped the interaction between the two people. Now imagine that the environment actively participates in such a coordination of its inhabitants’ behaviors.

Figure 2. Inter-bodily resonance between inhabitant and adaptive architecture.

expression, and so forth. This process can become autonomous and continue without either agent actively trying to influence it. Thus, a continuous interaction cycle emerges that Fuchs calls inter-bodily resonance (Figure 2).

This mechanism of potentially autonomous micro-adjustments between interaction partners can be transferred to and used for our interactions with adaptive architecture. Arguably, adaptive architecture has both perceptive and expressive abilities through its use of sensors and actuators, which are coordinated by software—in sum, a sensorimotor system. The inhabitant expresses a behavior, which the space senses. The sensory data is then processed and sent to actuators to express environmental behavior, which the inhabitant perceives. This illustrates the biofeedback loop as described by Schnädelbach. However, what Fuchs describes operates in both directions: Each partner participates equally in the interaction. So, what happens if the environment not only reflects the behavior of its inhabitant but also becomes proactive?

ExoBuilding, which moves up and down in response to a person’s breathing, thereby establishing a biofeedback loop. To reverse this feedback loop, we took control away from participants after some time and without their knowing. We first adaptively blended inhabitant behavior and automated environmental behavior, then progressively faded out inhabitant input until only automated environmental behavior remained. Following this transition of control, the environment slowed down its movement pattern. Most participants followed this change and adjusted their breathing (one group knowingly, another unknowingly) to the slowing movement of the adaptive environment. In other words, they synchronized their behavior with the environment. Architectural spaces that can predictably lead inhabitants to specific behaviors might, for example, be used in therapy, rehabilitation, or for relaxation purposes.

There are numerous situations— other than in narrow corridors—in which we already coordinate our own behavior with that of others. For example, we engage in dancing, playing sports, or making music. If we perceive this coordination to be successful, we might feel a stronger sense of cohesion with our partner(s). And interpersonal synchrony has further benefits, which others have extensively researched. Among them are: the establishment of rapport, positive effects on social perception, improvement of memory, increased self-awareness and other-awareness, increased social-emotional development, improved self-regulation in children, and improvements in work performance while reducing anxiety. Thus, if adaptive environments facilitated synchrony between inhabitants, we might experience positive effects on the life we spend inside adaptive buildings.

Reciprocal control. In one of our studies, we investigated the reciprocity of interactions between inhabitant and adaptive space by trying to have the environment lead inhabitants to different behaviors [7]. We used an adaptive structure called

Synchrony. We have seen how the enactive approach applies to the interaction between an adaptive environment and one inhabitant. Now let’s look at how an adaptive space can affect the interaction between two inhabitants. Indeed, the enactive approach already provides for such a scenario [4]: A general example used to illustrate this

First indications are that such coordination between people might be possible to achieve with adaptive architecture. For example, we conducted a study with yoga practitioners in an adaptive architecture prototype [8]. The breathing of two practitioners was measured and their synchronicity expressed through a projected graphic. This graphic faded in and out based on how synchronized the two were: High synchrony meant a sharp image; low synchrony meant a blurry image. Seeing a visualization

64 INTERACTIONS NOVEMBER–DECEMBER2017