At ONL, an architectural design firm in
Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and the
Hyperbody Research Group at the TU
Delft in The Netherlands, we have been
designing an entirely new aesthetic, one
based on the principles of customization.
Mass customization of buildings means that all produced building components have a unique identity
and are individuals that can be addressed independently. Each building component is different, and fits
only in one place. The structure that is built becomes
a giant 3D puzzle, where each piece fits exactly in one
location, and the unique ID of each component is
comparable to an IP address of a computer linked to
the Internet. This new generation of Pro-active Architecture (ProA) is based on customization that respects
the individuality of each component, building up a
completely new aesthetic. ProA buildings are responsive to the individuals that live inside them, and to
their environment. In the ProA concept, buildings are
organic, ever-changing vehicles for processing and displaying information. They exhibit independent real-time behaviors, like adjustments in shape in response
to changing environmental circumstances such as
wind direction.
Figure 1. Sensorboard in Saltwaterpavilion.
At Hyperbody, we have instigated a series of interactive prototypes to study the design of such buildings.
For the NSA exhibition in Centre Pompidou in 2003,
we were invited by the curators to build a first installation, NSA Muscle. NSA Muscle is a proactive
inflated space, its surface populated with a mesh of 72
muscles, all of which were addressed individually. In
the installation, the muscles cooperated as a swarm of
muscular actuators, so as to behave in real time. The
NSA Muscle danced, hopped, twisted, contracted,
and responded with subtle movements to sensor input
coming from visitors touching particular locations on
the nodes of the muscular mesh. The paradigm of
ProA was created, appearing on the cover of the
French daily newspaper Libération.
Our first truly interactive environment was the Saltwaterpavilion, realized in 1997. A weather station
positioned at the North Sea sent data to a computer
running Max/MSP, which informed a mixing table to
produce a soothing massage of light and sound that
refreshed every 20 seconds. The public could interact
with this dynamic environment using a sensorboard,
pushing and pulling lights and sound toward both
extremes of the interior space (see Figure 1). Interactivity and architecture were designed from scratch
with similar high budgets and at the same scale. Interactivity formed an integral part of the architecture for
the first time in the history of architecture. Imagine if
we could produce a swarm of such Waterpavilions, all