Dynamic Ornament: The Design of Responsive Architectural Environments

This thesis study investigates the architectural potential of digital information, using case studies and prototypes to explore the integration of dynamic information in the architectural environment. Responsive architecture, a design field that has arisen in recent decades at the intersection of architecture and computer science, invokes a material response to digital information and implies the capacity of the building to respond dynamically to changing stimuli. One important function of responsive architecture is the communication of dynamic qualities of the environment, a function that has the potential to enhance the experience of the building by giving expression to its fleeting, changeable aspects. I have chosen to use the discourse of architectural ornament as a means of engaging the architectural roots of interactive intervention. Like responsive architecture, ornament addresses the integration of furniture and objects, and well as movable, mechanical elements in the work of architecture. This is a topic that I believe has particular relevance for computer-augmented architecture. In addition, the history of ornament offers into the integration of information in buildings, and can be mined for strategies that have the potential to inform the integration of dynamic data in the built environment. "Dynamic ornament" is a term that describes the subset of responsive architecture that I will investigate in this thesis. I have focused in the thesis on responsive components whose functionality involves the communication of dynamic information. The primary contribution of the thesis is the identification of design strategies for the integration of dynamic digital information in buildings based on the tradition of architectural ornament. A primary intention of the thesis is to rehabilitate the position of computer-augmented architecture by addressing some of the principal critiques made against it: rapid obsolescence, superficiality, and irrelevance to the central concerns of architecture. Like ornament, the digital augmentations of architecture are commonly treated as accessory to the central and lasting concerns of architectural theory and practice. It is my contention that the modernist debate over ornament is a persistent topic which has refused to go away, and which continues to influence contemporary discussions of architecture and digital technology. I hope to bring a new focus to the design of responsive architecture, one that emphasizes the symbolic aspects of digital interventions by engaging a neglected history of architecture augmented by technology.

Process Bifurcation and the Digital Chain in Architecture

Russell Alexander Loveridge

This thesis investigates the impact of digital technology on the methods of design and production in architecture. Through research of history, theory, technology, and methods, the work determines whether the current use of new technologies should be considered as iterative development of the architectural practice, or as a radically new paradigm. The computer has now matured into the primary working medium for architectural design. Digital tools are increasingly expanding their role, from design and visualization, to use in empirical simulation and evaluation, digital fabrication, and in on-site construction validation. This combination of linked tools, into a single project-wide solution system is called the "digital chain". This procedure is a significant opportunity for optimization of process, but it can also be seen as a catalyst to reinforce creative collaboration between disparate professionals in a design team. Because of this change to both methods and relationships the digital chain, and its components are understood to be disruptive technologies. The digital chain has caused a bifurcation in architectural productivity, because of this disruption many theorists and critics claim that digital technologies now define a new era of architecture. This thesis seeks to understand if this inflection can also be considered a new paradigm. The contemporary computer, as an "information machine" is characterized by three specific capabilities: control, prediction, and processing. Research and project work to examine the digital chain have been undertaken and categorized using these three investigation channels. Each topic for investigation has been instigated with a pedagogic work. Thereafter, additional "proof of concept" projects have been undertaken to advance the work to the professional level. The results and findings occur at two levels: Practical production of architecture, but also as conclusion about "digital learning" and the scope of technological adoption within the architectural profession. The conclusions of the thesis state that a technologically induced paradigm-shift in architecture has not occurred. The current implementation of digital tools still only qualifies as iterative innovation of traditional methods. The technology and use of digital tools in architecture has developed significantly in the last decade. Emerging technologies, new methods, and the prognosis for future developments will have significant effect on architectural design and production. Because architecture has a well established precedent of "re-purposing" technology from other disciplines, the thesis concludes that there is strong potential that a paradigm-shift may yet happen. By examining emerging innovations from other industries it is possible to make highly informed predictions about incoming innovations in materials, production methods, and conceptual systems. This insight into the next wave of potential catalytic influences is presented in the discussion, and it is concluded that a broader range of new innovations may yet invoke a technologically driven paradigm-shift in architecture.

EPFL2012

Designable Visual Markers for Mobile Human-Computer Interaction

Enrico Costanza

Visual markers are graphic symbols designed to be easily recognised by machines. They are traditionally used to track goods, but there is increasing interest in their application to mobile human-computer interaction (HCI). By scanning a visual marker through a camera phone, users can retrieve localised information and access mobile services. In particular the dissertation examines the application of visual markers to physical tagging: practices of association of digital information with physical items. One missed opportunity in current visual marker systems is that the markers themselves cannot be visually designed; they are not expressive to humans, and thus fail to convey information before being scanned. To address this limitation, this dissertation introduces the idea of designable markers, visual markers that are both machine-readable and visually communicative to humans, and presents an investigation of the ways in which they can support mobile human-computer interaction. The application of designable visual markers to the creation of mobile interfaces is explored through a variety of methods: through formal usability experiments, through the creation and analysis of example designs, as well as through the qualitative analysis of two field trials. All three approaches were enabled by the engineering and development of d-touch, an actual recognition system that supports designable visual markers and by its integration in a variety of applications and experimental probes. D-touch is based on image topology, and its markers are defined in terms of constraints on the nesting of dark and light regions. The constraints imposed by d-touch are flexible enough to allow novice users to create markers which are visually expressive and at the same time machine readable. A user study demonstrates how such system enables people to design their own functional visual markers, determining their aesthetic qualities and what they visually communicate to others. A desktop application to support users in the creation of valid markers, the d-touch analyser, is presented and its usefulness is demonstrated through the same study. A formal usability experiment comparing five variations of marker-based interfaces on keypad and touch-screen phones shows that all of them allow users to reliably select targets within, on average, less than 4 seconds. Participants of the experiment reported a strong preference for interfaces that involve only marker scanning, compared to those that require a combination of marker scanning and key-presses or touch selections. Example designs of mobile interface generated by the author as well as others are presented to expose how the d-touch recognition system can be integrated in mobile applications. The examples illustrate a variety of ways in which markers can be used to augment printed materials such as cards, books and product packages, adding to them interactive capabilities. The examples show also different approaches to marker design, ranging from simple and recognisable iconic design, to symbols that integrate cues about the interactive functionality, to making them invisible by hiding them in existing graphics. Finally, the dissertation reports and analyses two field trials conducted to study what practices of physical tagging can emerge from, and be supported by, the use of markers. The trials were centred around the use of uWiki, a functional prototype based on d-touch, that allows users to associate digital content to markers printed on physical tags that can be affixed to objects or buildings. Observations show that a variety of practices emerge around the use of this technology, indicating that they provide a rich medium that has potential to attract the interest of real users. Though the results of this work are preliminary, they serve to demonstrate the range of potential for the future of such systems.

EPFL2010

The Digital Ornament using CAAD/CAAM Technologies

Russell Alexander Loveridge

New digital technologies are challenging the traditions of the architectural design methodology, the relationship between context and design, and the dependency on skilled workmanship for the fabrication of beautiful and complex architecture. Intellectually, applications of digital technologies are also allowing for the reinvestigation, reinterpretation, and redevelopment of historical concepts, theories, and skills. Our focus of ornament in this paper is presented as a constrained architectural testing ground, a reduced issue that still addresses the primary issues of geometry, aesthetics, individualism, and the transferal of design to materiality. Our work on digital ornament combines the traditionally intuitive skills of geometric & graphic manipulations with easily edited input (variables and digital images), control through parametric programming, and automated output (CNC manufacturing).The combination of these processes allows for efficient diversity and uniqueness of design, while also compensating for the increasing cost and declining availability of skilled artisans for the physical fabrication.The presented projects in teaching, research, and professional activities demonstrate our ongoing experiments with new technologies of programmed surface modeling and computer numerically controlled manufacturing (CNC manufacturing).This work has been incorporated in real world projects, both in the revitalization historic buildings, and in new applications of ornament in contemporary architecture.

2005

Process Bifurcation and the Digital Chain in Architecture

Russell Alexander Loveridge

EPFL2012

Designable Visual Markers for Mobile Human-Computer Interaction

Enrico Costanza

EPFL2010