In this hands-on research laboratory, we will unfreeze static buildings and create functioning interactive environments that bring architecture to life.

The class offers an immersive introduction to the issues of responsive kinetic architecture and the techniques of designing with electronic circuits. Students will work in teams and will use the standard building blocks of inexpensive sensors, simple microcontrollers, and shape memory alloy actuators to jump-start the process of designing with electronics. We will be among the first architects to conduct advanced research into material actuators--materials that are thin, lightweight, and silent, creating movement with no motors or mechanical parts.

Possible projects include hallways that listen to your secrets and replay them as flashing lights, pipes that expose their locations based on movement through a building, walls that hug you, and facades that open and close their gills based on air quality. We will conduct research collaboratively, in an open source way, sharing techniques among teams and building off the research of prior classes.

No prior experience is necessary.  We will use our own limits--of time, budget, and experience--to our advantage, and by the end of the semester, students will build a range of exciting full-scale demonstrations.

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