Interactive Architecture

Every year, a bevy of new phones, games, televisions, and electronic reading devices ride into our lives on a tidal wave of interactive hype. These i-products, while handy, primarily confine their interactivity to the surfaces of screens. Not exactly the kind of "world-changing" transformation we've been promised. In Interactive Architecture, authors Michael Fox and Miles Kemp introduce us to a brave new world where design pioneers are busy creating environments that not only facilitate interaction between people, but also actively participate in their own right. These spaces—able to reconfigure themselves in response to human stimuli—will literally change our worlds by addressing our ever-evolving individual, social, and environmental needs. In other words, it's time to stop asking what architecture is and start asking what it can do.

Interactive Architecture is a processes-oriented guide to creating dynamic spaces and objects capable of performing a range of pragmatic and humanistic functions. These complex physical interactions are made possible by the creative fusion of embedded computation (intelligence) with a physical, tangible counterpart (kinetics). A uniquely twenty-first century toolbox and skill set—virtual and physical modeling, sensor technology, CNC fabrication, prototyping, and robotics—necessitates collaboration across many diverse scientific and art-based communities. Interactive Architecture includes contributions from the worlds of architecture, industrial design, computer programming, engineering, and physical computing. These remarkable projects run the gamut in size and complexity. Full-scale built examples include a house in Colorado that programs itself by observing the lifestyle of the inhabitants, and then learns to anticipate and accommodate their needs. Interactive Architecture examines this vanguard movement from all sides, including its sociological and psychological implications as well as its potentially beneficial environmental impact.

Michael Fox is a founder and principal of Fox Lin Inc. In 1998, Fox founded the Kinetic Design Group at MIT as a sponsored research group to investigate interactive architecture. In 2001, he founded Odesco (Ocean Design Collaborative) in Venice California from which the office of Fox Lin has evolved. Prior to founding OdescO, he served as an assistant to engineer and inventor Chuck Hoberman in New York, and as a design team leader for Kitamura Associates in Tokyo, Japan.

Miles Kemp is the founder and principal of Variate Labs and Series Design/Build. Miles is currently developing a number of interface, robotic and spatial projects in Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York, Mexico City, Frankfurt and Munich. Kemp works as a Senior User Experience Designer and information architect for Schematic Inc. developing next generation interfaces for web, touch, gesture and other emerging technology platforms. In addition to his professional work, Kemp created and moderates a blog about robotics and emerging technologies in architecture, www.spatialrobots.com.