Filamentosa (Chicago Illinois) is a new type of ultra-lightweight skyscraper that integrates responsive technologies into its structural frame and living skins to reduce the amount of material and energy required to live within, construct and maintain large scale structures. It results from a similar exploration of contemporary building technology. It is hoped that these explorations will lead to more sustainable building practices and the development of new urban forms that use less mass to greater effect.

More than being a series of smart systems attached to a dumb building frame, responsive architectures actually consist of intelligent frames, skins and systems. These buildings change shape and color. They have intelligent systems within them and around them. They track the sun gradually and they adjust their shape to improve shading in the summer or day lighting in the winter. They shake snow from their roof. They even change shape to reduce wind loads or improve the way they ventilate.

Unlike the conventional boxes that we live in, these buildings adapt to the natural environment to improve the way that people live. They address suitability and socio-technical issues in three key ways. Firstly they provide a means to reducing the mass and embedded energy used within buildings without sacrificing robustness. Secondly they enable architects to produce a new class of building envelopes that actively adjust and shape themselves in relation to the natural environment, its seasons and weather. With this they offer great potential in reducing the energy used within buildings. The third, less quantifiable benefit that responsive technologies bring to architecture is that of a new aesthetic. Like modernism this aesthetic is the product of the way systems are assembled. The systems within responsive architectures operate very differently from conventional architectures. They bring a series of new design strategies, formal tendencies, and grammars to the discipline. The impacts that ultra-lightweight and responsive systems have upon building design are substantial. Yona Friedman reminds us about the impact that such changes have upon our tools when he said that as the tasks of architecture change so too must its methods.

We are practicing at a time when static and unintelligent building technologies are being superseded by intelligent systems. As architects we must realize that, for the first time since the rise of modernism, shifts within the profession are being driven not by the mastery of industrial tools or machines, nor by the challenges of effective computer use, but by the very real need for us to stop harming the natural systems that support our existence. Importantly these new technologies enable architects to re-conceptualize building processes and also revisit the older tacit knowledge that architects draw from. The age-old knowledge that the shape of a building is intimately linked to its performance can now be understood, realized and advanced in very new ways. The impact that these changes will have upon architectural design will be profound. Going back to Friedman we must realize that this change will result in revisiting the tools and design methods we use to produce buildings.