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Cities are massive investments. They are the largest creations made by people and they reflect both our historical as well as contemporary values. They are composed upon landscapes of functioning urban spaces, parks, transport arteries, natural reserves, and buildings. Historically many of these spaces were filled with industrial technologies that were connected to the fabric of cities at very large scales, leaving little space for a human scale or aesthetic to prevail. Smaller, more powerful, and more highly integrated ubiquitous technologies today enable us to distribute equally powerful systems more uniformly, less noticeably, and at the scale of a single individual. Today we are at a point in history where these much smaller, cheaper, more powerful technologies are ready to be incorporated into our buildings in ways that have never before been possible.

So what impact will these technologies have upon architecture? Of course, sensor/computer/actuator technologies have been common within our buildings for several decades, two very common examples of which are the elevator and the thermostat. Since the early 1980's, structural engineers have used responsive technologies to absorb loads within the largest of our buildings - skyscrapers. Engineers use these technologies to reduce the shear loads of wind as well as the loads that earthquakes impose upon buildings, often redistributing the forces or counteracting them by causing buildings to vibrate at frequencies that cancel out an undesired load in a dynamic way. The discipline of architecture has accepted the inclusion of these technologies because the services that they offer help extend existing visions of what architecture is. Thus, buildings become taller by cleverly responding to wind loads and actively adjusting the structure to absorb new loads, but the architectural aesthetic has remained surprisingly constant.

The Link Between Urban Technologies And Responsive Or Robotic Buildings:
Located at the heart of Burnham's plan of Chicago, a plan inspired by technological innovation and the advancement of a social built environment, this project was conceived as a forum for the development of a new type

of architecture "responsive architecture" that would meet the needs of an experimental performance space. The project was informed by the understanding that, the previous urban revolution caused by the introduction of technological systems will no longer be limited (en-mass) to urban forms. Technological innovation has moved from the urban scale, down, to affect buildings at the scale of a single individual. The revolution is made possible through technological progression, through a trend towards smaller and smaller, powerful technologies, and through their increasing adoption within social, cultural and artistic realms.

Within this project sensor/computer/actuator technologies are used to produce a series of intelligent building envelopes that seek fresh relationships between 'building' and 'user'. These responsive buildings are covered by skins that have the ability to alter their shape as the social and environmental conditions of the spaces within and around each building change. New, more personalized relationships with space will inspire fresh interpretations of architecture. Finally relationships that emerge from the juxtaposition of experimental performance and responsive architecture could lead architects to new sets of ideas that uncover new possibilities within architecture as well as provide performance artists with spontaneous, unanticipated, and serendipitous moments that further artistic expression.

The buildings are positioned to align with the existing urban vista and former civic axis of Burnham's plan as it stretches from Congress through Grant Park and then over a broad, ceremonial staircase, to an incomplete Chicago Harbor. The breakwater upon which it sits lies adjacent to the site of Burnham's famous Chicago World Fairgrounds. Several documents within Burnham's plan suggest the existence of a civic monument (or marker) located on the lake at the centre of Chicago Harbor. It is the belief of the designer that the mass of an unrealized civic monument was used by Burnham to complete the city's civic axis and thus also provide a focus for people as they approach the lake.