The term responsive architecture was given to us by Nicholas Negroponte, who first conceived of it during the late nineteen sixties when spatial design problems were being explored by applying cybernetics to architecture. Negroponte proposes that responsive architecture is the natural product of the integration of computing power into built spaces and structures, and that better performing, more rational buildings are the result. Negroponte also extends this mixture to include the concepts of recognition, intention, contextual variation, and meaning into computing and its successful (ubiquitous) integration into architecture. This cross-fertilization of ideas lasted for about eight years. Several important theories resulted from these efforts, but today Nicholas Negroponte's contributions are the most obvious to architecture. His work moved the field of architecture in a technical, functional, and actuated direction.

By adopting the stance that responsive buildings provide a means of improving the functional abilities of architecture, this paper will focus upon those characteristics that arise from the first and third points. The paper will begin by describing four precedents, their features, and downfalls, then suggest how functional responsive architectures can be made by using actuated tensegrity structures.