Making responsive technologies apparent & socially relevant within a contemporary architecture

Article by K Sutavee, published in Prophesy Magazine, #8 Winter 2005

When I first came to Chicago, I was overwhelmed by the breadth of its streets and the ways in which they exposed me to the sky, the sun, and the water. I was overrun with questions and constantly reminded about the role that this city played in developing many of the modern building techniques that were first used within skyscrapers - these thoughts informed the architecture of my mind.

My arrival here caused me to busily think about how one building, built strongly enough to stand against the wind, might affect its neighbour. How this building might cause its neighbour excessive loads by reflecting wind unexpectedly onto it, or how it might shelter its neighbour from the wind. And from this point on, I wondered if there wasn't a better way of making buildings so that they could both respond to unexpected conditions and recognize that a response to them may cause their neighbour some discomfort. I wondered if there would ever be an architecture that recognized this potential - an architecture that would produce buildings to intelligently respond to these situations and turn our cities into places filled by buildings that cooperatively blow and sway in the wind like a field of tall grass, distributing loads strategically across whole regions, rather than just individual areas, of a city.

I then began to wonder how these architectures could be built in social and cultural settings, about the type of program that would be necessary, the location where a series of these buildings would be built, and finally how also they would be built to respond to this city and the architecture that it inspires within my mind.

This project aims to make responsive technologies apparent within architecture by using them to purposefully shape the form of a building 'an experimental performance space' that is actively responsive to both you and me. The project is inspired by a desire to make spaces that improve the quality of peoples lives and that provide them with a place in which they can creatively interact with the environment in unforeseen and unexpected ways. It is a project that lets a dancer dance with a building, and that same building to then begin building dance with that dancer.