My Research

Although Vitruvius’s treaties included clocks, waterworks and mobile war machines, architecture is often understood to be an art of space, not of time. Architecture’s traditional role has been the spatial backdrop to social interaction: In the 20th Century, Archigram’s ‘Instant City’, Negroponte’s ‘Soft Architecture Machines’, Price’s ‘Fun Palace’, ‘and ‘Generator’ projects challenged this axiom, imagining and constructing architectures that were interactive participants in their own right. While these architectures borrowed much from the mechanical automata, kinetic sculpture and early cybernetic arts, they imagined more than simple choreographed kinetics routines. They suggested an architecture able to propose and negotiate its own kinetic behaviour with the world around it, one that could enter into a conversation (or even perhaps a dance) with its inhabitants. Often however, these visions of interactive architectures were limited to the drawing board by the technical possibilities of the time. Today’s technology places architects on the threshold of a new era of ‘intelligent’ kinetic architecture.