Abstract
This paper discusses soft structural transformation strategies and responsive motional activation control methods for the development of an interactive building skin, responsible for regulating inner light conditions, with particular feedback from human position and stature. Inspired from the latest employment of smart mobile devices in building industry as an on/off wireless control switchboard, the present project demonstrates an alternative, gesture-based activation methodology towards a more natural and approachable way of controlling architectural environments. Elastically deformable planar elements of low thickness, in the basis of bending-active principles, have been chosen for the composition of a ‘soft’, modular adaptive building skin that enables flexible kinetic transformation with enhanced diverse geometrical conversion. Alongside the question of responsive motional control strategies, the search for a practical design setup is investigated aiming to establish a computational-oriented methodology that integrates information from both direct physical sensory data and indirect computational programming and organization of the input information. This is discussed through the case studies, where the physical performance of individuals is examined to generate input parameters responsible for the appropriate gesture activation of the digitally simulated responsive skin. User’s physical actions are recorded via the synergy of multiple sensors and classified into two main categories. Computation of both data resulted on an enriched user motion decoding, and therefore the encoding of specific structural reactions.
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Notes
- 1.
Control of cognition: Cognition has to do with how mobile devices (operating system) understand and act in respect to user’s usage or preferences. It is defined as a set of processes and data examination that are purposely performed to activate a more interactive user-phone experience. Cognitive control is actually a mechanism of how digital platforms learn, recognise user’s actions, remember choices or particular data and effectively suggest options or even make specific tasks automated. This step is developed over time according to user’s activity and can manage both short- and long-term control [13].
- 2.
Sensing artefacts are sensing devices made by human being. These devices vary in technological manufacturing and nature of sensing. Many technological products are composed from sensing devices to provide users with valuable information regarding their status, operation or even failure. In most cases they work as protecting agents to prevent failure or to activate a special feature to avoid such incident to happen [14].
- 3.
Grasshopper is a parametric plug-in for Rhinoceros 3D. It allows custom programming for existing commands of Rhino as well as custom definition of commands using programming languages. Several sub-plugins have been formulated by developers which include pre-set components to enable communication between other official applications or hardware components such as sensing devices (Kinect camera etc.).
Information about Grasshopper at: http://www.grasshopper3d.com.
Grasshopper plug-ins at: http://www.food4rhino.com/?etx.
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Acknowledgements
The current paper presents an extended work that includes further research developments of a project initiated within the framework of the postgraduate course ARH-522—Advanced Computer-Aided Design Topics taught in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cyprus during the Fall semester of 2014. The initial investigation has been presented during the 3rd eCAADe Regional International Workshop ‘Computational Morphologies’ that was held in Polytechnic University of Milan on 14–15 May 2015 under the title ‘Adaptive building skin development and wireless gesture-oriented control’ and was authored by Odysseas Kontovourkis, Kristis Alexandrou, Constantinos Vassiliades, Stavros Frangogiannopoulos, Neofytos Dimitriou, and Christina Petrou [10]. We would like to sincerely thank all contributors participating in the previous part of investigation of the current extended work.
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Kontovourkis, O., Alexandrou, K., Frangogiannopoulos, S. (2018). Encoding Gesture-Oriented Human Behaviour for the Development and Control of an Adaptive Building Skin. In: Rossi, M., Buratti, G. (eds) Computational Morphologies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60919-5_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60919-5_10
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