Building (as) performance : a material approach to adaptive architecture

Abstract

One measure of performance in adaptive architecture is its ability the respond effectively to the environment and evolving program. As architects strive to create designs that respond to external change, more and more literally and actively, they are inevitably faced with the challenge of merging the kinetic with what is inherently an "immovable". Yet traditional mechanic devices allowing freedom of movement to an assembly have proven to be very expensive and often unreliable. This is in part due to their incompatibility with a building's use and lifespan. Thus, they are either implemented permanently at great expense or are confined to the temporary and architecturally limited realm of installations. We can thus witness a trend in architecture moving away from the mechanic and towards the use of material behavior and deformation as a cheaper and more durable architectural solution to responsiveness. Responsive materials such as shape memory alloys (SMA's) and electroactive polymers offer new possibilities for architecture. Furthermore, an understanding of the difference between kinetics in architecture and kinetics in mechanical objects has led to investigations into evolving interplays of rigidity and flexibility within structures. This thesis tries to advance the discourse by investigating the limits of elastic material deformation, and framing a niche where it is possible and fruitful for architecture to use material properties to produce adaptable space.

(cont.) The work instantiates these notions into a program of informal performance and exhibition space to test how performance criteria such as acoustical absorption, transmission and reflection, visual transparency and media proliferation at an architectural scale can be mediated by this approach.