Have you ever dreamt of rearranging not only the interior, but also the actual walls of your home from time to time? Or about controlling the heater in your house individually in the winter months, so that everybody can have his or her own favourite temperature in the same room? These and other incredible things become possible when technology and architecture merge. Read More
Have you ever dreamt of rearranging not only the interior, but also the actual walls of your home from time to time? Or about controlling the heater in your house individually in the winter months, so that everybody can have his or her own favourite temperature in the same room? These and other incredible things become possible when technology and architecture merge.
For centuries, architects have trying to create an environment that responds to us humans in a dynamic way: The famous Fun Palace proposed by British architect Cedric Price in the 2nd half of the past century in London, for instance, was strongly inspired by the idea of having a different kind of interaction between humans, architecture, and the environment.
With technological development advancing at an incredible pace in recent years, we’re now at a point in time where these visions have become possible. Our cities have been covered with sensors and networks designed to deliver many different types of digital information from our environment that we can collect, sense and even respond to. It’s almost as if the digital and the physical world were coming together, as if atoms and bits were converging.
The digital and the physical world were coming together, as if atoms and bits were converging.
This creates incredible new potential for architecture. From one point of view, you might call it the Internet of Things. From another angle you could say: it’s architecture coming to life. At MIT Senseable City Lab, we’ve been intensely working on making architecture come to life for the last couple of years. Here are some examples of our recent projects:
1. The living surface
Remember the sand castles of your childhood, and the beautiful illusion that you could build a whole world with your own hands? The satisfaction you got from designing your own dream house? What may seem like a childish fantasy has now become technologically viable.
Around ten years ago, when I was working with Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab, we developed a 3D scanner at MIT that could generate real time information about a surface – a project called Sandscape. When we installed it on top of a sand table, we got real time information about the height, slope and topography of the surface while we were shaping the surface of the sand with our hands. So we asked ourselves: Could we also activate the object?
Last year, Hiroshi managed to make sand dance back. We used a projector in front of a rotating mirror to capture the movement of a living surface and to reproduce it on a different surface in real time. Take a look at the video: The test person moves his hands underneath the projector, the projector scans the movement, and our surface made of movable bars changes its shape according to the hands’ movement. It moves exactly the same way as the hands do.
Such project would practically allow us to turn any surface into a living surface – we could even build houses with flexible walls and furniture. The shape of the walls could then respond to our living habits. At our design office Carlo Ratti Associati we did a project in this direction: We used a projector that could transform every surface around into a living wall.
2. The moving heater
We all know those days when the climate just seems to want to get you down. When the heat makes you run into the best-acclimatised room where you close all the windows and still feel sweaty. Or those freezing winter days when you end up wrapping yourself in a woollen blanket and crouching down next to the heater, but your feet still just won’t get warm.
Yet research at MIT has shown that a lot of energy we use for heating or cooling our buildings is wasted. Just think about it: We heat our entire houses even when we’re not there. At MIT, we therefore invented a system that instead of heating a space can specifically heat people. We call it local warming.
We tested it last winter in the entrance hall at MIT and this year at the Venice Biennale. A little bubble of heat would follow the people who came in. They could even customise the heat of the bubble to 20 or 24 degrees, or whatever temperature suited them best.
This sort of local warming system installed in the ceiling could entirely replace our common baseline heating. The same system could work for cooling too, of course. Instead of spraying water to cool everywhere – as is common in Dubai, for example – we could create a little water cloud that followed people individually.
3. The self-driving tractor: agricultural printing and altered landscapes
Do you remember the last time you went to the countryside? You probably strolled through the landscape on a mild summer afternoon, crossing tiny villages and vast fields. As a matter of course, these huge fields mark all our agricultural areas with one crop in each. Although nature has never used monocultures, we’ve always depended on them for our traditional way of farming.
Self-driving technology could help us overcome monoculture.
Now imagine this: Self-driving technology could actually help us overcome monoculture.
Self-driving cars that have 3D scanners installed on their roofs can scan the environment and navigate almost like a human being. The advantage for agriculture if tractors were self-driving: While humans need rectangular fields to seed and harvest correctly, self-driving tractors could move on the landscape in a very precise way. They could seed and harvest various crops on just one field using different shapes. Benedict Ross, a guest lecturer at MIT, wants to set up this system in Germany. He can almost print the landscape – you can see that very clearly in the video of his first test field.
4. Walking on water: the floating pavilion
Water striders are fascinating animals: they can walk on water and only their feet get wet. The ends of their legs are always exactly at the water line.
Reproducing this idea in architecture is very difficult: A platform that floats precisely on the water surface is almost impossible to develop, as it changes position depending on how many people you add. All the objects developed so far have always had one part floating above and one part floating underneath the water. Even a raft will change position in the water depending on how many people it supports.
In Brazil, we were commissioned with a project for the Olympics in Rio that focused on water. Water is a big issue in Brazil today with the severe droughts in Sao Paolo and Rio in particular. We wanted people to experience water in a very different way from what they are used to – we wanted to allow them to walk on water.
The floating pavilion allows people to walk exactly at the water line.
So we created a system that allowed us to carve volumes out of water: It responds to the number of people entering the platform and floats dynamically. The surface of the platform is always at same height as the water surface: It allows people to walk exactly at the water line.
5. The living water wall
Water has been a beautiful element of architecture and planning for hundreds and even thousands of years. For the World Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, we got permission to design the building at the entrance of the Expo Digital Water Pavilion, and we decided to construct it using living water walls.
The rooms expanded and shrank based on how many people were inside.
We installed a pipe with many tabs on the ground. A computer controlled when the walls opened and closed. It could respond to people, and would let you in when you approached it. It could also display text, images or patterns. Inside the house, the rooms expanded and shrank based on how many people were inside. Even the roof was covered with a thin layer of water. When there was wind, we could lower the roof to minimise splashing. We could even close the building completely and make it disappear in the ground.
6. Transform the bike and transform the city: the Copenhagen smart wheel
It’s no surprise that bike sharing and car sharing are on the rise worldwide: With more and more smog and traffic jams occurring in cities, we’re looking for smarter ways to move from home to work, to our friends’ houses, or to our favourite café.
A few years ago in Copenhagen, the mayor asked us if we could use ubiquitous computing to address traffic in Copenhagen. In Copenhagen, traffic refers to a lot of bicycles: 30-50% of all trips taken in the city are by bicycle.
That’s why we developed the Copenhagen wheel: Just changing the back wheel turns an ordinary bike into a smart and electric hybrid. Once you start pedalling, the motor takes over and supports your efforts. We also added a little sensor so you can connect the wheel to your smartphone and obtain information about CO2 exposure, noise level or distance travelled.
While ordinary electric bikes usually carry an extra battery and motor, we managed to install both inside the back wheel. This way the bike is still light and beautiful, but you’ll now be able to reach almost any place in town without traffic jams or suffocating metro rides.
In Copenhagen, 30-50% of all trips taken in the city are by bicycle.
This article is based on Carlo Ratti's speech at re:publica 2015.