Project Tag: Material Behavior

Historically, architectural design focused on adaptation of built environment to serve human needs. Recently embedded computation and digital fabrication have advanced means to actuate physical infrastructure in real-time. These ‘reactive spaces’ have typically explored movement and media as a means to achieve reactivity and physical deformation. Sentient Thermochromics is a research project that finds new mechanisms for permanent and non-deformable everyday materials and environments using thermal, tactile and thermochromic responses actuated biometrically and controlled by embedded networked system. The intention is to create individualized pathways to thermally actuate building surfaces and enable individualized thermal comfort while exploring expressive methods to respond to interactions between the environment and human occupants. Moving away from engineering paradigm of averaged thermal comfort, this project illustrates new interactive scenarios and new forms of reactivity within the built environment. We are developing new forms of em-bedded material reactivity and biometric responsiveness of architectural surfaces that effect relationships between individual thermal comfort and energy usage. The ambition of this research project is to create new forms of communication between the human perception and the built environment. This project combines passive and active systems with a focus on relationships between temperature, emotiveness and human health. sensing human biometrics, as well as link the visual effects on the surface to an emotive human response. The goal is to provide individualized dynamic thermoregulation by locally activating the surface temperature in buildings while sensing human biometrics, as well as link the visual effects on the surface to an emotive human response.

| PI: Dana Cupkova | co-PI: Daragh Byrne | Contributor: Dan Cascaval | Project Funded by: Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts Research and Creativity Grant 2017 & 2018; Margaret Gruger Faculty Fund 2017 & 2018 |