Living Building Skins

Areti Markopoulou, Designing Matter, Essay, IAAC, ka-au, No Density, Project, Senseable Technologies, Technology and fabrication

Architecture&design, Barcelona, Collective research, Design, Design-based research, Designing Matter, Discipline, Essay, Experimental Fabrications, Façade, IAAC, Innovation, Interdisciplinary design, Project, Research, Responsive technologies, Spain

The paper presented here uses research case studies developed within the Digital Matter Studio of the IAAC Master in Advanced Architecture program 2013-14 and 2016-17. The selection of projects presented here were developed by the following student authors:
Akanksha Rathee, Elena Mitrofanova, Pongtida Santayanon (Hydroceramic Tile)
Irene Ayala Castro, Montakan Manosong , Ya Chieh Chang, Zina Alkani (Water-Driven Breathing Skin)
Nasser Ghannam, Guoliang Zhang, Mohamad Al Chawa, Dongliang Ye (SoRO)
and the following faculty supervisors:
Areti Markopoulou (Senior Faculty)
Alexandre Dubor (Faculty and Fabrication Assistant)
Moritz Begle (Assistant Coordinator)
Angelos Chronis (Computational Assistant)

For a significant group of architects and researchers, the non-solid environments of our digital era seem to be the perfect playground for exploring novel possibilities for adaptive building solutions that can contribute to our energy-hungry lives and inhabiting style. If the anthropocene (or capitalocene) scenario of human impact needs constant change – if climate mutates, if information “runs” at extreme speeds of bits and bytes – then our human-made architecture and built space should be able to change, “run” and mutate rather than just merely being inhabited. Architecture shall move and is moving towards the performative, the performative instrument or the alive.