source: silviyailieva

“Kinetic pattern is ephemeral – clusters, thickenings and gradients of movement.”

Experimentation in kinetics and architectural skins is introduced more widely recently. Facades and elements are transformed in kinetic living creatures changing in synchrony with the environment. The kinetic quality of the locomotion and the bio-mechanisms that are hidden behind it in the current study are the driver that animates the artificial system. The surface itself acts like a mechanism supported by the mechanics behind it – it folds and unfolds, bends, twists – that way the movement becomes three-dimensional. The pleats of the fabric unfold delicately so the mechanics become subtle and the clumsiness from the first experiments is not present. A basic servo system is used for achieving the kinetic quality of the locomotion and the added surface compliments and bounds with it. The pattern of motion arises from the movement of the multiple parts in the single device and then in the system – morphology of movement is the result and transforms the system in an unfolding architecture. The local movement in the parts is simple and the complexity comes from the global outcome – the collaboration between the parts themselves and the system at a bigger scale.

The research is a design study for finding new alternative solutions for creating a design strategy; for the possibility of creating “space-changing” environments with a constant development held in them (like the organisms’ development through a life span). Furthermore the thesis is about the patterns of behaviour derived from biology and nature and the possible bio-mechanism that could be discovered and used for creating an architectural environment that could be a self-sufficient system. Such an outlook gives lots of possibilities and an area for speculations – a possibility of what architecture might be.

The thesis project pursues an environment for transformation and adaptation – a setting with responsive actions and living technologies at a primitive level for now but with a potential to develop in architecture in future. That environment creates a public space that reacts to and depends on human presence with surfaces that spread in three dimensions. The single species of this system are of an equal importance to the series of species and form a” living organism”. With the use of tessellated geometry the formed urfaces and configurations act like a hybrid public architecture where everything depends on everything.

The movement of a particular biological species – the butterfly is translated into an ephemeral and light design which acts like a spatial transformable boundary – a space-changing enclosure which is not solid and is modified into a setting for perception and experience with an accent on the relationships in the system.