Jan. 20, 2012
Architecture Exhibit Enables People and Objects to Interact
A gallery visitor approaches an installation - 12 panels made of wood and plastic arrayed in two rows on the wall. As the visitor moves his head to check out the installation, the corners of the panels tip forward and backward, mirroring his actions.
Created by Catholic University graduate students Robert Blabolil and Jeremy Haak, the installation - called "Defined Active" - uses open-source computer software, microcontrollers (small computers), a body-recognition camera, and nickel-titanium "muscle" wire, which contracts when electrically driven or heated, to pull off what appears to be magic.
The piece is part of an exhibit titled "Conversation Undefined" at the Project 4 gallery in Northwest Washington, D.C., that runs through Jan. 29.
The exhibit is based on research by Blabolil, Haak, and nine other graduate students in the Design Technology Program at Catholic University's School of Architecture and Planning, and by CUA's Harvest solar decathlon team, which has submitted a proposal for the 2013 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon.
In an announcement about the exhibit, the architecture and planning school asks: "Can architecture connect the virtual and the physical?" The answer, according to the exhibit, is "yes."
Blabolil notes that open-source computer software - whose code is available to the general public with relaxed copyright restrictions - allowed the students to experiment and use their imaginations as they put together the installations.
In the installation by Blabolil and Haak, the camera discerns body parts and remaps the visitor's movements within a virtual environment. The virtual movement is then used to activate the system based on the visitor's proximity to the 12 panels. When the visitor points to a panel, the system generates an electric current that passes through the "smart" wire and causes it to contract and pull on the panels.
The exhibit grew out of a design studio taught last semester by Jonathan Grinham, a visiting lecturer in the Design Technology Program.
"The studio was intended to be a research lab that looked at emerging fields of design and future possibilities in architecture," notes Grinham. "The student pieces in the exhibit are each one-of-a-kind installations that use light, temperature, and sensory data to facilitate interactivity."
Architects and engineers have designed "smart" houses, which are capable of regulating lighting, heating and air conditioning, and media centers, for almost two decades. Technologies similar to muscle wire have been researched and used by NASA.
But these technologies are expensive and have been confined to the engineering of mechanical systems that have had to adapt to traditional forms of architecture, Grinham notes. Open-source computing and online Wiki's - websites whose users can add, modify, or delete content via a Web browser - have enabled designers to conduct more user-centered research in the field of responsive architecture. "The result is a new way of envisioning the spatial and formal impact of smart home technologies," he says.As part of the Design Technology Program, students explore how new forms of computer design can be used in architecture, Grinham notes. "They also look at how architecture can take advantage of what computers have to offer in terms of construction methods."
Project 4 - located at 1353 U St., third floor, Northwest D.C. - is open from noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. For more information about the exhibit, call 704-488-2229.
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