Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Living


Amphibious Architecture (New York)


Living Light (Seoul)

The Living is a young New York-based firm formed by David Benjamin & Soo-In Yang. I recently had the privileged to see David present some of their works in a lecture, most of which were described as prototypes and experimental research projects that investigate the possibilities of technology, human/environmental interaction, and architecture. Of particular interest are projects that turns what's invisible in our natural and built environments into a visible representation with the help of sensors and data collecting.

Projects such as
Living City (a series of sensors that collect air quality/carbon levels in various locations in the city and through the internet sends the info such that an installation in a remote gallery will translate that data into a series of actions), the installation is an extension of their previous prototype called Living Glass which is a wall system will "gills" that can move and breathe. Other projects such as Living Light (a canopy on a pavilion in Seoul that displays air quality information by region by tapping into an existing online data resource, this info can be transmitted to mobile phones via text message) or Amphibious Architecture (an installation on the East River of NY that translates water quality, fish/aqua life, and other data into colour-coded led lights) use a similar method to make the invisible around us visible and interactive.

Through these experiments and prototyping, The Living and other firms and researchers doing similar things are interrogating what the future of interactive/responsive architectures can be. What can we do with the data? How can we represent it? How can our built environments respond to improve/alter the conditions? What would a larger network of such systems look like an function?


Living Glass:

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