Abstract

The area of responsive architecture is at the conceptual intersection of architecture, design, and technology. It presents an opportunity to investigate the potentials for engaging place-dwellers in an interactive exchange with each other and with the built environment, and can be regarded as an experimental medium for conceptual investigation. The concept of creating responsive architecture is synonymous to creating experiences in place, and for building site-specific interventions within the built environment that use computational technologies to choreograph or facilitate engaging experiences for visitors, spectators, and place-dwellers. From this perspective, responsive architecture can be regarded as a place-making design strategy that is informed the by theories and histories of architectural design practices, and also by concepts and studies on space, place, the body, experience, and perception.

This research attempts to present responsive architecture within the context of place-making and as a place-making design strategy. It conducts an overview which reads the history of experimentations in endowing architecture with feedback and adaptability in response to presence and interaction, and contextualizes this research by performing an inter-disciplinary reading in the history of arts and science to better understand the rise of these tendencies in the light of development of other forms of creation such as theatre, dance, and the advances in science and technology. This research also conducts a theoretical overview on the concepts of space and place, and their relation to active bodies and perception.

The second part of this thesis is a research-creation component which presents a design strategy that investigates the ways in which computational and digital media can be conceptualized, diffused, and used to create engaging and interactive experiences in place. It presents a set of experiments that were conducted by the author of this research, provides a conceptual pretext for the responsive design strategies that were used in each experiment, and draws similarities and distinction from the ensemble of the experiments that investigate a certain aspect of each strategy.