Atmosphere 2014—ACTION

PDFS:DWELLING ACTS    ENVIRONMENTAL ACTS    SOCIO-POLITICAL ACTS    BUILDING ACTS   REPRESENTATIONAL ACTS    RESEARCH IN ACTION

Push, Pull, Bend, Bind: Enacting Architecture Through Behaviour and Consequence
LANCELOT COAR, University of Manitoba
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Informality in Bogotá: Housing, Rapid Urbanization, and Public Space
JORGE COLÓN, University of New Mexico
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Poetic Action for Autism: An Intersubjective Approach
ALLISON DVORAK, MSH Architects
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Black Contemporary: Act of Construction
PETER P. GOCHÉ, Iowa State University
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Experiencing the Three-Legged Stool: Social, Economic and Environmental Education
Through the Mariposa Redevelopment

MARIANNE BELLINO HOLBERT, University of Colorado-Boulder

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Clouds of Action: Rethinking Urban Contexts as Differential and Participatory Fields 
HANNAH HOPEWELL, Auckland University of Technology

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Inhabiting Difference: Integrating Rule Based Design and Cultural Ritual
JASON S. JOHNSON, University of Calgary
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Exposing Experiences: Research Based Placemaking
JENNY KEMPSON, Framework Cultural Placemaking (Seattle)
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Turbulence and the Creation of Home
GRAHAM LIVESEY, University of Calgary

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Heaven on Earth: Transient Dwelling and Adaptation in Downtown Houston
GREGORY MARINIC, University of Houston
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Digital Surrogacy in Ephemeral Sites
URSULA EMERY MCCLURE, Louisiana State University
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Returning Anew: Sequential Experience in the Jewett Art Center
KEVIN MOORE, Auburn University
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Patterning Temporary Atmospheres: Installations for the Experience of Sound and Light
CLAY ODOM, University of Texas
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Photography as a Phenomenological Tool in Architectural Representation
ERIKA PETRIC, Technical University of Graz
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Apocalyptic Architecture: Designing Within Resilient Detroit
ZIAD QURESHI, Iowa State University
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Free Zoning: Designing a Framework for Typological Evolution and Continual Building Acts
GEORG RAFAILIDIS, State University of New York at Buffalo
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Blind Spot: The User Usurps the Dwelling Act and the Designer’s Attention
NATALIJA SUBOTINCIC, University of Manitoba
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Toward Anonymity in Architecture: An Augmentation of the Historical Project of Autonomy
JOSHUA M. TARON, University of Calgary
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Call Before You Cut! The Importance of Tree Protection
ANNA THURMAYR, University of Manitoba

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The Lightest Material

AARON J. WEINERT, Wentworth Institute of Technology

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The Architectural Lessons of Anselm Kiefer’s La Ribaute: The Material of History and the Space of Dramatic Representation
STEPHEN A. WISCHER, North Dakota State University

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Reclaiming Space

PAOLA ZELLNER, Virginia Tech

 

Visions for interactive architecture have existed for decades. However, the majority of the proposals remained speculative, like those produced by Archigram in the 60’s. Very few projects, like Inter-Action Center in Kentish Town by Cedric Price, were materialized as physical architecture.

 

In many cases these provocative proposals relied on cybernetics and computing technologies to sense user’s needs or desires and make the architecture adapt to accommodate those needs. While inviting the user’s interaction and improvisation in the shaping of their environments, responses were generally focused on the functional performance of a machine-like architecture, and on the kinetic and mechanical adaptation of a flexible architecture to a variety of uses and comfort, rather than to the range of spatial experiences afforded by it.

 

At present, in addition to this subservient role of an architecture that responds to functional needs, implemented responsive technologies act as discursive devices that not only invite the inhabitant to participate in the production of mediated mirror-like reflections of him/herself, but also respond to the socially networked audience that has come to expect “total involvement” the shaping of its environment.1

 

This paper will present the responsive installation Between the Pyramid and the Labyrinth, erected in, and occupying the black box theatre in the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech and sponsored by the Institute of Creativity, Art, and Technology. The project is one in a series that aims to discover effective implementations of responsive technologies in architecture. While these technologies, similar to “material innovation and new methods of production cannot lead directly to a new architecture,”2 their implementation seeks visitor interaction that, beyond returning self-centered responses, will heighten the awareness of the spatial experience, and consequently augment the “lived experience” of architecture.3

 

1 Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (Corte Madera, Ca: Gingko Press, 2001).
2 Adam Caruso, The Feeling of Things (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2008), 31.
3 Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999).

 

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The 2014 Atmosphere Committee consists of: Lisa Landrum, Chair (Architecture), Rae Bridgman (City Planning), Alyssa Schwann (Environmental Design), Lynn Chalmers (Interior Design), Marcella Eaton (Landscape Architecture); with web design and graphics support from Thalia Andreoglou (Masters of Architecture student), and administrative support from Brandy O’Reilly (Faculty of Architecture, Partners Program).

 

Questions? Please contact Lisa.Landrum@umanitoba.ca

 

Atmosphere is generously supported by the Faculty of Architecture Endowment Fund and the following professional associations: the Manitoba Association of Architects (MAA); the Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects (MALA); and the Professional Interior Designers Institute of Manitoba (PIDIM).                  

Aspects of Atmosphere 2014 ACTION are being presented in collaboration with StoreFront Manitoba and aceartinc.