David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang are both architects, but to call their company, Living, an architecture firm doesn’t come anywhere near to explaining what they do. Benjamin and Yang create what they call “open source, incremental, small-scale architecture that engages the city.” They fuse science, technology, engineering and interactivity, “defining responsive kinetic architecture to involve input, processing and output.” Their work is as much R&D as structural design. A couple of weeks ago at Postopolis, a New York exhibition and conference on architecture, urbanism, landscape and design (of which our teammate Geoff Manaugh was an organizer), the pair presented two of their projects, Living Glass and River Glow, which utilize responsive technologies as a means of revealing the presence of CO2 and water pollutants, respectively. They categorize both as “Flash Research”: An architectural project that involves: 1. A budget under $1000 2. A duration of less than three months 3. Proof-of-concept through the creation of a full-scale functioning prototype Living Glass involves a reactive, transparent surface with an infrared sensor and gills that open and shut as they detect the presence of humans and control air quality in a room. With minor changes, the system could be tuned for… (more)
(Posted by Sarah Rich in Cities at 7:31 PM)