Brief #2 - Arts Centre (Public Realm)

“Where information flows through every component of a building each element is potentially programmable with a set of instructions allowing it to adjust itself. When arrayed across a structure these adjustments can combine into large scale emergent effects.”(ROEWUarchitecture)

Arts & Cultures Centre

Question:
To explore the use and impact of responsive technologies and smart materials on human needs and social interaction in a building in the public realm.

Brief:
An Arts and Cultural centre which is dynamically adaptable and responsive both in functional and physical terms. Incorporation and adaptability for additional functions such as commercial/offices/research, recreation and public space and cultural/exhibition should be possible allowing response to any number of changing variables within the local and global infrastructure. This should include an integrated public space (agora).

Goals:
· To question and explore the concepts of the architectural hyperbody through programming a unique and adaptable user experience within a collection of works.
· Through the notion of a constantly changing and responding physical building fabric the idea of a gallery displaying artefacts can be explored. A building which can respond to users motions through a space could seek to reconfigure itself based upon both internal and external events and activities, based on immediate events and those from a wider network of interconnections and interdependencies.
· Exploration of the concept of the built form being as responsive and changeable as the weather and how this may affect human interaction with this.
· Responsiveness and adaptability of building function should be explored through the notion of a dynamically changing building function. The building could look to seek an equilibrium between functions, spaces and uses based upon events in the local and global infrastructure.
· Explore the role of pervasive technologies and their affects in the larger social context of the public square (agora). How technologies can be used to create communication and identity to spaces and bring groups of people together in a non-exclusive manner which offers the opportunity for integration with the larger scale global community.