Victoria Meyers architect (hMa) has spent years studying the effects of enhanced walls systems. Enhanced walls and other architectural surfaces create different reactions in people who encounter the constructions. These systems need to be studied in a manner that moves the discipline of architecture forward. By enhanced walls, I am referring to walls, like the wall at DWi-P, with Digital and/ or Biological systems embedded within the traditional construction system, enhancing the experience of the wall or surface, making it more immersive.
Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass set the stage for many of the changes in 20th and 21st century architecture. An intervention using emergent digital and biological systems, developed thoughtfully, would similarly affect how the art of architecture moves forward as an art.
Working with my firm, hMa, I will be constructing wall studies with embedded sensors and study how these embedded systems alter people’s experience and reaction to architecture. The enhanced walls would have effects that exceed their physical area, and I would also propose to map their geographic area of influence, and demonstrate how perceptual thickness and materiality can be altered through these new interactive interfaces. This work would be performed as part of the hMa Research component of our practice. Look for future postings mapping hMa's progress with this area of research.
This is research about the future of architecture. There has been a great deal of advancement in the integration of visual information in buildings through the use of LED and other technologies. Sound has not been as studied, or as seamlessly integrated in architecture. With the ubiquity of cellphone use, sound and visual information as a fourth dimensional expression of architectural space is an emergent possibility. I will be mapping the possibilities of sound in architecture in my upcoming book, 'shape of sound'.
The most important research in sound and architecture to date was by Leon Theremin. At EMPAC, Johnannes Goebel overviewed the development of an amazing building dedicated to sound, using the latest technologies. EMPAC is located on the Rensselaer Polytechnic campus, in Troy, New York.
