An interactive simulation environment for adaptive architectural systems

Bess Krietemeyer

pp. 231-252

in: Nicholas S. Dalton, Holger Schnädelbach, Mikael Wiberg, Tasos Varoudis (eds), Architecture and interaction, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

Current architectural design methods for visualization and analysis of the relationship between energy flows, building demands, and occupant control remain limited because existing software tools and virtual reality environments are not yet integrated into a seamless feedback loop. This chapter presents the development of an interactive visualization and simulation environment that combines real-time energy analysis with hybrid-reality techniques to support user interaction with adaptive architectural systems and spaces. It argues for a combination of a new material testbed, hybrid reality visualizations, and energy simulation to create a design tool for architects and end-users to experience and develop the many performance possibilities of adaptive systems. Using an Electroactive Dynamic Display System as an adaptive facade testbed, an interactive simulation environment examines the impacts that adaptive architectural facades have on a building's energy performance and spatial effects. As a result of the experimental simulations with large-screen projections and virtual reality technologies, new criteria related to user control and comfort are informing the material and physical prototyping of emerging adaptive facade systems. For designers integrating next-generation adaptive architectural systems into buildings, interactive simulation environments are necessary to anticipate the fundamentally new environmental, social, and spatial implications of their dynamic and responsive potential. This research is producing a design decision-making tool for both visualizing and measuring the architectural and environmental impacts of multi-user interaction with adaptive architectural systems. In the process, an iterative co-design process emerges between fields of architecture, materials science, and human-computer-interaction that informs each in multidimensional ways.