© Frederic Camallonga.
It is fitted with sensors which react to the presence of visitors, expanding or reducing interior spaces.
It has been fully designed and developed at the ELISAVA school facilities by the students and teachers of its Master’s Degree in Advanced Design and Digital Architecture (ADDA). The course, was carried out under the architect Jordi Truco’s direction.
© Frederic Camallonga.
Bio Design Laboratory, which drove the creation of PARA-Site and is an international point of reference in the area of research on adaptive architecture systems, publishes Formaciones espaciales en el tiempo producidas por materiales inteligentes (Time-Based Spatial Formations Through Material Intelligence).
Experimental Interactive Architecture
PARA-Site is the first life-size prototype of experimental interactive architecture of its type to be developed in Spain. It takes up a surface area of 60.75 square metres (13.5 metres long by 4.5 metres wide) and has been fully designed at ELISAVA’s facilities, both in relation to its design and in relation to its computerisation and materialisation. Its assembly involves fitting together over 100 prefabricated non-standard parts and around 60 square metres of fibre-reinforced composite.
PARA-Site generates spaces by using materials’ intrinsic characteristics, forming a structure which finds its own equilibrium by superimposing and displacing nodes on parallel bands (form finding). It can increase or reduce the area it takes up based on the number of visitors inside it, optimising space requirements and thus saving energy.
© Frederic Camallonga.
It is an architectural project in which space is conceived as a living system with the ability to react to an environment which is also alive and to adapt, creating designs which can feel, observe, listen, react, propose, learn and interact. It will be open to visitors at ELISAVA’s facilities until 29th July 2011.
Its development involves learning how physical systems communicate, gaining a deeper understanding of the use of sensors to collect data from the environment, processing such data by means of microcontrollers and transferring them to the actuators which will be part of the active design. The aim of the Master’s course is to gain a deeper knowledge of this and apply it to the architecture design process and the design of spaces and components.
