Some new work, Click the Image for a video

Click the Image for a video

I call this the Hydro/ Pneumatic adaptive wall

Architecture serves many purposes…

Palaces are constructed to glorify empires, factories are built to optimize production, and public squares write important chapters of history. Yet the most quintessential purpose of architecture begins from the earliest evidence of the human attempt of organization of spaces for living. Archaeologist believed the gathering around the fire was the first conscious attempt to organized spaces for the everyday living. Even though these primeval spaces are open, indeterminate and ambiguous at the margins, the heat radiating from the fire defines the limits of space. Architecture is not restricted to the built structure. Human beings are hot-blooded animals, it is a matter of survival to maintain at a temperature that is necessary for enzymic activities. The formal evolution of the fire evolved into the hearth and then into heaters, air conditioners and the other climate control strategies as gradually architectural origin and the form lost connection.

This disconnection presents a problematic worldwide cultural phenomenon of anesthetized built environments, where architecture became an opaque package of technology, totally unresponsive to the thermal origin of architecture and the climate.  This disconnection also led to the building sector’s over dependence on energy consumption to maintain comfort. Instead, if mankind revisits the making of fires, shelters and places of protection from the heat of the sun, then this connection can be repaired. Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This thesis explores the potential for using thermal qualities as a performative and expressive element in architecture.

In the history, vernacular architecture demonstrates many thermal qualities that are expressive and performative. The modern term of “passive house” also exemplifies passive solar strategies for energy efficiency. A new term must arise from old concepts in order to encompass the whole segment of building forms. “Thermoceptive architecture” by definition is the architecture of condition, characterized by the compelling experience of hot and cold that turns the occupants’ senses more highly attuned and more perceptive inevitably establishing a strong “sense of place”. “Sense” of place may often be equated to comfort, or to a sense of existence in a particular space.

This is aided by the patterns of materials, light, dark, circulation of air, access to sunlight and shade and insulation from extremes. Yet our receptor for hot and cold is not one sense but a combination of all of our senses. Our visual, acoustic, olfactory and tactile senses combined add to our perception of the thermal quality. All of our senses are key to repair the broken connection between the thermal environment and us…

"The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system." The sun should organize our system, but in many forms. Sun generate wind, generate food… we consume food and exert exergy.

Cultural factor

Therefore, the conclusion is to present the merits of incorporating thermoceptive design into a wider extent of the current built environment; new and existing.

Based on the hypothesis: if … then …

“The sense of temperature and temperature changes (Thermoception). The skin sensation of passing suddenly from a pocket of warm air to a pocket of cool. I don’t know that causes that, especially on dawn river trips, but I like it. And there’s a part of me that misses being barefoot in a Grumman and feeling the water temperature change through the soles of my feet when poking up some tributary.”

-       A solotrip paddler

Awareness and Choices are new challenges, good or bad?

Through application of exergy-efficient passive-solar techniques, thermoceptive architecture (TA) can adapt to an audience across gender, age, culture and physiological traits as a mediator between the environmental thermoscape and the skin thermoreception, offering a new level of awareness and choices to occupants.

Such an approach suggests that the physical environment can be energy independent that’s suitably found at the interior scale. Sustainable lifestyle trends shall pose a healthy level of challenge for the today’s dynamic, flexible and adaptive gadget culture. A thermoceptive environment can not only facilitate behaviors, but also inspire new ways of living and acting in everyday circumstances. It is important to recognize that our psychological and physiological perception of space is most influenced by our body’s homeostasis system. Many applications in thermoceptive architecture are not limited to sensing and mechanical movement, and can embrace a wealth of old and new methods inspired by vernacular dwelling and new and emergent material technologies. These techniques should be re-applied to dwellings to achieve energy independence that can mitigate global energy shortage and climate change. While many of these techniques are not technological, some are not even physical, but merely tectonics that inspire behavior change. They do play an important role in influencing the use of space and experience of space. TA that can dynamically adapt to our desires can shape our experience. As TA empowers us with the ability to change building’s thermal envelope, glazing and ventilation system, we are being offered a new level of awareness and choices. Climate is moderated and translated to the inhabitants through the building that acts as a second skin (or a filter) based on either satisfying by achieving a higher level of thermal delight or creating an individualistic behavior based on desires. The key to such process is user engaged and user specific: asked, enticed, directed or challenged. To achieve this, TA must operate on an intuitive and simple level of perception and control.

Thermoscape

What is the opportunity for a new typology of dwelling that addresses the body’s perception or negotiation of its surroundings? How can dwellings reshape one’s living experience and improve thermal satisfaction? How can certain climate correctional functions be incorporated into products for mass commercialization?

Architects of today are aware of that the building sector consumes 50% of global energy and raw materials, and in equal share of the cause for climate change. We must widen our spectrum of capabilities, extending from the visible toward the invisible, from macroscopic toward the microscopic and inorganic toward the organic, most effectively limiting our dependence on energy and shifting towards a passive climate adaptive architectural strategy. It can be done by investigating the sensitive zones closer to the body, at the limit of our skin. The work, titled “Thermoscape” is a synthesis of functionally reinforced energy efficient materials for a retrofit intervention. 

Program Visualization

Interesting find: Modifying Temperature and Humidity to Alter the Experience of Space at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale

I visited the Biennale and found this project by Transsolar and Tetsuo kondo architects.

“By controlling the microclimate of the space in the arsenale building, a layer of artificial clouds is made to hover above the ground level, remaining in balance above the heads of the viewers.”

The installation certainly awed the visitors. I have made a small film trying to convey the experience by altering the red color filter intensity trying to associate the visual perception and the thermoception.

Transsolar Cloudscape at 12th Venice Biennale from Differentenergy on Vimeo.

Updates - Interview with a visually handicapped patron at the Carnegie Library for the Blind

 

Published with the permission of Mr. Wassermann

On 13-10-2010 I had an interview with Mr. Wassermann at the Carnegie Library for the blind. I asked him a set of 21 questions in a 60 minute session, attempting to understand how one experience a space without relying on vision. The interview session was incredibly informative, I can say it has profoundly changed the one I starting to notice things I never noticed before.

Below are some of the excerpts of the interview. 

 Me: When you walk inside a room, what is the first thing that is most noticeable to you? The temperature? The floor? The noise or?

Wassermann: Probably (I'm) most aware, to the best I am able to discern it i s the size of the room I am in. Probably because of the ambient noises and a little bit of air flow. You know right now I am picking up a little bit of noises from a ventilation system or whatever, any of those noises, start to give you a little bit of the size of the room, or either the lack of or the presence of things between me and the next obstacle

 ...

 Me: Where and when do you ever feel too hot or too cold?

Wassermann: anything that's asphalt, that's black top on it, you will get lots of heat reflected off of it.

...

Wassermann: I don't think we will able to control nature, there are lots of things we should concentrate on, other than nature.

Me: For example, what should we focus on?

Wassermann: Human relations.

I will be re formulating my questions to get more specific answer on the thermal experience of the built environment, and indoor environment. I would love to have some suggestions.