Encoding Gesture-Oriented Human Behaviour for the Development and Control of an Adaptive Building Skin

Abstract

This paper discusses soft structural transformation strategies and responsive motional activation control methods for the development of an interactive building skin, responsible for regulating inner light conditions, with particular feedback from human position and stature. Inspired from the latest employment of smart mobile devices in building industry as an on/off wireless control switchboard, the present project demonstrates an alternative, gesture-based activation methodology towards a more natural and approachable way of controlling architectural environments. Elastically deformable planar elements of low thickness, in the basis of bending-active principles, have been chosen for the composition of a ‘soft’, modular adaptive building skin that enables flexible kinetic transformation with enhanced diverse geometrical conversion. Alongside the question of responsive motional control strategies, the search for a practical design setup is investigated aiming to establish a computational-oriented methodology that integrates information from both direct physical sensory data and indirect computational programming and organization of the input information. This is discussed through the case studies, where the physical performance of individuals is examined to generate input parameters responsible for the appropriate gesture activation of the digitally simulated responsive skin. User’s physical actions are recorded via the synergy of multiple sensors and classified into two main categories. Computation of both data resulted on an enriched user motion decoding, and therefore the encoding of specific structural reactions.