Fusing design and construction as speculative articulations for the built environment

Paper in proceeding, 2015

Dry stone constructions date as far back as 9000 BC and are associated with the first stable human settlements in the cradle of human civilization. Agricultural tools and permanent settlements led to sustained domestication of crops, and consequently a continuous co-evolution of humans and their environment. The tools adopted widely by contemporary society are related to processing and visualizing information. It has been suggested that based on the information gathered from the environment, architecture itself could become responsive to the real environment. This research seeks to attain a constant modification of the built environment on a small scale, rather than a large scale stepwise engagement. We suggest that representations of information should be closely coupled with the built environment, and that the built environment should be conjoined in real-time communication with multiple different representations, enabling sense-making and suggesting potential future states. Through physical construction and design experimentation, representations of potential modifications, or articulations, are overlaid onto the environment. It is however important that these articulations be in constant flux based on the ongoing communication between environment and representations of it. We propose a computational material supported by a framework that would link computation and environment in constant bi-directional communication and continuous, stepwise development. We propose a methodology composed of scanning the environment, real-time computation, guidance, and construction visualization that would lead to a new approach of evolving the digital into a new physical reality. Future mixed reality architecture applications could make use of computational composites in order to fuse design and construction.