Philip Beelsey’s Meander comes alive when you walk through it. Embedded computers and sensor arrays that react to and learn from both its audiences. Data from the environment constantly transfer data within the sculpture, making its wild array of immersive structures to react to visitors. Here’s more from Philip Beesley Architect:
The geometric structures seen in Meander use interlinking, flexible lattices that behave like textiles and natural shell structures. Overlapping strands of materials balance each other within doubly-curved conical stem-shaped forms. The skeletal forms create strong inner and outer shells much in the same way that natural bone structures are formed. Rather than static, closed boundaries, thresholds of new buildings could be deliberately fragile and delicate. By interlinking many delicate parts, robust structures can handle intense amounts of force, accommodating the increasing storms and turbulence of our changing climate. The interwoven structures are developed to handle shifting, unstable environments and are capable of absorbing strong forces. Instead of the heavy masses of material used in traditional building, this kind of process uses extremely light, thin sheets of material, reducing material use and saving energy.
Sensors embedded within the environment signal the presence of occupants, and send ripples of light, motion and sound through the system in response. Software is organized in clusters of interconnected groups that can communicate with neighboring groups resulting in global behavior connections throughout the system. A second layer of sensors provides ‘proprioception’ – internal sensing. Like the human body’s ability to know its own actions, this layer of information provides each cluster of mechanisms with information about action happening within its local structure. By using this constantly-cycling information, the systems can adapt their behavior and form new responses. By creating artificial environments that can learn, this research might help develop new mutual relations and healthy exchanges with urban environments.
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