Haptic Design in Architecture
Special Symposium at EuroHaptics 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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General Information
Workshop: 7
Time: 17:00-18:00.
Title: Haptic Design in Architecture.
Organiser: Stephanie Davidson, Georg Rafailidis.
Speakers: Stephanie Davidson, Georg Rafailidis.
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We founded Touchy-Feely in 2006 as a platform for exploring haptic design in architecture. As a specialized branch of our architecture practice, Davidson Rafailidis, Touchy-Feely has a specific orientation toward haptic design, objects and spaces, investigating how the built environment can relate to us in an immediate, physical and corporeal way Using an experimental approach to materials and an interest in incidental design, Touchy-Feely aims to provoke curiousity in, and more physical interaction with, the built environment.
Much of our work involves the exploration of architectural concepts in the form of installations or developing objects with an architectural application. Our specific interest is in the relationships that could exist between people and buildings. We often alter existing spaces and surfaces to highlight these relationships. In examining architectural surfaces, we question basic formal presumptions such as: Why are walls predominantly flat and vertical planes? Why do wall-floor connections necessitate baseboards? What is wainscoting? With our experience in the architecture profession, we are aware of the clear, commonsense answers to these questions that come from the building industry. However, we are interested in investigating the consequences of these ordinary but unquestioned architectural gestures on our physical relationships to space.
In working toward a haptic architecture, our earliest formal investigations were driven by processes wherein human bodies were used directly as form-giving devices. These processes of “body-defined form” have been a way of questioning the nature of architectural form, where architectural form comes from, how it is defined, and how it relates to human bodies. Our early “body-defined form”-finding projects focused on basic positive/negative space inversions; for example, filling the pockets of negative spaces that are defined by a body leaning against a wall. Because this work continues to be process-driven, there is never a preconceived idea of what should result. Our work involves formal experiments prompted by the question “what happens if…?” These “body-defined forms” are demonstrated in my projects, Found Space tiles, Urban Cushions, Trigger Points and the Thumbprint Pool Deck (please refer to our website, Touchy-Feely.net).
Much of our work has investigated temperature as a haptic device. Our facade installation, Public Heat, in Milwaukee Wisconsin, transformed the exterior of a community centre into a surface warmed to 45 degrees Celsius. The facade installation was temporary, mounted during the cold Milwaukee winter, in an effort to not only entice people to engage directly physically with the building, but also, to spark cuddling and huddling, social interaction in an area otherwise bereft of pedestrian life.
In this workshop, we will present a selection of our architecturally oriented haptic design work. In addition to our realized projects and design research, our presentation will look at precedents of hapticity embodied in historic and vernacular architectures as well as a more general discussion about using the human body as a design tool in architecture. The format of the session is a verbal and visual presentation with select models and objects being available to see and touch.
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