A Design Process For Social Network Data-Driven Adaptive Architecture

Abstract

We are living in a rapidly changing world, led by a constantly developing technology. Our daily habits are affected by this progress and newly emerging technologies such as the World Wide Web (WWW). Communication, shopping, and information gathering are only a few of these mutated experiences. Such fundamental and continuous changes in daily routines, increase the pressure on architectural spaces to adapt to the fluxional circumstances around them. However, Kretzer complains that the implementation of new paradigms to architecture, including the concept of active spatial adaptation, is limited due to the conservative essence of the profession. Besides, Kurzweil predicts that the exponentially increasing pace of technological advancements is not going to last. So, the dynamic nature of the current era is not ephemeral. Therefore, it would not be inaccurate to predict that architecture will start to work on new paradigms such as active spatial adaptation, sooner or later. As a consequence of being a centenarian topic, the terminology on the concept of change in architecture is significantly crowded and confusing. Thus, before proposing a design process, this research is focused on understanding the concept of adaptive architecture. With this motivation, terms related to this concept are explained and discussed from different points of view provided by several architects. Primary terms analyzed by this study are flexible, adaptable, responsive, and interactive. The research process of this subchapter consists of a literature review starting from the second half of the 20th century and projects designed and applied after the 1920s. As the author noticed during the research phase, it is neither possible nor necessary to disassociate these terms entirely. Still, this part of the research was able to recognize and report noteworthy distinctions between the mentioned terms such as being active or passive, being able to sense the surroundings or being based on human intervention, providing spatial variability or not. In light of this process, it would be accurate to state that adaptive architecture aims to provide spatial variability by sensing its surroundings and performing an active adaptation accordingly. As well as comprehending adaptive architecture, understanding its elements is necessary before proposing a design process. By refining various frameworks of the concept proposed by different researchers such as Charles Eastman, Holger Schnädelbach, and Gordon Pask, the questions that constitute this concept are cataloged as "what to adapt," "how to sense," and "how to react." These three questions are discussed by examining numerous projects designed since the beginning of the 1960s. As revealed under this title, the most common strategies practiced by architects to answer these questions are adapting to the climatic conditions, sensor-based sensing, and reacting through hard systems. Other than discussing these methods by analyzing various projects, this part of the study revealed the essentiality of the sensing strategy for the process of spatial adaptation. This title also revealed that even though there are design processes for sensor-based sensing and material-based sensing in the literature, a design process for social network data-driven adaptive architecture is missing. This lack provides the primary motivation for the main purpose of this study. Following these two steps that intend to develop a proper basement for the research, a design process for social network data-driven adaptive architecture is proposed in the third chapter. Even though design processes for sensor-based sensing and material based sensing are suggested by architects such as Khoo and Leileveld, these schemes do not cover the needs of social network data-driven projects. By contrast with the first two sensing methods, social network data requires a complex interpretation process to become suitable to be employed in an architectural project. This thesis intends to solve this problem by considering the process within the paradigms of information management. Accordingly, Ackoff's data, information, knowledge, wisdom hierarchy (DIKW) is utilized to constitute a design process. Thus, a design process that consists of three phases as data, stimulus, and adaptive space is developed. Additionally, this scheme contains two processes; interpretation and simulation. Briefly, the interpretation process evaluates the data to compute the stimulus, and the succeeding process, simulation, converts the stimulus into the knowledge required by the adaptive space.