The Convergence of Technological Advancements.

INPUT_OUTPUT: Adaptive Materials and Mediated Environments addressed the convergence of several significant and fundamental advancements in the ways that materials and environments are conceived, evaluated, and experienced within architecture and related disciplines. The emergence of new and ultra-performing materials, parametric design and modeling tools, integrated design technologies, and developing digital fabrication and prototyping techniques establish an interconnected network of technological inputs that has stimulated the development of materials, assemblies, and systems with adaptive environmental behaviors. The symposium interrogated the relationships that exist between each of four discrete, yet interrelated technologies of adaptive materials: Material Compositions [traditional and emerging contexts for materiality], Material Computations [generative digital design processes within the virtual and physical worlds], Material Behaviors [experiential and performative qualities of assemblies] and Material Fabrications [analog and digital processes of production]. As such, it highlighted the productive, tangible, and expanded theoretical basis of adaptive environments through design-based research.

In collaboration with Sneha Patel. 

Acknowledgements: NPUT_OUTPUT: Adaptive Materials and Mediated Environments was supported by the Tyler School of Art and Architecture Department at Temple University and Actar Birkhäuser.