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This forest of rustling filaments and skeletal columns might not look like a building. But Philip Beesley and Rachel Armstrong want it to inspire the architecture of the future. Their interactive sculpture, Hylozoic Ground, is heading for the Centre Culturel Saint-Exupéry in Reims, France (from January 29 to February 12), where Beesley hopes it will challenge visitors' relationships with their environment. "The idea that buildings are passive is one that we've lived with, certainly since the Renaissance," says Beesley, a 54-yearold Canadian (below). "It's tantalising to think of them biting back."
As people venture through the 170-metre-square mesh-work structure, crickets chirp and tendrils react (driven by tension wires bound to nickel-titanium-alloy mechanisms).
The whole set-up is controlled by arrays of Arduino-like microprocessors. "When you walk in, some elements might reach out and, as you interact more, you get great energetic cascades of motion," he explains. "But an awful lot happens in subliminal territory -- you're not quite sure if it's working. It's a sense of delicious instability."
Armstrong (right), 40, an architect and TED fellow, contributed chemical features, which hang from the canopy in glass bulbs. Like the mechanical system, they are an attempt at artificial life. "The mechanical parts are constantly changing, and on another timescale the chemistry is also evolving," she says. One reaction takes carbon dioxide from water and transforms it into a shell, suggesting how future buildings might repair themselves in a carbon-negative way. But more literally, says Beesley, Hylozoic Ground could be seen as a new type of space: a "next-generation public forum where people can gather".
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
