Studio (n-1) Architects » Responsive Architecture

The proposal asserts its presence by formally negating its figure. By voiding its image, it foregrounds its background: Helsinki.

The proposal consists of a cobblestone plinth and a white fabric object. While the plinth negotiates all ground requirements, the white object mediates the context in which the art is shown. The building takes its cue from the harbor it has settled in. It is both urban and maritime.

THE WHITE OBJECT
The removal of the subject/figure reinforces the environment. Anything placed in front of the white object becomes the focus of attention. The building is an abstract representation, an exacerbation of the white box, an undetermined shape or event, a John Baldessari cutout, a white-out. The white object is simultaneously iconic and subtle; it is explicitly present, yet yielding to its surroundings. The missing figure forms a strong presence through its absence. What initially seems like a non-descript form reveals itself as a finely tuned performative surface. Through its use of PTFE white fabric, the envelope acts as a light diffuser to the interior galleries. The structure enables large, flexible, column free spaces. Deep floors and ceilings allow for all mechanical infrastructure. The top floor is a series of vierendeel trusses from which hangs possibly the largest single solid cross laminated Finnish timber plane. The wood plane is suspended by very slim carbon fibre cables forming the floor of the suspended gallery and the ceiling of the invisible gallery.

The building recognizes lightness as one of the most overlooked approaches to architectural sustainability. The weight of a building is directly related to its carbon footprint. During construction, and possible demolition, lightness will dramatically reduce carbon emissions associated with the amount of manufactured material as well as from moving and installing building material. Because of its pervasive use of fabric, and Phase Change Material for insulation, the proposed building is significantly lighter than one using traditional materials.

“The Thing” is a black box where architecture is turned into a black void. Any object that is placed with this field is precisely illuminated without excess light fall-off. Objects are detected by infrared (IR) beams and illuminated according to their presence and location.

The invisible gallery space is encapsulated in white fabric. Rounded corners generate a type of visual ground zero, a white-out. Here, the ubiquitous white gallery wall typically used for the display of art has become the space itself. The hovering uninterrupted timber plane, the museum goers, and the art itself gain equal conceptual focus…

Carol Moukheiber, Christos Marcopoulos. Team: John Natanek

DropMoss

DropMoss

DropMoss™ is a networked moss culture designed for standard T-bardrop-ceilings. We recognize the ceiling as an untapped site for interior landscapes. It is an undisturbed zone that can be reclaimed by nature and linked to resilient outdoor ecosystem by means of networked embedded technology. The tile consists of a compostable/recyclable coco mat “cartridge” and an aluminum “tray” with integrated sensors, digital readout and wireless communication. The cartridge hosts a variety of common low maintenance moss species including Hypnum, Haircap, Rock Cap, and Cushion moss. They are irrigated by a hand held piston-pump sprayer or alternatively by means of an automated misting system integrated into the drop-ceiling structure. Moisture levels are optimized through embedded humidity sensors.

Internet of Moss

Although discretized as individual elements for stand-alone use or modular aggregation, the DropMoss tiles are wirelessly connected to their neighbors and linked to the Internet. They report individually on their status (humidity, pH) and together on ambient environmental conditions (temperature, ambient light, humidity, C02). They join other networked moss communities around the globe in an ecosystem of live correlated data whose feedback serves their resilience and sustainability.

Web Interface of DropMoss tile: “the Internet of Moss”. In collaboration with Rodolphe el-Khoury
Team: Andrew Piotrowski, Tommy Reslinski, Samar Sabie

The Hu-Mannequin

The Hu-mannequin project was initially conceived as a pop-up store proposal for a fashion designer. The proposal attempts to enrich the experience of viewing by engaging the olfactory sense.

The installation is composed of scent-emitting mannequins that release a variety of smells into the environment throughout the day. Seats are placed within the store to harness the scent of sitting individuals. The scent of those occupying the seats is transported through a system of ducts, where the smell is released into the air via perforated mannequins. The person occupying the seat metaphysically wears the clothing through smell. The mannequin, typically a lifeless object, is now animated by human qualities through the production of smells

Christos Marcopoulos and Carol Moukheiber

Date: 2012

Team:
Valentina Mele
Michael Spatafora

Clothes designed by:
Adrian Wu
Erin Holman

IM Blanky

: IM Blanky is a blanket that exists in real space and virtual space simultaneously. If you move the blanket in real space, a virtual mesh moves along with it.

: IM BLANKY is a blanket with an IP address. The basic v. 1.0 is self-modeling, which means that it is wirelessly linked to a digital model that registers and reprocesses its changing state in real time. The built-in capacity to situate and represent itself in space and time points to a most primitive and essential form of cognition — the sense of one

: Blanket:
Materials: green two-tone Taffeta, nickel coated silver fabric, conductive and non-conductive thread, silver plated beads, glass beads, leather (back), resistors, multiplexers, LilyPad (back).

: Blanket Schematic Circuit
The blanket measures 7

: Computational Diagram
The data from each sensor determines the local tilt direction at the reading site; the readings from neighboring sensors establish elevation and orientation in 3D. The mapping of each vector against the entire field completes the overall picture.

: Circuit Schematic
16 Multiplexers receive seven inputs each from the tassel

: Circuit prototype
Hard-wire blanket circuit, prototype with Arduino.

: Conductive soft circuit detail

: Soft tilt sensors:
The shape of the petals and their distance from one another, were calibrated for maximum contact with the tassel

(soft) Hardware:
The blanket measures 7

RAD

RAD (2012-2015) was founded by NMO partners Carol Moukheiber and Christos Marcopoulos, with Rodolphe el-Khoury:

The lab was set up to research emerging responsive technologies. The lab

Farnsworth Curtain

: The Farnsworth Curtain takes its cue from Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. The famous glass house made its inhabitant uneasy by its complete transparency to the outside. Perimeter curtains were hung to provide opacity and psychological comfort.

: The curtain is composed of 2 separate layers. The outer layer is the supporting structure for the infrared sensors and the LEDs. The inner layer forms the screen upon which the LEDs project light. When an object interrupts the infrared beams, the corresponding LED lights dim, causing a dark shape to emerge on the inner layer of the curtain.

Through the use of electronic noise cancellation technology and sound absorbing materials, the enclosed space will be almost silent, in contrast to the main space. Shadows will seemingly float by, the busier the outside the more hypnotic the experience.

Carol Moukheiber and Christos Marcopoulos

Date: 2011

Team:
Min Woo Kim

Out-House

The project proposes an inverted McMansion in an arid climate which, in its final act of over-consumption, ingests its own rear yard. However this act leads to its own survival. The ingested yard now becomes an activatedorganic machine for the harvesting and filtration of a single body of water that is perpetually recycled in a semiclosed system.

The original pitched roofs made for shedding water are now opportunistically reconfigured to collect water, and harvest energy. The newly ingested yard/lawn becomes a lush living filtration system cleaning grey and black water for reuse, while offering an Eden-like garden for its inhabitants. Eden is sustained by the toilet; a site for human waste disposal becomes a site for production, providing the necessary nutrients for the maintenance of plant and animal life, which in turn clean the water.

What was once the exterior of the house is now the most private area. The most private moments are experienced in what used to be outside.

In 2004, after five years of severe drought, Las Vegas banned all lawns in any new housing development, allowing

Dual State Room

A space that responds to fluctuating light levels by continuously modulating its surface to enhance light and mood.

The Dual State Room is a systematically constructed deep infrastructure for controlling the most superficial of tectonic conditions: the wall surface – (the wall paper)

The Dual State Room can change its appearance. One moment it is a warm, sound absorbent walnut veneer, and the next, a cool, reflective fluorescent yellow enamel. The space flip flops between these states, responding to light level fluctuations over the course of the day. When the space is too bright, the wall adopts the wooden side, reducing glare, and offering a feeling of warmth. Conversely, when dark, the wall flips to a highly reflective surface maximizing light levels.

RGB Garden

: The garden consists of 850, 6

Heating and Cooling Glass

Heating and Cooling Glass explores the potential for the migration of the central HVAC system into a decentralized modular surface.

The double glazed Heating and Cooling Glass unit is used opportunistically as the site of maximum difference in temperature. Mediating incoming and outgoing air at the envelope takes advantage of the building takes advantage of the building’s skin as the interface between two different climatic zones. That difference is harnessed — through a Peltier device inserted in the glazing unit– to generate heating and cooling locally, as needed by the user, or as necessitated by weather conditions.

The glazing is slumped to form air channels to the heating and cooling unit.

The miniaturized heating and air-conditioning unit consists of a peltier device inserted between two back-to-back mounted CPU cooling sinks. The device cools and heats by reversing the current flow to the peltier device

Diagram of the air-channel infrastructures – showing the airflow in plan section and elevation.

The glazing sandwich. Two sheets of glass direct air in and out through the miniaturized heat-pump

By distributing the previously centralized HVAC system into the glazing system, glass becomes a haptic transmitter. With Valentina Mele

Fresh Air Window

: The Fresh -Air-Window employs two back-to-back Central Processing Unit cooling sinks. This configuration creates an instant Heat Recovery Ventilator

: Traditional system: centralized heat-recovery ventilation;
Proposed system: distributed heat recovery ventilation along the entire building envelope

: Two back-to-back CPU cooling units form a Heat Recovery Ventilator

: Diagram of the heat recovery ventilation: fresh cold exterior air comes though the fins and is heated by outgoing warm stale air

: Air-Quality monitoring

Digital Window

Calculating Wall

NMO Unedited

: NMinusOne Unedited

: Shoes commissioned by C1rca

: High-tops commissioned by C1rca based on the color scheme of the painkiller Phenaphen 30mg.

: Table designed in collaboration with Wonder inc. Materials: shipping pallet and 1/2″ blue glass

: Madrona Crescent Addition Vancouver 2006

: Required addition size

: Cladding concept for addition

: Cladding Sample

: Study for the “Disappearance of the Existing Building”

: Model of proposal

: First floor plan

: Second floor plan

: West Elevation

: South Elevation

: Model

: Sebastopol Bathroom. California, 2006

: View up into skylight

: Toothbrush, 2002
Hybrid of a toothbrush and vibrator.

: Suction Cuffs, 2012
These suction cuffs restraint devices are for spaces with lots of glazing: modernist homes, condos, and any other contemporary architecture with floor to ceiling glass.