Archinect - News

In an Ontario plaza, interactive pavements play music ‘as if by magic’

2024-02-28T13:28:00-05:00

Montreal-based studio Daily tous les jours has completed a public space design in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Titled 'River Lines,' the project saw the creation of an interactive stage in an urban plaza for big impromptu musical ensembles.

Video credit: doublespace photography

Part of the studio’s wider Musical Pavement series, the interactive wave-patterned pavement is embedded with 62 sensing light rings that “get people moving through musical collaboration exercises.” The infrastructure is formed of twelve in-house tailored audio tiles that have no visible hardware and blend with the wider pavement pattern, meaning “music emanates from the ground as if by magic.”

Image credit: doublespace photography

Located on the site of a 19th-century foundry, the artwork is “a response to the historical nature of the site” and “an exemplar of how investment in the public realm is essential to reimagine and activate places and encourage collective interacti...

Interactive museum opens in historic DC building

2020-11-02T11:31:00-05:00

Planet Word is a new interactive museum in Washington DC dedicated to words and language. Designed by international firm Beyer Blinder Belle, the museum is housed in the Franklin School, a National Historic Landmark in the city. The building was originally designed by Adolf Cluss, a DC-based 19th century architect who also design The Castle, the Smithsonian's renowned HQ.

Beyer Blinder Belle was hired to rehabilitate and restore the five-story, 50,000-square-foot building. The task included restoration of the Great Hall, the building's original frescos, in addition to two grand staircases.

Planet Word holds nine immersive learning galleries that were designed by Local Projects, an interactive exhibit design firm. Some exhibit highlights include a massive word wall, composed of over 1,000 three-dimensional words that speaks and asks visitors questions. "It uses its voice to address stereotypes and misconceptions about how language works — challenging, for example, the idea that “ain'...

Author of 'Interactive Architecture' on the built environment in the age of ubiquitous computing

2016-06-09T20:14:00-04:00

Architects Michael Fox (FoxLin) and Miles Kemp (Variate Labs and Series Design/Build) put together the first version of Interactive Architecture in 2009, as a "process-oriented guide" to creating spaces that, with the help of emerging technologies, could interact with inhabitants in a variety of "pragmatic and humanistic" ways. Within just the last few years, thanks to advancements in computation and environmental design, the interactive potentials of architecture and urban spaces has expanded even more, leading to a rich experimental culture for architects and designers.

To honor these new prototypical experiments in interactive architecture, and update the 2009 text, Michael Fox has gathered eighteen global case studies together in Interactive Architecture: Adaptive World. Fox penned an introductory piece for Archinect to herald in this new age of interactive urbanism, which you can read below.

Catalyst Design in a Connected World

by Michael Fox

As we embrace a world in which the line...