haque :: design + research

Papers

(Some papers are not yet available from this site).

Conversations with buildings (and other friendly devices), in Modern Weekly, 2008
Interactive systems, especially in buildings, would enable us to challenge customary models of production and consumption that places firm distinctions between designer, client, owner, and mere occupant. The design process is never finished, an environment continues to adapt throughout its life, buildings converse with other buildings, and an ecosystem of devices fluorishes in and around us, while inhabitants become the real designers of their own spaces.

Urban Versioning System, with Matthew Fuller, a Situated Technologies pamphlet, 2008 [ PDF and website ]
What lessons can architecture learn from software development, and more specifically, from the Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement? Written in the form of a quasi-license, "Urban Versioning System 1.0" posits seven constraints that, if followed, will contribute to an open source urbanism that radically challenges the conventional ways in which cities are constructed. The pamphlet is available as a print-on-demand publication and free pdf download.

The architectural relevance of Gordon Pask, in 4d Social - Interactive Design Environments, Wiley & Sons, 2007 [ PDF ]
A review of the work of cybernetician Gordon Pask, with suggestions of how his ideas can inform the development of authentically interactive architecture.

Distinguishing Concepts: Lexicons of Interactive Art & Architecture, in 4d Social - Interactive Design Environments, Wiley & Sons, 2007 [ PDF ]
A discussion of some terms common in the practice of interactive art and architecture, including "interactive", "open source" and "public & private".

Architecture, interaction, systems Arquitetura & Urbanismo, AU149, Brazil, 2006 [ Extended PDF, English ] [ Edited PDF, Portuguese ]
This paper explores what "interactive" means and questions whether things presented to us as such actually are so, before moving on to consider why we might want our designed objects and spaces to be "interactive". Rather than provide at the outset a fixed definition for "interaction", it discuss it from a few different angles, hoping that the sketched-in boundaries enable one to converge on a useful conception of the word.

Dressing the shadows of architecture Korean Design Journal, 2005 [ PDF ]
Consider architecture as something impermanent: how can one design for the ephemeral, knowing that the ephemeral is at every stage just beyond reach? Artists working with technology demonstrate a possible approach by pioneering new creative research roles that can inform architectural practice.

New Media Architecture, Or Is it Art and Does it Matter? Veiled Works, Oslo, 2005
Architects wishing to pursue an advanced conceptual agenda often create work that treads a fine line between "art" and "architecture". Such practitioner-researchers can benefit from employing tactics and approaches that have been developed by new media artists. From collaborating with scientists to pursuing institutional funding models, such artists have found themselves best placed to push the boundaries of technological spatial design. Three projects that employ such an approach are discussed.

The Choreography of Sensations, VSMM 2004 Conference Proceedings, Hybrid Realities & Digital Partners [ PDF ]
Architecture has traditionally been thought of as solid, static and permanent. Here we consider, instead, a soft, dynamic and fluid architecture created with smells, sounds and electromagnetic fields. Suggestions are made for "soft" interfaces based on rich, suggestive outputs that counter usual efforts to increase efficiency and verisimilitude.

Towards an ephemeral architecture, (Indian Architect & Builder, 2004)
A description of an architecture that is illusory, transitory, responsive and fluctuating.

Sky Ear: a work in progress
Strategies for new media art production are applied to an architectural research project. This paper discusses the methods and issues arising in the design and fabrication of an architecture that "attempts to break free from the compulsions of gravity and to peer beyond the edge of visual space".

Invisible Topographies (in Receiver 09), 2003
Wireless technologies have helped blur the distinctions between art and architecture and altered our relationships to designed space. Projects operating within hertzian space help to reveal the richness of our electromagnetic habitat.

Logical Conflicts: architecture and open source design, 2003
Particularly relevant to architecture (since the design of space is always a collaborative process) is an open source system. Open source interaction and performance become the foundations on which a dynamic architecture, both physical and virtual, is built to allow for different and conflicting logics.

The Science of Imaginary Solutions, 2003
As new media art and architecture draw close to each other, the shared notions of interaction and performance become crucial foundations on which the two are constructed. Like the exquisite corpse, or Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch a collaborative new media architecture project draws on the inventive surrealisms of each individual's creativity.

Architecture and the Poetries of Interaction, 2003
Ubiquitous computing, like architecture, is the practice of designing spatial configurations that provoke interactions between people, and between people and their spaces. Architects contribute to the discourse because their expertise lies in designing spatial and environmental "situations". However, while ubiquitous computing research tends to emphasise efficiency, convenience and predictability, architecture, on the other hand, can give clues about ways to develop spatial poetries.

Hardspace, Softspace and the possibilities of open source architecture, 2002 [ PDF ] - [ PDF, Spanish ] - [ HTML, Latvian ]
Architecture can be thought of as the hardware of space. An alternative approach is to think of architecture as software: the ephemeral sounds, smells, temperatures, radio waves, even social relations that surround us. Pushing this analogy further, we can think of architecture as a whole as an operating system, within which people write their own programmes for spatial interaction. A collaborative architecture may then be considered along the lines of an open source operating system.

'Understanding' Architecture, 1996
A comprehensive interface between user and architecture is essential for the evolution of dynamic responsive systems. One fairly important area to investigate is the means of recognising and distinguishing between different users and usages. A truly interactive architecture requires an architecture that 'understands'.

Attributing space, Inventing Attributes, 1996
Suppose that it is possible to reconfigure the spatial attributes of one space to give some of the same sensory experiences that another one provides. How might this be done; and what does this imply about "location"?

Transactions and Architecture, 1995
Investigation of psychogeographical space and human emotions as applied to a spatial "operating system".

Death of the Architect, 1993
Just as a text is made complete through the act of reading, so too is architectural space made complete by its inhabitation and use. So what is the political role of an architect in the context of "virtual reality"?