The Agency of Responsive Envelopes: Interaction, Politics and Interconnected Systems

Abstract

This article positions the territory of responsive envelopes within the context of contemporary disciplinary questions surrounding the politics of the architectural envelope on one hand, and the agency of material explication of environmental, social and spatial performance on the other. Two recent prototype-based responsive envelope projects undertaken by the authors, the Stratus Project and Resonant Chamber, are described in detail relative to the reciprocity between the development of their materiality, form, production methods and their dynamic interaction with external forces, environments and inhabitants. An argument is made that responsive envelopes, in their capacity to structure continually evolving energetic, material and information exchanges between humans, buildings and the wider environment, have the potential to actively construct and enable political participation through spatial transformation, data driven processing and informatics. These envelopes are positioned as agents within wider ecologies and social systems, and as sites for the design of robotic architectures to engage such questions.