Course: Unit XIX Sensing Structures
Sensing Structures will revisit the unit-based typology which can accommodate a small area within a single building or expand as a larger network of structures in parts of a city. This typology is highly regarded as ignorant of its urban context. It is perceived as a set of mass-produced forms standing as an isolated island with scarce connections to the existing city networks. The aim of the Unit is to reinvent the unitbased approach by devising methods of sensitizing, customizing and embedding it within larger urban systems.
The city is a complex system of networks and flows constantly transforming its nature, resources, and responses; it never stands still and it is never a finished piece of work. The building itself is a sophisticated organization of systems implanted in the city’s fluctuating networks. A great deal of experiencing a
given space revolves around its temperature, humidity, light, the effect of people’s bodies moving in it. This experience is perceived after the edifice is completed. Within this framework, we witness design systems
which aim to present proposals claiming to be fully resolved and complete, without making use of the live urban data that their site may be providing as a way to forecast more efficiently designed forms. This condition has resulted in the mismanagement of buildings, towns, and in some cases even cities. The
proposal aims to tackle the future of urban spaces that lack the ability to perform effectively by exploring the potentials and extents of the use of live data as design guidelines for a unit-based structure in complex city
systems. Can a city’s urban fabric be responsive and datadriven? If so, can we propose a system of interactions between the building, its surroundings and its inhabitants which has the potential to adapt to the changing conditions in the city?
Working with the sensitized unit-based structure as a building type enables the testing of extreme scenarios informed by the dichotomy between the ‘self‐completeness’ of the building and the city. In contemporary urban conditions, where the various social, economic, cultural and artistic systems are interacting in a constant flux of density and differentiation, the building needs to respond
to its current environment by changing from a static building of repetitive floor plates towards a heterogeneous, differentiated open system that can adapt itself. Whether it is programmed for a single function or multiple uses, the contemporary paradigm of architecture will expect differentiation of the building along its vertical axis, its circumference, and throughout its volume in an interdependent manner.