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Interaction design with building facades

Conference Paper January 2010

DOI: 10.1145/1709886.1709948 Source: DBLP

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Federico Casalegno Juhong Park

Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Miami
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Sotirios Kotsopoulos
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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 Interaction Design with Building Facades
Orkan Telhan, Federico Casalegno,
Juhong Park, Sotirios Kotsopoulos, and Carl Yu
MIT Mobile Experience Lab
1 Cambridge Center, 4th Fl., Cambridge,
MA, 02142 USA
{otelhan, casalegno, juhong, skots, carlyu}@mit.edu

ABSTRACT interaction paradigms to design smart building envelopes.

In this paper, we discuss our early studies with
electronically activated variable transmission materials
(e.g., electrochromic glasses and PDLC films) for the
design of interactive, programmable building facades that
exercise environmentally and socially sustainable building
behaviors. We articulate on the different applications of
these facades, such as automated climate moderation,
lighting, view and privacy control, and discuss their
aesthetic, social, and cultural implications in light of new
interaction paradigms that shape the experience of the space
that they are manifested in.
Author Keywords
Smart windows, interaction design, interactive facade.
ACM Classification Keywords
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
General Terms
Design, Experimentation.
INTRODUCTION
Smart skins, programmable surfaces, responsive facades,
interactive building envelopes are active research areas in
architectural design that are bringing the gap between the
traditional static world of architecture with recent
paradigms from human-computer interaction, ubiquitous
computing and tangible interface design. As new paradigms
and technical advances prevail and allow designers to
conceive buildings as new kinds of interfaces, it becomes
possible to combine environmentally-conscious, sustainable
and expressive architectural design with advanced
Thus, conceiving new roles for the building facade is an
interesting interaction design challenge when the facade can
actively be configured for new relationships between the
inside and outside; the environment and the house, the
house and its inhabitants as well as the inhabitants among
themselves and with their neighbors (figure 1).
An active research area where such paradigm shift often
manifests itself is in the design of smart windows [1, 2]
where the traditional design and functionalities of windows
are revisited with advances in electrically activated
materials research and control systems engineering. For
example, by actively controlling the phase changes in
electrochromic material properties, thermal transmittance of
windows can be programmed to respond to the changes in
external climate conditions. As windows adjust the thermal
relationship between interiors and exteriors, such windows
take active roles in dynamically optimizing building energy
performances with low operational costs [3]. Polymer
dispersed liquid crystal films (PDLC) and suspended
particle displays, on the other hand are other popular
choices in smart window design that eliminate the need for
traditional blinds and shutter systems where optical
dimming and density variation effects replace bulky
mechanical actuation with solid-state shading, glare and
view-control [4]. Windows equipped with such material
properties open new ways to think about privacy
management especially for public places.

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TEI 2010, January 2527, 2010, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Copyright 2010 ACM 978-1-60558-841-4/10/01...$10.00.
Figure1. Light and thermal transmission modulation pattern
on the programmable facade.

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APPROACH
Our approach is to build on the existing smart windows
research and combine different kinds of material responses
with our custom applications. We explore the design of
different material responses and interaction techniques by
building a series of prototypes, which will eventually lead
into a programmable curtain-wall facade installation in a
residential building.
Here, the goal is to design an expressive building
membrane that not only functions like an energy-efficient,
climate moderator, but also as an experimental design
element that can take active roles in shaping the behaviors
of the residents, radically contribute to their experience of
space, and improve the quality of living.
For the design of personalized, expressive yet
environmentally-conscious interactive behavior, we play
close attention to the environmental impact of these
interactions and study them with custom simulation tools
that can take into account dynamic changes caused both by
the inhabitants and the environment (figure 2).
Figure 2. Solar radiation (above) and sun-path studies (below).
Instead of targeting a technical update on smart window
design, we focus our research more on radically rethinking
the fenestration process in general where we aim to take
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into account the rich history of windows with their social
and cultural uses in architectural practice together with the
roles they play in individuals and collectives lives.
FACADE BEHAVIORS
We identify one of our main contributions as the design of
new kinds of embedded behaviors for the programmable
facade. Here, we explore the design of new systems that
exercise autonomous, responsive and interactive behaviors
interchangeably in different application scenarios.
Autonomous behavior, for example, is mostly desired when
the system engages with changing environmental conditions
(e.g., sunlight, solar heat etc.), and when it doesnt require
any explicit guidance from the user. Like an advanced
thermostat, its control system is driven by an energy
management system that provides optimized optical and
thermal transmittance configurations for different energy
performance and user comfort settings.
Responsive behaviors allow the facade to dynamically
adapt to the implicit needs of the user. If an existing
optimization setting is overwritten, such as the case that the
user opens too many windows on a summer day, the system
would respond directly to the amount of heat loss, instead
of the opening of a single window. It would take actions in
the background to compensate the loss by reconfiguring its
optimization settings (e.g., changing light modulation
patterns, or extra dimming durations).
Embedded interactive behaviors, on the other hand, are
parallel sets of action that allow the facade to explicitly
engage with external stimuli, such as the automatic
switching of PDLC films in response to user action, sun rise
or sun set conditions.
In relation to our ethnographic studies on the use of
windows in traditional architecture, we explore the potential
of these behaviors in a number or interaction scenarios.
Here, we intend to think unconventional fenestration
practices that are ecologically, socially and culturally
sustainable at the same time.
INTERACTION SCENARIOS
Traditional windows control the passage of light and view,
manage heat, and air ventilation across the exterior walls of
buildings.
Windows, on the other hand also take social and cultural
roles. In addition to admitting light, they also allow a gaze
to pass through. They negotiate the different boundaries of
inside and outside for different needs of privacy and
display. What comes through the window is an opening of
the intimacy of the house towards public life [5].
It is where we look and desire to be looked at by others.
Behind windows, we veil and unveil ourselves and express
individuality. In our designs, we explore the possibility of
allowing the users to define their own viewing areas by
controlling the opacity of the desired parts of the window
cells. Without prescribing a fixed frame as the window,
the entire facade can be configured as a series of openings
that can admit light and allow the inhabitants themselves to
determine how much they would like to reveal themselves
to the outside world (figure 3).
Figure 3. User creating a privacy patch (above) and a viewing
area (below).
Electrically activated chromics can also be configured to
dynamically respond to passer-by and allow the facade to
follow the presence of a user by a series of embedded
sensors. Over the completely transparent facade, a privacy
patch in the size of the user can conceal only the moving
people from the outside and leave the rest of the house fully
open.
Likewise, when the programmable facade respond to a hot
summer day by completely dimming itself, at night, it can
return to its clear state and allow the selective switching of
the PDLC films turn the house into a stage, a shadow
theater, where inhabitants perform before the implicit gaze
of the others (Figure 4).
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Figure 4. Facade of the shadow theatre.
The opening and closing of the windows blinds during
different times of the day are important social rituals in
different cultures.
Windows welcome the new morning, signify the waking up
of the inhabitants and communicate their availability to the
neighbors. For the dynamic facade, the response to the
morning and evening sun can also be exercised by subtle
gestures. As the electrochromic glasses respond to the
increasing amount of sunlight by slowly dimming
themselves, the PDLC shutters incrementally turn on and
welcome the slowly approaching sun (figure 5).
Figure 5. The facade responding to rising sun.
During the day, the facade pattern then gets reconfigured to
accommodate the desired temperature settings. As the
facade modulates its patterns to control the amount of light
in the environment, it optimizes its own energy
consumption in relation to the rest of the energy saving plan
of the house. While such patterns can be pre-calculated for
different daily or seasonal cycles, the control system would
still be prepared to update its configurations to
accommodate real-time changes in user demands.
In this design, selectively operable windows would still
allow the users to have control over their window opening
and closing gestures. The facade, here, take an active role in
optimizing the overall performance. It adjusts its light
modulation patterns for negotiating the amount of light
provided by the open windows, user activated PDLC
shutters, natural ambient light diffusion and artificial
lighting to balance the glare and reflection in the
environment. Thus, a new choreography of light emerges
from the optimized coordination of different light sources
and allows personal comfort settings be maintained under
changing conditions.
DESIGN
The preliminary facade prototype is conceived as a matrix
of individually addressable composite window cells that are
made of one layer of electrochromic glass on the external
glazing and a layer of PDLC film on the internal glazing
(figure 6). The cells are driven by custom electronics where
not only the cells but also the different materials within the
cell can be addressed separately in different applications.
As both materials have varying response times and exhibit
different optical, thermal and power-consumption
characteristics, their responses are customized for different
behaviors. For example, while the slow response time and
the dimming effect of the electrochromic glass is mainly
utilized for energy management, the PDLC films provide
instant response and different opacity levels for shading and
privacy needs.
In our design, each window cell is also equipped with a
photocell to calculate the amount of light that it is exposed
to and utilize an IR sensor to detect the presence of a
passerby. The PDLC films can be activated either using the
photocells and IR sensors for simple switching action or
dynamic following behavior. The films can be programmed
to output varying levels of opacity by the simple gesture of
holding the hand on the photocell for different durations.
The climate monitoring behavior of the facade is controlled
by a custom energy management system that runs different
patterns for the facade for optimizing its own energy
consumption in relation to changing environmental
conditions.
Figure 6. Electrochromic glass used with PDLC film.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we discussed our early studies on the design
of programmable facades that utilize switchable variable
transmission materials (e.g., electrochromic glasses and
294
PDLC films). We use this facade as an example of an
expressive design element to discuss both a technical and
conceptual framework to radically rethink the role of
electronically-activated fenestration in residential settings.
Being rooted in smart window research, our work engages
with new interaction paradigms that intend to combine
socially and environmentally-sound design practice with a
notion of sustainability that is not driven by guilt or
sacrifice in utilizing resources, but on the contrary, focuses
on their use in identifying new ways to improve the quality
of interactions among people, architectural space and the
environment.
By designing a reprogrammable facade, we observe its
potential for autonomous, responsive and interactive
behaviors that take into account not only the technical uses
of windows (e.g., light transmission, air ventilation, climate
management), but also their social, cultural roles in
architectural design. In our experiments, we explore the
different applications of the system ranging from dynamic
view and privacy control to personalized lighting, shading
and self-expression, where the facade is not only the
climate moderator, but also the screen that mediates the
social dynamics between the inside and outside of the built
environment. In light of these early studies, we think that
interactive architectural elements will demand new
interpretations from our traditional conceptions of space. As
inhabitants and users identify new paradigms to
emotionally, socially and culturally engage with their
spaces, it will not be too surprising to expect new
characterizations of Genius Loci (trans: spirit of place), that
render place as the site of interaction; the interface between
static, dynamic and reprogrammable architecture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research of "interaction design for dynamic windows"
is done within the Green Connected Home Alliance
between MIT and FBK. We thank our research partners for
their collaboration and William J. Mitchell for his insightful
guidance during the research.
REFERENCES
1. Boyd D. (ed.) Intelligent Buildings. Alfred Walter L. P.,
Henley on Thames, Oxon, England. 1994. 133-140.
2. Addington M. and Schodek D. Smart Materials and
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3. Travi V., Advanced Technologies: Building in the
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4. Celemens.-Croome, D. (ed.) Intelligent Buildings:
Design, Management and Operation. Thomas Telford P.
Heron Quay, London, 2004. 130-131.
5. Keenan T. Windows: of vulnerability, The Phantom
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