CONTENTS
INTERFACE DESIGN
Four design projects that investigate interactivity, responsiveness and ‘the interface’.
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urban (de)resolution An 18 month exercise of research and production culminating in a theoretical framework for producing hyper immersive interfaces and experiences within the built environment.
CHAAK A competition entry that was almost exclusively interested in questioning the user experience and environment.
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SKiN In collaboration with The Laboratory for Integrative Design (University of Calgary) – this ongoing research project deals with responsive systems and their relationship with the user.
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the CLOUD A competition entry for a library in Korea looks to transform the built environment into a largescale digital interface.
image: beach beneath the street | Adam Onulov
>RESEARCH
urban (de)resolution
P01-P06
urban (de)resolution is the culmination of 18 months of rigorous theoretical research, design, image production and execution. This project in is a critical analysis of consumer culture and it’s effects on our urban landscape. Our ‘public spaces’ have become generic ‘non-places’. As such, our experiences have become manufactured and predictable – our relationships are mediated by a ‘ubiquitous network’ and as a result, have transformed our traditional understanding of public space and human interaction. This design exploration is about inducing moments of connectivity and consciousness with and within the built environment. Through the lens of a specific brand (Holt Renfrew), various sites and programs were selected as testing grounds for the implementation of composite interface/ architecture systems. The synthesis of interactive and responsive interfaces into ‘architectural’ systems raised important questions about their increasing significance in our everyday experiences. Does the implementation of a digital interface into a physical built system make it better? Does it augment the human experience of the built system? Is the built system necessary? There is a renewed awareness about the user, something that was lost in the realm of traditional ‘architecture’. Responsibilties: research / writing / concept design / programming / 3D Modeling / rendering / visualization / layout design
global image infrastructure The old image infrastructure is familiar to us – it typically involved large-scale, materially concentrated capital projects that were often physically prominent symbols of power and control. The new infrastructure is flexible, dynamic and dispersed throughout the network society. Exclusive memberships ensure that an identity and its message are spread by word of mouth, while mobile applications facilitate communication between user and network.
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In an attempt to be everywhere without having to physically be everywhere, the global image infrastructure manifests itself in the virtual realm – instantaneously available and ready to distribute content and propaganda.
We are becoming increasingly dependent on digital interfaces – the virtual realm is where we are having conversations, accessing information and purchasing goods. urban (de)resolution embraces this shift and explores how our experiences can be mediated in new ways. The success (and fun) of this design exploration is the way in which it simultaneously questions and embraces the current trajectory of our virtual ‘selves’. This awareness led to more immersive brand experiences and interfaces that engage with users in ways that might be unexpected – whether that be in its application, interactivity or the information that is being communicated.
caption 001/ EXCLUSIVE MEMBERS Card. This design exploration would have been aimless if it were not for brand engagement. 002/Interior perspective of the “Fashion Lab” – a hybrid physical + virtual user experience. 003/ “Occupy These” – a tongue-in-cheek exploration of mass communication, interface and public protest.
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004/ The Holt Renfrew product experience. User’s can browse seasonal collections and learn about the itinerary each product travels. Is the new ‘value’ distance traveled or resources used?
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004/ HOLT RENFREW PRODUCT EXPERIENCE
‘architecture’ as interface The notion of interface is fundamental to the (de)resolution of the built environment. The production of information and its dispersion throughout our network society dominates the spaces we inhabit.
more of the same generic spatial conditions that we are used to seeing everyday – rather, it was necessary to explore difference (different being neither better, nor worse). The design and prototyping of interfaces and interactive components was paramount Wherever we are, we are inundated with to the success of this project. imagery and data. urban (de)resolution examines how we can either bridge the gap The results of a rigorous hybridization of between the physical and the virtual; or if interface and ‘architecture’ were these one of them drifts into obsolescence while incredibly immersive brand experiences – the other governs our everyday experiences. both physical and virtual. As a result, a key component to this design exploration was much more than creating Existing Retail Store <Holt Renfrew Main Floor>
Touch-Screen Interface Existing Display
Pedestrian Walkway
Eighth Avenue SW
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caption 001/ urban (de)resolution questions how we apprehend and experience the world. This particular perspective explores a new type of interactive storefront. 002/ Interior perspective of the “Exclusive Members Club” – a hyper-immersive brand experience, and a space that enables the highest level of communication and interactivity.
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003/ Diagram: a series of mobile user interfaces that allow an identity network to manifest itself not only physcially, but digitally. Users can shop, communicate, navigate and preview; both with and within the brand and the city.
003/ DIAGRAM: THE MOBILE USER EXPERIENCE
CHAAK • • •
1st runner-up in the Think Space Blur Competition [2012] Exhibited @ Storefront for Art and Architecture’s The Competitive Hypothesis (NYC) [2013] Featured @ the 2nd Annual Think Space: Unconference (Zagreb) [2013]
P07-P10
CHAAK was a re-envisioning of a project that arguably saved architecture and architectural theory in the early 2000s. Instead of reinterpreting the sensory and environmental affects of the original Blur project, we decided to augment them. We imagine what the world would be like if the systems used in Blur were distributed on an urban, national and even global scale. The by-products of this exploration were a result of an iterative and collaborative design process almost exclusively dependent on visualization and interface design.
In collaboration with Josh Taron (synthetiques.net)
image: f*ck your brighter future | Adam Onulov
Responsibilties: concept design / visualization / layout design
>COMPETITION
Weather is no longer a viable system for humanity in its present form. The behavior of weather has been modified to such a degree by industrial forces that our best recourse is an attempt to blur/invert this relationship by using weather to augment the behavior of global Empire. Left unchecked, weatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mythical violence long correlated with the mere manifestation of the gods threatens global stability and the possibility to sustain ethical standards of living for individuals.
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Additionally, its intensifying unpredictability poses unacceptable and unsustainable risks to global markets, nation states and multinational corporations. Rising sea levels threaten coastlines while drought rages through once fertile farmlands. Resource scarcity ceases to differentiate between developed and undeveloped countries. Basic Needs becomes
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the dominant political mantra throughout all social and economic spheres. Weather as threat, that which is threatened, and weather as solution. So while it could be argued that this is not the first time in history that the sovereign has made a claim to controlling the weather, it is the first time modern western Empire has produced such an explicit claim. As is the case when any form of sovereignty manifests, a multitude is produced that exerts its own set of forces throughout the system. With weather no longer as the sole territory of Nature, new less predictable populations begin to surface in the form of geopolitical affects. Much the same way the extraction of fossil fuels from below the surface of the earth and their subsequent injection into industrialized systems has facilitated certain environmental effects, so too does the injection of hot water into the atmosphere produce intensifying results. And while the system comes with the promise of hydro-distribution and
agri-fertility, so too does it mean that weather becomes a formally politicized object. To be clear, the project makes no claims to utopian accord but rather attempts to internalize these contradictions into a kind of affective and atmospheric ecosystem consumed and sensed at a wide range of scales and orientations. We explicitly see the conventional pavilion to be an absurd and otherwise wasted opportunity to vitally expand on the ideas of the original Blur Building. If Architecture has learned nothing else since 1999, it’s that the value of nothingness is directly proportional to the magnitude and diversity of the populations it can incorporate. Blur as a project[ion] doesn’t need re-visitation, it needs proliferation.
caption 001/ What would our lives be like if it were dark, dreary and wet - everyday? 002/ Would we accept perpetual darkness for a “brighter” future? 003/ A perspective from within an operational Chaahk system, here the mist is creating a cover for the escape of Syrian refugees. 004/ Chaahk allows areas not conducive to rain (ie. deserts) to become productive. 005/ An alternate affect/perspective to image 003/ - the militarization of Chaahk. 006/ Aerial perspective of “foils” that allow for the harvesting of moisture and the interface that governs how this system operates.
image: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;layered-gridâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; prototype | Adam Onulov
>RESEARCH
SKiN
Soft Kinetic Network
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Featured and published @ ACADIA 2011: Integration Through Computation (Banff + Calgary) [2011] Featured @ M.I.T.’s Digital Aptitudes Exhibition and Conference (Boston) [2012]
In collaboration with Richard Cotter and Vera Parlac (Laboratory for Integrative Design)
P11-P14
This project is part of an ongoing research project on responsive systems in architecture, and the notion of architecture as interface. It is driven by an interest in adaptive systems in nature and a desire to explore the capacity of built spaces to respond dynamically and adapt to changes in the external and internal environment. The intention is to explore ways to integrate smart systems (sensors, actuators, and controllers) and kinetic systems (movable architectural components) to enable spaces we inhabit to sense, respond and interact with us. Responsibilties: concept design / programming / prototyping / visualization
The goals of this project are two-fold. First, we wanted to establish an effective methodology of creating iterative prototypes and testing their modulation abilities. Our design intentions were based on material performance, and the notion of a ‘soft tissue’ that could be manipulated to accommodate the dynamic nature of human occupation. The Soft Kinetic Network is organized around a system of embedded muscle wire that provides for a range of motions and facilitates surface transformations through soft, muscle-like movements. Realistically, this system would not exist without a virtual component: the designed interface and interactive system. Our second goal was to integrate our material studies with a system that could sense, communicate and actuate. As such, our prototypes do more than
‘mindlessly’ move – they are able to sense, react and communicate movement, temperature, mass and wireless signals. Our focus on seamless material integration and the implementation of interactivity and responsiveness hints at our broader goal that architectural intervention should find a more productive place within larger ecologies. We are very much interested in suspending a challenge of finding a non-permeable and clearly defined boundary between inside and outside in exchange for a surface that fosters constant flow of information, matter and energy.
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caption 001/ Detail image of an initial iteration of a “structural grid” embedded with Shape Memory Alloy. 002/ Using video software to track motion points, we mapped the range of motion in order to further gain control/understanding of the prototype. 003/ Architectural deployment of SKiN; shown here as an external building façade. 004/ Architectural deployment of SKiN; shown here as an occupiable canopy. 005/ Programming was an integral tool in the prototyping and analysis of SKiN. Models could be tested digitally before put into production. This diagram is a composite image of the different stages of actuation in an iteration of an expanded cell-system prototype.
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SKiN as interface In and of itself, SKiN is a physical interface. It is the point of contact and interaction between the user and a set of information and behaviors. SKiN reacts to it’s users in a myriad of ways: it physically moves and adapts to occupants as it delaminates and bulges to create habitable space; and it records data and communicates information about occupancy, temperature and movement. SKiN alludes to a future of system integration – of architecture as interface. 004/
005/ MODULATION DIAGRAM zone of actuation prototypes were analyzed, and patterns of material aggregation were efficiently and effectively employed within various iterations of SKiN – here ‘strings’ of actuation were organized to produce the most desirable movements yielding surface variability and potential spatial effects.
responsive surface initial design intentions called for a composite network – by interconnecting all systems, changes in one area of SKiN produced responses within the system as a whole
the CLOUD • •
Entry into the Daegu-Gosan Digital Public Library Competition [2012] Exhibited @ The Kasian Gallery’s {MAS+Synthetiques} Body of Work Exhibition (Calgary) [2012]
In collaboration with Jason Johnson (Minus Architecture Studio)
P15-P18
The Library in the age of continuously fluid and highly portable information exists as much more than just a collection of books and resources. At its most potent, it can act as the public domain in which the citizens of a city engage in the exchange of ideas, culture, shared experiences. We propose a library that refuses the notion of large uniform spaces as the containers of information in the form of books and physical resources, in favor of a continuous but changing space that allows for the new and old functions of the library to coexist. We call this the CLOUD. The formation of the CLOUD was predicated on how users interface with - and exist within our networked society. the CLOUD assimilates the ever changing ways in which people access and share information by creating a highly varied set of experiences, in which users can interact, engage in group activities (both physical and virtual), browse book collections, find quiet reading areas and be educated and entertained. Responsibilties: concept design / 3D Modeling / rendering / visualization / layout design
image: public interface/gradient of “public-ness” | Adam Onulov
>COMPETITION
01 General Collections 001/ FAÇADE DIAGRAM external panelized ‘skin’
02 Philosphy
accumulation of panels and embedded LEDs creates a pixelated condition that facilitates the library as interface.
external panelized ‘skin’ accumulation of panels and embedded LEDs creates a pixelated condition that facilitates the library as interface.
03 Religion
the CLOUD as interface
04 Law
The notion of interface was fundamental to the formation of the CLOUD. The laminated façade does more than provide the basic functions of a building envelope – it is a communication device. Users engage with the CLOUD, as it becomes more than a selfeffacing screen within the urban landscape.
05 Life Sciences
The various zones of our façade represent the necessary literary collections mandated within the project brief – users can see which areas are most visited and which collections have the most books ‘checked-out’. The result is a visually compelling interface that is seamlessly articulated within a complex building system.
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caption 001/ Facade Diagram - Besides being physically dynamic, the facade of the CLOUD is a large scale digital interface that has been integrated into the urban fabric. It is programmed to communicate which areas of the library are most often used, and the availablity of books within certain collections. 002/ the CLOUD is a performative interface - users can access information through digital devices and interfaces; ultimately transforming the physical built environment into a responsive digital interface. 003/ View from above of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;reading roomâ&#x20AC;? - the spatial configuration of the CLOUD enables users to visually and physically engage with each other.
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004/ The facade of the CLOUD is physically dynamic, and acts as a communicative medium to its users and its surroundings.
Adam Lazar Onulov Adam is a graduate from the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary. His interestes lie in the relationships between the built environment and the user â&#x20AC;&#x201C; specifically through perspectives of branding, mass communication, interaction design, and the user experience. These skills and perspectives have created opportunities for Adam work with architects and designers from around the world, present his work across North America and Europe, and co-found atelierXS, a theoretical research and design lab.
adam@atelierxs.ca www.adamonulov.com