Persistent Model #3: pneumatically steered tensile skin

This project investigates the role of under-specified models to support adaptive strategies in architectural design. This may at first seem counter-intuitive as the activity of design is generally regarded as aiming towards greater degrees of specificity, especially when focusing upon issues of realisation.
However, under-specified models find real traction as a means for dealing with situations in which there is incomplete information, continual change, unpredictability, uncertainty and the need to manage multiple criteria that are often conflicting – conditions which are endemic to both architectural design and use.
Computational approaches provide a basis for establishing these models, allowing them to continually re-calculate, adapt and exhibit different states in the face of a design context undergoing continual change.
A pneumatically activated tensile skin provides a limited material analogue to the computational space of representation. It has the ability to change state, expressed through active shading in relation to specific geographical location, time of year and changing interior demand.
The project draws a critical distinction between the need for high degrees of specificity at the level of material assignment and organisation, and the need to remain under-specified in terms of response to its context. Through the use of under-specified models the system is able to remain provisional over extended time whilst finding specificity ‘in-action’ at any point in time. The system, which should be understood as a material and computational hybrid, is continually adapting and negotiating the interface between internal demand and exterior environment. It manifests a restless specificity.