Designing Kinetics for Architectural Facades: State change

Architecture has typically resisted kinetics, but with advances in dynamic screens and animated surface there are new opportunities for designers. This book examines the architectural facade, to identify a latent aesthetic within contemporary practice. How might precedent from architecture and the arts inform this new field? What are the design parameters, when composition shifts from stasis to a state of constant flux? And given this liquidity, what are the distinctive contours of this new aesthetic? These questions of precedent, design ontology and kinetic morphology are explored here in a strategic mix of theory and experiment. Analysis of architectural praxis intersects with discourse from kinetic art, to provide the conceptual spark for the study of 'movement itself'. The potential is for the realization of indeterminate states, where parts coalesce, forming clusters and sublime patterns that resonate over time. This is the first book to articulate a framework for the design of kinetics developed from first principles. Located between theory and practice, the analytical diagrams and time-lapse images provide a unique and timely resource for designers, theorists and students interested in the potential of kinetics to enliven the public face of architecture.