‘Pixels created from air and water’
p2pnet news view | applications:- A building made of water with liquid curtains for walls – curtains that can be programmed to display images or messages and to sense an approaching object and automatically part to let it through.
That’s what Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architects and engineers have designed for an international exhibition in Spain.
The interactive “digital water pavilion” is made of digitally controlled water curtains that’ll contain an exhibition area, a cafe and various public spaces.
It’ll be sited at the entrance to Expo Zaragoza 2008.
The “water walls” comprise a row of closely spaced solenoid valves along a pipe suspended in the air, explains Carlo Ratti, head of MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory.
The valves are openeded and closed via computer control to create a curtain of falling water with gaps at specified locations, “a pattern of pixels created from air and water instead of illuminated points on a screen,” says MIT going on:
The entire surface becomes a one-bit-deep digital display that continuously scrolls downward.
All of the walls of the pavilion will be made of digital water, as will vertical partitions, both on the edge of the roof and inside it. The pavilion roof, covered by a thin layer of water, will be supported by large pistons and can move up and down. When there is too much wind, the roof will lower. Similarly, when the pavilion is closed, the whole roof will collapse to the ground and the whole structure will disappear.
While there have been other attempts to digitally control water droplets, this is being reported as the first time the idea has been used to create an architectural space.
The digital water wall concept was initially developed in the Zaragoza Digital Mile class at MIT, led by William Mitchell and Dennis Frenchman, with Michael Joroff and Carlo Ratti, says MIT.
The actual design was the work of Walter Nicolino, Carlo Ratti, Claudio Bonicco and Matteo Lai at the architecture office carlorattiassociati (Turin, Italy); the engineering company Arup (London, UK and Madrid, Spain); and landscape architects Agence Ter (Paris, France).
Also See:
MIT – MIT architects design building with ‘digital water’ walls, July 10, 2007
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