KINETIC ARCHITECTURE : RE-TERRITORIALIZING THE PUBLIC SPACE

Abstract

The contexts in which all architecture is conceived can be classified as highly dynamic. If the city is considered as a network of interacting installations rather than a collection of static objects, it becomes obvious that any architecture introduced into that fabric has to adapt and respond to the changes occurring around it. The city’s constant state of flux suggests an architecture that has an inherent flexibility and mutability. Today, technology, through kinetic architecture, allows the reinterpretation of flexibility, not as a neutral solution but as one that is in a permanent state of flux. Kinetic architecture I believe is a response to instable conditions and a challenge to preset programs. In this thesis, kinetic intervention is seen as a way to intensify the ephemeral conditions of a place and create interactive focus. Such an approach aims to celebrate and harness these shifting intensities of a site and design, therefore, removing the possibility of considering site as a given context. The thesis looks at Ngee Ann City Square with different gradations in territorial claim between the public and private domain. It aims to respond to this instability through a responsive architecture to attempt to balance territorial claims and improve circulation through the reconfiguration of Ngee Ann City Square as a circulation node to better respond to urban scale events and activities. Using a process of speculation and diagrammatic documentation, multiple scenarios of use are investigated. These potential opportunities help to define a programmatic strategy. Through these scenarios, the research explores generators of form with kinetic foundations through positive and negative attractors. Using parametric software, rules of spatial combination are formulated and coordinated in real time feedback. A responsive architectural proposition is developed to examine how movement, circulation and time can be harnessed to generate optimum responses to mediate between public and public/private spaces. While a specific site is chosen to illustrate the thesis, the intention is to derive an approach and a process that would be malleable and adaptable as sites or site condition changes. The aesthetic value of virtual motion may always be a source of inspiration, its physical implementation in buildings and structures may challenge the very nature of what architecture really is.