Abstract

Buildings are solid, monolithic, static structures of steel, stone and glass. Buildings are at their most dynamic during the phases of construction and ossify from the point of completion. They occupy a different timescale to the rest of us, unlike the mayfly that enacts its lifespan in the space of a day, or our three score and ten, buildings emerge from a long gestation to face the elements for periods that can span a thousand years. Or they used to - increasingly the contemporary built environment ebbs and flows, generating a dynamically changing landscape as buildings are designed, constructed and demolished in the time it used to take to construct a model. This state of flux is enhanced by the addition of surveillance systems, telematic communication networks and environmental monitoring and control technologies. All these factors provide a new tangible dimensionality to contemporary architecture. Arch-OS is an ‘operating system’ that harnesses these new architectural, technological and social dimensions. Arch-OS, ‘software for buildings’, has been developed to manifest the social, technological and environmental life of a building and provide a living laboratory for cultivating transdisciplinary knowledge. Arch-OS buildings will be permanently in a state of flux. By feeding on the diverse forms of dynamic data that are generated by a building, its environment and its occupants, Arch-OS transforms the architect’s drawings, the brick, steel, glass and fibre-optic infrastructure into a living, breathing environment. Arch- OS provides users of buildings with a spatial and temporal consciousness, essentially re-programming human activity through a heightened social, architectural awareness. Arch-OS combines a rich mix of the physical and virtual into a new dynamic architecture, an ‘intelligent’ entity, that interacts, responds and anticipates: Arch-OS is a nervous system for multidimensional buildings. ‘Soft Buildings’ explores some of the ‘dimensions’ made manifest by Arch-OS. Specifically the generation of new kinds of space, a new kind of model, generated by a soft building.