Architecture User Interface: Towards a Performative Architecture

This is our primary question: with the inexorable advance of digital technologies along all fronts of human endeavor, whither architecture? We identify performance as the primary criterion to revealing a new paradigm for architecture. We do not delimit this definition to the role traditionally played by mechanical and quasi-mechanical technologies in the optimization of environmental control systems and building skins. Nor do we intend to ascribe to performance the interpretation narrowly defined by the emergence of digital gadgetry, primarily optical in methodology, which have nonetheless already radically altered the means by which we negotiate our environment, built and otherwise. The focus of our work, then, is to make the building responsive, to see the performance of the user as an integrated part of the building.