Interactive Environments Minor TU Delft 2020

How can interactive environments make the city park a more lively place? Thirty-two undergraduate students from various disciplines at the Technical University (TU) Delft took part in a LASG-associated interaction design project aimed at making the on-campus Mekelpark more alive. Students were provided with access to a LASG form library containing scalable pattern languages that later guided the shape of industrial design components in the final installation. This interactive environments minor constitutes a pilot curriculum exploring the potential for open-source shape grammars for physical scaffolds to serve as armature for public scaled expressive, responsive works.

Using the LASG’s original digital patterns and physical samples as a launch for their own studies, TU Delft students developed individual variations and multiple innovative combinations and structures that greatly extended the original work. Behaviour patterns and user experiences were orchestrated in combination with physical forms. A series of seminars and talks in exchange between Waterloo-based LASG studios and TU Delft extended the development of the work from October to December. The material sent for this course is now on display at TU Delft Science Center, forming the first phase of a longer-term collaboration.

Five distinct concepts were developed to address the design brief: Link, Harmony, Guido, Mimic, and Bustle. The final installations were exhibited to the public on January 29, 2021. Link is a seating arrangement that emphasizes the connection and interactions occurring between a group of people sitting together. Harmony is a digitally fabricated installation that tracks the movement of passersby and translates the input into immersive sound and projections. Guido is an open, suspended mesh of nodes that guides visitors through transitional indoor spaces. Mimic is designed to simulate a living creature, using mechanical movement and changing lights. Bustle “listens” to the online activity of the TU Delft student and staff community, and plays this as an overhead soundscape at Mekelpark.