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Embodied Interactions with Adaptive Architecture
Abstract
We discuss increasingly behaviour-responsive adaptive architecture from an embodied point of view. Especially useful in this context is an understanding of embodied cognition called ‘the 4E approach,’ which includes embodied, extended, embedded, and enacted perspectives on embodiment. We argue that these four characteristics of cognition both apply to and explain the bodily interactions between inhabitants and their adaptive environments. However, a new class of adaptive environments now expands this notion of embodied interactions by introducing environment-initiated behaviours, in addition to purely responsive behaviours. Thus, we consider how these new environments add the dimension of bodily reciprocity to Adaptive Architecture.
... It was also salient in our user data that participants expected to have bodily control and interactions with flexible and adaptable domestic spaces. Previous research by Jager et al. highlights the importance of bodily interactions between inhabitants and their adaptive environments [40]. These adaptive environments may enhance the flexible and adaptable aspects of our built spaces. ...
... Robinson and Pallasmaa (2015) discussed how architecture and design link the mind and body. Jäger et al. (2016) proposed embodied interactions when designing adaptive architecture. FRED relies upon "4E" cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) theoretical foundation (Newen et al., 2018) for retrofitting facades onto a building. ...
... Before humans settled as farmers, they all lived as nomads in adaptive structures and in this sense, adaptive architecture has been part of history longer than static environments (Jäger et al. 2016) However, it was not until the invention of the computer, which facilitated the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in built environments, that the idea of adaptive structures able to sense, plan and act-or robotic buildings-came along (Gross and Green 2012). ...
The research presented in this paper explores how textiles can be formed into adaptive, kinematic spaces to be able to respond to its environment and users utilizing on-site, distributed, mobile robotic connectors. The project aimed at creating an adaptive system that consumes little energy while making use of textiles’ advantageous qualities—their lightweight, portability, and manipulability. This was achieved through the development of a bespoke on-material mobile machine able to locomote on suspended sheets of fabrics while shaping them. Together, the connector and the tectonic system compose a lightweight architectural robot controlled with a feedback loop that evaluates real-time environmental sensor data from the space against user-defined targets. This research demonstrates how the combination of mobile robotics and textile architecture opens up new design possibilities for adaptive spaces by proposing a system that is able to generate a significant architectural effect with minimal mechanical actuation.
... For instance, occupants can now communicate with automated building control strategies and actively influence them [1]. Automated or intelligent control systems can also monitor occupant behaviour and response to adapt to and learn from the daily routines of people [8]. However, despite the level of technological development of building automation systems, occupants are often dissatisfied with control strategies and related interactions with automated systems [9]. ...
The interest in occupant interaction with building controls and automation systems is growing due to the wider availability of embedded sensing devices and automated or intelligent building components that can integrate building control strategies with occupant-centred data and lead to greater occupant satisfaction and reduction in energy consumption. An area of particular interest is the interaction strategies between occupants and the so called automated facades, such as dynamic shading devices and switchable glazing. Occupant-Facade interactions are often disruptive and source of dissatisfaction because of conflicts between competing requirements, e.g. energy-efficiency and indoor environmental quality. To solve these conflicts, expertise from several disciplines is required, including Behavioural Science and Building Physics, but the absence of common research frameworks impedes knowledge transfer between different fields of expertise. This paper reviews existing multi-disciplinary research on occupant interaction with facades, buildings and automation systems and provides a new classification scheme of Occupant-Facade interaction. The scheme is based on an extensive review of interactive scenarios between occupants and facades that are summarised in this paper. The classification scheme was found to be successful in: 1) capturing the multidisciplinary nature of interactive scenarios by clarifying relationships between components; 2) identifying similarities and characteristics among interactive scenarios; 3) understanding research gaps. The classification scheme proposed in this paper has the potential to be a useful tool for the multi-disciplinary research community in this field. The review also showed that more research is needed to characterise the holistic and multi-disciplinary effect of occupant interaction with intelligent building components.
... Adaptive Architecture will recalibrate the nature of human-building interactions, mediating how we negotiate our relationships and everyday lives in those spaces . Interactions with buildings will range from ephemeral to persistent and embodied (Dourish 2004;Jäger, Schnädelbach, and Hale 2016); from low to high tech; from personalised to generic. ...
In this paper, we explore the regulatory, technical and interactional implications of Adaptive Architecture (AA) and how it will recalibrate the nature of human-building interaction. We comprehensively unpack the emergence and history of this novel concept, reflecting on the current state of the art and policy foundations supporting it. As AA is underpinned by the Internet of Things (IoT), we consider how regulatory and surveillance issues posed by the IoT are manifesting in the built environment. In our analysis, we utilise a prominent architectural model, Stuart Brand’s Shearing Layers, to understand temporal change and informational flows across different physical layers of a building. We use three AA applications to situate our analysis, namely a smart IoT security camera; an AA research prototype; and an AA commercial deployment. Focusing on emerging information privacy and security regulations, particularly the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016, we examine AA from 5 perspectives: physical & information security risks; challenges of establishing responsibility; enabling occupant rights over flows, collection, use & control of personal data; addressing increased visibility of emotions and bodies; understanding surveillance of everyday routine activities. We conclude with key challenges for AA regulation and the future of human–building interaction.
An introduction to the 4Es -- embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition.
This Element discusses contemporary theories of embodied cognition, including what has been termed the '4Es' (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition). It examines diverse approaches to questions about the nature of the mind, the mind's relation to the brain, perceptual experience, mental representation, sense making, the role of the environment, and social cognition, and it considers the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question. It contrasts embodied and enactive views with classic cognitivism, and discusses major criticisms and their possible resolutions. This element also provides a strong focus on enactive theory and the prospects for integrating enactive approaches with other embodied and extended theories, mediated through recent developments in predictive processing and the free energy principle. It concludes with a brief discussion of the practical applications of embodied cognition. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Purpose
This research investigates the means of tacit knowledge (TK) communication between the designer and the computer in architectural design. Despite the integration of state-of-the-art computational technologies in different design phases, this integration happens within a limited scope, focusing mainly on tangible aspects of the design process, such as technical systems and visual representations. This lets architectural design miss the wider scope technology provides, where it can help in developing the computational design process through incorporating new intangible knowledge domains that were usually neglected, such as tacit knowledge, and through incorporating more design entities that were not included in the design process before.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conducts an interdisciplinary analytical review of the literature to achieve two main research goals. The first goal investigates TK communication between human beings and the second understands approaches of TK communication between humans and computers. For each goal, three phases were implemented; an initial research phase, where main keywords are identified, a sampling and selection of literature phase and an analysis of literature phase.
Findings
Through interlinking findings from different disciplines, the study presents a theoretical framework for TK communication. The framework provides architects with an approach to construct and transfer TK while using the computer in a computational design environment, presenting an individual and a social set of conditions and factors revealed from the review of the analyzed literature. The framework particularly emphasizes the significance of a human–computer symbiotic relationship for the process of TK communication to take place.
Originality/value
This paper presents a novel interdisciplinary reading into the literature of fields beyond architectural design, incorporating intangible knowledge domains into the computational design process and expanding the capabilities of computational design tools to allow for the transfer of intangible design attributes between different design entities, particularly tacit design knowledge.
Background: The creative process potentially complements the ABI condition. Given the potential of art to empower people with impaired cognitive capacity and communication skills, it was hypothesized that art therapy techniques could be used to ascertain the perspective of adults with ABI surrounding their housing and support preferences.
Method: Visual research methods informed the research protocol reported in this paper. Participants’ pictures were created mainly using pastels on paper. Eight people (3 adults with ABI; 4 non-family paid carers; 1 researcher as participant observer) participated in this pilot study. Qualitative rigour was achieved by addressing the four principles of trustworthiness.
Results: By analysing participants’ creative works in their entirety (i.e. image, text, and visual storytelling), key attributes of the ideal home or environment for adults with ABI were identified. The piloted arts-based process was also reflected upon.
Conclusions: Art processes may give voice to people with limited capacity to verbalize.
Computing has become an established part of the built environment augmenting it to become adaptive. We generally assume that we control the adaptive environments we inhabit. Using an existing adaptive environment prototype, we conducted a controlled study testing how the reversal of control (where the environment attempts to influence the behaviour of the inhabitant) would affect participants. Most participants changed their respiratory behaviour in accordance with this environmental manipulation. Behavioural change occurred either consciously or unconsciously. We explain the two different paths leading participants to behavioural change: (1) We adapt the model of interbodily resonance, a process of bodily interaction observable between, for example, partners engaged in verbal dialogue, to describe the unconscious bodily response to subtle changes in the environment. (2) And we apply the model of secondary control, an adjustment of one’s own expectations to maintain the pretence of control, to describe conscious cognitive adaptation to the changing environment. We also discuss potential applications of our findings in therapeutic and other settings.
The full scope of enactivist approaches to cognition includes not only a focus on sensory-motor contingencies and physical affordances for action, but also an emphasis on affective factors of embodiment and intersubjective affordances for social interaction. This strong conception of embodied cognition calls for a new way to think about the role of the brain in the larger system of brain-body-environment. We ask whether recent work on predictive coding offers a way to think about brain function in an enactive system, and we suggest that a positive answer is possible if we interpret predictive coding in a more enactive way, i.e., as involved in the organism's dynamic adjustments to its environment.
What does it entail to be embraced by a space that responds to your actions? What kind of relations can we create between the active body and the active space? What qualities does the responsivity have for creating certain experiences of a space? Through the Dress Room, I begin to explore the qualities of responsive spaces and embodied interaction. The Dress Room is a white cube that responds to the body's movements over the floor. The walls move, the room collapses or expands. I rely on a dancer to open up this experience. The outcome suggests that interacting with responsive environments can help create a sense of intimacy as well as motivate our motions within the space.
[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 17(2) of Review of General Psychology (see record 2013-23324-001). There were several errors in the text of the Online First version of the article. The corrected text is included in the erratum. All versions of this article have been corrected.] The enactive approach to cognitive science aims to provide an account of the mind that is both naturalistic and nonreductive. Psychological activity is viewed not as occurring within the individual organism but in the engagement between the motivated autonomous agent and their context (including their social context). The approach has been developing within the fields of philosophy, artificial life, and computational biology for the past two decades and is now growing within the domain of psychology more generally. In this short paper we outline the conceptual framework of the enactive approach. Illustrative research questions and methods for investigation are also broached, including some existing examples from theoretical, behavioral, and computational modeling research. It is suggested that an enactive psychology provides the basis for the conceptual framework of the enactive approach. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
There is a growing realization in cognitive science that a theory of embodied intersubjectivity is needed to better account for social cognition. We highlight some challenges that must be addressed by attempts to interpret ‘simulation theory’ in terms of embodiment, and argue for an alternative approach that integrates phenomenology and dynamical systems theory in a mutually informing manner. Instead of ‘simulation’ we put forward the concept of the ‘extended body’, an enactive and phenomenological notion that emphasizes the socially mediated nature of embodiment. To illustrate the explanatory potential of this approach, we replicate an agent-based model of embodied social interaction. An analysis of the model demonstrates that the extended body can be explained in terms of mutual dynamical entanglement: inter-bodily resonance between individuals can give rise to self-sustaining interaction patterns that go beyond the behavioral capacities of isolated individuals by modulating their intra-bodily conditions of behavior generation.
This chapter is dedicated to clarifying the central tenets of enactivism and exploring some of the themes currently under development. In this exercise, following the logic of the central ideas of enactivism can sometimes lead to unexpected hypotheses and implications. The value of a new framework must not be underestimated in allowing us to formulate questions in a different vocabulary, even if satisfactory answers are not yet forthcoming. Implicitly, the exploration of these questions and possible answers is, at the same time, a demonstration of the variety of methods available to enactivism—from phenomenology and theory cycles to the synthesis of minimal models and validation by construction. After introducing the five core ideas of enactivism, the chapter focuses on value generation, and on questions regarding the coherence of the idea of a value system in cognitive architectures and similar modular structures whose function is to generate or judge the meaning of a situation.
This book contributes to the idea that to have an understanding of the mind, consciousness, or cognition, a detailed scientific and phenomenological understanding of the body is essential. There is still a need to develop a common vocabulary that is capable of integrating discussions of brain mechanisms in neuroscience, behavioral expressions in psychology, design concerns in artificial intelligence and robotics, and debates about embodied experience in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. This book helps to formulate this common vocabulary by developing a conceptual framework that avoids both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and the inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Through discussions of neonate imitation, the Molyneux problem, gesture, self-awareness, free will, social cognition and intersubjectivity, as well as pathologies such as deafferentation, unilateral neglect, phantom limb, autism and schizophrenia, the book proposes to remap the conceptual landscape by revitalizing the concepts of body image and body schema, proprioception, ecological experience, intermodal perception, and enactive concepts of ownership and agency for action. Informed by both philosophical theory and scientific evidence, it addresses two basic sets of questions that concern the structure of embodied experience. First, questions about the phenomenal aspects of that structure, specifically the relatively regular and constant phenomenal features found in the content of experience. Second, questions about aspects of the structure of consciousness that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before one knows it, and do not normally enter into the phenomenal content of experience in an explicit way.
Compared to for instance the E. coli, humans have an exceptionally rich behavioral repertoire that gets applied with great flexibility and sensitivity to environmental conditions. This chapter argues against the received view in cognitive neuroscience, that is, that cognitive systems can display this behavior only by maintaining mental representations of the world on the basis of which plans are made to achieve specific goals. It explains how such a position leads to the problem of computational intractability. It proposes that effective control may be possible for a more tractable, even "lazy," control system that does not maintain any internal models of the world, assuming that such "lazy" control systems co-evolve with the bodies and environments of organisms. This co-evolution ensures a certain degree of fit between the control system of an organism and its life world.
Sonic Cradle is a chamber of complete darkness where users shape a peaceful soundscape using only their respiration. This interactive system was designed to foster a meditative experience by facilitating users' sense of immersion while following a specific attentional pattern characteristic of mindfulness. The goal of Sonic Cradle is twofold: first, to trigger the proven effects of mindfulness on stress, and second, to help teach and demystify the concept of meditation for users' long-term benefit. This paper presents the design phase of the project, starting by theoretically grounding the initial concept. We then discuss 15 co-design sessions which provided informal conceptual validation and led to several concrete design iterations aimed at balancing users' perceived sense of control. The presented approach to designing an interactive stress management system can be considered research through design, as it also resulted in a novel theoretical framework for the psychology of media immersion which has implications for a wide range of research areas.
This paper discusses physiological data as one stream of personal data available to drive adaptations in architecture. Physiological data here refers to data such as heart rate, respiration and brain activity that can be measured, manipulated and to some extent be interpreted to say something about the inhabitants’ emotional state. An iteratively developed prototype, the ExoBuilding, allowed the exploration of some of the salient issues in this space, and this exploration highlighted the possibility for a biofeedback loop emerging between the inhabitant and their ‘physiologically’ adaptive environment. An associated early consideration of the possible mappings between physiological data and the building fabric gave rise to an initial model of physiological data in Adaptive Architecture, presented here, which sets out the relationship between inhabitant, physiological data, actuation and effect with biofeedback being a special case specific to the context of this work. An outline of a series of hypothetical case studies explores the mappings between physiological data and the building fabric, which in turn leads to the suggestion that adaptive architecture best be understood as socio-technical system.
Adaptive Architecture is a multi-disciplinary field concerned with buildings that are designed to adapt to their environments, their inhabitants and objects as well as those buildings that are entirely driven by internal data. Because of its multi-disciplinary nature, developments across Architecture, Computer Science, the Social Sciences, Urban Planning and the Arts can appear disjointed, some times leading to parallel developments of the same ideas, false starts and the repeat of mistakes. This paper aims to allow readers to take a step back advancing the exploration of thematical and historical links across this exciting emerging field. To this aim, it presents a cross-disciplinary framework of Adaptive Architecture, discussing motivations for creating Adaptive Architecture, strategies and its temporal dimension, before introducing the key interlinked components of Adaptive Architecture.
As yet, there is no enactive account of social cognition. This paper extends the enactive concept of sense-making into the social domain. It takes as its departure point the process of interaction between individuals in a social encounter. It is a well-established finding that individuals can and generally do coordinate their movements and utterances in such situations. We argue that the interaction process can take on a form of autonomy. This allows us to reframe the problem of social cognition as that of how meaning is generated and transformed in the interplay between the unfolding interaction process and the individuals engaged in it. The notion of sense-making in this realm becomes participatory sense-making. The onus of social understanding thus moves away from strictly the individual only.
Current theories of social cognition are mainly based on a representationalist view. Moreover, they focus on a rather sophisticated
and limited aspect of understanding others, i.e. on how we predict and explain others’ behaviours through representing their
mental states. Research into the ‘social brain’ has also favoured a third-person paradigm of social cognition as a passive
observation of others’ behaviour, attributing it to an inferential, simulative or projective process in the individual brain.
In this paper, we present a concept of social understanding as an ongoing, dynamical process of participatory sense-making
and mutual incorporation. This process may be described (1) from a dynamical agentive systems point of view as an interaction and coordination of two embodied agents; (2) from a phenomenological approach as a mutual incorporation, i.e. a process in which the lived bodies of both participants extend and form a common intercorporality. Intersubjectivity,
it is argued, is not a solitary task of deciphering or simulating the movements of others but means entering a process of
embodied interaction and generating common meaning through it. This approach will be further illustrated by an analysis of
primary dyadic interaction in early childhood.
According to the view that has become known as the extended mind, some token mental processes extend into the cognizing organism’s environment in that they are composed (partly) of manipulative,
exploitative, and transformative operations performed by that subject on suitable environmental structures. Enactivist models understand mental processes as (partly) constituted by sensorimotor knowledge and by the organism’s ability to act,
in appropriate ways, on environmental structures. Given the obvious similarities between the two views, it is both tempting
and common to regard them as essentially variations on the same theme. In this paper, I shall argue that the similarities
between enactivist and extended models of cognition are relatively superficial, and the divergences are deeper than commonly
thought.
KeywordsAbility–Enactivism–Extended mind–Sensorimotor knowledge
ExoBuilding explores the novel design space that emerges when an individual's physiological data and the fabric of building architecture are linked. In its current form ExoBuilding is a tent-like structure that externalises a person's physiological data in an immersive and visceral way. This is achieved by mapping abdominal breathing to its shape and size, displaying heart beat through sound and light effects and mapping electro dermal activity to a projection on the tent fabric. The research is positioned in relation to previous work and the iterative development of ExoBuilding from to-scale to full-size prototype is described. The design process, feedback gathered alongside and observations allow the discussion of wider issues: the different scales possible, the temporal nature of the data, ownership and ambiguity of that data, ranges of control and the aggregation of data in a building context. This leads to the presentation of directions for future research at this exciting boundary between Architecture, HCI and medical science.
Ada is an entertainment exhibit that is able to interact with many people simultaneously, using a language of light and sound. "She" received 553,700 visitors over 5 months during the Swiss Expo.02 in 2002. In this paper we present the broad motivations, design and technologies behind Ada, and a first overview of the outcomes of the exhibit.
The shift from mechanical to digital forces architects to reposition themselves: Architects generate digital information, which can be used not only in designing and fabricating building components but also in embedding behaviours into buildings. This implies that, similar to the way that industrial design and fabrication with its concepts of standardisation and serial production influenced modernist architecture, digital design and fabrication influences contemporary architecture. While standardisation focused on processes of rationalisation of form, mass-customisation as a new paradigm that replaces mass-production, addresses non-standard, complex, and flexible designs. Furthermore, knowledge about the designed object can be encoded in digital data pertaining not just to the geometry of a design but also to its physical or other behaviours within an environment. Digitally-driven architecture implies, therefore, not only digitally-designed and fabricated architecture, it also implies architecture – built form – that can be controlled, actuated, and animated by digital means.
In this context, this sixth Footprint issue examines the influence of digital means as pragmatic and conceptual instruments for actuating architecture. The focus is not so much on computer-based systems for the development of architectural designs, but on architecture incorporating digital control, sensing, actuating, or other mechanisms that enable buildings to interact with their users and surroundings in real time in the real world through physical or sensory change and variation.
A comprehensive presentation of an approach that proposes a new account of cognition at levels from the cellular to the social.
This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). Enaction, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in The Embodied Mind (MIT Press, 1991), breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. Enaction offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science.
Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science.
ContributorsRenaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson
Bradford Books imprint
Since the earliest people lived as nomads, their buildings were portable, constructed in a way that allowed them to be rebuilt as they moved to new locations for better living conditions as the seasons changed. This book discusses the forerunners, present context, and technology of portable architecture. It documents numerous international examples, organized by areas of application, and offers a broad array of suggestions for practical design. In the Arts and Culture section, Shigeru Ban’s Nomadic Museum, made of shipping containers in the USA and Japan is examined, as is Mark Fisher’s event architecture for concert tours by the Rolling Stones and U2. Suggestions for flexible living include Richard Horden’s micro compact home and the Container Home Kit from LOT/EK. The design of mobile structures used in extreme situations, such as the Antarctic or in the aftermath of natural catastrophes, is explored. Exhibition and entertainment facilities are other typical areas of application for light, mobile structures. Demountable, temporary structures allow for exciting architectural experimentation which can then be prototyped for regular use.
The shift from mechanical to digital forces architects to reposition themselves: Architects generate digital information, which can be used not only in designing and fabricating building components but also in embedding behaviours into buildings. This implies that, similar to the way that industrial design and fabrication with its concepts of standardisation and serial production influenced modernist architecture, digital design and fabrication influences contemporary architecture. While standardisation focused on processes of rationalisation of form, mass-customisation as a new paradigm that replaces mass-production, addresses non-standard, complex, and flexible designs. Furthermore, knowledge about the designed object can be encoded in digital data pertaining not just to the geometry of a design but also to its physical or other behaviours within an environment. Digitally-driven architecture implies, therefore, not only digitally-designed and fabricated architecture, it also implies architecture – built form – that can be controlled, actuated, and animated by digital means.In this context, this sixth Footprint issue examines the influence of digital means as pragmatic and conceptual instruments for actuating architecture. The focus is not so much on computer-based systems for the development of architectural designs, but on architecture incorporating digital control, sensing, actuating, or other mechanisms that enable buildings to interact with their users and surroundings in real time in the real world through physical or sensory change and variation.
An investigation into the conceptual foundations of a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate all cognition "in the head."
There is a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate mental processes exclusively "in the head." Some think that this expanded conception of the mind will be the basis of a new science of the mind. In this book, leading philosopher Mark Rowlands investigates the conceptual foundations of this new science of the mind. The new way of thinking about the mind emphasizes the ways in which mental processes are embodied (made up partly of extraneural bodily structures and processes), embedded (designed to function in tandem with the environment), enacted (constituted in part by action), and extended (located in the environment).
The new way of thinking about the mind, Rowlands writes, is actually an old way of thinking that has taken on new form. Rowlands describes a conception of mind that had its clearest expression in phenomenology—in the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. He builds on these views, clarifies and renders consistent the ideas of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended mind, and develops a unified philosophical treatment of the novel conception of the mind that underlies the new science of the mind.
Bradford Books imprint
The Handbook of Cognitive Science provides an overview of recent developments in cognition research, relying upon non-classical approaches. Cognition is explained as the continuous interplay between brain, body, and environment, without relying on classical notions of computations and representation to explain cognition. The handbook serves as a valuable companion for readers interested in foundational aspects of cognitive science, and neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. The handbook begins with an introduction to embodied cognitive science, and then breaks up the chapters into separate sections on conceptual issues, formal approaches, embodiment in perception and action, embodiment from an artificial perspective, embodied meaning, and emotion and consciousness. Contributors to the book represent research overviews from around the globe including the US, UK, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Where are the borders of mind and where does the rest of the world begin? There are two standard answers possible: Some philosophers argue that these borders are defined by our scull and skin. Everything outside the body is also outside the mind. The others argue that the meanings of our words "simply are not in our heads" and insist that this meaning externalism applies also to the mind. The authors are suggesting a third position, i.e. quite another form of externalism. Their so called active externalism implies an active involvement of the background in controlling the cognitive processes.
Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts introduces the reader to the fundamental ideas that have emerged from these intertwinings, outlined in Chapter 1, of Merleau-Ponty's philosophical heritage, cross-disciplinary interests, and his personal and political life. His own reflections on the philosophical enterprise indicate how he may have understood the relationship between “life” and “work”, and they also provide the best guide to how we might approach his philosophy, as well as to how to approach the essays in this book. In the Preface to Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty concludes his rendition of phenomenology and existentialism with the suggestion that philosophy “is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being” and “[t]rue philosophy consists in relearning to look at the world” (PP: xx). He later made a similar point in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in 1952 (published as In Praise of Philosophy in 1953): “the philosopher, in order to experience more fully the ties of truth which bind him to the world and history, finds neither the depth of himself nor absolute knowledge, but a renewed image of the world and of himself placed within it among others” (EP: 63). These definitions of philosophy in part reflect Merleau-Ponty's ontological commitments, in particular the idea that the self and world are inextricably entwined: to express oneself is to express a world that is already both a historical and natural event of meaning, but is no less real for that; and expression, whether philosophical, historical or scientific, is fundamentally creative. © Editorial matter and selection, 2008 Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds.
The relation between us and our surroundings is paradoxical. On the one hand, we sometimes feel that we and the things around us are part of a seamless whole. Thus mystics speak of experiences in which they meld into the background. On the other hand, things often resist our efforts to assimilate them to our purposes. We then experience them as separate from us and sometimes even as alien. Indeed, some thinkers have claimed to be overcome by nausea in the face of a landscape's muteness and seeming utter disregard for them. These ontological postures involve epistemological stances. Some thinkers emphasize the immediate accessibility of things to us; they postulate that we are internally related to these things and thereby already have an at least implicit knowledge of them in advance of any empirical learning. In contrast, those thinkers who stress the separateness between us and things hold that we are only causally or otherwise externally related to them and must therefore build up our knowledge of these things from scratch. Phenomenologists have found each of these positions one-sided. They suspect that each of them involves an imposition of preconceived ideas on to the relationship between selves and the world. They think that both rationalists and empiricists have ignored the testimony of immediate experience in favour of ideas that have other sources. In order to escape this dilemma, phenomenologists perform their famous epoché and put aside common-sense or science-based conceptions of reality. © Editorial matter and selection, 2008 Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds.
Latest advances in digital architectural design enable applications of computation and fabrication strategies for the development of adaptive mechanisms. Adaptive design processes, influenced by environmental and human related conditions, are only developed partially with regard to the design, fabrication, and multi-objective performance based context. The current paper proposes an adaptive design process that investigates the design of a kinetic structure emphasizing material behaviour, embedded technology and computation. In parallel, it allows design proposals to adapt or transform with regard to geometrical configuration and structural behaviour according to external and internal influences. An adaptive hybrid structure is developed at digital and physical prototype level, where its behaviour is examined in real time under the influence of physical conditions. The development is based on a holistic design approach driven by environmental and human activity related conditions, while focusing on the application of elastic materials and embedded technology.
The Primacy of Perception brings together a number of important studies by Maurice Merleau-Ponty that appeared in various publications from 1947 to 1961. The title essay, which is in essence a presentation of the underlying thesis of his Phenomenology of Perception, is followed by two courses given by Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne on phenomenological psychology. "Eye and Mind" and the concluding chapters present applications of Merleau-Ponty's ideas to the realms of art, philosophy of history, and politics. Taken together, the studies in this volume provide a systematic introduction to the major themes of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy.
L'A. defend l'originalite de la phenomenologie du corps de Husserl contre l'interpretation traditionnelle, cartesienne et kantienne, de sa philosophie de l'(inter-)subjectivite, qui engage le statut transcendantal du sujet incarne dans la perspective epistemologique de la perception des objets de l'experience et de l'espace
When historian Charles Weiner found pages of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's notes, he saw it as a "record" of Feynman's work. Feynman himself, however, insisted that the notes were not a record but the work itself. In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain- bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.
Our surroundings are becoming infused with sensors measuring a variety of data streams about the environment, people and objects. Such data can be used to make the spaces that we inhabit responsive and interactive. Personal data in its different forms are one important data stream that such spaces are designed to respond to. In turn, one stream of personal data currently attracting high levels of interest in the HCI community is physiological data (e.g., heart rate, electrodermal activity), but this has seen little consideration in building architecture or the design of responsive environments. In this context, we developed a prototype mapping a single occupant’s respiration to its size and form, while it also sonifies their heartbeat. The result is a breathing building prototype, formative trials of which suggested that it triggers behavioral and physiological adaptations in inhabitants without giving them instructions and it is perceived as a relaxing experience. In this paper, we present and discuss the results of a controlled study of this prototype, comparing three conditions: the static prototype, regular movement and sonification and a biofeedback condition, where the occupant’s physiological data directly drives the prototype and presents this data back to them. The study confirmed that the biofeedback condition does indeed trigger behavioral changes and changes in participants’ physiology, resulting in lower respiration rates as well as higher respiration amplitudes, respiration to heart rate coherence and lower frequency heart rate variability. Self-reported state of relaxation is more dependent on inhabitant preferences, their knowledge of physiological data and whether they found space to ‘let go’. We conclude with a discussion of ExoBuilding as an immersive but also sharable biofeedback training interface and the wider potential of this approach to making buildings adapt to their inhabitants.
The integration of adaptive distributed robotics in architectural design has the potential to improve building energy performance while simultaneously increasing occupant comfort. In addition, conceiving buildings as dynamic systems with the ability to adapt to the changing environments in which they exist, opens new aesthetic possibilities for designers. As the façade of a building is a common place to address issues of energy performance and occupant comfort, this paper presents a first prototype of an adaptive solar envelope (ASE). Its functions are to provide distributed shading, solar power generation through integrated photovoltaics, and daylight distribution. We describe the interdisciplinary design process, and illustrate the architectural possibilities that arise from a distributed systems approach. The ASE is expanded to work in parallel with an adaptive artificial lighting element. Rather than being preprogrammed, the systems adapt their behavior through interaction with the environment and building occupants. This adaptation to the user's wishes is demonstrated successfully for the artificial light controller. We argue that with presently available technology and an increased exposure of architecture students and practitioners to adaptive design techniques, adaptive architectures will soon become a regular element of the built environment.
This paper describes the use of composite urethane elastomers for constructing responsive structures at an architectural scale. It explains the underlying material research and design criteria for constructing deployable columns that are responsive to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and are used to reconfigure and pattern the space of inhabitation.
Developing structures as flexible networked information processors.
Researchers suggest that architectural robotics embedded into the built environment will support and augment regular work, learning, healthcare, entertainment, and leisure activities. They state that architectural robotics can empower people of all ages to live more independently in medical facilities and homes, adapting to their changing needs and capabilities. Architectural robotics can also physically morph to support more and different physical and digital tasks and social, collaborative interactions in work environments. Architectural robotics located inside or outside the formal classroom in learning environments can afford interactive, creative exploration, and inquiry. Architectural robotics also has the potential to respond effectively to a variety of disasters of natural and human origins in urban environments, providing support for victims assembling, seeking treatment, and planning recovery operations.
The emerging viewpoint of embodied cognition holds that cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body's interactions with the world. This position actually houses a number of distinct claims, some of which are more controversial than others. This paper distinguishes and evaluates the following six claims: (1) cognition is situated; (2) cognition is time-pressured; (3) we off-load cognitive work onto the environment; (4) the environment is part of the cognitive system; (5) cognition is for action; (6) off-line cognition is body based. Of these, the first three and the fifth appear to be at least partially true, and their usefulness is best evaluated in terms of the range of their applicability. The fourth claim, I argue, is deeply problematic. The sixth claim has received the least attention in the literature on embodied cognition, but it may in fact be the best documented and most powerful of the six claims.
The thousand dreams of Stellavista
- J G Ballard
- JG Ballard
Ballard JG (2006) The thousand dreams of Stellavista. In: The complete short stories. Harper
Perennial, London, pp 414-435
4dspace: interactive architecture (Architectural Design) AD 128
- L Bullivant
Strong interaction and self-agency
- S Gallagher
Gallagher S (2005) How the body shapes the mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Gallagher S (2011) Strong interaction and self-agency. Hum Ment 15:55-76
How the body shapes the way we think
- R Pfeifer
- J Bongard
Responsive environments. Victoria & Albert Museum, London Bullivant L (2007) 4dsocial: interactive design environments (architectural design)
- L Bullivant
Bullivant L (2006) Responsive environments. Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Bullivant L (2007) 4dsocial: interactive design environments (architectural design). In: Castle H.
(ed) Wiley. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.v77:4/issuetoc
Interactive architecture
- M Fox
- M Kemp
Breathe. sonicribbon.com. Available at: http:// www. sonicribbon. com/ sonicribbon
- M Jacobs
- J Findley
Flexible: architecture that responds to change
- R Kronenburg
Kronenburg R (2003) Portable architecture: design and technology, 3rd edn. Birkhäuser, Basel
Kronenburg R (2007) Flexible: architecture that responds to change. Laurence King Publishing,
London