The vision of interactive architecture has long inspired architects about buildings that escape the notion of architecture as the passive, static background of our everyday lives. As early as the 1960s, designers envisioned a future where buildings could shift, walls could move or ceilings could change. They saw the potentials of these dynamic changes in facilitating multifunctional spaces that react or adapt to the needs of occupants. Recently, as relevant technological innovations like digital manufacturing, pervasive sensing, mechanical actuation or artificial intelligence are becoming accessible and affordable, groundbreaking opportunities are emerging to materialise these visions. Efforts in the fields of interactive, responsive, adaptive or smart architecture show that it is possible to robotically move furniture, walls, ceilings or even structures. Yet, as architecture is becoming increasingly active, it is still not clear how such dynamic changes influence the way people perceive, interpret, or experience the built environment. 

In this research, we explore the design space of interactive architecture, i.e. the interaction of humans with and through life-size dynamic architecture. Our hypothesis is that not only is interactive architecture able to afford or resist human activities by manipulating spatial qualities, its dynamic behavior can also generate novel hedonic experiences that are perhaps even more compelling than that of ‘static’ architecture. We deployed several physically-actuated interactive architecture prototypes in realistic contexts to empirically test their impact. We discovered guidelines of how and when such architecture should move to benefit human experience. Since there is evidence that “static” architecture influences our health and wellbeing, and enhances our quality of lives; if architects can make use of temporality as a design tool, there exists the possibilities to design future indoor spaces not only more flexible and functional, but also more pleasurable and healthy.