I am excited to be teaching a one-day Interactive Surfaces workshop for the upcoming Facades+ Conference being held in New York City on April 11th-12th. The event has an amazing line up of speakers and workshops which are being taught by some of the industries leaders including: Robert Aish (Autodesk), Nathan Miller (Case), Gil Akos & Ronnie Parsons (Studio Mode), Neil Meredith (Gehry Tech), and John Sargent (SOM).
The Interactive Surfaces workshop will concentrate on producing facade prototypes that are configurable, sensate, and active. The facade of a building is the liminal surface across which information and environmental performance is frequently negotiated. Given dynamic context of our built environment; the facade must be capable of intelligent adaptation over time.
In this workshop, we'll be focusing on new hardware and software prototyping techniques; primarily focusing on a wide range of sensing and actuation modalities in order to build novel interactive devices. Using remote sensors, microcontrollers (Arduino), and actuators, we will build virtual and physical prototypes that can communicate with humans and the world around them. Using both Grasshopper and the Firefly plug-in, you will learn how to create intelligent control strategies for interactive or responsive facades.
The participants who sign up for this workshop will also be the first to get their hands on the new Firefly Interactive Prototyping Shield which I have been developing. This shield provides access to a number of built-in, ready-to-use sensors and actuators including: 3 linear sliders (potentiometers), a light sensor, a two-axis joystick, 3 push buttons, a red LED, a yellow LED, a Green LED, and a Tri-color LED, 2 servo connections, and a high-voltage MOSFET circuit capable of driving lights, valves, DC motors, etc. Each participant will not only walk away with a kick ass new hardware kit, but valuable knowledge in how to create new types of interactive prototypes!
