haque :: design + research

The domain of architecture has been transformed by developments in interaction research, wearable computing, mobile connectivity, people-centered design, contextual awareness, RFID systems and ubiquitous computing. These technologies alter our understanding of space and change the way we relate to each other. We no longer think of architecture as static and immutable; instead we see it as dynamic, responsive and conversant. Our projects explore some of this territory.

Principal projects (current):

Natural Fuse
Natural Fuse harnesses the carbon-sinking capabilities of plants to create a city-wide network of electronically-assisted plants that act both as energy providers and as shared "carbon sink" circuit breakers.

August 2008-ongoing

Huey-Dewey-Louie Climate Clock
A proposed self-building landscape that measures and tracks climate change, both local and global, over the course of the next 100 years.
[With Robert Davis, Goldsmiths College, London].

May 2008-ongoing

Primal Source
An all-night mirage-like performance/installation is brought to life on Santa Monica beach through the voices, sounds and music created by festival-goers.

March 2008-July 2008

Pachube
A platform that enables you to store, share & discover realtime sensor, energy and environment data from objects, devices & buildings around the world, facilitating interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.

March 2007-ongoing

Principal projects (completed):

Reconfigurable House
A House constructed from thousands of low tech sensor/actuators that can be "reconfigured" by its occupants.
[With Adam Somlai-Fischer & the Reorient team].

February 2007-July 2008

Burble
Participants come together to compose, assemble and control an immense 'wall' of illuminated balloons constructed from a set of modular and configurable components.

February 2006-September 2007

Evolving Sonic Environment
An architectural experiment to construct an interactive environment that builds up an internal representation of its occupants through a network of autonomous but communicative sensors.
[With Robert Davis, Goldsmiths College, London].

November 2005-December 2007

Remote
Two spaces, one in Boston the other in Second Life, bound together by the internet so that things that occur in one space affect things that happen in the other and vice versa.

February 2008-April 2008

Evoke
A massive projection, generated by the collective sounds of the public, that lights up the facade of York Minster.

October 2007-November 2007

Sky Ear
A floating glowing cloud, embedded with mobile phones, listens out for electromagnetic waves in the sky.
[project info] [event info].

July 2003-January 2006

Haunt
Using humidity, temperatures and electromagnetic and sonic frequencies that parapsychologists have associated with haunted spaces to build an environment that feels "haunted".

October 2004-October 2005

Scents of Space
An interactive smell system that allows for three-dimensional placement of fragrances without dispersion (funded by a Wellcome Trust Sciart Award).
[Pletts Haque / Dr. L Turin]

May 2002-December 2002

Worldview

Worldview is an urban installation for tourists, enabling them to record their experience with both an instant-print postcard and a video clip and look through realtime windows into public spaces in other cities. [Pletts Haque]

June 2001-October 2001

Urban Constellations
Ultrabright solar-powered flashing devices are placed around a town, so that when viewed at night from a particular window in a building they appear as a constellation.

August 2000-October 2000

Moody Mushroom Floor
A smell/sound/light floor that develops moods and aspirations in response to the ways that people react to the invidual outputs.

1996

Auxiliary projects (current)

Siphonophora
A collection of small reactive devices that float in a lake, evolve their behaviour organically in response to specific site conditions including the local bird population, insects in and around the water and human interaction. [With Robert Davis, Goldsmiths College, London].

January 2009

Scattered House
A low-tech networked structure demonstrates the implications of designing environments in the context of family diasporas and ubiquitous networked connectivity.

July 2008

EEML
Extended Environments Markup Language is a protocol for sharing real time sensor data between remote environments, both physical and virtual.

March 2007-ongoing

Wifi Camera
An experiment with Adam Somlai-Fischer and Bengt Sjolen to reveal the electromagnetic "view" of 2.4GHz (that analogises the way that a traditional camera obscura works with visible light).

June 2006-ongoing

Low Tech
Prototype research for a suite of low-tech sensors and interactive actuators that can be produced inexpensively from hacked toys and devices. Final report here & wiki for other contributions here.
[With Adam Somlai-Fischer].

August 2004 - ongoing

Auxiliary projects (completed)

Environment XML
Environment XML is deprecated in favour of Extended Environments Markup Language.

January 2006-December 2007

Project Unspecified
Members of the public came together to design, construct and inhabit a temporary inflatable structure, sited in Washington Square Park, New York City.

April 30, 2007

Open Source Arch Expt
Architecture as an 'operating system' enables people to create architectural 'programs'. This experiment in collaboration explores how such a system benefits from open source tactics.

November 2003-December 2007

Furu furi
Experiments with dynamic structures to produce physical output from an mp3 player.

August 2006

Configurable T-shirt
A t-shirt for which the wearer configures the design on the front. A matrix of hexagonal pixels is provided that can be coloured in with a black felt-tip pen in order to turn them "off".

May 2006

An Example 06 (an homage to Jim Campbell's homage to Heisenberg)
A collection of video projections, remote control cars, lasers and cats...
[With Ai Hasegawa].

January 2006-February 2006

Bricks
A mobile projection system for creating responsive visual environments in public spaces (with funding from London Arts).

September 2003-September 2004

Reflected Reflections
An interactive shop window installation, exhibited at Plymouth Arts Centre as part of Architecture Week 2002.

May 2002-June 2002

Engaging Bus Shelters
Interaction design elements for London's Bus Shelters commissioned by Richard Rogers Partnership.

August 2001-October 2001

Infinitum Ad Nauseam
An interactive audio/video projection system for choreographed and improvised dance performances, exhibited at the Tokyo Metrolpolitan Museum of Photography and the Hillside Gallery, Tokyo.

November 2000-December 2000

Japanese Whispers
An experiment into the way information is changed by being digitally processed and transmitted through electromagnetic space using feedback loops created by mobile phones.

November 2000-December 2000

'Blue skies' projects

Rainbow
Reuses rainwater to create urban rainbows above buildings.

Floatables
Floatable jellyfish-like vessels drift around cities to create temporary, ephemeral zones of privacy: absence of phone calls, emails, sounds, smells and thermal patterns left behind by others.

Safely dangerous vertical playground
A playground of fire, spikes, ladders, slides, trampolines and long, long falls.

Seeking funding

Paskian Environments
Reconsidering Gordon Pask's work in "interactive environments" to explore the human meaning of "interaction" and "conversation" in an actual built space.
[With Paul Pangaro].

November 2005-ongoing

1000 (Little Tips of Communication)
A system for technologically-aware bodies in technologically-animated spaces that challenges conventional ubiquitous computing approaches.
[With 5050 ltd].