The Psychology of Buildings: Computational Cognitive Strategies for Interactive Buildings

The Psychology of Buildings

Computational cognitive strategies for interactive buildings

Henri AchtenCzech Technical University in Praguehttp://[email protected]

Buildings have to respond to changes in order to remain functional. Traditionalmeans to adapt to change are to design relatively static shells that canaccommodate to some degree changes. Recently a number of technologies havecome into existence that extend the capacity of buildings to change in a moreautonomous way. Such buildings are responsive buildings. In this paper we dealwith a special case of such responsive buildings: interactive buildings.Interactive buildings engage in a dialogue with the user and have an internalrepresentation of the user. Interactive buildings can display a variety of 'styles'how they interact with people - these are known as attitudes. As a building maygo through a number of attitudes during the interaction with the user, controlstructures are necessary to determine this change. The mechanisms for thesechanges are the 'psychology' of the building.

Keywords: Interactive architecture, Building attitudes, Computational cognition

RESPONSIVE AND INTERACTIVE ARCHI-TECTUREBuildings are situated in a changing environment.Usually, buildings are not conceived as highly dy-namic systems that change a lot, although in truththey actually accommodate quite a lot of change.Most of theway this accommodation of change is ac-complished is by offering a more or less static struc-ture that allows a various number of uses. Someenduring configurations, acknowledged as buildingtypes, are particularly strong in this respect (Rossi1982). However, during the life-time of a build-ing many occasions may occur in which the avail-able flexibility reaches its limits and more profound

changes need to be made. Incorporating such po-tential for change requires a different way of think-ing about buildings (Habraken et al. 1986; Leupen etal. 2005). Today a set of technologies are emergingthat allowbuildings tobecomemore responsive thanthrough traditional approaches. There exist already aquite large number of technologies that make build-ings more dynamically changing (see Table 1).

The application of such technologies mentionedabove results in buildings that can adapt to changingconditions. They are knownunder a variety of names:Building Automation Systems, Smart Homes, Sen-tient Buildings, Adaptive Buildings, Dynamic Build-ings, Interactive Buildings, and Portable Buildings, toname a few. In our work, we want to make a spe-

Smart and Responsive Design - Volume 2 - eCAADe 32 | 621

Table 1Existing examplesof responsivetechnologies.

cial case for Interactive Buildings. Wewant to reservethe term 'Interactive' when one ormore componentswork with each other and which always have somekind of relationship with one or more persons. Ifthe interaction is only between two or more systems(therefore, no people involved), then we are talkingon a system level but not about interaction. We re-quire of an interactive system that it has a represen-tation of the user. This representation does not haveto be complex; it is sufficient if it can differentiate be-tween a number of states and desires of the user andreact correspondingly. If it does not, then it can onlybe a purely reactive system that has a single responseto a user action: thus, it is not considered to be inter-active (Achten 2011).

An interactive system can consist of multiplecomponents. For an interactive system it is not nec-essary that every component is interactive. To de-termine the boundaries of an interactive system, wecan simply proceedby a process of elimination; givenany system, continue to eliminate components un-til the system as a whole is not interactive anymore.Components which can be removed without conse-quence for the interaction are not a necessary partof the interactive system (but they can of course fulfilany different kind of purpose).

Interaction is geared towards one or more pur-poses. In particular when dealing with complex sys-tems, there can be multiple functions present in thesystem. In such cases, additional control structures

are required that determine which type of functionhas to be fulfilled. These control structures can acton the system level (thus they act without user in-teraction; the system makes up its own mind) or ina reaction or dialogue with the user (thus determin-ing the behaviour as a partly reaction to the user).On the most general level, an interaction can be di-rect involvement between the system and user or in-direct. Additionally, the interaction can require theuser to be active or passive. A system that aims to-wards direct interaction with a passive user can becharacterised as a "perfect butler"; direct interactionwith an active user as a "partner." A system that aimstoward indirect interactionwith a passive user can becharacterised as "environmental"; and indirect inter-actionwith an active user as a "wizard" (Achten2011).

The general characterisations above still leaveopen many options how the system actually inter-acts with the user. According to interaction designtheory, interactive systems can try to instruct a user,have a conversation, manipulate, or explore (Sharpeet al. 2007). Additionally, an interactive system canhave different kinds of goals: performance, sustain-ability, service, symbolising, and entertaining (Achten2013). The combination of these possibilities leadsto 20 combinations of interaction styles, or in otherwords: attitudes of buildings (Table 2).

622 | eCAADe 32 - Smart and Responsive Design - Volume 2

Table 2Attitudes ofbuildings.

INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS CONCEIVED ASAGENTSMany contemporary responsive systems are fairlysimple in their behaviour: they aregeared to a limitedset of input aspects, determine behaviour on the ba-sis of fairly straightforward decision rules, and have alimited amount of expressions. In other words, such

Figure 1Agent architecture.

Figure 2An agent can bemade up of manydifferent agents.

interactive systems exhibit short loops. For such in-teractive systems we do not need a lot of controlstructures to understand their behaviour, neither inthe design phase nor in the use phase. There aresystems on the other hand however, which are morecomplex: they respond to a large number of inputs,process decisions in complex ways, and offer manydifferent kinds of feedback to the user. In otherwords, such interactive systems exhibit long loops.

For the understanding and design of interactivebuildings it is useful to conceive such buildings asagents. An agent is an autonomous entity, situatedin an environment, capable of sensing this environ-ment and other agents that are in that environment,able to sendout and receive signals from theenviron-ment and other agents, and capable to manipulateaspects of the outside world (see Figure 1).

The core of an agent has a recorded state, goalsthat it wants to achieve, and reasoning structuresthat process input and determines output of theagent. The input comes from the outside worldin two types: actions (changes in the world envi-ronment of the agent) and messages (from otheragents). Actions are registered through sensors andmessages are received through channels. The agentcan manipulate the world through actions (chang-ing the world environment of the agent) by meansof actuators, and it can send out messages througha channel. Messages can be sent directly to otheragents, or they can be sent to the world.

Agents can be considered in the same way ascomplex systems in systems theory. Complex agentscan be realised by combinations of more simpleagents working together (see Figure 2). The bound-ary is determined by the interactions between the


agents. Note that in this approach, between agentsthere is only communication possible - not actions.Actions always occur in the world, where they maybe sensed by other agents.

INTENTIONAL AND COGNITIVE LEVELThe control structure of interactive buildings is nota straightforward issue. Aspects to be consideredby the control structure are: which attitude, actionsof the overall interaction, and coordination of thecomponents. These control issues determine the be-haviour of the interactive system, but they do notmanifest themselves as such to the observer. Whatthe observer notices is the outward performanceof an interactive system (something opens, moves,changes aspect, and so on) but not the considerationwhich leads to this behaviour. Therefore it is fair tosay that the control issues could be considered thepsychology of a building: those mechanisms whichdetermine what actual behaviour a building will per-form. The psychology is described in two ways: onthe "intentional" level what the overall considera-tions are; and on the "cognitive strategy" level howthe intentional level is actually realised.

• The "intentional" level is the attitude of theinteractive system as the user perceives it tobe. It concerns the communication of the sys-tem to the user about its goals and purpose,and informs theway the communication is re-alised.

• The "cognitive strategy" level is the compu-tational part how the intentional level is re-alised: this concerns the control strategies,decision trees, input signals, outputs to actu-ators, communication between components,and so on. This level is usually hidden for theuser.

In this paper we describe the intentional level ofthe attitudes, and the mechanisms for switching be-tween attitudes. Attitude change is governed bysystem-user interaction or through autonomous sys-tem decision. Attitudes need not be completely

mutually exclusive; they can be mixed. This mix isdependent upon perceived priorities of the controlstructure.

Hypothetical case: interactivemuseumIn the following example we consider a hypotheticalcase in which we describe the potential interactionsin a museum. The example of museum is fairly ar-bitrary - much of the interactions can be consideredin the same way for large places which take manynon-residential visitors (social services, airports, trainstations). Following the discussion above concern-ing agents, we term main aspects of the functioningof the building as agents. Specific agents that likelyneed special fine-tuning for a museum are Lighting,Wayfinding, Itinerary, Exhibition, and Advertising.

We keep the possible descriptions of agents asclose as possible to parts of the building itself. A vi-able alternative approach would involve communi-cation of the buildingwith PDA's (Personal Digital As-sistants such as tablets, smart phones, or specific de-vices handedout in thebuilding) but then thediscus-sion becomes even more speculative because of theopen-ended capabilities of such devices (Table 3).

Switching between attitudesAn attitude defines the basic interaction style of thebuilding with the user. In many cases multiple atti-tudes are possible to realise a particular interactionwith the user. Theyhavedifferent implications for thedesign of the interaction. Switching between atti-tudes can become desirable to counteract saturation(where the user does no longer perceive the interac-tions because of their repetitive character), to stressincreasing importance of a particular aspect (goingfrom an 'introvert' attitude to a more 'assertive' atti-tude) and vice versa, whengoing fromone functionalregime to another (opening hours, rush hour, closinghours, night hours), and so on.

On the cognitive strategy levelmost attitudes arethe same in terms of input - they always use the samesets of sensors to get the relevant data. The reasonfor this is that the sensor part is fairly inflexible (theyhave to be integrated in the building and are not very


Table 3Intentional andcognitive aspects ofa hypotheticalinteractive museumcase.


easy to change once installed). Differences betweenattitudes can occur in the selected agents that are in-volved in the communication, priorities in the controlstructures, and output channels for communicationwith the user. When we include PDA's in the interac-tion, possibilities become almost endless and highlyflexible.

DISCUSSIONThe psychology of buildings allows a deeper inves-tigation of interactive buildings in terms of controlstructure. The distinction between intentional leveland cognitive strategy level helps to keep overal de-sign considerations separate from the technologicalimplementation. This is in particular useful whenwe are considering complex behaviours of buildings.Cognitive strategies allow realisation of various atti-tudes through switching sets of parameters. The caseof the hypothetical museum shows that the inten-tional andcognitive strategy force thedesigner tobe-come more explicit about the interaction design ofthe building, which has implications for the concreterealisation of the interaction.

We do not claim that the current framework pro-vides the definitive answer to the design of interac-tivebuildings -weare at the verybeginning tounder-stand what interactive architecture is about. Never-theless, we hope that the presented work sheds lighton the many implications of interaction, and addssome transparency and systematic rigour to all theoptions that are possible.

REFERENCESAarts, E and Marzano, S 2003, The New Everyday – Views

on Ambient Intelligence, 010 Publishers, RotterdamAchten, H 2011 'Degrees of Interaction: Towards a Clas-

sification', Zupancic, T. et al. (eds.) Proceedings of the29th International Conference on Education and Re-search in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Eu-rope, Ljubljana, pp. 565-572

Achten, H 2013 'Buildings With an Attitude – Personal-ity Traits for the Design of Interactive Architecture',Stouffs, R. and Sariyildiz, S. (eds.), Computation andPerformance–Proceedingsof the31st eCAADeConfer-

ence – Volume 1, Faculty of Architecture, Delft Uni-versity of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, pp.477-485

Habraken, NJ, Boekholt, JTh, Dinjens, PJM, Wiewel, Wand Gibbons, S 1986, Variations: The SystematicDesign of Supports, Laboratory of Architecture andPlanning at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Kronenburg, R 2007, Flexible: Architecture That Respondsto Change, Laurence King Publishing, London

Leupen, B, Heijne, R and van Zwol, J 2005, Time-BasedAr-chitecture, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam

Milgram, P, Takemura, H, Utsumi, A and Kishino, F 1994'Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on theReality-Virtuality Continuum', H Das (ed), Telemanip-ulator and Telepresence Technologies: 31 October-1November 1994 (Proceedings of Spie – The Interna-tional Society for Optical Engineering, V. 2351.), Eu-rospan, Boston, Massachusetts, pp. 282-292

Rossi, A 1982, The Architecture of the City, The MIT Press,Cambridge, Massachusetts

Sharp, H, Rogers, R and Preece, J 2007, Interaction De-sign: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edi-tion, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester

[1] http://www.helloivee.com/ [Accessed: 9-2-2014][2] http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/home/roomba.aspx

[Accessed: 9-2-2014][3] http://www.mobilerobots.com/ResearchRobots/

ResearchPatrolBot.aspx [Accessed: 9-2-2014][4] http://www.sony-europe.com/support/aibo/

1_1_3_aibo_story.asp?language=en[Accessed 9-2-2014]

[5] http://www.aldebaran-robotics.com/en/Discover-NAO/Key-Features/hardware-platform.html[Accessed: 9-2-2014]

[6] http://www.zigbee.org/Standards/ZigBeeHomeAutomation/Features.aspx[Accessed: 9-2-2014]

[7] http://www.orambra.com/˜prairieHouse.html[Accessed: 9-2-2014]

[8] http://www.vml-technologies.com/projects/taipei-arena [Accessed: 9-2-2014]


The Psychology of Buildings: Computational Cognitive Strategies for Interactive Buildings

Documents

Transcript of The Psychology of Buildings: Computational Cognitive Strategies for Interactive Buildings