Between Art and Architecture: The Interactive Skin

There are two current approaches to the realisation of interactive building ‘skins’: in architecture so called intelligent facades are being designed with an environmental science agenda; while in a parallel line of inquiry, artists are experimenting with media facades. It is proposed here that there is common ground between reactive environmental facades and data driven screens, in that both involve the design of kinetic process. Selected examples from kinetic and generative art provide useful precursors for such an approach and these provide the background to a framework for the design of interactive building skins. The aim is to locate the design parameters for practice where the art / architectural skin is a process based system, rather than a static object.