Kinetic architecture is the expression of the building's need to adapt to physical changes through the process of motion. It is the most dramatic change a building can have and a theatrical manner requires a change from one state to another in the shell and the interior.
Throughout the history of building, movement has always been perceived as the ideal action to achieve optimum living conditions. The early nomads moved their communities to find better living conditions and later, with the prevalence of static structures, some of the changes were incorporated inside the building itself and expressed as windows, vents and other systems.
Our research starts from the entrance to the industrial revolution of the machine attempting to automate this adaptation, through integration of motion as a concept and practice in the building. Movements such as Futurism, Constructivism, metabolism and Archigram, created a new architecture based on this thinking, proposing moving cities and buildings that could adapt to rapid social and environmental changes.
On the next stage we notice the abandonment of this idea due to failure of implementation, and the rise of the development of digital systems which will convey the sense of motion in the digital space and will talk about the interaction between man and machine through the birth of the language of communication, the computer software.
Experiments on the improvement of this interaction, coupled with the invention of sensory technology will trigger the introduction of kinetic architecture as we know it today. Buildings like the Arab World Institute managed to solve the technological barriers and realize the part of the vision promised by the early 20th century architectural movements.
Finally, it becomes increasingly clear that the scale of motion scale will become increasingly difficult to discern, until it will finally come down to molecular movement as we see through nanotechnology. Another trend is that our sensors may be limited as to the breadth of their capabilities and can be improved through the bio-mimicry, the imitation of organisms found through-out nature that can be utilized to improve kinetic architecture. It remains, then, to see whether the kinetic architecture can survive as a style or movement, perhaps not as we know it today, but constantly enriched with new tools and even becoming the norm in the future architectural world.
