Differentiation and performance: multi-performance architectures and modulated environments

The architectural tradition of the West is fundamentally characterised by substantial structures and building typologies that link tectonics with function and representation. It has been focusing on the relation between the material constituents that frame space and its direct relation to programme on the one hand, and to social formations on the other. Interior environments are largely homogenised, a preference inherited from Modernist open-plan arrangements and facilitated by vast paraphernalia of electrical and mechanical equipment. Here, Michael Hensel and Achim Menges argue for an ecological understanding of architecture that promotes the differentiation of environmental conditions through a morphological intelligence, which promises not only a new spatial paradigm for architectural design, but also a far more sustainable one that links the performance capacity of material systems with environmental modulation and the resulting provisions and opportunities for inhabitation.