The Sensitive Tapestry: Built Architecture as a Platform for Information Visualization and Interaction

This paper presents ´The Sensitive Tapestry´, an interactive installation using body-input as a nontraditional user interface. The technical basis for this kind of media-enabled environment is a thermal imager that captures the activities in public areas at a large scale. The installation has been developed as a prototypical example in architectural education at the ETH Zurich, Science City. The aim of the project is to generate a novel experience, which shows the potential of merging physical architecture and digital information. The article newly develops architecture as an interface that reveals information about the building itself, its occupants, and/or its environment. It describes the research that employs design experimentation and information visualization with the use of computer supported,interactive, visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition. This questions the way in which one perceives the own body spatiality and motility in physical and augmented environments and how the particular experience created by this juxtaposition evokes onepsilas awareness of the motility in the public. The paper suggests that introducing this kind of display in asocial scenario can enrich the casual interaction of people nearby and this might enhance social awareness and engagement.