The Living
The Living Glass project by David Benjamin and Soo-In Yang, featured in Metropolis and Parallax uses a shape memory alloy to open and close the surface like gills.
Beginning with the premise that architectural elements might move in response to their environments, we conducted research on, designed, and built a full-scale kinetic surface. Our system collects input through an array of sensors, processes the input through BASIC Stamp II microcontrollers, and triggers local and global movement of a human-scale surface.
Information on Nitinol and other shape memory alloys can be found at NDC, Johnson Matthey, Special Metals, Memry Corporation, MIGA, Grikin, and the University of Wisconsin. Nitinol is an acronym for Nickel Titanium Naval Ordnance Laboratories.
