| iSpa: Interactive Urban Retreat | 2005/01/05 : | : updated | |
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Kelp Towers Eric Lindeman |
Through the kelp towers project I have created an interactive relationship between the ocean and the gallery space. I have brought these kelp plants along with other elements of their natural habitat including the water they live in, the rock that holds them to the ocean floor and the sounds of waves crashing on the shore into the space. The real-time audio of the waves is directly affecting a device in the tank that recreates the natural movement of the ocean bringing the natural underwater environment to the gallery. | |
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BREATHE_life need to breath |
Breathe is an wall installation that performs like a human lung. The entire wall reacts, causing sparkle, and a gentle water movement when a user steps into the underwater world. When a person walks along the wall, the surface physically responds, morphing itself to a dynamic shape causing an experience that will provide a fresh breath of life. As you continue the journey through the outer environment of iSpa, the wall wraps around, extending the experience, the force and becoming one with the element. Breathe gives a sense of freshness, power, a desire to live, and the understanding of "life needs to breath". This organically shaped wall resembles my past of experiences and the force of nature that I have everyday adapt and overcome. Surf's up! | ||
| Ripple Timothy Meyer |
The iSpa Lounge is a soothing urban retreat from the stressful life of the city. It promotes relaxation and reflection through a calming environment of light and sound. By reclining on the floor and submerging beneath the surface of lights one can enter into the lounge and experience a state of calmness. Guests of the lounge can provide a profile of iSpa preferences either at home on the web or directly in the lounge in order to create a personalized experience of changing colors and light patterns when wading through the lights and seeking relaxing refugee underneath the lights. The visitors are also guided to a spot in the lounge landscape where they can be either by themselves or engage in conversation with others as chosen in their profile. The floating lights mark and suggest a way through the lounge to the right location as most of the floor is hidden beneath them. The iSpa lounge tries to create an interactive environment for it's guests that responds to their needs and to provide them with a relaxing atmosphere. | ||
| Digital Cloud JaeWon Cho |
The digital cloud is an atmospheric lighting environment intended to illuminate its' surroundings by picking up and translating ambient sounds into light. Registered by the amount of excitement and interaction around the cloud, colorful transitions of mood and emotion float by in various lighting interpretations. | ||
| Biorhythmic Meditation Room Alissa Kauffman + Stephanie Lee |
A secluded space where individuals can escape to for quiet meditation. A lighting system has been designed to reset a person's internal clock based on cyclical patterns of color and light. Natural light and time of day affect our sleeping and waking patterns, thus affecting our abilities to function both physically and mentally. This biorhythmic lighting design is a form of "chroma-therapy" because the colors that appear in the sky throughout the entire day, dawn through dusk appear on the horizon in this design. By spending a prescribed amount of time in this biorhythmic chamber, one may emerge more relaxed and refreshed. This particular space is 12'x8' because it has been designed to fit into an existing space, accommodating up to 4 people at a time. The structure for the room has been designed out of all natural, sustainable building materials. The main walls have been built out of straw bales, covered in a natural lime-based plaster and the fabrics are of an organic blend. The lighting system utilizes an energy-efficient LED system. Incorporating straw bales is a low cost, energy efficient way of building which provides a high level of natural soundproofing, thus creating the quiet escape urban dwellers seek.(Note: The speed of the lighting cycles has been calculated and sped up for the purposes of exhibiting the concept.) | ||
| Cognitive Transformations Mike Burris |
Everything we surround ourselves with is typically designed with a specific thought or intention of use for the consumer, even many adaptive environments. However, how we see things as individuals reveals the subjectivity of the things we experience and what they mean to us, such as color, music, and visual layouts of information. The question is how do we as individuals break down the information from our mind and translate it directly into verbal or physical communication. This may seem like a task that requires little or no effort but for someone with a limitation, such as autistic children or those with physical inabilities it becomes an avenue for expression of thought and communication. What I am proposing is to enable the user to orchestrate their own understanding of information by turning the environment into the instrument of communication and thought processing. The first step is to map out the phonetic patterns and physical behaviors that are displayed by the individual. This specific interactive environment is based on a cause and effect interaction and is the beginning to a completely adaptive environment that can be used to analyze and map out learning behaviors displayed by the child. | ||
| Sea Anemone Chiharu Araki |
People go to a spa for refreshing their mind and their bodies. My design will be installed at the entrance of the spa, so it functions to separate stressful personal life and relaxation space. I inspired how sea anemone cleans the body of fish and how sea they balance with both organs and environment. By going through this portal, people can experience a feeling cleansing both the mind and body. | ||
| Equilibrium Derek Hibbs |
Equilibrium invites the passerby to seek refuge in the urban retreat and experience balance within their life. Four counterweighted arms gently raise and lower balanced light fixtures from the roof, leaving a trail across phosphorescent strips. The motion of the lights and arms respond to the volume and frequency of visitors to the retreat. A glowing map of past activity is left on the façade of the building over time. Through its balanced mechanics and memory map Equilibrium is symbolic and informative; both defining and enhancing the experience of urban retreat. | ||
| IBag Suzanne Hanson |
The south building may not be the most obvious location for an exhibit if you are not an environmental student, and for better and worse, its stance is far removed from the happenings and displays of the main building. Thus a way to attract "clients" to our urban rehab is necessary. DURING an afternoon of "consumer observation" I witnessed a young couple walk up to a woman carrying a "baby gap" bag and ask her how to get there. I realized shopping bags do much more than just carry your stuff. They are essentially walking, mini billboards. Shopping bags inform other shoppers of stores that are in the vicinity, who shops at them, and the presence of quality products worth purchasing. They also act as a reminder of the purchases until they are disposed of. INSPIRED by an effort to combine advertising, signage, and way-finding a "portable or fractured façade came to be. I want the users to take a piece away, not realizing that it will extend their experience until something is activated by their presence that was not activated prior to visiting. By placing sensors in the parking lot and/or campus, visitors will be reminded of the experience. As others witness these rewards they will inquire as to how they can activate the sensors, what the activator did, and/or how can they witness, experience, and participate. The large sail structures that will create a series of 3 vistas that lead the "client" to and from our "urban rehab" exhibit. As an individual passes near a rhythm of blue light (inspired by the actual façade design by Derek Hibbs) will act like ambient arrows and guide them to the south building. Upon departure the client will remember their "urban rehab" experience before they completely re-immersed into the overwhelming hustle and bustle of urban life. | ||
| Jeffery Hastings Indexical Cartography |
By using the model of tides, graphs and charts, can human interaction react/mimic these natural forces caused by gravity, the sun, and the moon to graph its own chart of interaction? By using presence of people (the sun) and duration of participation(the moon), can we map out the ebbs and flows of circulation into a visual map of usage so as to watch a change throughout the day, week, month…to experience the se daily high and low tides(usage)? Maps, Tides, Charts, Graphs, High, Low, Ebb, Flow, Sun, Axis, Moon, Spring, Gravity, 24 hr. 52 min., Semidiurnal, Diurnal | ||
| Responsive Floor
Space Sandor Pratt |
The responsive flooring/lounging surface reacts to the movements of users through the space. This dynamic system reacts and adapts to the specific situations to create a unique relaxation experience within a larger public space. The instability of the floor challenges the user to become explicitly aware of their place within the space, as well as their connection to others within the larger space. Through further exploration, in a very tactile navigational way - with the absence of light, soft lounge spaces can be found for a more comfortable lounging experience. The floor represents the fluidity of the space below the surface of the hanging lamps. | ||
| Octet: Cassie Cobb |
"Octet" can refresh your memory of what you just witnessed from the other projects or it can be a prelude of what is ahead. It is situated on the exterior of the south building. A galvanized pipe cantilevers four feet from the building that the sound tube hangs from. Eight speakers line the interior walls of the vinyl cylinder. Each speaker out-puts a different sound that has been prerecorded. The sounds are rooted from other projects in the spa/ urban retreat. The viewer occupies the space by ducking underneath and then standing up in a normal manner. The speakers encompass the head allowing for a close relationship to your ears, but also blocking the line of sight. After entering, the speakers can be triggered individually through touch, but play simultaneously allowing for a form of manually mixed infusion. | ||
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