ABSTRACT
For the environmental designer, understanding plasticity is important, particularly as built form becomes evermore dynamic. Architectural plasticity can emerge as adaptive sensory environments change and adapt as a result of contextual experiences. As environments become increasingly malleable, it is vital that their design and subsequent interactions improve over time while not deteriorating. For this, architects of adaptive sensory environments can look toward the design and strategy of complex adaptive systems. Adaptive architecture should be able to cross-talk as it integrates such factors. An adaptive architecture with plasticity must learn as it interacts. And learning requires feedback, which can be either positive or negative. Adaptive architecture is a bottom-up system that yields emergent behavior based on local interactions occurring between individual occupants and their built environment. The architectural response is based on occupant cues which the architecture senses. It uses such cues to determine occupant reaction – which serves as an indicator of physiological, intellectual, emotional, behavioral, or spiritual health.
