| Existing knowledge in sustainable building technology is often predicated on achieving certain quantitative benchmarks while overlooking the complex relationship between people and their environment and the discrepancy between individual and collective desires. This is partly due to isolated experimental processes with limited single-scale focus that lack critical input or feedback from the future users of the technologies. Recent developments in emerging display technologies have the potential to actively reconfigure their basic patterns to respond to fluctuating bioclimatic flows while simultaneously adjusting to the changing visual desires of occupants. Electroactive display technologies demonstrate a significantly new opportunity for dynamic facade applications that enable instantaneously switchable patterns to be embedded within the surfaces of insulated glazing units. As choreographers of mediated bioresponsive building envelopes, new dynamic design frameworks are required to anticipate the fundamentally new architectural implications of their dynamic material behavior, particularly in response to inevitable conflicts between aesthetic desires and environmental performance criteria.;While the social and mental ecologies of building inhabitants are artificially treated as separate from the "natural" environment in most contemporary building practices, my objective is to fuse these ecological registers through research frameworks embodying bioresponsiveness in design. This thesis encompasses three interconnected trajectories towards this goal. The first focuses on the design and technical transfer of emerging display materials to mediated building envelope applications for environmental modulation and dynamic patterning. The second involves the development of immersive visualization methods for deploying information-rich patterning techniques into solar responsive Electroactive Dynamic Display Systems. The third focus is on the design of interscalar testbeds for multi-systemic integration of Electroactive Dynamic Display Systems.;This synthetic approach couples the design of electroactive material behaviors with immersive visualization techniques that are flexible and responsive to both human desires and bioclimatic energy flows. Experiments in bioresponsive feedback loops allow for multi-scalar design frameworks that simultaneously address the relationships between material behavior, environmental modulation, building demands, human interactivity, and the diverse preferences (i.e., daylight, views, privacy, pattern aesthetics) of building inhabitants. In addition to testing their environmental performance, the experiments explore the visual heterogeneity and user empowerment enabled by the proposed bioresponsive building envelope, reflecting the critical need in this field for more comprehensive simulation frameworks that address these necessary socio-technical parameters.;The contributions of this research to the field of architecture are threefold: (1) It produces a flexible programming tool---an information framework---that provides designers with real time energy performance feedback and visual effects of their aesthetic and formal choices; (2) It provides negotiation strategies for environmental response that balances energy performance with human behavior and preferences for comfort; (3) Crucially, this work lays the foundations for radically new technology pathways that enable architects to engage in the discourse of engineering material performance by specifying desired behaviors and designing the materials and systems accordingly. |
