Associate Professor Rodolophe el-Khoury was recently featured in an interview on the CBC radio program Spark, which explores technology and culture.  

el-Khoury is the director of the Daniels Faculty’s Master of Urban Design program, a partner in the firm Khoury Levit Fong, and a co-director of the RAD Lab (Responsive Architecture at Daniels).  Host Nora Young, spoke to him about the integration of technology and architecture, how buildings and other material objects can be embedded with computers that will allow them to read and respond to changes in the environment.

Thanks to advancements in computer technology, different parts of a building, such as windows, walls, and lights, or even furniture, could even be programed to receive and transmit information from and to each other, explains el-Khoury. This is where architects come in.

el-Khoury predicts that issues of sustainability will ultimate drive innovation in this field. Walls or windows, for example, could be designed to respond to the exterior climate and be programmed to optimize a building's energy efficiency.

At the end of the interview, Young asked whether architects need to think differently about their roles in this new world, where buildings have the ability operate as giant computers.

“Architecture is not necessarily a static thing anymore. We think of architecture as a permanent, non-moving artifact: a building is solid; it doesn’t move. But I think we have to recognize that a building has the capacity to respond in subtle and dynamic ways to the environment,” said el-Khoury. “This can be achieved by conventional, low-tech means with window-like shutters that you can open or close, but also, it can be helped tremendously by more automated, smart technologies, which enable the building to sense and react in real time.”

Visit the Spark website to listen to the full interview.

Related:

• WATCH: Rodolphe el-Khoury’s TEDtalk: Designing for the Internet of Things
• From microchips to algae: Finding ways to make buildings that live, breathe and think, Globe and Mail
• Azure names RAD Lab researchers pioneers in the rapidly evolving field of responsive architecture
• VIDEO: The Space Channel visits the RAD Lab
• Christos Marcolpoulos presents RAD lecture as part of TEDx U of T