ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a new kind of materials that can actively engage with the environment, and act as a transition, an interface or a permeable boundary through which different effects could be brought into productive contact. Through their performance, active materials could provide “fluid” thresholds that can bridge the difference between the internal logic of the constructed (and engineered) and the effects of thermodynamic or indeterminate behaviours. The discussion of projects and prototypes presented in the chapter shows the profound influence these new material technologies could have on how we design and build but also on how design thinking might have to change to fully exploit their potential.
