The Responsive Octopus

[aether architecture] A virtual structure designed through physical modelling, by informing the virtual with qualities of a physical model. The structure is responsive, it is aware of the visitors presence and redefines its geometry dependent on the visitors position. This structure functions as a navigation system for the website Allende Arquitectos in Madrid.

This is the kind of website that I find extremely inspiring, please have a look around. The navigation architecture is engaging and I dream of ways to extract some of its nectar and inject a similar experience in the printed book.

Construct a line, that is nonlinear. It encodes the whole website, the projects as well as the other fields. The line evolves, complexity emerges from repetition. The line is spatial, experienced in perspective projection that has a content sensitive, dynamic field of view. As the content loads, the experienced space undergoes a transition that seamlessly stitches the two realities together.

Nonlinearity (my favourite theme), spatiality, perspective are keywords rarely used when talking about print design. What a shame... The costs of producing and printing a book are far superior to those of making a site in Flash (in this example) and I wish that all those ideas born from the possibilities offered by animation tools would be reinjected in some ways into our books. The limitations of print design potentially represent a great motivation to push back the standards we have gotten used to.
I hope we'll have opportunities to go down this route.

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