WhoWhatWhenAIR is a blog that follows the development and fabrication of a 40ft interactive/kinetic tower (by Philippe Block, Axel Kilian, Peter Schmitt, John Snavely).

The project was submitted for the mini-Skyscraper competition in the Department of Architecture at MIT. As winning entry we received $7,000 to build it in a month. (...) We wanted to connect the culture of the hack at MIT with a personified miniskyscraper. To bridge interactivity and personality, we created a language. You can speak to the mini skyscraper by operating a bicylce pump and it responds with movement. Coordinated efforts produce unexpected structural choreography.

Pneumatic muscles allow the structure to move in all directions. They pull the structure out of an equilibrium position, creating three-dimensional curvature in the central core. By stacking several units, the mini skyscraper can curve in several directions at once. This core acts as a spine to keep the structure upright when none of the muscles are actuated. The pneumatic movement is graceful and precise.

Also check the movie (.mov, 3.62 Mb).