Imagine a Building Made of Water

Buildings made of water are an interesting idea and the first step in this direction has been already made, with the introduction of new technology that will incorporate liquid curtains into walls that can be programmed to display various messages and images.

As reported in an MIT article by Patti Richards, the institute's architects designed a new generation of walls for future buildings, capable of performing the tasks mentioned above and many others, like sensing a person approaching it and automatically splitting open to let them pass through.

The digital water is part of a project to be unveiled next year in Spain, at the international exhibition Expo Zaragoza 2008. The structure will be fully interactive and will be made of digitally controlled water curtains.

Located at the entrance of the exhibition, in front of a new bridge, the liquid structure will house not only an exhibition area, but also a cafe and other public spaces. A row of closely spaced solenoid valves running along a suspended pipe will make up the "water walls."

They will open and close at high speeds and frequency, controlled by computer applications, to produce a curtain of falling water and gaps will be incorporated at specific intervals. The ensemble will create a pattern of pixels from water and air which will form an image.

This image will change according to a computer software and the organizers' requirements, much like a billboard made of illuminated points. The display surface will continuously scroll downward, bringing new images.

"To understand the concept of digital water, imagine something like an inkjet printer on a large scale, which controls droplets of falling water," explains Carlo Ratti, head of MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory.

MIT plans to make all the pavilion's walls of digital water, but also vertical spaces inside and on the edge of the roof.

"Water, actuated by gravity, has traditionally been the most dynamic element in architectural and urban space," said William J. Mitchell, head of MIT's Design Laboratory and former Dean of Architecture at MIT. "For centuries, architects have shaped and directed it by means of channels and pipes, nozzles, and valves. The industrial era brought powerful pumps, which enabled larger-scale water elements, such as jets that spurted high into the air."

"Now, in the digital electronic era, new combinations of sensor technology, embedded intelligence, networking, computer-controlled pumps and valves, and control software open up the exciting possibility of urban-scale, precisely controlled, highly interactive water."