Open up your mind and say, ahh...

In a nondescript central Los Angeles neighborhood sits a renovated warehouse, home to the Southern California Institute of Architecture, or Sci-Arc for short. The small graduate school, which is noted for producing architects who go on to work in highly specialized fields like digital animation, is run by a core group of LA architects who place special emphasis on advanced fabrication. The school’s new Robot House, for example, is a dedicated laboratory for students interested in, well, learning how to program robots.

Robotic arms, to be more specific. The Robot House (it’s more like a room) has five of them, Staübli-brand machines with “hands” that can be programmed to do just about anything. Initiated in spring of last year, the lab has already produced some pretty cool stuff. The latest is a complex acrylic sculpture called Hot Networks, authored by Brandon Kruysman and Jonathan Proto, the two young designers Sci-Arc appointed to run and teach the Robot House lab.

In Hot Networks, Kruysman and Proto have given each robotic arm a different task: one positions the work surface, a another picks up and places a plastic cylinder, a third heats up the plastic as it’s set into place, melting and deforming against the others. Another arm airbrushes the cooled pieces, and the fifth arm films the whole thing for posterity. It’s a bit like earlier robotic building experiments (like this one, in which an arm builds a brick wall), but about five times more complex.

The highly choreographed network is made possible by a programming language the duo wrote specifically for the Robot House. Esperant.O, as it’s cleverly called, translates MAYA’s dynamic systems (like skeletons and moving parts) into a language that the mechanical arms can understand. “Esperant.O opens up an entirely new way to engage making through industrial robotics,” write the duo on their website. MAYA, an animation and rendering software that’s typically used to make stuff move on-screen, is being used to control real-time moving parts. For anyone unfamiliar with the software, a vastly over-simplified analogy would be a cartoonist who’s invented a way to control real-life people using his pencil and paper.

It’s funny that we never really get a good look at the morphing plastic sculpture. But the ambivalence the designers seem to feel about showing off the piece plays to the concept behind Robot House. The final product might look cool, sure, but it’s just a byproduct of the real work – the programming itself.

The future of television is much more than social; much in the same way that the future of media is too, more than social. Social is a fabric; it connects the individual nodes that make up the human network. But, social however, is not a means to an end. And, as such, the same is true about the working theories driving Social TV. Understanding the role social plays in how viewers connect with programs and other people is essential to defining the future of television.

Over the years, I’ve written much about my vision for the long overdue convergence of not only web and TV, but also how the three screens (TV, mobile, and PC) and human relationships impact adoption and engagement between people and also between programming. So when I hear the term Social TV, I get it. I’ve certainly used it in the past. At the same time, I’ve also said however that the future of television is more than integrating Tweets or #hashtags into the programming to start a “global conversation” around the world’s largest digital water cooler.

This is a time when bringing to life what’s possible takes imagination, design, scripting, and innovation. We need to raise the bar. The future of TV won’t be driven by a social media strategy. Instead, the future of TV will be driven by innovation and a vision for more meaningful entertainment and engagement (no it won’t be called entergagement). This innovation will in turn inspire new programming, revenue opportunities and ultimately social media strategies.

Chloe Sladden, Twitter’s director of media partnerships, once said, “Twitter lets people feel plugged in to a real-time conversation. In the future, I can’t imagine a major event where the audience doesn’t become part of the story itself.”

She’s absolutely right. The program is the event. It’s the epicenter of engagement. The future of TV starts with defining how the event is alluring, captivating, and most importantly shareable.

Many of you don’t know, but I ran some very interesting social experiments with top networks and programs for several years. The driving questions at the time are still more than valid today. How do you expand the reach of a network, program or personality beyond the reach of the existing audience? And, how do you use social media to drive tune-in?

All too often, even the best examples of social media in entertainment are simply finding new ways to connect with those to whom they’re already connected. The goal, in every experiment, was always the same and it sparked creative thinking and innovation in both approach and technology. Marketers sought to use social media to drive tune in and also find new ways to measure social media’s effects.

I learned quite a bit about how engagement between and during events created a new communal experience that connected events and people together offline and online. I also learned more about the role each of the three screens play in consumption and engagement. Whereas TV, PC and mobile are all used for consumption of content, consumers have made it clear that they only wish to use the PC and/or mobile for real-time engagement…not the television.

It is in the context of each device and the context of the event that brings viewers together. The nature of the event also defines are engagement is triggered. We can’t assume that content and channels are agnostic. What we can assume is that audiences are already more fractured and distributed. Each channel (broadcast, online, and social) and each device serves a purpose. But no purpose will ever compensate for unengaging content or events.

If you think about it, some of the biggest events, such as the Super Bowl and the GRAMMYs, are only earning greater concentrations of live audiences. This is in part due to the content of the event, but it’s also driven by the conversations that make the event communal, a real-time exchange. Whether it’s driven by a fear of missing out (FOMO) or a desire to share in the experience, broadcast events are conduits to live participation and as such, can be designed to spark online engagement.

I refer to the connected class of consumers as Generation-C. It’s not just about Gen-Y, it’s about all consumers who live the digital lifestyle. And, they are not only connected, they’re incredibly discerning. Connected consumers don’t just expect online, on-demand streaming optimized for each device, they expect to engage in each screen differently and in a dynamic way. This is where you come in. The experience requires definition. The experience requires architecture. And, the supporting experiential infrastructure must be adaptive. It’s part programming, part mobile and social media, and part engagement. It’s also episodic and continual.

Today, we’re seeing experimentation across the screens with strategies that invite audience participation. Some live shows now run social media tickers during programs. Other live events feature tweets and also live statistics based on social media analytics. Some programs are integrating community participation into content. Others are using social media to tell supporting stories between seasons or airing special webisodes to keep interest and anticipation high between on air programs. Apps are also emerging to open new windows between programs and mobile audiences.

So what?

What we need to do for any of these initiatives to work is to align them with a higher purpose and a vision for what the new relationship looks like between viewer and the program, the viewer and the program’s elements, storyline and characters/roles, between the viewer and the screen, and between viewers and other viewers.

You must first answer these questions…

What is the objective and the purpose of your social TV initiative?

What kind of relationship are you striving for and how will you enliven it through each channel in a way that’s not only engaging, but also relevant?

What would the “Tweet heard around the world” look like and what is the social spark that would trigger activity?

What does the experience look like on a mobile phone, tablet, PC, and a TV? Meaning, what does the second and third screen experience look like? Design it and also design it back into the first screen programming.

Programming is just the beginning. Advertising also has a new opportunity to engage in a more meaningful way.

Rather than simply buying seconds and using spots to promote social media campaigns, visits to Facebook pages or rallies to Tweet a branded hashtag (brandtag), think about it as a way to tell a story that can live beyond the spot or beyond the campaign. Old Spice learned that its commercials were too successful to treat as traditional campaigns that would start and stop. Viewers don’t “turn off” so why wouldn’t a great story continue to live on across distributed platforms where consumers are more than willing to engage? Now, Old Spice hosts an ongoing experience where its campaign has become a transmedia experience that perseveres across online, broadcast and social channels. The story, the product, the series keeps viewers engaged. The series also strives to make consumers part of the story where custom videos are created based on input and participation.

Product placement is also open for reinvention. By making products or brands part of the story, advertisers have new opportunities for contextualized storytelling across multiple platforms and the ability to host new interactions, build communities or drive desired outcomes. Everything of course is based on the story advertisers wish to tell and the experience they wish to delivery. The point is that advertising doesn’t just have to end nor does it have to be limited to a finite engagement in new networks and platforms. Storytelling and consumer engagement are infinite if they’re compelling, delightful and shareable. But then again, it takes a different vision supported by an irresistible purpose or intention.

Through experimentation, we are seeing what’s possible. However, networks, advertisers, and producers, must think beyond technology and rethink experiences. By not focusing on the experience or defining the nature of relationships, we fall to mediumalism a condition where we place inordinate weight on the technology of any medium rather than amplifying platform strengths to deliver desired experiences, activity, and outcomes.

The future of Social TV is not yet written. It takes vision. It takes creativity and imagination. It takes innovation. Most importantly, it takes the architecture of experiences to engage, enchant and activate viewers.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

A decade into the fashion industry’s romance with the pop-up store, the concept of temporary retail is no longer a novelty to consumers. Hoping to engage their audience with a six-week storefront in the East Village, high-end scent maker Odin invited Brooklyn duo Snarkitecture to rethink the pop-up. The resulting space opened yesterday in a tiny (350 feet wide) 11th Street space.

Snarkitecture is known for its process-oriented approach (last year, partner Daniel Arsham sealed himself into the Storefront for Art and Architecture with white foam and slowly dug a tunnel out). But for Odin’s shop, the duo imagined a still, austere space emphasizing the preciousness of Odin’s products. “We wanted to create an unexpected moment within this small storefront,” says Snarkitecture partner Alex Mustonen. “An escape.”

Snarkitecture started off with a simple visual insight: all of Odin’s packaging is black, with little text or decoration. They decided to cast one of the bottles–a simple black cube with a drum-like cap–in white gypsum cement. The resulting cast was “almost like a ghost or mirror of their product,” says Mustonen. Snarkitecture cast over 1,500 of the bottles, and hung the casts from the ceiling in an undulating sea of white cubes. On the ground plane, the ghost bottles rise on white poles to mirror the texture of the ceiling. The actual Odin products are few and far between, recognizable as the only objects in the store that aren’t white.

Rather than overwhelming visitors with gimmicks, Mustonen and Arsham say they hope the shop will offer consumers “a few minutes to contemplate this strange white-on-white landscape inhabited by only a few products.”

The act—and art—of bending plywood has preoccupied architects and designers the world over for ages, offering the idealistic promise of practical, functional, and affordable construction from a very modest material. The Dragon Skin Pavilion, a recent collaboration between the Laboratory for Explorative Architecture and Design (LEAD), a Hong Kong- and Antwerp-based firm, and the Tampere University of Technology in Finland, further explores the potential of this customizable lumber.

An early prototype of the self-supporting, free-standing form was developed after two workshops, and the structure was then “drastically reworked” for the Hong Kong and Shenzhen (HKSZ) Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, LEAD’s founding director Kristof Criolla explains to Co.Design.

Cutting, milling, and molding each of the 163 squares of post-formable plywood—which has layers of adhesive film that eliminate the need for steam or extreme heat to curve—took place in Finland, but the assembly happened on-site in Hong Kong. “After a few false starts trying to figure out the best strategy, the puzzle was slotted into place by roughly nine people, in about three hours,” Criolla says.

And though the piece was only temporary at the pavilion, he feels there are lessons to be learned from its unique configuration, which “connects geometry with mechanics in one single integrated system” and can be scaled to suit a variety of environments. “The evolution of digital fabrication and manufacturing technology has brought us to a point where we need to revisit today’s building premises,” he says. “By actively working with this material’s basic properties and pushing its structural performance, the unlimited design freedom we experience digitally can be grounded and materialized in a sustainable way.”

The team is now looking for a second home for the Dragon. Any takers?

In 2009, the community of Våler, Norway, sustained a severe blow: Their 17th-century church caught fire and burned to the ground. To replace their beloved meetinghouse, the town recently held a competition for a design that would serve as a symbol of renewal. Among the proposals was OOIIO Architecture’s low-lying all-wood structure, whose rooftop doubles as a promenade, providing an open public space with views of the picturesque surroundings.

“OOIIO Architecture designed for Våler a different and new typology of building, trying to solve two problems of the city at the same time,” the Madrid-based firm writes in its brief. “They need a new church, and they don’t have a representative public space, a meeting point where all the inhabitants could meet or immediately associate it to Våler and nowhere else.” It’s a beautiful gesture, making the church accessible and useful to even those residents who don’t attend religious services, in the same way that Snøhetta’s Norwegian National Opera and Ballet house became a public plaza and architectural landmark in Oslo. But there are some practical drawbacks to the plan: Without a draining system, the indented rooftop could become a reservoir of rainwater. And the open chapel, while creating a strong connection to the outdoors, could be unpleasantly chilly during long winter sermons.

That said, a few tweaks could have salvaged the proposal and made for a lovely communal space. Instead, Våler opted for Espen Surnevik’s slightly more traditional structure, whose white façade and pointed naves refer to the original church’s form.

Impressed by the bent plywood furniture of Charles and Ray Eames? Then feast your eyes on what a bunch of students whipped up at a university in Zurich.

This giant umbrella of a pavilion is made by stretching oversized sheets of curved plywood, each as much as 8 feet wide and 36 feet long, over the steps of the architecture department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

A plywood structure that big and heavy should collapse on itself. But by carving perforations into the wood, the designers made it easier to bend and more resistant to powerful wind loads. Then, they arranged the plywood sheets to overlap and interlock, creating a set of “self-stabilizing vaults.” Cross-bracing cables help keep everything in place.

The pavilion was a collaboration between the Chair of Structural Design at ETH and the Emergent Technologies and Design program at the Architectural Association (AA) in London. Read more about it at ArchDaily.com.

Images via ArchDaily.com