Links from physical objects to digital information about these objects can help unskilled users to immediately adapt their environment according to their unique needs. They could allow interaction, reconfiguration and fabrication to take place with equal ease of use – all options for creative action should be equally affordable or ‘maakbaar’.

ProtoTAG is a system which can help provide such links. The impact of systems like protoTAG on daily life will be illustrated with the clickfab.com system and interactive architectural creatures. You are invited to hack! Could protoTAG become an open access public infrastructure?

Technically speaking, protoTAG lets you tag a physical object with an IFC BIM GUID so it can be related an open access database. The type of information can be defined by creators and users alike: think of conceptual, technical and social information, e.g. fabrication files, the past, current and planned position of the object within a building’s structure, its use history, social tagging, memories, links to interaction interfaces, code, etc. The tag is there to ensure the information will always stay linked to the tagged object. At hackathon, protoTAG will be made available as open source system.

Christian Friedrich:

Is architect at ‘Architecture and Digital Habitat’ (aadh.nl) and PhD researcher at Delft University of Technology (hyperbody.nl). His field of work encompasses digital fabrication, interactive architecture, non standard design methods and process integration. His PhD thesis, ‘Immediate Architecture’, investigates how architecture as process and product can be optimized for adaptation. Immediate Architecture employs technological means to allow its creators, users and inhabitants to adapt it according to their actual needs.

Links:

hyperbody.nl / aadh.nl