Imagine a building made of water. It features liquid curtains for walls – curtains that not only can be programmed to display images or messages but can also sense an approaching object and automatically part to let it through. MIT architects and engineers have designed such a building, and it will be unveiled at next year’s international exhibition in Spain. The ‘digital water pavilion’ – an interactive structure made of digitally controlled water curtains – will be located at the entrance to Expo Zaragoza 2008, in front of a new bridge designed by Zaha Hadid. The structure will contain an exhibition area, a cafe and various public spaces. ‘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. The ‘water walls’ that make up the structure consist of a row of closely spaced solenoid valves along a pipe suspended in the air. The valves can be opened and closed, at high frequency, via computer control. This produces a curtain of falling water with gaps at specified locations – a pattern of pixels created from air […]