The project here presented is the outcome of the process which created an interactive airplane which accommodates a biomimetic institute. In this project, which was made for the architectural Transarchitecture atelier at the Academie van Bouwkunst in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I made a link between the virtual world, the real world and everybody's fantasy by interactive folding spaces.

It all started with my first idea to grab virtuality by folding space in the same way as children are learning to fold paper according to the methods of Friedrich Fröbel. His methods for children in kindergarten teaches them things about colors, proportions, numbers and so on, based upon square pieces of paper which you then fold diagonal and crosswise in endless combinations. When you fold one space in to other spaces that are connected you not only change the spaces but also the relationships between them. And when you change them according to a strategy you change the relationships of the relationships like painters do when they paint mosaics.

After that I analyzed the design of Daniel Libeskind for the Victoria and Albert museum in London where he designed an asymmetrical upwards winding spiral around an ever changing vertical axis which creates space while changing in materialization from massive and closed to open and hybrid when followed upwards. One conceptual thought creates a spatial element and also utilizes the structural possibilities, and solves the building and climatical problems in one solution. Inner space and outer space are interactive through the spiral, you can feel space.

In the process of the Transarchitecture atelier we experimented with 3D-Studio-Max before we went to the workshop at the V2 lab, and in this process for me the question was getting more important as to what it all ment to me and what was important for me about cyberspace or virtual space and the relation with reality. Specially because I worked with all these programs for the first time. That new science, in this case three-dimensional computer aded design in virtual space, will create new architecture I think is inevitable, but will it create the space I want to create ? And more important how can I avoid randomness and find the tools that I want to use to create my architecture ?

In the workshop all the questions cumulated in the models I made, random volumes were transformed by random forces which fluctuated randomly in time. This was not what I wanted, and by finding this out I discovered what was realy important for me in this process. First of all for me the program, a biomimetic institute ( a lab which creates new artificial materials or material structures from natural structures and growing processes ) must to be able to go where ever it is needed. The lab will therefore be part of an airplane, like the F117A stealth fighter, which will be the context for the lab and the way it works, and an intermediair with the ever changing surroundings. The airplane is the bearer of the design.

Secondly the lab, which will expand out off the airplanes cargo bay ( like the space shuttle ) will have various sensors which can be on or off. These sensors can for instance be a telescope, a infra-red radar or a digging claw. When these sensors, which will be quite big, are on or of that also means they are outside or inside the laboratory space. So inner and outer space are connected and will change when a sensor is activated or not. This will only happen when the airplane is on a site. When the airplane is flying the whole program of the laboratory, the living quaters, storage's and sensors are back into the airplane, its almost massive non-space then. The researchers will not travel to the next stop inside the completely self-sufficient airplane, and can be changed in that sense if other researchers are needed. This for the greater part is the concept of the real part of my design for a biominetic institute.

The third part is the interactivity which originates from the fact that the airplane is steered by the visitors from its internetsite. I think people who visit the site of this researchinstitute want to have data, not space, and they want to have influence on what data. So they can decide where on this earth the airplane must go to, and it will do so if a certain number of people have the same choice. Then they can decide which sensors have to collect data, and by doing so change the shape of the lab in reality. But also in the virtual sense because their choices decide which data is collected.

The data from former locations is put into a library which is accessible from the site, so anyone can use the data and the biomimetic institute is virtually growing. The interactivity between the public and the researchers is indirectly because they, in my opinion, have other interests. The researchers can decide to change the sensors on the internetsite and in real, because they want to research other things. By doing so they give the visitors on the internet other choices and the place and form of the laboratory will change because of that.

Because of all of this it is not clear anymore weather the airplane is virtual or real and your imagination will be put to the test. The biomimetic institute will no longer exist on a place because of space and time but because of the visitors that through the internet want the lab to exist there for a certain amount of time to get the data they want. The researchers can not decide where the lab will go to, but the internet visitors can not decide which data they will get eventually, the art of the accident is playing with that. So there is a tension between the visitors on the internet and the researchers, like there is a tension when you fold spaces along their folding lines or better along their folding spaces. Or like the sensors can fold in and out of the laboratory data can fold virtual space on the internetsites. Folding spaces.

VRML