Wearable Architecture: Cocoon

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

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Architecture should be as fast to move as the world is changing in front of us, as architectural conceptual thinking is becoming more and more a way to see, understand, and operate in the ever-changing world. As an overall strategy or some pre-meaning, the studio proposes examining the possibility of wearable architecture as an act of dual and parallel scale and augmented behaviors between architecture and garment.

 

As an extension of this interest, the studio will focus more specifically on the degree to which body architecture and architecture could be interpreted as an accumulative mutation of interactions or a new potential for integration. This studio will use a bodysuit program that can be transformed into a microhabitat house as a tool to study the shift towards a paradigm of fluidity rather than the ubiquitous platform of types, using 3d modeling capacity to deploy a straightforward process of how a garment can become habitat.

 

My project is a series of wearable architectural pieces, called Cocoon, working as a facility for an online dating app named Vicinity, prevailing in the future. Unlike other online apps where users' communications are merely based on online information in the virtual world, this dating app aims to prompt users to have an unexpected encounter in the physical world by detecting users' emotions and mental senses in real-time. Thus, the wearable architectures serve as both a sensor and a transformative and wearable installation.

Cocoons apply malleable and flexible foam materials. Usually, they will appear as daywear for users to wear on the street. However, once a user confronts one's potential dating partner on the corner of a road, who is selected by the dating app from its database, the clothes will illuminate, scale-up, and deform to demonstrate their mutual crushes. The deformation of garments can urge some isolated and shy users to flirt like peacocks spread their tails boldly. Being made up of translucent materials, the Cocoons imitate the skin of glowing sea creatures, representing human's beaming and glowing faces in a noticeable and illuminative way.

When romance is in the air for the couple, their garments will dissolve and release particles that can reconstruct a habitat for them to date. The habitat gradually encloses a wonderland to temporarily generate a dating space and isolate the couples from outside environment. The public can also sight their romantic story as spectators by appreciating the transformative exterior of their habitat.