Old movable stuff

Transformation technology is a very well know group of inventions and techniques that utilize innovative engineering along a group of inventions and techniques that utilizeside original geometric principles to make products, structures, and environments change their size and shape. They provide conditions to building structures that change their form, an ability that can be used for many different functional applications. Instant spaces can be erected for temporary use. Walls and roofs can retract to transform a space from indoors to outdoors. Structures can transform to create exciting venues for performances and entertainment. Windbreaks and sunshades can respond to changes in weather or time of day.



In observing the natural world, we see continuous transformation all around us; from the changing shape of clouds on a clear day to the incremental growth of a budding plant, the natural world is constantly changing form. These observed transformations of size and shape reveal subtle and ordered natural processes that can be seen in both large and small-scale transformation.

In 1987 Hoberman Associates founder Charles Hoberman discovered and patented a general technique for combining kinetic linkages to make expanding structures of virtually any shape. His discovery was, in essence, an algorithm to translate particular surface properties into the angles and proportions of particular linkages. This fundamental discovery has been followed by a series of related inventions that provide many techniques for the creation of transforming objects. They fall into two general categories: linkage systems which are made up of many parts, and pleated sheet systems whereby a sheet of material is scored and folded.

So far this technology is still asking for researches concerning applications to go beyond the mere formalism, which normally was regarded. Mainly it asks for engaging an intelligent process of environment interactions with users needs and creating possibilities of future uses.