Pneumatic Robotics - Growing Car
Redefined Kia's future mobility with adaptive green spaces, creating a network of mobile pocket parks.
Pocket parks emerge through slow-moving, flexible, and responsive hubs, fostering interaction, activation, and dynamic programming.
These spaces encourage recreational activities, strengthening children's connections to the community.
Time: 2 Months
​
Nature: Individual Work​
​
Visualization Tools: Adobe CC, Procreate
​
Presentation Video:
Approach:
What is a "Growing Car"?
I was asked to define and explore Kia Design Innovation's 20-year future mobility positioning keyword "Growing Car".
Growing Car = a Living Machine for social growth
It is to a city what a cell is to the body.
Responding to the changing spatial social needs of a neighborhood.​
Reframing the car as a "living machine" redefined Kia’s future mobility plan from a product and material-centric direction into a sustainable community-based urban model.​
Research:
Rethink mobility's function in cities
Currently, transportation separates living zones and causes unequal resource distribution and inequality, what if rather than segregating lives, mobility is designed to serve a community function by creating social sustainability and well-being?
Human-to-place interactions change throughout their lifespan
Mesosystem-neighborhood scale interactions remain prominent throughout lifespans and are the main focus of interaction for humans from middle childhood to adolescence.​​
At ages 6 - 18, Mesosystem interactions establish individuals' values, and identity, and influence well-being in people's 30s more than microsystem (family) interactions.​​​
Despite this, spaces for community interaction is often lacking in childhood and adolescence.
This causes drug and crime rates in youth to rise.
​
​
​
​
How can we create neighborhood spaces for children and adolescents to form community ties?
Strategy Design
Slow-moving, Flexible, and Responsive.
1. Slow
Slow mobility fosters external community interactions, while fast mobility enables closed-group interactions within the microsystem (family, friends).
Mobile spaces can foster organic community growth by enabling mass participation and providing people agency to shape their environment.
2. Flexible
Flexible spaces allow privacy in public and promote non-verbal social interactions.
Excerpts from The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Excerpts from The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
With flexible seating, people could create social distance in close proximity.
This results in non-verbal interactions and social rituals, fostering trust and community connection.
Different age groups have distinct mobility patterns, requiring spaces to adapt to changing roles.
Mobility patterns of a family in a living space
3. Responsive
"Soft environments" are responsive to touch, and strengthen place identity and city retention while being developmentally important for children's mental growth, fostering logical thinking, adaptability, and creativity.
Online Image
System Design
Neighborhood pocket parks formed by slow-moving, flexible spaces that are responsive to touch, and allows the formation of small green spaces within a packed urban city.
An Alagae Circulation System Soft Space Responsive to Touch
Algae growth responds to sunlight. As the fabric (embedded with algae-carrying tubes) expands from social interaction, the more sunlight reaches the algae, the greener the space becomes. Because the bubble is flexible in the middle and ends, these parts would become darker than the rest after some time.
The hub's skin reflects physical touch and stores community history, thereby promoting social interactions.
Touch Stimulates Algae Circulation & Spatial Movement
Fabric sensors detect movement and trigger the pumping of algae water, causing the fabric to
contract, expand, and conform to the resident’s position and gestures.
Algae absorb COâ‚‚ and release oxygen, enabling a self-renewing indoor air system. Air enters from the bottom, rising naturally through algae tubes, with oxygen released through finer tubes at the top. The nutrient-rich algae residue can be harvested every two weeks by plugging the bubble into a charging station.
Caterpillar-like flexibility
The bubble space features flexible skin at its center and ends. Flexing the middle enables slow, caterpillar-like movement, while end expansion creates organic, responsive entrances. Inside, flexible seating adjusts for inclusivity. These mobile bubbles can rearrange dynamically as social groups form and change.
Prototyping the Skin
Biomimicry of the cardiac muscle of the human heart
Soft tissue pumps blood by pulling through tension.
Air pumped through a balloon causes tension periodically.
Connective tissue prevents soft tissue from bulging.
Mesh wrapped around the balloon prevents it from bulging allowing unified contraction.
Cardiac muscles are branched, forming interconnected tissue which allows for contraction in three dimensions.
Embedding the "mckibben muscle" in fabrics creates a branching structure that allows complex movements.
Experiments
Mimicking interconnected tissue with branching structures.
Weaved
The rope's looseness prevents sufficient contraction, resulting in limited movement - Need more rigidity.
Embedded in Fabric
Offers a better range of movement than the waved design, but the fabric's defined shape restrains the movement range - too rigid.
Waved in Fabric
The most flexible option, but its limited movement suggests the need for a more rigid fabric within the waved structure—a balance between soft weaving and semi-rigid material.
Final Prototype
Feature 1. Conforms to shapes
In the video, the fabric starts with less air. After it was manipulated into a shape, air was pumped through the fabric, causing it to conform to its bent shape. It will stay in the conformed shape until some air is released.
Feature 2. Bi-directional
Pumping air or liquid through the "muscles" induces contraction and therefore movement.
Feature 3: Autonomous communication by color change
In a self-organized bi-directional hub with no defined front or back, movement in both directions is possible. Communication can occur through visual and color changes, shifts in the hub's skin can signal directional movements to other hubs and people nearby .
Feature 4: Privacy Control
- Open Pores
- Close Pores
The origami design on the skin forms "pores" that open and close with the movement of contraction and expansion, providing varying levels of privacy for the inhabitants.
Conclusion:
A proposal to reframe how we think about the future city.
From a fast, rigid, and shiny one...
... to a slow, flexible, and responsive future.
One composed of dynamic, stimulating, and communitive environments that allow different privacy levels in public and promotes social interactions for community growth.
