Distributed, networked, electronically tagged, interactive devices are increasingly incorporated into the physically built environment, progressively blurring the boundary between physical and virtual space. This changing relationship between the physical and virtual domains implies not only a change in the operation and use of physically built space but also in its physical configuration, and therefore, its design. Architecture incorporating aspects of intelligence employs information and knowledge contained within the network connecting electronic devices. Thus, the relevant question is not whether intelligent, sentient environments may be built, but how these environments may become instruments for distributed problem solving and how (artificial) intelligence may be embedded into architecture in order to serve everyday life.
In this context, digitally-driven architecture is defined as an architecture that is not only designed and fabricated by digital means but which, actually, incorporates digital sensing-actuating mechanisms that enable buildings to interact with their environment and users in real-time. This paper discusses digitally-driven design and architecture that incorporates on some level bottom-up mechanisms enabling the emergence of global effects from local interactions. While digitally-driven architectural design may imply the emergence of spatial and programmatic formations from contextual (environmental, programmatic, etc.) interactions, digitally-driven architecture employs real-time interaction in the actuation of architectural embodiments, which become dynamic, acting and re-acting in response to environmental and user-specific needs.

Neighborhood Technologies expands upon sociologist Thomas Schelling’s wellknown study of segregation in major American cities, using this classic work as the basis for a new way of researching social networks across disciplines. Up to now, research has focused on macrolevel behaviors that, together, form rigid systems of neighborhood relations. But can neighborhoods, conversely, affect larger, global dynamics? This volume introduces the concept of “neighborhood technologies” as a model for intermediate, or meso-level, research into the links between local agents and neighborhood relations. Bridging the sciences and humanities, Tobias Harks and Sebastian Vehlken have assembled a group of contributors
who are either natural scientists with an interest in interdisciplinary research or tech-savvy humanists. With insights into computer science, mathematics, sociology, media and cultural studies, theater studies, and architecture, the book will inform new research.