Proposal for the Octavia Boulevard Housing Competition, San Francisco, CA.

A strategy was invented for situating large buildings that maximize real-estate potentials into smaller neighborhoods through utilizing an electronic version of camouflage. Unlike most camouflage strategies that match context through representational mimicry, we propose the use of the opposite tactic: bold patterns radically blanket an object to be disguised, rendering it difficult to discern as overall perceptual patterns are disrupted. Known as Disruptive Patterning System camouflage, or DPS, larger forms dissolve into a broad visual noise of indefinable geometries.

To create its DPS skin, the Chromogenic Dwelling uses Electrochromic glass to create a real-time changing texture of visible solids and voids. In response to climate, light effects, and privacy requirements the building’s occupants electronically switch the thermal glass into an opaque, transparent, or translucent exterior surface. What emerges is a cumulative building image constantly on the move, and a virtual fragmentation of the building's mass.