I'm currently in Barcelona working on an architecture model for the experimental company Cloud9 of Barcelona.

I met Enric Ruiz (founder of Cloud9) at Klein-Dytham's Pecha Kucha Night in Tokyo last spring. Pecha Kucha is basically a showcase of artists, architects, designers, etc. And we were both selected to present our works on the same week. Having seen my presentation and the lighting designs that I've done, it was perfect match for his upcomming project; the Habitat Hotel and the scale model they will be building for exhibition.

The Habitat Hotel will be developed in the Barcelona area. It is a hotel with a light mesh that wraps the whole building. The light mesh has sensors that will read the daylight sun amplitude and then at night each node will give off color according to how much that node collected sun. Therefore, the mesh reflects the energy levels of each day, it will change over seasons and due to weather. It's very nice since the mesh itself is raised off the building and forms its own see-through structure. Also, each node is self-contained with it's own sensor and LEDs, there is no central computer controlling the whole structure.

So, for the exhibition next February at the Museum of Modern Art in New York we are working on a working scale model that has all the functions of what the real building will do. The exhibition will be great with new models of the best new architecture coming from Spanish architects and their collaborators.

The lighting system for the Cloud9's building is what I will be designing and engineering. It's a tricky project that consists of 560 tri-color LEDs in a floating mesh over the building. Here is an image of one of the grid sections. The model will consist of a grid array that represents the mesh on the actual building.

I will also place sensors around the building so people can interact with it using a flashlight, sending it light values and having it react in turn. The exhibition will also have an automatic mode also that will give an animated representation of the mesh throughout the year.

Of course being in Barcelona one needs to go out! So it was fortunate that TokTok and Soffy O were playing at a club last weekend. Very dancey and fun.

This last week was there was a flurry of designer activity within Tokyo as it hosted Tokyo Designers Week (including 100% Design), Tokyo Fashion Week, and the remnants of Tokyo Designers Block.

I'm not really going to go into detail about the individual objects shown at the exhibitions since there are some great blogs/online magazines that are already covering this.

Of course with all design events there are lots of after-parties to chit chat with others. There was this pretty fun roof party in Shinjuku with these crazy guys climbing the scafolding to redirect spotlights down onto the party-goers. I especially enjoyed this mainly for the fact that I happened upon many friends I hadn't seen in a long time.

That aside, I've been pretty busy preparing the system design for the collaboration with Enric Ruiz and his architecture company eCloud-9. I'll be leaving for Spain next week and work there for a couple weeks to finish the project. Then the piece will be exhibited in the New York MoMA starting Feb 7th 2006 for a three month exhibit.

I'm very excited about this project, I think it's going to be great. While I can't disclose full details until it is done, I will be revealing details when I do updates from Barcelona.