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Usman Haque (born 1971) is an architect and artist who works with technology. He is known for designing large scale interactive installations and his contributions to
Interactive architecture Interactive architecture refers to the branch of architecture which deals with buildings, structures, surfaces and spaces that are designed to change, adapt and reconfigure in real-time response to people (their activity, behaviour and movements), ...
and the
Internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
. Haque's
interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...
has appeared at the
Singapore Biennale The Singapore Biennale is a large-scale biennial contemporary art exhibition in Singapore, serving as the country’s major platform for international dialogue in contemporary art. It seeks to present and reflect the vigour of artistic practices in ...
(2006),
London Fashion Week London Fashion Week (LFW) is a clothing trade show that takes place in London twice a year, in February and September. Showcasing over 250 designers to a global audience of influential media and retailers, it is one of the 'Big Four' fashion wee ...
(2007) and has been exhibited at
KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art is located in Aalborg, Denmark, on Kong Christians Allé near its junction with Vesterbro. Of a modern Scandinavian design, it was built between 1968 and 1972 by Finnish architects Elissa and Alvar Aalto and Danis ...
,
NTT InterCommunication Center NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) is a media art gallery in Tokyo Opera City Tower in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in ...
, New York's
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
and
Barbican Centre The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhi ...
. According to author
Owen Hatherley Owen Hatherley (born 24 July 1981 in Southampton, England) is a British writer and journalist based in London who writes primarily on architecture, politics and culture. Early life Hatherley was born in Southampton in 1981, growing up in a 1930s ...
, Haque’s work “defies conventional classification” and “is not what you would immediately think of as architecture”, often overlapping both
digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...
and
interactive architecture Interactive architecture refers to the branch of architecture which deals with buildings, structures, surfaces and spaces that are designed to change, adapt and reconfigure in real-time response to people (their activity, behaviour and movements), ...
. Haque’s contribution to
interactive architecture Interactive architecture refers to the branch of architecture which deals with buildings, structures, surfaces and spaces that are designed to change, adapt and reconfigure in real-time response to people (their activity, behaviour and movements), ...
is to distinguish between ‘circular mutual reaction’ and ‘linear causal response’ in designing architectural structures and environments, building on
Gordon Pask Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was an English author, inventor, educational theorist, cybernetician and psychologist who made contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and ed ...
’s
cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
theories in creating interactive spaces.


Education

Haque studied architecture at the
Bartlett School of Architecture Bartlett may refer to: Places * Bartlett Bay, Canada, Arctic waterway * Wharerata, New Zealand, also known as Bartletts United States * Bartlett, Illinois ** Bartlett station, a commuter railroad station * Bartlett, Iowa * Bartlett, Kansas ...
and was part of the Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop.


Selected projects

* ''Sky Ear'', “a cloud of 1,000 helium balloons launched into the evening sky with a payload of mobile phones, sensor circuits and flashing LEDs” * ''Open Burble'', “a 70m tall structure consisting of 1000 extra-large helium balloons, supported by 140 carbon-fibre hexagonal units” * ''Haunt'', “a scientifically haunted room” * ''Evoke'', “a riot of projected colours...on the imposing 60 metre-high front of York Minster” * ''Reconfigurable House'', “an environment constructed from thousands of low tech components that can be “rewired” by visitors” * ''Natural Fuse'', “ a network of houseplants attached to the electrical system, which monitor energy use” Others include ''Another Life,'' one of Haque’s permanent interactive installations, located in
Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...
, UK; ''Assemblance'', which “lets visitors sculpt and shapes beams of lasers” ic ''Cinder'', an augmented reality cat designed "to get students interacting closely with the modern technology"; and ''Starling Crossing'', an “interactive road crossing that only appears when needed”. In the
internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
he is known for founding Pachube in 2007, an IoT data platform that “enabled hundreds of Japanese civilians to quickly and easily share weather and radiation data in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster”, acquired by
LogMeIn GoTo, formerly LogMeIn Inc., is a flexible-work provider of software as a service (SaaS) and cloud-based remote work tools for collaboration and IT management, with products including GoTo Connect, GoTo Resolve, Rescue, Central, and more, built ...
in 2011, renamed
Xively Xively (formerly known as Cosm and Pachube) is an Internet of Things (IoT) platform owned by Google. Xively offers product companies a way to connect products, manage connected devices and the data they produce, and integrate that data into oth ...
and sold on to Google in 2018. He also founded Thingful, a search engine for the internet of things, in 2013.


Awards and honors

Haque won a
Japan Media Arts Festival The Japan Media Arts Festival is an annual festival held since 1997 by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. The festival begins with an open competition and culminates with the awarding of several prizes and an exhibition. Based on judging by ...
''Excellence Award'' in 2004 and was a Brit Insurance Design Awards winner in 2008. He was appointed a
Design Council The Design Council, formerly the Council of Industrial Design, is a United Kingdom charity incorporated by Royal Charter. Its stated mission is "to champion great design that improves lives and makes things better". It was instrumental in the prom ...
Ambassador in 2021 and in 2022 he joined the London Mayor's Data for London Advisory Board.


Further reading


What is Interaction - Are there different types?
Interactions - January/February 2009, by Hugh Dubberly,
Paul Pangaro Paul may refer to: *Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) *Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chris ...
and Usman Haque
Urban computing in the wild: A survey on large scale participation and citizen engagement with ubiquitous computing, cyber physical systems, and Internet of Things
by Flora Salim and Usman Haque
Interview with Usman Haque in Programming Interactivity

Designing Projects That Thrill And Empower: The Architect Who Taught A City To Fly

The Architectural Relevance of Gordon Pask
by Usman Haque
Paskian Environments
by Regine Debatty


References

British architects 1971 births {{DEFAULTSORT:Haque, Usman Living people