A breeze-driven pavilion and some bridge-machines

[Image: The Wind Shaped Pavilion; ©Michael Jantzen].

Michael Jantzen's Wind Shaped Pavilion is "a large fabric structure that can be used as a public or private pavilion. As a lightweight fabric structure, the wind slowly and randomly rotates each of the six segments around a central open support frame. This continually alters the shape of the pavilion, while at the same time generating electrical power for its nighttime illumination."
Rubik's Cube-like, it "starts out as a relatively symmetrical form. Then the wind begins to alter that shape randomly, with only a slim chance of ever returning to its original symmetry."
You can watch its breeze-driven shifting through Jantzen's own well-lit renderings.

[Images: Wind Shaped Pavilion; ©Michael Jantzen].

Along with a wide variety of other projects, actually built or still conceptual, Jantzen has also proposed a Wind Tunnel Footbridge – whose name quite accurately abbreviates in these days of text-speak as WTF.

[Image: It's a machine, it's a bridge, it's an electrical generator: it's the Wind Tunnel Footbridge; ©Michael Jantzen].

The Wind Tunnel Footbridge is a "new kind of wind activated footbridge made of steel and aluminum. As the wind blows, the five wind turbine wheels turn at different speeds around the people who are walking through to reach the other side. Three of the five wheels turn in one direction while the other two turn in the opposite direction. As the wind driven wheels turn in different directions and at different speeds, they can produce different electronic corresponding sounds. The Wind Tunnel Footbridge was designed to be constructed in various types of public venues as an architectural attraction. The wheels also produce and store electrical energy much like a windmill."

[Images: The Wind Tunnel Footbridge; ©Michael Jantzen].

Also worth checking out, of course, is Jantzen's Wind Turbine Observation Tower, "an observation tower that people can walk through to view the surrounding landscape, while the five wind activated segments of the structure rotate around them in different directions. While these segments rotate, they also produce electricity which is used to light the structure at night." And don't forget Jantzen's weird, unfolding deck/tower/office; his retro-futuristically sloped domestic half-curvatures known as Home-Scape; or Jantzen's (actually built) M House, constructed from "a wide variety of manipulatable components that can be connected in many different ways to a matrix of modular support frames." (M House was also featured in arcspace, Inhabitat, Architectural Record, and Wired, to name but a few).
For that matter, who can resist something like Jantzen's Space Time Transformation Foot Bridge...?

[Image: The Space Time Transformation Foot Bridge; ©Michael Jantzen].

This last project would be constructed using "clear glass so people passing over it could see through the support frame to the terrain below. The outer shell of the covered portion of the structure would be made of glass impregnated with translucent solar cells that form a graphic grid around it's circumference, partially shading the interior walkway. These solar cells which convert light into electricity, would produce energy to illuminate the structure at night and to power the movement of the outer shell of the covered portion of the bridge. As people walk through the structure it would sense their motion patterns and respond by changing it's shape accordingly."

[Note: All images ©Michael Jantzen; and thanks to who else but Alexander Trevi for the tip on Wind Shaped Pavilion, which also appeared several weeks ago on architechnophilia].