Lecturer: Alex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen
Fields: Human-Building Interaction, Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction
Content
This course examines the growing field of Human-Building Interaction (HBI), in which architectural design and human-centred computing are increasingly converging to reshape living and working spaces. Through the integration of robotic and AI technologies, architectural space can now adapt physically and proactively to support occupant needs, and in some cases even nudge their behaviours towards health and wellbeing benefits. The course discusses how knowledge of spatial experience, long central to architectural design, is now also informing interactive systems and robotic prototypes. Across three sessions, participants will build a conceptual understanding of this highly interdisciplinary field, covering its foundations, design and evaluation principles, as well as open challenges and future directions.
Session 1: Activating spatial experience. This lecture introduces the foundations of the course. It discusses the phenomenological concept of spatial experience and how it has informed the design of architectural spaces and interactive systems. It then examines how spatial affordances can be purposefully designed to activate human experience.
Session 2: Designing, prototyping, and evaluating Human-Building Interaction. This lecture provides an overview of the conceptual, technical, and methodological approaches used to implement and evaluate HBI systems. It compares HBI deployments across different spatial, temporal, and social scales, and discusses their impact.
Session 3: Challenges and future directions. This lecture discusses current challenges for HBI in both practice and research, ranging from technical requirements and occupant adoption to the need for a cohesive scientific framework. It also outlines emerging opportunities and research directions in light of generative AI and cross-reality spatial interaction.
Literature
- Alavi, H. S., Churchill, E. F., Wiberg, M., Lalanne, D., Dalsgaard, P., Fatah Gen Schieck, A., & Rogers, Y. (2019). Introduction to Human-Building Interaction (HBI): Interfacing HCI with Architecture and Urban Design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 26(2), 1–10.
- Becerik-Gerber, B., Lucas, G., Aryal, A., Awada, M., Bergés, M., Billington, S. L., Boric-Lubecke, O., Ghahramani, A., Heydarian, A., Jazizadeh, F., Liu, R., Zhu, R., Marks, F., Roll, S., Seyedrezaei, M., Taylor, J. E., Höelscher, C., Khan, A., Langevin, J., … Zhao, J. (2022). Ten Questions Concerning Human-Building Interaction Research for Improving the Quality of Life. Building and Environment, 226, 109681.
- Johansen, S. S., Kjeldskov, J., & Skov, M. B. (2019). Temporal Constraints in Human—Building Interaction. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 26(2), 1–29.
- Ju, W. (2015). The Design of Implicit Interactions. Springer International Publishing.
- Nguyen, A. B. V. D., Leusmann, J., Mayer, S., & Moere, A. V. (2025). Eliciting Understandable Architectonic Gestures for Robotic Furniture Through Co-Design Improvisation. 2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 569–579.
- Nguyen, B. V. D., & Vande Moere, A. (2024). The Adaptive Architectural Layout: How the Control of a Semi-Autonomous Mobile Robotic Partition was Shared to Mediate the Environmental Demands and Resources of an Open-Plan Office. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–20.
- Rao, S., Rogers, K., Good, J., & Alavi, H. (2025). What Do We Design for When We Design ‘Smart Buildings’? – A Scoping Review of Human Experience Design Research in Buildings. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–23.
- Wiberg, M. (2020). Interaction and Architecture is Dead.: Long Live Architectural Interactivity! Interactions, 27(2), 72–75.
Lecturer
Alex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen is a guest professor in Digital Architecture at the University of Antwerp and a research project manager in Human-Building Interaction at KU Leuven (Belgium). His research focuses on the responsible integration of digital technologies to physically and virtually transform everyday built environments, such as homes, offices, and public spaces, in order to improve occupants’ experience, health, and well-being. In particular, his work spans the design, prototyping, and evaluation of Human-Building Interaction, Human-Robot Interaction, and Human-Centred AI systems that augment buildings throughout their lifecycle, from architectural design and construction to post-occupancy evaluation.
Affiliation: University of Antwerp, Belgium
Homepage: https://alexbvdnguyen.com/