Ralph Damköhler made the case that a façade no longer has to be static, that it can move, opening and adapting to light, temperature or the people inside, and showed the engineering behind kinetIQ.
Damköhler, who runs Middle East and Saudi operations, pitched kinetIQ as the next big thing: the façade as something that moves, responding to a user’s wishes or to environmental conditions, with different methods of opening.
Underneath it are two principles. Pivoting, rotating around a fixed axis, and linear movement along a set path. Those are the foundation on which most kinetIQ concepts adapt dynamically to light, temperature or human interaction. It works, he argued, because two worlds are made to merge: the world of automation, cutting-edge digital tech, intelligent controls, smart sensors, intuitive interfaces, acoustic performance, and the world of classical façade construction, with its structural precision and glass-and-metal quality. The motto: moving architecture forward.
The project he walked through made it concrete: a residential tower with Juliet balconies, a genuinely smart move in a region where balconies often go unused because of the dust, here the resident decides when a bay is an open balcony and when it is internal space.
The engineering was not trivial. Some balconies were double-height with no intermediate support, so they were reinforced with thick steel stiffeners hidden within the section to avoid disturbing the internal design, and coordinated carefully for cleaning, maintenance and tenant access, including the interface with the GRC. The payoff is simple: on demand, the living room becomes the balcony.