We created a kinetic shade that adjusts the amount of light entering a room in response to the changing outdoor brightness. The shade is constructed from an array of foldable units, shaped like pixels that can open and close in different sequences. As the folding units/pixels transform, they create a “living” shade that "breathes" the light through it.

The kinetic shade is constructed from rows of the folding units fixed to a firm aluminum frame. The units of each row are folded by the force of a servo motor. Each Servo is attached to a metal rod, which transfers the rotary motion into a linear motion.
The Servo’s are activated by photocells in the back of the screen (facing outdoors).

The shade acts as an interactive dimmer. The lighter it gets outside the units open/close in a higher speed or different patterns. In the current prototype, the kinetic pattern between the different units was programmed as a continuous wave. However, the units could be programmed into different modes such as a continuous loop, different shapes, or random openings.
In the future we plan to further enhance the interactivity of the shade by setting it to respond to the users’ presence, by means of different sensors.