Abstract
Material systems are evolving at fast pace today, expanding the field for which designers can play with. While architecture has been fundamentally linked to the materials of its time, new material systems provide for new potential in spacemaking. With a focus on pneumatically actuated soft robotics, this thesis projects to a future when material systems can read and perform socially to create a multi-state public plaza that can respond to people’s desires and transfigure between different states to provide aesthetic and spatial agency to the people.