Hacked Brainwave Headset Lets You Control Architecture by Thinking

In the age of ubiquitous computing, we've grown fairly used to infrastructure, objects, and even furniture that adapt to the presence of humans. But what if you could control the behavior of a wall or room simply by thinking harder?

That’s the impetus behind Cerebral Hut, an installation by the Turkish architect Guvenc Ozel. The hut, which is made up of ten hexagonal panels programmed to expand and contract on command, was part of a show at the last Istanbul Biennial. Ozel bought a commercially available brainwave reader—like this NeuroSky headset—and wrote a script that turns the brain activity of the user into motion cues for the panels. Standing beneath the curved half-wall, visitors could control the size of the panels and the pace of their deformation simply by concentrating and blinking.