Mood Sensitive Architecture Edit
Emotional Cities

We’ve seen mood clothing and furniture, and now we can add emotion-sensitive architecture to that fascinating list thanks to incredible Swedish technology.

As part of the Emotional Cities project, the Haymarketscrapers, or Hötorgetskrapor, in Stockholm change colour according to the feeling of the city’s people. The city’s five tallest skyscrapers act as colossal projections of the overall citizen mood. The scale ranges from depressed, which is reflected as deep purple, to happy, which is shown as vibrant red.

Tourists flying in will be able to tell the overall vibe of a city from the airplane window already, just by taking a peek at the towers!

So how does they mood affect them? No surprise in today’s wired world: with the help of citizen votes on the internet, of course. Stockholmers can log on to emotionalcities.com where they are greeting with, “How are you today?”

7 clickable circles appear below the question in all colours of the rainbow. The far left has the biggest frown on a violet sphere, next to it is indigo, then the expression gets happier as it progresses from light blue to green, yellow, orange and a happy red.

From there those who choose can keep a diary. Once answering “how,” they have the opportunity to answer “why” in an online journal that can be kept entirely private.

The site also offers a chart of constantly updated city stats. A web cam can be seen here.

Rumor has it more cities will be getting mood lighting similar to emotional city including in South Korea.