The reality however is different, time passes and everything around us is continuously changing, nothing is stable. Design static solutions is not sufficient anymore if it wants to reach high level of sustainability. It is necessary to consider time and changing in the design phase, designing a good solution is not enough, its evolution and adaptation in time have to be studied too.

The debate about architecture has introduced the idea of changing in different aspects: from the urban considerations to the building technological solutions till consider in the design process of a building even its demolition phase. The whole life cycle of a construction is taken into account. The concept of changing has entered in the practice and there is a strong effort to overcome the traditional resilience of cities, buildings, and construction.

To meet the mutable conditions of the environment a good behavior can be represented by the adaptation capacity, changing in fact it is not sufficient to achieve higher level of sustainability and ensure better performances. The change must be driven, it has to be envisioned and studied. The attention in the design phase thus should be wide from the object of the design to reach and understand the characteristics of the environment in which the object will be placed. The surrounding becomes part of the process and study's object. Adaptiveness is the result of the conjunct study of the object and of the environment considering all the possible relationships and interactions.

The aspects involved in a building design are many, from the environmental parameters related to the climate condition of the site to the destination of use of the building and the behavior of its users. To reach the higher level of efficiency and to obtain innovative buildings it is necessary to deep all these aspects and get to a performative solution that has to consider the possibility of changing and adaptiveness constantly meet at the best the requirements.

In this diesis, starting from these considerations, has been formulated a proposal of an adaptive structures applied in the acoustic field starting from the studies of some existing examples.

In chapter 1 is reported an analysis of the context: it starts from a brief consideration about the influence of the digital technologies in the practice of architecture that has caused the appearance of new visions and new attitudes towards the discipline. These led to the rise of the concepts of "Smart Cities" and "Smart Buildings" which has guided the research and development towards more efficient and technological solutions relying on the latest technologies available, both for the design task both for the construction phase. The proposal of adaptive and transformable structure to reach higher level of performance is a consequence of the new possibilities open by the technological advances and the strive for efficiency and sustainability of the latest years. This analysis has been conducted to properly collocate the work in the international debate and it is accompanied by a selection of case studies of adaptive structures applied in different fields. The chapter ends with a presentation of the expected work, defining clearly the acoustic application, and highlighting the different aspects and competences involved in the development of the study. These wide from the geometry considerations, to the model and prototype issues to test and evaluate the solutions to the sound considerations for an effective application of the structure. For the complexity and variety of discipline implied it is reported also the organization of the work and the succession of design phases.

The chapter 2 contains the theoretical knowledge of the different disciplines that have been involved in this work. The geometric issues to identify a suitable shape for the application have been faced relying on the study of the origami that have already been used for engineer applications. The control of a variable geometry has required the use of algorithmic models which ensure fast changes and free control on the model. These aspects and the advantages coming from these tools are reported in the paragraph about computational design. The last paragraph of this chapter reports the base acoustic concepts to better understand the field of application and to introduce the specific aspect which the solution has to control that is the scattering coefficient.

Chapter 3 contains all the design development of the solution which starts from the firsts geometric considerations followed by the prototyping and assessment of the selected options. This has led to the identification of one suitable shape for an adaptive panel that has been tested performing the acoustic measurements in a reverberant chamber. The results obtained in laboratory have been used to perform an acoustic simulation of the application of the proposed solution inside the aula magna of the Politecnico di Torino. The results of the measurements and of the simulation are reported in this chapter.

In the conclusion is reported a summary of the results and the considerations coming from this experience. A brief analysis of the possible future developments is present too.