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By Barbara Knecht

The ambitious research agenda includes proactive health care and monitoring of daily activities, as well as indoor air quality, information technology, appliance design, energy management, and construction. Even as we become more and more used to the idea of pervasive computing, the question for architects remains, What does it mean for building? With this project and a related consortium, the Open Source Building Alliance (architecture.mit.edu/~kll/OSBA_faq.htm), Larson is teaming up with computer scientists and the technology industry to tap the explosion of creative advances to improve human environments and building technology. Larson and his colleagues have added to the research agenda serious thinking about the application of these technologies to the making and maintaining of buildings.

Returning to the comparison between the automotive and building industries, it is hard to dispute the technological backwardness of the latter. Automobiles and computers are an assembly of components that work together because the industries have developed robust compatible interfaces. Buildings are put together by a range of subspecialties that recoil from crossing the line to others, and yet they need to be interconnected in the final product. Larson explains, “We currently build buildings the way we build the space shuttle: one change and it ripples through the entire system. In the future, we will decouple the systems and standardize the interfaces. We will be able to predict the life cycles of individual components and replace them as necessary. Avoiding unnecessary construction demolition is a significant contribution to sustainability.”

 

Hometronic is a home-automation system from Honeywell. The diagram at right shows which functions can be controlled by a single, wall-mounted unit. The system is wireless and uses a multifrequency transmission radio frequency (RF) to regulate heating, monitor energy consumption, and control lights, shutters, curtains, and appliances. Drawing: Courtesy Honeywell

Larson’s work is likely to yield some answers to the question of how houses may be retrofitted to accept new technology. It is easy to see how devices can be integrated into walls and fixtures. Georgia Tech’s Gregory Abowd speculates that progress in wireless and nanotechnology should eventually mean that high-powered sensors and display technology should be allowed to be embedded at will in nearly any material.

The prospects are amazing, and the technology is evolving quickly. Sensors will differentiate between strangers and friends entering your house. Protocols will make sure that your neighbor’s controller doesn’t interfere with yours. Better interfaces and standards will develop between technologies so that devices will recognize one another the way computer peripherals do now. More complex computer algorithms will process more information, improving the data and making it more useful. Still, for some people, the Big Brother nature of ubiquitous surveillance and continuous collection of personal data will conjure up images of the lip-reading, murderous computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The truth is that the Hal of the future smart house will be a homebody devoted to predicting when the hot-water heater will fail, and doing other mundane tasks.