The paper presents how the latest advances in autonomous building management and electrically activated materials affect the design, production, and operation of residential buildings. The innovative features of an elementary prototype house, which is at the final stage of construction in Trento, N. Italy, are discussed with a view to expose the opportunities and the problems that these new technological developments pose to design research.
Improving the energy efficiency of residential buildings can lead in reducing the energy consumption of cities. It is presented a prototype house that uses real time connectivity to enable effective energy management through the deployment of an optimization algorithm. Following the principles of the Web of Things, the devices of the house are mapped into a RESTful structure where the HTTP protocol is used for communication, and a risk-sensitive algorithm p-Sulu, based on Iterative Risk Allocation, is used for long-term energy optimization. The RESTful protocol makes the system compatible and scalable, able to expand at a neighborhood or a community scale.
This paper presents a programmable façade that contributes significant reduction in energy consumption by regulating the incoming sunlight into the interior of a residential building. Electrochromic and liquid crystal technologies allow the modification of thermal transmittance and view, which are controlled by a model-based plan executive. Except from operating as climate moderator the façade functions as an interface mediating the dynamics between inside and outside, public and private. The interaction design challenge is how to renew the role of the façade to provide new ways of association between the private environment of the house and the public environment of the street, the residents among themselves and their neighbors, and ultimately the house and its urban context.
The use of digitally activated, variable transmittance materials and artificial intelligence methods to building control will enhance the performance of buildings, and programmable components will change the traditional modes of architectural design, manufacturing and construction. In the presented key study, the architectural form and functionality of windows are revisited with a view to integrate current advances in material science, control systems engineering and human-computer interaction. The features of a building facade, involving a matrix of programmable windows that enables precise control of daylight, view and privacy in the interior of a house are discussed. Managing the variable transmittance materials of the facade by an autonomous high-level control system allows the optimization of the house performance based on real time data and the schedule of the inhabitants. Using constraint violations as a measure of success, the autonomous control of the house outperforms any existing deterministic control models.
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