Abstract-Today's building automation shifts from simple applications like controlling illumination and temperature towards complex applications like the observation of buildings for safety and security reasons or increasing the occupants' comfort. Complex applications require more and more sensory information. Existing approaches of sensor data processing cannot cope with these demands. In this article, we present a new, bionically inspired approach for coping with such a huge amount of diverse sensory information. For this purpose, an information processing principle called neuro-symbolic information processing is introduced which bases on neuroscientific and neuro-psychological research findings about the perceptual system of the human brain.