How Nano Motion Sensors Can Improve Your Building Design
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Visualization of a hand in motion during a conversation
Image: jeanbaptisteparis | Flickr
Motion sensors are already all around us, they exist in certain appliances, mobile phones and even within your car — but what if nanotechnology and the miniaturization of these sensors down to the nano scale could have profound impact on the buildings in which we live?
With nanotechnology, development is in the works to make sensors 100 times more sensitive than sensors we have today. Here is a quote explaining this remarkable feat:
“Able to “feel” and sense the movement of individual atoms, the researchers’ new MEMS sensing device uses small carbon tubes, nano in size — about one-billionth of a meter long. Creating these tiny tubes using a process involving methane gas and a furnace, Prof. Hanein has developed a method whereby they arrange themselves on a surface of a silicon chip to accurately sense tiny movements and changes in gravity.”
- from phsorg.com, A More Sensitive Senor Using Nano-sized Carbon Tubes
The question now becomes, how can you as an architect make use of such significant advances in order to improve and uplift the lives of your occupant? And yes, I do believe that uplifting the lives of your occupants should be a primary focus for your work as an architect. Nevertheless, it is time to think outside of the box.
Where Would You Embed a Nano Motion Sensor?
Since MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) will be not only more sensitive, but also a lot smaller, your designs can make use of their ability to sense very slight motion. For instance, with architectural kinetic installations, perhaps your components which are in motion could respond to an array of different triggers — like the way someone walks up the stairs, into a room, or even the way someone sits and repositions themselves in a chair. Thus, an entire architectural space could respond to such slight human behaviors.
Very slight motion could revolutionize architecture, as its elements would be able to react more sensitively to a multitude of variables like wind, earth activity, water, fire, weathering and more subtle occupant behaviors. With nano sized motion sensors an architectural design could go from a more reactive state to an almost predictive state; where when time is of the essence, buildings could be safer. Hospitals, for instance, could treat their patients more effectively.
But that’s not all.
Perhaps offices could be better ergonomically designed as slight movements in the way an employee works at their desk or talks on the phone could prompt certain office components and new materials to foster a happier, healthier, more effective and productive working lifestyle. Similarly, nano motion sensors could detect the activity on a teacher’s and/or student’s desk to then actuate certain designed elements within a classroom to facilitate better teaching and learning.
I challenge you, as an architect, to think beyond the scope of where technology is today — to take into account even the slightest variations of your occupant’s behaviors, because it is in those details that you will often be able to more truly optimize your design vision.
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Assuming the sensors could be programmed for recognition of specific movement, and users trained, it’s easy to imagine that, like a conductor of the symphony, a person could orchestrate their environment without remote controls. The potential grace of such a system would become hilarity if elaborate sequences were required. I would not want to be the one to have to demonstrate the “AV” or “lights out scenario dance” to my clients (who would probably be willing to learn it just to lose the remote….). If the sensor could adjust for the difference between reading and moving about, energy consumption could be controlled, adjusting lights or heat. If they are sensitive enough to tell the difference between ‘reading’ and’ vacant room’ they have application for immediate, though mundane, work.
Lisa — Issues of “control” are going to be a challenge as sensors continue to embed built environments and devices. That’s one reason I think it is so critical for architects and other designers to more fully understand their clients and occupants. The interaction between dynamic built form and its inhabitants should be seamless — not an interaction where architecture and occupants enter a power struggle for control. Ideally, the natural movements of inhabitants can “speak” to those sensors and actuators, which in turn will gently transition what needs to be transitioned on multiple levels within a space. Ideally, there will be no power struggle “dance”, just a room that grasps cues from and for its inhabitant.
Also, those cues that a sensor grasps about its inhabitants don’t all have to come from that occupant’s gestures. Adaptive architecture can be goal-oriented.