Image: nate steiner | Flickr

Samsung has come out with a transparent smart window, and I think it will be interesting to see how this impacts architectural design. You see, such a smart window provides much added functionality — particularly if certain apps get created for this particular “window-type” smart use.

Now, before I go on, I’d like to show you what these transparent smart windows look like. Here’s the video:

So, will such a smart window do much to improve architectural design? Or could it destroy an architectural design if not integrated correctly? Well, I think it can do both, depending on how it’s used.

I think the placement of such smart windows will be paramount, as will attention to making sure technology isn’t getting in the way. You see, such a smart window is really all about what is going on inside of a room. But I question — what will happen if the window begins to use apps that also take into account what is going on in the nearby exterior? What if the window becomes more truly interactive?

Suddenly, this transparent smart window will act as a Read more

Often the architecture that you see and use each day acts as a surrounding container with which occupants interact at certain times, and in often very physical ways — whether it be to open a door, open a window, engage in cleaning or maintenance, or even when using building interface devices like light switches, temperature controls or plumbing hardware which can often be found systematically throughout a building. Because of this, occupants often have to travel to predesignated places within buildings, in order to interact or change their surroundings — adding on to them, personalizing them or simply to use them for their intended functions.

As we are now in the midst of increasingly instantaneous and automatic lifestyles, you will find that the interactive will occur in more and more places within your building — and each of those places are becoming better equipped to handle a greater amount of functions. While this may be a good thing in many ways, I think we still have to revisit and renew what occupant connectedness means with regard to how a person interacts with their surrounding built environment, finding new and overlooked opportunities that may make improved use of occupant-to-building interactions.

What You Can Begin to Ask of an Interactive Wall

Of course, many of you have likely already seen interactive floors were projections give way to colorful visuals which respond to a person’s movements as they enter into a dialogue (examples might be playing, exercising or learning) with that particular installation. But I ask, what other ways might there be for occupants to interact with their buildings?…particularly as more variation and functionality gives way to greater personalization?

For instance, new innovations are bringing about technologies which make use of gesture-based as well as touch-based communication between a user and the functional goals of their interface — whether computer-based, object-based or environment-based. But what might happen if within buildings, surfaces (like walls) are Read more

Image: samuelbausson | Flickr

Buildings are much more than a surrounding envelope which merely exists in a state separated from its occupants and their objects and tools. Instead, buildings are part of the landscape which helps occupants to live better. And now, with more sensory technologies, architecture can connect anew with occupants to greatly uplift their lifestyle… through their objects and tools that they use everyday.

Much of this is done by making interactive surface design within your building highly effective.

Many times, people think of sensing technologies within architecture as a way for the building to pick up all kinds of cues from just the occupants, but that is only one part of how a building can read or interpret the language and context of what is happening within it. In fact, a key way for a building’s systems to engage with occupant behaviors is by sensing cues from an occupant’s objects — like a bottle of medicine that might need to be refilled or random food from the kitchen that might be calling for a good recipe so it doesn’t go to waste.

Such is the challenge being worked on by Intel when developing Oasis, an interactive surface design technology that can be used in many places throughout a home, or for any building type should the need arise. Really, it can work on a simple premise: as objects and their respective movements occur, sensory technologies gather Read more