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Intelligent architecture through intelligent design
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THE NEW FRONTIER Intelligent architecture through intelligent design Walter M. Kroner
This paper explores the dichotomy between intelligent buildings as containers of smart technologies and the potential for an intelligent architecture responsive to cultural shifts, resource issues, and human potential.
Architecture is a mirror of culture. As such, it reflects cutural values and qualities of life, it confronts and challenges our ways and means, and its images are witness to the relationships beween people and nature. Architecture can enslave or enlighten, provoke or perpetuate, and contribute to or diminish the quality of our lives. Architecture shapes the character of cities and communities and in doing so profoundly influences the human condition. Architecture can also be a critic of, and genesis for, technological developments. Replicating historical architectural models with modern technology may either reflect the timelessness of significant designs or a lack of creative vision; new visions of architecture, using new technologies, may reflect either toyerism I or the emergence of cultural paradigm shifts. The development of smart technologies, having a form of artificial intelligence (AI), has lead to the emergence of a new architectural concept: the 'intelligent building'. National and international organizations committed to its development have formed, 2 and a host of conferences, seminars, and symposia have debated its potential and its merits, s In essence, an intelligent building is one in which various systems (heating, cooling, lighting, communication and information, transportation , and so on) are automated and electronically controlled to manage resources (energy, data, information, productivity, and so on) effectively in a coordinated and efficient manner. 4 An examination of the literature on the subject reveals that the focus of the debate on intelligent buildings is not whether these buildings
Walter M. Kroner is a Professor and Director of the Center for Architectural Research, School of Architecture, RensselaerPolytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA.
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are intelligent, but how to integrate these smart technologies into traditional forms of buildings. The purpose of this article is to suggest that current forms of intelligent buildings are not very smart, but that smart technologies provide the opportunity for paradigm shifts in architecture as well as in the ways we live and work. These paradigm shifts will only be realized if the debate on intelligent buildings is expanded to focus on fundamental cultural, global, and contextual design issues relevant to architecture. It is hypothesized that such an expanded debate will lead to intelligent design producing an intelligent architecture for our future. An historical perspective
From an architectural perspective, intelligent buildings are not new. Primitive and indigenous forms of architecture exhibited sophisticated forms of intelligent design. These designs were intelligent because of their intimate relationship between the occupant and the technologies of built form. This intimate relationship was designed into the building by giving the user the capacity to interact with the building's various systems. The user could adjust, modify and adapt the building to changing situations, whether they were social, functional, or natural phenomena. Comfort, utility, and delight were achieved by the user's ingenuity in manipulating built form. The occupant was thus a critical element in the design and use of the building, and without the occupant's presence the building neither functioned nor had any intelligence. This continuous interaction between user and building (including its technologies) was responsive--it was intelligent architecture. Neither building nor user was complete, whole, or effective without the other. Historic examples of such intelligent built forms are many. The American Indian's tepee was capable of being changed to adapt to weather, location and function. Its wall composition could be modified by adding or subtracting layers of animal skins and straw mats to respond to climate and human comfort. The enclosure of an Eskimo's igloo could be changed with a knife to bring in daylight at desired locations, and the walls could be modified as in the Indian tepee. The traditional Japanese farmhouse with its moveable exterior walls and s h o j i screens could be modified to change space size and qualities and to respond to physical, psychological or physiological needs. Intelligent designs or pre-industrial architecture produced sensitive and sustainable forms unique to culture and place. They were built from locally available resources and were responsive to nature's assets such as sun, wind, soil and precipitation to create comfort and to provide safety and a sense of well-being. Before the advent of modern versions of heating and air-conditioning systems, the building user could operate windows and window shutters, and portable and personalized means of warming, cooling, and lighting allowed the individual to meet his or her unique requirements. These examples exhibited an intelligent and sensitive design which was responsive to user, place and context. These forms of experiencing architecture created a user-friendly relationship between occupant and architectural technology. Today's versions of intelligent buildings, in contrast, are autonomous
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from user interactions, for they can function and be managed with or without the presence of the occupant--their 'intelligence' is provided through the technology of automation. Early versions of intelligent technologies include thermostats, time-clock controlled light switches and water heaters, infrared sensors for detecting intrusion and for operating controls, self-defrosting freezers, and programmable ovens. Today we have electrical systems that recognize the difference between the coffee maker and a child sticking a metal object into the electrical outlet, and thus provide safety. We can telephone our home to receive our phone messages, turn on the oven, adjust the thermostat, and have the chicken cooked when we arrive. The electronic door-lock recognizes who should be allowed to enter, and calls security if someone is trying to intrude who shouldn't. While we are watching television the programme may be interrupted by the building's diagnostic system telling us that the refrigerator is not defrosting or that the motor on the water pump is malfunctioning.
Today's intelligent building The electronic and computer age of the technological revolution has introduced telecommunications, miniaturization, micromechanics, digital systems, and technologies, materials, and systems containing an AI. Buildings incorporating these advances are referred to as 'intelligent'. The Intelligent Buildings Institute in Washington DC defines an intelligent building as follows: s . . . one which integrates various systems (such as lighting, HVAC, voice and data communications, and other building functions) to effectively manage resources in a coordinated mode to maximize occupant performance, investment and operating cost-savings, and flexibility. Various levels of intelligence are provided through interactive controls and communications devices driven by either central or distributed micro-chip intelligence, and employing sensing devices and interactive distribution media. Shared tenant services, primarily a voice and data telecommunications function shared among various independent users, is a component of intelligent buildings. Another term for such buildings is the 'electronically enhanced building'. The National Research Council, Washington, DC, defines electronically enhanced office buildings as: 6 buildings [which are] equipped with the electronic and physical infrastructure to support the use of advanced communication, data processing, and control technologies by its occupants and operating personnel. Such a building is equipped with the necessary wires, cables, ducts, power supply, heating, ventilating, cooling, illumination, noise suppression, and security systems to support the performance requirements of today's office environment. Examples of modern technologies that enhance the performance capabilities of such buildings include mainframe computers, minicomputers, and microcomputers; voice, video, and data telecommunications; internal (local area) communication networks; automated (computerized) workstations; and a variety of automated building sensors and control systems that can enhance performance. These include systems that:
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• sense human presence in a particular part of the building and turn on lights and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems; • activate elevators; • alert security and fire alarm systems; • sense the intensity and angle of exterior light and respond by adjusting interior lighting systems, window louvers, visual (as well as thermal) building envelope characteristics, etc, to provide specified levels of illumination qualities; • sense outside temperature and respond by turning on the HVAC system sufficiently far in advance of the arrival of occupants to ensure a comfortable thermal environment; • automatically increase the ventilation rate when tobacco smoke or noxious odours are detected; • distribute electric power to computers on demand or in accordance with a preset priority schedule and automatically activate reserve batteries or emergency generators when electric power fails to meet present standards; or • automatically select the least-cost carrier or route when a long-distance telephone call is placed. 7 A review of the most current literature on the subject of intelligent or electronically enhanced buildings shows that the most important design issues seem to involve the integration of hardware, power consumption, service access, switching techniques, and requirements for space and other technical-fit issues.
Intelligent buildings as containerized technology This preoccupation with integrating smart technologies within our traditional forms of architecture is a matter of fit, rather than creative design. The issues are how to 'package' smart technology in an already designed container. Thus we have containerized technology in buildings. It is simply an engineering, construction, and economic-fit problem and has little to do with fundamental issues of architecture. The current phase of the technological revolution began around 25 years ago. If we compare the architecture of the 1950s to the architecture of today's intelligent building there is no visible difference in form, enclosure, interior, or even in how we experience the spaces. The glass building is still a glass box, the horizontally spread manufacturing building is still a concrete slab with flat roof and metal enclosure, and apartments and houses look and feel the same as they did 40 years ago. The smart technology lies hidden in the floors, pipes, ducts and ceilings, so that there is no visible evidence of a changed architecture. The only visible evidence is in old technologies, like venetian blinds, that seem to move without human intervention. Even the technological systems of heating, cooling, lighting and elevator technology have not changed; only their sensor and control systems have changed. There are, however, instances where scientific and technological advances have significantly changed architecture and have caused paradigm shifts in our culture. For example, the transformation of our cities by the
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car, telephone, and television has changed where, how, and when we live, work, and recreate. Electricity and the light bulb have changed architecture as well as our definitions of work, productivity, and the relationship between people and technology. The invention of the elevator combined with advances in steel construction have allowed us to create vertical cities and high-rise apartments and have increased the density of our liveable space. Glass and curtain-wall construction has created glass towers--an architecture of transparency and intrusion. Has smart technology caused transformations of such scale and proportion? Not yet. Has it changed the way we work, live and play? Of course. Is the smart technology of AI, robotics, composite materials and computing likely to change the way we design our communities and their buildings? Almost certainly. Architecture's claim to fame, for the last 50 years, is that it has successfully containerized plumbing, HVAC and electricity, replaced stairs with elevators and escalators, exploited the use of glass, and sandwiched and packaged different materials and the modern-day wonders of electronics. To my knowledge, there is no significant invention or innovation that architecture can claim for itself in the last 100 years. Architecture has become successful in adapting technology invented by other industrial and professional sectors, and in exploiting the aesthetic potential of packaging technology.
How smart are today's intelligent buildings? There is little argument that today's buildings are, or can be, electronically enhanced. The examples previously cited are evidence that today's buildings, marvellous examples of automated and programmed systems, are technologically sophisticated and efficient in terms of energy management. But are they the product of intelligent design and can they be considered to be intelligent buildings? One of Webster's definitions of intelligence is: 'The power of meeting a novel situation successfully by adjusting one's behaviour to the total situation'. On the basis of this definition, it would appear that an intelligent building would have characteristics and qualities that would allow it to interact with and respond to situations similarly to the ways that human beings respond to their natural surroundings. It would suggest an intimate and harmonious relationship between the individual and the building. We would expect that such a building would exhibit caring qualities for the people who own and use it, whatever their priorities, values and needs, and, conversely, that people would care about the building. If a building exhibited intelligence it might change throughout its existence as a result of its relationship with human beings. We could argue that intelligent buildings exhibit the same responsive capacity as that found in plants which change their configuration, orientation or other characteristics in response to night and day, moisture, and the seasons, or in animals which change their skin, fur, metabolism or behaviour in response to the seasons or to danger. Based on the above interpretation of intelligence it is clear that at present there are intelligent building technologies and some intelligent building systems. Buildings that contain such systems and technologies
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could certainly be classified as electronically enhanced, or as containing intelligent systems and technologies. The building itself, however, in a holistic sense is neither intelligent nor smart. Just as buildings containing plumbing, electric lights and air-conditioning are not necessarily healthy buildings--as demonstrated by the current sick building syndromea--so buildings containing intelligent technologies are not necessarily intelligent buildings.
Intelligent buildings require intelligent design The definition of intelligence above refers to 'meeting novel situations successfully', which in the context of intelligent architecture simply means that the building should have or provide the ability to respond to the situations it and its users encounter. Today's intelligent technologies are able to respond to situations as defined by a building's owner, building codes and standards, and safety requirements. Thus we can manage a building's resource requirements (energy) according to the priorities of the owner, but not necessarily those of the user. The building itself, its structure, walls, roofs, floors, partitions, finishes and windows cannot respond to different situations encountered. Recent studies of buildings with intelligent systems indicate that these buildings provide inadequate and problematic responses to situations encountered. 9 Despite their intelligent technologies, these buildings have HVAC systems that don't work, environments that make people sick, energy efficiencies that make it difficult for people to be productive or healthy, and smart technologies that are difficult to understand, maintain or operate. Intelligent and responsive designs should not create such situations. In part, these problems exist because we take a rather narrowly focused approach to the design of the built environment. Architects relegate technological issues to specialists without understanding problems and opportunities for integrated and holistic thinking. The humanist is not a critical part of the design team, and the user's needs are secondary to budgets, construction schedules and energy management. Instead of designing an architecture in harmony with nature, we continue to see nature as something to be overcome or conquered. We recognize the complexity, uncertainty and difficulty of predicting human behaviour in buildings, so we use smart technology to discount the user. These are not the reflections of intelligent design. Given the existence of smart technologies, the rapid developments in robotics, the creation of totally new materials, the advances in communication and information systems and the potential for transferring technologies from other fields, we are challenged to revisit our traditional design approaches. If there is ever to be an intelligent architecture, architecture needs firstly an intelligence in design which responds to the cultural, environmental and technological contexts of the present and the future. Intelligent design requires that we respond to the architectural context, the natural resource context, the human resource context, and factors of uncertainty and adaptability.
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Architectural context
The primary purpose of architecture~defined as the built environment of cities, including infrastructures, buildings, spaces and places--is to support and celebrate human activities. Except as a purely artistic pursuit, the basis for architecture to exist at all is to serve and preserve human values and human rights; to respond to human needs; to protect and shelter; to support, provoke, and promote human growth; and to do this in ways and means which free rather than enslave people. Modern-day architectural designs must achieve these goals in the context of a global economy, varying local cultures, and change and uncertainty, while maintaining the life-supporting qualities of our biosphere. This is not to demean the importance of aesthetics or beauty: in fact it is the essence of beauty. But no matter how beautiful architecture may be, if it degrades the natural environment, causes sickness, starves our visions, enslaves us to technology, or diminishes human potential, it is not intelligent, smart or desirable. Natural resource c o n t e x t
Architecture depends upon the availability of resources not only for its construction; it also consumes resources in its existence and use. The 1973 energy crisis brought into proper perspective our dependency on foreign resources, our inefficiencies in energy utilization, and our difficulties in coping with energy-dependent technologies. Resource management in buildings needs to be expanded to include concern for the efficient use of materials, water, and air quality, and for the impact of the built environment on the biosphere. Intelligent design must create an architecture that is sustainable within a global context. National economies exist in the context of a global economy, in which social costs need to be included. The ebb and flow of the most critical resources needed for the built environment create a global interdependency. The USA, for example, represents only 6% of the world's population, yet it consumes nearly 50% of the world's natural resources, much of which it obtains from developing countries. 1° The USA imports 80% of its most critical raw materials, half of these from countries which are not friendly to its government. 11 In addition, developing countries import the technologies, architectural forms and lifestyles of developed countries as images of improved conditions, even though these are ill-suited to their own economies and environments. The proliferation of modern architecture exported by developed countries to developing countries raises serious questions as to whether such designs are sustainable on a global basis. 12 H u m a n resource c o n t e x t
The history of civilization and technology, in the context of a manufacturing economy, speaks to the importance of the relationship between the human resource and machines. Human beings' ability to produce is expanded as innovations and knowledge expand. In manufacturing economies the relationship between man and machine has been primary, while the qualities of
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the working environment seem to have been secondary. In a service economy, however, the issues bring into play such questions as: What is the relationship necessary between human beings and the built environment, including its qualities, in order for people to be productive, creative and innovative? Today we recognize that the innovative capacity of human beings is crucial to our future. While many economists and policy makers have assumed that natural resources are finite, and that economic growth and an increasing population necessarily create a resource crisis, a functional concept of resources sees natural resources as a function of knowledge, wisdom and know-how. Resources are therefore dependent upon human innovation, which expands present resources and creates new ones, and resource scarcities result from a lack of innovation. Since human beings are the source of innovation, redefining present resources and creating new ones, they are the most important resource. In order to realize this innovative potential, we must provide environments whose qualities and performance characteristics support the human resource and its ability to innovate. These environments would include the built environment and its technologies, the natural environment and its life-sustaining qualities, and the cultural environment of knowledge, laws, capital and institutions. For an environment to support innovation it must be clean and healthy, sustaining, affordable and efficient. Its technologies and infrastructures, institutions, buildings and systems must be able to adapt and respond to the differences in human beings, including their varying activities and ever-changing physical, psychological and physiological needs. Uncertainty a n d adapatabifity
The time has passed when our cultural patterns could be predictable over a significant time period. Architecture can no longer rely on the original design-intentions for a building or assume that occupancy characteristics, use or purpose will remain as defined during the design stage. We have in our architectural vocabulary a new word: 'churn-rate', defined as the rate at which the interior of a building is completely renovated, changed, reconfigured and redesigned. Churn-rates are dependent upon a number of factors: the introduction of new technologies, changes in organizational structures due to shifts in management styles, and constant revisions of methods of production, manufacturing and distribution, and of social groupings that are created to accommodate a particular pattern of activity. These shifts create considerable uncertainty as to when, how and to what extent such changes will occur. As a result, buildings as well the spaces within them become multipurpose shared spaces in which people, activities and content are in a constant state of flux. Intelligent design suggests an architecture whose enclosures, partitions, lighting, environmental systems, spatial characteristics and qualities can adapt to these dynamic situations. What is necessary is a fundamental rethinking to define the nature and meaning of habitat, architecture and urban space in a high-flux society. The mechanistic view of the Descartian-Newtonian mindset which dominates the Western world is possessed with the idea of conquering
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nature and with controlling and predicting behaviour. 13 Central to this belief system is the need to be able to predict results. This need to predict creates the need to control. Effective control means reducing uncertainty; automating with centralized intelligent controls; legislating behaviour, style or manner; and dictating standards for health, well-being and comfort. More often than not, the result is homogeneity, sameness, and glass-box architecture which may be efficient but which is also boring, demeaning, and void of the capacity to respond to individuality, climate or cultural differences. Human discounting can only lead to revolt, destruction and creative and spiritual starvation. The mechanistic view also ignores the relationship of architecture and urban form to the natural environment. Intelligent, holistic design, on the other hand, must recognize that buildings contribute to the pollution of the indoor and outdoor environment. The bioshpere, whose qualities we seem to be bent on destroying, provides sustaining qualities in the form of natural light, clean and fresh air, solar energy, wind, moisture, and soil in which to grow our food. Intelligent design means striving to have our buildings in harmony with nature, to protect its qualities, and to recognize its dynamic qualities, whether assets or liabilities. Intelligent design recognizes that nature's assets and liabilities, in terms of intensity and occurence, are for the most part unpredictable. While we know the changes of the seasons, the diurnal and nocturnal cycles, and the rhythms of the tides, we are uncertain about the weather or the microclimate, and we cannot predict the changes in the urban context surrounding our buildings. Yet these dynamic characteristics influence our need for energy, impact environmental qualities, and determine the availability of natural resources. An idealized intelligent design in harmony with nature would have to be dynamic in its interphasing with the natural environment. The frontier: intelligent architecture
Intelligent architecture resulting from intelligent design is responsive to global and local situations, is sensitive to natural and human resources, is responsive to individual human beings and to their differences, and contributes to maintaining the quality of our biosphere. Intelligent architecture would both utilize and create a demand for scientific and technological developments, giving new meaning and potential to architecture. Based on the current state of intelligent technologies, the outline of what constitutes intelligent design, we can form a definition for intelligent building, or more appropriately, intelligent architecture: Intelligent architecture is built form capable of anticipating and responding to phenomena (situations) external and internal to enclosed space which impact the built form, occupants, and the biosphere. An intelligent architecture also provides the ways and means of managing whole-building performance, resource requirements, and outputs to provide a fully responsive environment to the ecology of the place as well as to the individual user. Based on this definition, the architecture itself, and not just its system components, would have an intelligence. We would expect that an intelligent architecture could perform the functions listed below: • Sense conditions such as weather, climate, occupancy, malfunctioning
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systems and components, temperature, humidity, illumination levels, occupant intensities and many other situations important for the building's operation and for occupants' health and well-being. • Remember information, instructions, and previous patterns of use and responses, and have the ability to learn. • Modify its physical characteristics and properties in order to respond to external conditions, programmed instructions, or instructions given by the occupant. Thus, a building's degree of transparency, thermal resistance, capacity to store thermal energy, degree of exposure, colour, texture, and other qualities could be changed. • Communicate information about itself and its performance to the occupant, building owner, or maintenance personnel. Associated would be diagnostic capabilities, self-analysis, and, through robotics, repair and maintenance. Whatever the ultimate forms of intelligent architecture, it is clear that such forms do not yet exist in a holistically integrated way. It is also clear that such forms will not emerge from narrow disciplinary investigations into intelligent technologies or from the containerizing of smart systems. The frontier is intelligent design. The following are images of intelligent architecture and are offered as possibilities for a much needed discourse.
Intelligenturban envelopes Today w e have enclosed shopping malls, large span-structures such as enclosed stadiums and exhibition halls, and covered urban streets and walkways. Tomorrow's neighbourhoods, communities, or portions of cities may be covered by large structures whose enclosures (skin) would provide protection from nature's extremes (sun, wind, snow, rain and hail), yet be removable (dynamic). W e would have buildings within a building. Such an enclosure would be designed to collect and direct water to storage, collect solar energy for the buildings within it, and modulate daylight and provide shade when needed. This enclosure would be dynamic in many respects: it would open up to the sunshine and rain in selected portions of the envelope, it would turn opaque or translucent when the temperature rose or when solar radiation became too intense, it would allow cooling breezes to move through the neighbourhood, and its structural and performance characteristics would be such that buildings within would not have to resist nature's forces individually. The dynamic urban enclosure would have an intelligence capable of receiving instructions from the community on what to do under specific conditions. Yet the individual building owner within it could instruct and control segments of the enclosure. While the rest of the community would be in shade, a person sitting on a terrace could open a portion of the envelope to get a sun tan. Since buildings within such an enclosure would no longer have to withstand wind forces, protect themselves from rain or snow, or individually overcome extreme temperatures, they could n o w be designed with much greater freedom of design and with lighter construction, and in the process conserve materials and energy and reduce cost. The cost of maintaining city streets and sidewalks in the winter would be reduced, urban spaces in
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climatic extremes could be used throughout the year, and the nature and purpose of public spaces and places would gain new meaning. Just as today's buildings share the infrastructure of streets, pavements and utility distribution systems, tomorrow's communities, enclosed in dynamic urban envelopes, would share that portion of a building's structure and enclosure which today must be provided by every single building. Buildings within the urban envelope would no longer be allowed to exhaust their fumes and sewer gases to enclosed public spaces and places. Buildings would be required to have pollution controls, and the urban envelope would protect the enclosed community from acid rain, smog, and other pollutants in the atmosphere. Liveable cities and communities would once again be a reality and members of the community would be unified through the shared dependence on this new infrastructure. Dynamic buildings Intelligent architecture might include built forms having various types of dynamic characteristics--buildings with dynamic enclosures, dynamic interiors, even the ability to rotate, move in and out of the ground, or float on or seek protection below the water, buildings with the ability to expand and contract or to open and close like flowers. We accept and understand such phenomena in nature: the trees change colour and drop their leaves and animals change the colour of their skin, or the colour or amount of their fur in response to the seasons. We even accept such dynamics in the clothing we wear. Depending on weather, anticipated activities, health, age and sex, and level of formality, we choose and control our attire carefully. Once clothed, we have the ability to add layers of clothing for warmth, remove some to be cooler, or move about to seek places of comfort. Can our buildings of tomorrow have similar qualities of self-selection and control through intelligent technologies? The answer is yes. Some of the emerging technologies enable us no longer to be limited to predetermined, static walls and windows, roofs and skylights. Tomorrow's dynamic enclosures are surfaces which have an inherent intelligence to change their physical properties according to programmed instructions or according to the instructions given by an occupant. Such an exterior enclosure, when one arrived at the office, would be totally transparent, but as the sun's intensity began to overheat the office the wall would become translucent or opaque. As the intensity of sunlight reflected on one's desk, a portion of the glass would turn opaque, shading the work area, and as the sun moved the opaque portion in the glass would keep moving with it. The glass surface could be changed to an opaque wall, whose colours or stained-glass effect could be selected by the push of a button. Depending on personal preference or energy management, the user could decide where daylight would enter a room, ie, near the ceiling, on the side, in the middle, or near the floor, for whatever reasons. As one rearranged the office interior, one could change the opacity of the wall for privacy or comfort. Similar dynamic performance patterns in relation to ventilation, sound and thermal comfort could be created. The appearance of a building's facade in the morning would be different from how it looked in the afternoon, whether due to temperature, cloudy sky, or people's needs. The new building blocks of building enclosures are no longer only
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bricks, steel, stone or traditional glass, but now include the soft technologies of the chemical and electronic age. Tomorrow's walls will be curtains of light, sound and air, both visible and invisible. Just as today we select a view and sound through our CD-player, so tomorrow we will select the spatial enclosure and its qualities. We will instruct our space how to behave under whatever situations are encountered, and we will tell it when we have changed our minds and desire a different quality. A building's dynamic enclosure will be as adaptive as the 'enclosure' we select to shield our body: clothing. Individuality will be as apparent on the exterior of a building as it is in fashion. Similar intelligent technologies can be used to create dynamic interiors. Today's fixed and difficult-to-move walls would be replaced by holograms creating visible barriers, qualities of colour and texture, and optical images. Yesterday we painted images on walls to bring them to life, expand their spatial illusions, and to create desired but permanent atmospheres. Today our walls are adorned with art objects, tapestries, paintings and posters. Tomorrow we will dial for a real-time optical image of the grand canyon, the sunset over the Indian Ocean, or project an image on our office wall showing our home's backyard where our children are playing. We will be able to enlarge, reduce and change our space, modify its qualities according to our needs and moods, and take responsibility for what we need. The dynamic enclosures and dynamic interiors, as described, assume a building structure that is more or less static in its position, configuration and orientation. Today we are familiar with rotating restaurants, floating factories and cities, houseboats, motor-homes, ocean liners (floating hotels), and saturn rockets (essentially a high-rise building) which are moved on a tractor from the assembly building to the launching pad. We have submarines, dams which move to control the tide, flying presidential suites, and high-rise structures (missiles) which move in and out of silos. Some of these technological achievements have automated pilots, computercontrolled movement systems and other intelligent controls. What can we envision from the transfer of such technologies to the context of architecture? We can envision dynamic buildings which rotate to catch the sun, wind, view, and light, or turn their 'back', or protective side, to undesirable natural phenomena or away from the noise and view we wish to avoid. We can envision buildings which move in and out of the ground, to the top of or below the water, and under or out of a protective cover in response to desirable or undesirable situations. It is common knowledge, for example, that more solar energy can be collected with a surface normal to the sun's rays. A building that is a collector of renewable energies could track the sun, or catch the wind at an ideal angle, or avoid both; such a building would be much more energy- and resource-efficient than a static building. Spaces not used could be contracted to reduce energy requirements or expanded to make them more comfortable. While we were away on holiday our homes would be safe, for they would be stored away. Dynamic structures tend to be more resource-efficient in terms of material usage and tonnage. They realize greater performance per pound, a concept naval architects and aeronautical engineers understand well. Such buildings must be not only intelligently designed, but also efficient in terms
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of weight and mass, something foreign to architects. Such buildings might even become energy producers instead of energy consumers. Personalized environments
The visions of intelligent architecture described above begin to suggest a potential for personalizing space. Today's ways and means of thermally conditioning our work and living spaces rely on HVAC systems which condition the entire building volume or the entire space to comfort levels required by occupants. Although such systems can have intelligent controls they are inadequate in terms of responding to individual differences. They condition the entire spatial volume even though only the lower portion of the space is occupied. Controls of such systems are usually not accessible to the individual, and system designers find it impossible to anticipate and design for all the conditions that can occur within a space. Nature and its unpredictable impact on interior spaces further complicate the matter. On the other hand, we are familiar with portable heaters and fans, electric heating blankets, battery-heated ski boots, task-lighting, portable and personal radios, vibrating chairs and beds, and may other forms of personalized technologies. In Europe and the USA there are some isolated developments of personalized environments, including task comfort systems, ie, individually controlled workstations. Occupants have their own systems through which they can control temperature, humidity, direction and velocity of fresh air, lighting, acoustics and radiant temperature. The system shuts down when not occupied, conserving energy, and its performance does not interfere with the personalized environment at the adjacent desk. Such systems are today's reality. They suggest an intelligent architecture with heterogeneous environmental systems, places and spaces that provide different environmental qualities throughout a building. They suggest that the systems protecting a building's integrity or its furnishings and equipment are different from those providing comfort to the human being. Tomorrow's intelligent architecture may even include furniture with integral and controllable thermal and luminous qualities. And the clothing worn by occupants may have its own thermal flexibility and system, controlled by the person wearing it. Free-standing and mobile personalized environments would be provided by employers just as desk, computers, and typewriters are today. Most of all we could devote our time to being productive and creative instead of complaining to our employer or maintenance person about systems which do not meet our personal needs. Conclusions
As a cultural mirror, architecture reflects the values of our cultures as well as our aspirations for quality living. It communicates to us the values and priorities we hold in regard to the human resource and its conditions, the care we exercise in maintaining a healthy biosphere, whether or not we are enjoying life at the expense of fellow human beings, and whether or not we control or are controlled by architectural technology. The character and qualities of architecture, as defined, also inform us on the extent to which
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we, individually and collectively, can innovate, create new knowledge, and solve and seek problems, or whether the design of our environments demands so much time, energy, and resources that little is left to innovate and to develop creative visions of the future. Architecture must change, for it cannot continue to ignore the significance of the human resource. It must change because its resource consumption patterns are inefficient and wasteful and its by-products contribute to the destruction of our biosphere. It is at risk because the competition for resources by both the developed and developing nations will increase the need for more efficient ways of using these resources. Architecture is also the incubator in which innovations emerge, making it central to our future. Intelligent design is the practice wherein the meanings of 'less is more', 'performance per pound', and 'small is beautiful' are explored. The central theme in the discussion above suggests that: • new technologies and scientific discoveries with which we can envision and design intelligent architecture are available to us today; • new architectural theories are emerging, redefining the nature of work and living; • the indivudual's role in society is changing from being part of a producing and consuming mass of people to being a creative entity; • the rights of the individual will increasingly determine the nature and quality of space and place; and • the resource-equity issue is not just a question of efficiency but is a challenge for creativity. Thus, the central issue becomes: What is architecture, and what is the role of the architect in the design of the future? Is the role to dictate style and degree of comfort and to predetermine the rate at which the built environment consumes our time, energy, money and resources? Can architecture really know who we, the users of the built environment, are, what our aspirations and needs are, and what we hope to become? Can architecture know what these things mean in terms of space, place and environmental qualities? Is our freedom to participate in making a place for ourselves limited to choosing the colour of paint, selecting the furniture, turning on the lights and setting the thermostat? Despite all of the scientific knowledge we possess about nutritional needs, would we agree to a legislated diet, a predetermined and singlechoice menu, and even to relinquish our choice as to the time when we eat? Would we agree to and tolerate being told what to wear and when? If our answers to these questions are 'No', why is it that we tolerate these patterns in architecture? We could probably agree that such an approach is neither acceptable, nor intelligent by design. One would expect that for a while the professions of architecture will continue to design a marginally intelligent environment; that patronage architecture will continue to occupy and dominate our urban museums, our cities; that the high-tech architect will continue to toy with invention and gadgetry for the purpose of aesthetic possibilities; and that the user of spaces and places will be largely ignored, as will the destruction of our biosphere. There are likely to emerge, however, visionary and creative architects, creators of sustainable designs, artists who can work with
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intelligent technologies, not as containerized technology, but as a means towards an intelligent architecture. They would design an architecture which would inform and redefine culture, transforming the meaning of work and living from labouring and surviving to a passion for creative pursuits. The new architects will no longer be the intelligentsia for the masses, dictating style, fashion, taste and 'good design'. Instead, they will provide us with the ways and means to create our own spaces and places and their environmental qualities. Intelligent architecture will become the means to our individual and collective ends. Architecture itself will become the stimulator, provoker, teacher and challenger, and we, the users and occupants, will become the designers of the theatre of life in which our individual growth towards self-esteem and self-actualization can be realized. Intelligent architecture is the frontier that cannot only be very smart, but more importantly, can be responsive, gentle, humane, sensitive, caring and nurturing. It can model desirable human qualities. This, then, is the challenge for intelligent design, a challenge to each of us as designers of the future. Will we insist, by the power invested in us through historic precedent, on perpetuating the creation of high-tech prisons, or will we liberate ourselves and members of our society? And will we embark on a journey to develop an intelligent future, with an intelligent architecture which is freeing, open, soft, sensuous, responsive, touchable, and always in the process of becoming? Notes and references
1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13.
'Toyerism' is, to my knowledge, a word I have coined. I use it to mean 'the childlike fascination of adults with the making of useless or of-little-vlaue objects and the search for their application in society'. For example, the Intelligent Buildings Institute, Washington, DC, and the International Intelligent Buildings Association, Washington, DC. Among them, the international conference on Intelligent Buildings, held at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, Rueschlikon/Zurich, Switzerland, 1986; the conference on Building Controls and Intelligent Buildings, held at Drexel University, Phitadelphis, PA, USA, 1986; the O R B I T conference, held in Tokyo in 1988; and the Berlinmodell Industriekultur, West Berlin, Germany, May 1988. R. J. Caffrey, Chairman, Intelligent Building Institute (IBI), Washington, DC, publicity material provided by IBI, 1986. Ibid. National Research Council, Electronically Enhanced Office Buildings (Washington, DC, August 1988). Ibid. B. Berglund et al, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, August 20-24, 7984, Stockholm, Sweden (Stockholm, Sweden, Swedish Council for Building Research, 1984). Building Research Board, Controls for Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning Systems, (Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 1988); P. Kroeling, "Gesundheits- und Befindensst6rungen in Klimatisierten Gebauden, (Munich, West Germany, W. Zuckschwerdt Verlag, 1985); W. Kroner, The N e w Frontier: Environments for Innovation, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Advanced Comfort Systems for the Work Environment, May 1-3 1988, Troy, NY, USA Center for Architectural Research, Rensselaer. World Resources Institute, World Resources 7988-1989 (New York, Basic Books, 1988). G. O. Barney, The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century Volume One (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1980). L. Brown, Building a Sustainable Society (New York, W. W. Norton, 1981). F. Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (London, Collins 1985).
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THE NEW FRONTIER Intelligent architecture through intelligent design Walter M. Kroner
This paper explores the dichotomy between intelligent buildings as containers of smart technologies and the potential for an intelligent architecture responsive to cultural shifts, resource issues, and human potential.
Architecture is a mirror of culture. As such, it reflects cutural values and qualities of life, it confronts and challenges our ways and means, and its images are witness to the relationships beween people and nature. Architecture can enslave or enlighten, provoke or perpetuate, and contribute to or diminish the quality of our lives. Architecture shapes the character of cities and communities and in doing so profoundly influences the human condition. Architecture can also be a critic of, and genesis for, technological developments. Replicating historical architectural models with modern technology may either reflect the timelessness of significant designs or a lack of creative vision; new visions of architecture, using new technologies, may reflect either toyerism I or the emergence of cultural paradigm shifts. The development of smart technologies, having a form of artificial intelligence (AI), has lead to the emergence of a new architectural concept: the 'intelligent building'. National and international organizations committed to its development have formed, 2 and a host of conferences, seminars, and symposia have debated its potential and its merits, s In essence, an intelligent building is one in which various systems (heating, cooling, lighting, communication and information, transportation , and so on) are automated and electronically controlled to manage resources (energy, data, information, productivity, and so on) effectively in a coordinated and efficient manner. 4 An examination of the literature on the subject reveals that the focus of the debate on intelligent buildings is not whether these buildings
Walter M. Kroner is a Professor and Director of the Center for Architectural Research, School of Architecture, RensselaerPolytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA.
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are intelligent, but how to integrate these smart technologies into traditional forms of buildings. The purpose of this article is to suggest that current forms of intelligent buildings are not very smart, but that smart technologies provide the opportunity for paradigm shifts in architecture as well as in the ways we live and work. These paradigm shifts will only be realized if the debate on intelligent buildings is expanded to focus on fundamental cultural, global, and contextual design issues relevant to architecture. It is hypothesized that such an expanded debate will lead to intelligent design producing an intelligent architecture for our future. An historical perspective
From an architectural perspective, intelligent buildings are not new. Primitive and indigenous forms of architecture exhibited sophisticated forms of intelligent design. These designs were intelligent because of their intimate relationship between the occupant and the technologies of built form. This intimate relationship was designed into the building by giving the user the capacity to interact with the building's various systems. The user could adjust, modify and adapt the building to changing situations, whether they were social, functional, or natural phenomena. Comfort, utility, and delight were achieved by the user's ingenuity in manipulating built form. The occupant was thus a critical element in the design and use of the building, and without the occupant's presence the building neither functioned nor had any intelligence. This continuous interaction between user and building (including its technologies) was responsive--it was intelligent architecture. Neither building nor user was complete, whole, or effective without the other. Historic examples of such intelligent built forms are many. The American Indian's tepee was capable of being changed to adapt to weather, location and function. Its wall composition could be modified by adding or subtracting layers of animal skins and straw mats to respond to climate and human comfort. The enclosure of an Eskimo's igloo could be changed with a knife to bring in daylight at desired locations, and the walls could be modified as in the Indian tepee. The traditional Japanese farmhouse with its moveable exterior walls and s h o j i screens could be modified to change space size and qualities and to respond to physical, psychological or physiological needs. Intelligent designs or pre-industrial architecture produced sensitive and sustainable forms unique to culture and place. They were built from locally available resources and were responsive to nature's assets such as sun, wind, soil and precipitation to create comfort and to provide safety and a sense of well-being. Before the advent of modern versions of heating and air-conditioning systems, the building user could operate windows and window shutters, and portable and personalized means of warming, cooling, and lighting allowed the individual to meet his or her unique requirements. These examples exhibited an intelligent and sensitive design which was responsive to user, place and context. These forms of experiencing architecture created a user-friendly relationship between occupant and architectural technology. Today's versions of intelligent buildings, in contrast, are autonomous
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from user interactions, for they can function and be managed with or without the presence of the occupant--their 'intelligence' is provided through the technology of automation. Early versions of intelligent technologies include thermostats, time-clock controlled light switches and water heaters, infrared sensors for detecting intrusion and for operating controls, self-defrosting freezers, and programmable ovens. Today we have electrical systems that recognize the difference between the coffee maker and a child sticking a metal object into the electrical outlet, and thus provide safety. We can telephone our home to receive our phone messages, turn on the oven, adjust the thermostat, and have the chicken cooked when we arrive. The electronic door-lock recognizes who should be allowed to enter, and calls security if someone is trying to intrude who shouldn't. While we are watching television the programme may be interrupted by the building's diagnostic system telling us that the refrigerator is not defrosting or that the motor on the water pump is malfunctioning.
Today's intelligent building The electronic and computer age of the technological revolution has introduced telecommunications, miniaturization, micromechanics, digital systems, and technologies, materials, and systems containing an AI. Buildings incorporating these advances are referred to as 'intelligent'. The Intelligent Buildings Institute in Washington DC defines an intelligent building as follows: s . . . one which integrates various systems (such as lighting, HVAC, voice and data communications, and other building functions) to effectively manage resources in a coordinated mode to maximize occupant performance, investment and operating cost-savings, and flexibility. Various levels of intelligence are provided through interactive controls and communications devices driven by either central or distributed micro-chip intelligence, and employing sensing devices and interactive distribution media. Shared tenant services, primarily a voice and data telecommunications function shared among various independent users, is a component of intelligent buildings. Another term for such buildings is the 'electronically enhanced building'. The National Research Council, Washington, DC, defines electronically enhanced office buildings as: 6 buildings [which are] equipped with the electronic and physical infrastructure to support the use of advanced communication, data processing, and control technologies by its occupants and operating personnel. Such a building is equipped with the necessary wires, cables, ducts, power supply, heating, ventilating, cooling, illumination, noise suppression, and security systems to support the performance requirements of today's office environment. Examples of modern technologies that enhance the performance capabilities of such buildings include mainframe computers, minicomputers, and microcomputers; voice, video, and data telecommunications; internal (local area) communication networks; automated (computerized) workstations; and a variety of automated building sensors and control systems that can enhance performance. These include systems that:
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• sense human presence in a particular part of the building and turn on lights and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems; • activate elevators; • alert security and fire alarm systems; • sense the intensity and angle of exterior light and respond by adjusting interior lighting systems, window louvers, visual (as well as thermal) building envelope characteristics, etc, to provide specified levels of illumination qualities; • sense outside temperature and respond by turning on the HVAC system sufficiently far in advance of the arrival of occupants to ensure a comfortable thermal environment; • automatically increase the ventilation rate when tobacco smoke or noxious odours are detected; • distribute electric power to computers on demand or in accordance with a preset priority schedule and automatically activate reserve batteries or emergency generators when electric power fails to meet present standards; or • automatically select the least-cost carrier or route when a long-distance telephone call is placed. 7 A review of the most current literature on the subject of intelligent or electronically enhanced buildings shows that the most important design issues seem to involve the integration of hardware, power consumption, service access, switching techniques, and requirements for space and other technical-fit issues.
Intelligent buildings as containerized technology This preoccupation with integrating smart technologies within our traditional forms of architecture is a matter of fit, rather than creative design. The issues are how to 'package' smart technology in an already designed container. Thus we have containerized technology in buildings. It is simply an engineering, construction, and economic-fit problem and has little to do with fundamental issues of architecture. The current phase of the technological revolution began around 25 years ago. If we compare the architecture of the 1950s to the architecture of today's intelligent building there is no visible difference in form, enclosure, interior, or even in how we experience the spaces. The glass building is still a glass box, the horizontally spread manufacturing building is still a concrete slab with flat roof and metal enclosure, and apartments and houses look and feel the same as they did 40 years ago. The smart technology lies hidden in the floors, pipes, ducts and ceilings, so that there is no visible evidence of a changed architecture. The only visible evidence is in old technologies, like venetian blinds, that seem to move without human intervention. Even the technological systems of heating, cooling, lighting and elevator technology have not changed; only their sensor and control systems have changed. There are, however, instances where scientific and technological advances have significantly changed architecture and have caused paradigm shifts in our culture. For example, the transformation of our cities by the
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car, telephone, and television has changed where, how, and when we live, work, and recreate. Electricity and the light bulb have changed architecture as well as our definitions of work, productivity, and the relationship between people and technology. The invention of the elevator combined with advances in steel construction have allowed us to create vertical cities and high-rise apartments and have increased the density of our liveable space. Glass and curtain-wall construction has created glass towers--an architecture of transparency and intrusion. Has smart technology caused transformations of such scale and proportion? Not yet. Has it changed the way we work, live and play? Of course. Is the smart technology of AI, robotics, composite materials and computing likely to change the way we design our communities and their buildings? Almost certainly. Architecture's claim to fame, for the last 50 years, is that it has successfully containerized plumbing, HVAC and electricity, replaced stairs with elevators and escalators, exploited the use of glass, and sandwiched and packaged different materials and the modern-day wonders of electronics. To my knowledge, there is no significant invention or innovation that architecture can claim for itself in the last 100 years. Architecture has become successful in adapting technology invented by other industrial and professional sectors, and in exploiting the aesthetic potential of packaging technology.
How smart are today's intelligent buildings? There is little argument that today's buildings are, or can be, electronically enhanced. The examples previously cited are evidence that today's buildings, marvellous examples of automated and programmed systems, are technologically sophisticated and efficient in terms of energy management. But are they the product of intelligent design and can they be considered to be intelligent buildings? One of Webster's definitions of intelligence is: 'The power of meeting a novel situation successfully by adjusting one's behaviour to the total situation'. On the basis of this definition, it would appear that an intelligent building would have characteristics and qualities that would allow it to interact with and respond to situations similarly to the ways that human beings respond to their natural surroundings. It would suggest an intimate and harmonious relationship between the individual and the building. We would expect that such a building would exhibit caring qualities for the people who own and use it, whatever their priorities, values and needs, and, conversely, that people would care about the building. If a building exhibited intelligence it might change throughout its existence as a result of its relationship with human beings. We could argue that intelligent buildings exhibit the same responsive capacity as that found in plants which change their configuration, orientation or other characteristics in response to night and day, moisture, and the seasons, or in animals which change their skin, fur, metabolism or behaviour in response to the seasons or to danger. Based on the above interpretation of intelligence it is clear that at present there are intelligent building technologies and some intelligent building systems. Buildings that contain such systems and technologies
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could certainly be classified as electronically enhanced, or as containing intelligent systems and technologies. The building itself, however, in a holistic sense is neither intelligent nor smart. Just as buildings containing plumbing, electric lights and air-conditioning are not necessarily healthy buildings--as demonstrated by the current sick building syndromea--so buildings containing intelligent technologies are not necessarily intelligent buildings.
Intelligent buildings require intelligent design The definition of intelligence above refers to 'meeting novel situations successfully', which in the context of intelligent architecture simply means that the building should have or provide the ability to respond to the situations it and its users encounter. Today's intelligent technologies are able to respond to situations as defined by a building's owner, building codes and standards, and safety requirements. Thus we can manage a building's resource requirements (energy) according to the priorities of the owner, but not necessarily those of the user. The building itself, its structure, walls, roofs, floors, partitions, finishes and windows cannot respond to different situations encountered. Recent studies of buildings with intelligent systems indicate that these buildings provide inadequate and problematic responses to situations encountered. 9 Despite their intelligent technologies, these buildings have HVAC systems that don't work, environments that make people sick, energy efficiencies that make it difficult for people to be productive or healthy, and smart technologies that are difficult to understand, maintain or operate. Intelligent and responsive designs should not create such situations. In part, these problems exist because we take a rather narrowly focused approach to the design of the built environment. Architects relegate technological issues to specialists without understanding problems and opportunities for integrated and holistic thinking. The humanist is not a critical part of the design team, and the user's needs are secondary to budgets, construction schedules and energy management. Instead of designing an architecture in harmony with nature, we continue to see nature as something to be overcome or conquered. We recognize the complexity, uncertainty and difficulty of predicting human behaviour in buildings, so we use smart technology to discount the user. These are not the reflections of intelligent design. Given the existence of smart technologies, the rapid developments in robotics, the creation of totally new materials, the advances in communication and information systems and the potential for transferring technologies from other fields, we are challenged to revisit our traditional design approaches. If there is ever to be an intelligent architecture, architecture needs firstly an intelligence in design which responds to the cultural, environmental and technological contexts of the present and the future. Intelligent design requires that we respond to the architectural context, the natural resource context, the human resource context, and factors of uncertainty and adaptability.
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Architectural context
The primary purpose of architecture~defined as the built environment of cities, including infrastructures, buildings, spaces and places--is to support and celebrate human activities. Except as a purely artistic pursuit, the basis for architecture to exist at all is to serve and preserve human values and human rights; to respond to human needs; to protect and shelter; to support, provoke, and promote human growth; and to do this in ways and means which free rather than enslave people. Modern-day architectural designs must achieve these goals in the context of a global economy, varying local cultures, and change and uncertainty, while maintaining the life-supporting qualities of our biosphere. This is not to demean the importance of aesthetics or beauty: in fact it is the essence of beauty. But no matter how beautiful architecture may be, if it degrades the natural environment, causes sickness, starves our visions, enslaves us to technology, or diminishes human potential, it is not intelligent, smart or desirable. Natural resource c o n t e x t
Architecture depends upon the availability of resources not only for its construction; it also consumes resources in its existence and use. The 1973 energy crisis brought into proper perspective our dependency on foreign resources, our inefficiencies in energy utilization, and our difficulties in coping with energy-dependent technologies. Resource management in buildings needs to be expanded to include concern for the efficient use of materials, water, and air quality, and for the impact of the built environment on the biosphere. Intelligent design must create an architecture that is sustainable within a global context. National economies exist in the context of a global economy, in which social costs need to be included. The ebb and flow of the most critical resources needed for the built environment create a global interdependency. The USA, for example, represents only 6% of the world's population, yet it consumes nearly 50% of the world's natural resources, much of which it obtains from developing countries. 1° The USA imports 80% of its most critical raw materials, half of these from countries which are not friendly to its government. 11 In addition, developing countries import the technologies, architectural forms and lifestyles of developed countries as images of improved conditions, even though these are ill-suited to their own economies and environments. The proliferation of modern architecture exported by developed countries to developing countries raises serious questions as to whether such designs are sustainable on a global basis. 12 H u m a n resource c o n t e x t
The history of civilization and technology, in the context of a manufacturing economy, speaks to the importance of the relationship between the human resource and machines. Human beings' ability to produce is expanded as innovations and knowledge expand. In manufacturing economies the relationship between man and machine has been primary, while the qualities of
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the working environment seem to have been secondary. In a service economy, however, the issues bring into play such questions as: What is the relationship necessary between human beings and the built environment, including its qualities, in order for people to be productive, creative and innovative? Today we recognize that the innovative capacity of human beings is crucial to our future. While many economists and policy makers have assumed that natural resources are finite, and that economic growth and an increasing population necessarily create a resource crisis, a functional concept of resources sees natural resources as a function of knowledge, wisdom and know-how. Resources are therefore dependent upon human innovation, which expands present resources and creates new ones, and resource scarcities result from a lack of innovation. Since human beings are the source of innovation, redefining present resources and creating new ones, they are the most important resource. In order to realize this innovative potential, we must provide environments whose qualities and performance characteristics support the human resource and its ability to innovate. These environments would include the built environment and its technologies, the natural environment and its life-sustaining qualities, and the cultural environment of knowledge, laws, capital and institutions. For an environment to support innovation it must be clean and healthy, sustaining, affordable and efficient. Its technologies and infrastructures, institutions, buildings and systems must be able to adapt and respond to the differences in human beings, including their varying activities and ever-changing physical, psychological and physiological needs. Uncertainty a n d adapatabifity
The time has passed when our cultural patterns could be predictable over a significant time period. Architecture can no longer rely on the original design-intentions for a building or assume that occupancy characteristics, use or purpose will remain as defined during the design stage. We have in our architectural vocabulary a new word: 'churn-rate', defined as the rate at which the interior of a building is completely renovated, changed, reconfigured and redesigned. Churn-rates are dependent upon a number of factors: the introduction of new technologies, changes in organizational structures due to shifts in management styles, and constant revisions of methods of production, manufacturing and distribution, and of social groupings that are created to accommodate a particular pattern of activity. These shifts create considerable uncertainty as to when, how and to what extent such changes will occur. As a result, buildings as well the spaces within them become multipurpose shared spaces in which people, activities and content are in a constant state of flux. Intelligent design suggests an architecture whose enclosures, partitions, lighting, environmental systems, spatial characteristics and qualities can adapt to these dynamic situations. What is necessary is a fundamental rethinking to define the nature and meaning of habitat, architecture and urban space in a high-flux society. The mechanistic view of the Descartian-Newtonian mindset which dominates the Western world is possessed with the idea of conquering
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nature and with controlling and predicting behaviour. 13 Central to this belief system is the need to be able to predict results. This need to predict creates the need to control. Effective control means reducing uncertainty; automating with centralized intelligent controls; legislating behaviour, style or manner; and dictating standards for health, well-being and comfort. More often than not, the result is homogeneity, sameness, and glass-box architecture which may be efficient but which is also boring, demeaning, and void of the capacity to respond to individuality, climate or cultural differences. Human discounting can only lead to revolt, destruction and creative and spiritual starvation. The mechanistic view also ignores the relationship of architecture and urban form to the natural environment. Intelligent, holistic design, on the other hand, must recognize that buildings contribute to the pollution of the indoor and outdoor environment. The bioshpere, whose qualities we seem to be bent on destroying, provides sustaining qualities in the form of natural light, clean and fresh air, solar energy, wind, moisture, and soil in which to grow our food. Intelligent design means striving to have our buildings in harmony with nature, to protect its qualities, and to recognize its dynamic qualities, whether assets or liabilities. Intelligent design recognizes that nature's assets and liabilities, in terms of intensity and occurence, are for the most part unpredictable. While we know the changes of the seasons, the diurnal and nocturnal cycles, and the rhythms of the tides, we are uncertain about the weather or the microclimate, and we cannot predict the changes in the urban context surrounding our buildings. Yet these dynamic characteristics influence our need for energy, impact environmental qualities, and determine the availability of natural resources. An idealized intelligent design in harmony with nature would have to be dynamic in its interphasing with the natural environment. The frontier: intelligent architecture
Intelligent architecture resulting from intelligent design is responsive to global and local situations, is sensitive to natural and human resources, is responsive to individual human beings and to their differences, and contributes to maintaining the quality of our biosphere. Intelligent architecture would both utilize and create a demand for scientific and technological developments, giving new meaning and potential to architecture. Based on the current state of intelligent technologies, the outline of what constitutes intelligent design, we can form a definition for intelligent building, or more appropriately, intelligent architecture: Intelligent architecture is built form capable of anticipating and responding to phenomena (situations) external and internal to enclosed space which impact the built form, occupants, and the biosphere. An intelligent architecture also provides the ways and means of managing whole-building performance, resource requirements, and outputs to provide a fully responsive environment to the ecology of the place as well as to the individual user. Based on this definition, the architecture itself, and not just its system components, would have an intelligence. We would expect that an intelligent architecture could perform the functions listed below: • Sense conditions such as weather, climate, occupancy, malfunctioning
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systems and components, temperature, humidity, illumination levels, occupant intensities and many other situations important for the building's operation and for occupants' health and well-being. • Remember information, instructions, and previous patterns of use and responses, and have the ability to learn. • Modify its physical characteristics and properties in order to respond to external conditions, programmed instructions, or instructions given by the occupant. Thus, a building's degree of transparency, thermal resistance, capacity to store thermal energy, degree of exposure, colour, texture, and other qualities could be changed. • Communicate information about itself and its performance to the occupant, building owner, or maintenance personnel. Associated would be diagnostic capabilities, self-analysis, and, through robotics, repair and maintenance. Whatever the ultimate forms of intelligent architecture, it is clear that such forms do not yet exist in a holistically integrated way. It is also clear that such forms will not emerge from narrow disciplinary investigations into intelligent technologies or from the containerizing of smart systems. The frontier is intelligent design. The following are images of intelligent architecture and are offered as possibilities for a much needed discourse.
Intelligenturban envelopes Today w e have enclosed shopping malls, large span-structures such as enclosed stadiums and exhibition halls, and covered urban streets and walkways. Tomorrow's neighbourhoods, communities, or portions of cities may be covered by large structures whose enclosures (skin) would provide protection from nature's extremes (sun, wind, snow, rain and hail), yet be removable (dynamic). W e would have buildings within a building. Such an enclosure would be designed to collect and direct water to storage, collect solar energy for the buildings within it, and modulate daylight and provide shade when needed. This enclosure would be dynamic in many respects: it would open up to the sunshine and rain in selected portions of the envelope, it would turn opaque or translucent when the temperature rose or when solar radiation became too intense, it would allow cooling breezes to move through the neighbourhood, and its structural and performance characteristics would be such that buildings within would not have to resist nature's forces individually. The dynamic urban enclosure would have an intelligence capable of receiving instructions from the community on what to do under specific conditions. Yet the individual building owner within it could instruct and control segments of the enclosure. While the rest of the community would be in shade, a person sitting on a terrace could open a portion of the envelope to get a sun tan. Since buildings within such an enclosure would no longer have to withstand wind forces, protect themselves from rain or snow, or individually overcome extreme temperatures, they could n o w be designed with much greater freedom of design and with lighter construction, and in the process conserve materials and energy and reduce cost. The cost of maintaining city streets and sidewalks in the winter would be reduced, urban spaces in
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climatic extremes could be used throughout the year, and the nature and purpose of public spaces and places would gain new meaning. Just as today's buildings share the infrastructure of streets, pavements and utility distribution systems, tomorrow's communities, enclosed in dynamic urban envelopes, would share that portion of a building's structure and enclosure which today must be provided by every single building. Buildings within the urban envelope would no longer be allowed to exhaust their fumes and sewer gases to enclosed public spaces and places. Buildings would be required to have pollution controls, and the urban envelope would protect the enclosed community from acid rain, smog, and other pollutants in the atmosphere. Liveable cities and communities would once again be a reality and members of the community would be unified through the shared dependence on this new infrastructure. Dynamic buildings Intelligent architecture might include built forms having various types of dynamic characteristics--buildings with dynamic enclosures, dynamic interiors, even the ability to rotate, move in and out of the ground, or float on or seek protection below the water, buildings with the ability to expand and contract or to open and close like flowers. We accept and understand such phenomena in nature: the trees change colour and drop their leaves and animals change the colour of their skin, or the colour or amount of their fur in response to the seasons. We even accept such dynamics in the clothing we wear. Depending on weather, anticipated activities, health, age and sex, and level of formality, we choose and control our attire carefully. Once clothed, we have the ability to add layers of clothing for warmth, remove some to be cooler, or move about to seek places of comfort. Can our buildings of tomorrow have similar qualities of self-selection and control through intelligent technologies? The answer is yes. Some of the emerging technologies enable us no longer to be limited to predetermined, static walls and windows, roofs and skylights. Tomorrow's dynamic enclosures are surfaces which have an inherent intelligence to change their physical properties according to programmed instructions or according to the instructions given by an occupant. Such an exterior enclosure, when one arrived at the office, would be totally transparent, but as the sun's intensity began to overheat the office the wall would become translucent or opaque. As the intensity of sunlight reflected on one's desk, a portion of the glass would turn opaque, shading the work area, and as the sun moved the opaque portion in the glass would keep moving with it. The glass surface could be changed to an opaque wall, whose colours or stained-glass effect could be selected by the push of a button. Depending on personal preference or energy management, the user could decide where daylight would enter a room, ie, near the ceiling, on the side, in the middle, or near the floor, for whatever reasons. As one rearranged the office interior, one could change the opacity of the wall for privacy or comfort. Similar dynamic performance patterns in relation to ventilation, sound and thermal comfort could be created. The appearance of a building's facade in the morning would be different from how it looked in the afternoon, whether due to temperature, cloudy sky, or people's needs. The new building blocks of building enclosures are no longer only
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bricks, steel, stone or traditional glass, but now include the soft technologies of the chemical and electronic age. Tomorrow's walls will be curtains of light, sound and air, both visible and invisible. Just as today we select a view and sound through our CD-player, so tomorrow we will select the spatial enclosure and its qualities. We will instruct our space how to behave under whatever situations are encountered, and we will tell it when we have changed our minds and desire a different quality. A building's dynamic enclosure will be as adaptive as the 'enclosure' we select to shield our body: clothing. Individuality will be as apparent on the exterior of a building as it is in fashion. Similar intelligent technologies can be used to create dynamic interiors. Today's fixed and difficult-to-move walls would be replaced by holograms creating visible barriers, qualities of colour and texture, and optical images. Yesterday we painted images on walls to bring them to life, expand their spatial illusions, and to create desired but permanent atmospheres. Today our walls are adorned with art objects, tapestries, paintings and posters. Tomorrow we will dial for a real-time optical image of the grand canyon, the sunset over the Indian Ocean, or project an image on our office wall showing our home's backyard where our children are playing. We will be able to enlarge, reduce and change our space, modify its qualities according to our needs and moods, and take responsibility for what we need. The dynamic enclosures and dynamic interiors, as described, assume a building structure that is more or less static in its position, configuration and orientation. Today we are familiar with rotating restaurants, floating factories and cities, houseboats, motor-homes, ocean liners (floating hotels), and saturn rockets (essentially a high-rise building) which are moved on a tractor from the assembly building to the launching pad. We have submarines, dams which move to control the tide, flying presidential suites, and high-rise structures (missiles) which move in and out of silos. Some of these technological achievements have automated pilots, computercontrolled movement systems and other intelligent controls. What can we envision from the transfer of such technologies to the context of architecture? We can envision dynamic buildings which rotate to catch the sun, wind, view, and light, or turn their 'back', or protective side, to undesirable natural phenomena or away from the noise and view we wish to avoid. We can envision buildings which move in and out of the ground, to the top of or below the water, and under or out of a protective cover in response to desirable or undesirable situations. It is common knowledge, for example, that more solar energy can be collected with a surface normal to the sun's rays. A building that is a collector of renewable energies could track the sun, or catch the wind at an ideal angle, or avoid both; such a building would be much more energy- and resource-efficient than a static building. Spaces not used could be contracted to reduce energy requirements or expanded to make them more comfortable. While we were away on holiday our homes would be safe, for they would be stored away. Dynamic structures tend to be more resource-efficient in terms of material usage and tonnage. They realize greater performance per pound, a concept naval architects and aeronautical engineers understand well. Such buildings must be not only intelligently designed, but also efficient in terms
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of weight and mass, something foreign to architects. Such buildings might even become energy producers instead of energy consumers. Personalized environments
The visions of intelligent architecture described above begin to suggest a potential for personalizing space. Today's ways and means of thermally conditioning our work and living spaces rely on HVAC systems which condition the entire building volume or the entire space to comfort levels required by occupants. Although such systems can have intelligent controls they are inadequate in terms of responding to individual differences. They condition the entire spatial volume even though only the lower portion of the space is occupied. Controls of such systems are usually not accessible to the individual, and system designers find it impossible to anticipate and design for all the conditions that can occur within a space. Nature and its unpredictable impact on interior spaces further complicate the matter. On the other hand, we are familiar with portable heaters and fans, electric heating blankets, battery-heated ski boots, task-lighting, portable and personal radios, vibrating chairs and beds, and may other forms of personalized technologies. In Europe and the USA there are some isolated developments of personalized environments, including task comfort systems, ie, individually controlled workstations. Occupants have their own systems through which they can control temperature, humidity, direction and velocity of fresh air, lighting, acoustics and radiant temperature. The system shuts down when not occupied, conserving energy, and its performance does not interfere with the personalized environment at the adjacent desk. Such systems are today's reality. They suggest an intelligent architecture with heterogeneous environmental systems, places and spaces that provide different environmental qualities throughout a building. They suggest that the systems protecting a building's integrity or its furnishings and equipment are different from those providing comfort to the human being. Tomorrow's intelligent architecture may even include furniture with integral and controllable thermal and luminous qualities. And the clothing worn by occupants may have its own thermal flexibility and system, controlled by the person wearing it. Free-standing and mobile personalized environments would be provided by employers just as desk, computers, and typewriters are today. Most of all we could devote our time to being productive and creative instead of complaining to our employer or maintenance person about systems which do not meet our personal needs. Conclusions
As a cultural mirror, architecture reflects the values of our cultures as well as our aspirations for quality living. It communicates to us the values and priorities we hold in regard to the human resource and its conditions, the care we exercise in maintaining a healthy biosphere, whether or not we are enjoying life at the expense of fellow human beings, and whether or not we control or are controlled by architectural technology. The character and qualities of architecture, as defined, also inform us on the extent to which
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we, individually and collectively, can innovate, create new knowledge, and solve and seek problems, or whether the design of our environments demands so much time, energy, and resources that little is left to innovate and to develop creative visions of the future. Architecture must change, for it cannot continue to ignore the significance of the human resource. It must change because its resource consumption patterns are inefficient and wasteful and its by-products contribute to the destruction of our biosphere. It is at risk because the competition for resources by both the developed and developing nations will increase the need for more efficient ways of using these resources. Architecture is also the incubator in which innovations emerge, making it central to our future. Intelligent design is the practice wherein the meanings of 'less is more', 'performance per pound', and 'small is beautiful' are explored. The central theme in the discussion above suggests that: • new technologies and scientific discoveries with which we can envision and design intelligent architecture are available to us today; • new architectural theories are emerging, redefining the nature of work and living; • the indivudual's role in society is changing from being part of a producing and consuming mass of people to being a creative entity; • the rights of the individual will increasingly determine the nature and quality of space and place; and • the resource-equity issue is not just a question of efficiency but is a challenge for creativity. Thus, the central issue becomes: What is architecture, and what is the role of the architect in the design of the future? Is the role to dictate style and degree of comfort and to predetermine the rate at which the built environment consumes our time, energy, money and resources? Can architecture really know who we, the users of the built environment, are, what our aspirations and needs are, and what we hope to become? Can architecture know what these things mean in terms of space, place and environmental qualities? Is our freedom to participate in making a place for ourselves limited to choosing the colour of paint, selecting the furniture, turning on the lights and setting the thermostat? Despite all of the scientific knowledge we possess about nutritional needs, would we agree to a legislated diet, a predetermined and singlechoice menu, and even to relinquish our choice as to the time when we eat? Would we agree to and tolerate being told what to wear and when? If our answers to these questions are 'No', why is it that we tolerate these patterns in architecture? We could probably agree that such an approach is neither acceptable, nor intelligent by design. One would expect that for a while the professions of architecture will continue to design a marginally intelligent environment; that patronage architecture will continue to occupy and dominate our urban museums, our cities; that the high-tech architect will continue to toy with invention and gadgetry for the purpose of aesthetic possibilities; and that the user of spaces and places will be largely ignored, as will the destruction of our biosphere. There are likely to emerge, however, visionary and creative architects, creators of sustainable designs, artists who can work with
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intelligent technologies, not as containerized technology, but as a means towards an intelligent architecture. They would design an architecture which would inform and redefine culture, transforming the meaning of work and living from labouring and surviving to a passion for creative pursuits. The new architects will no longer be the intelligentsia for the masses, dictating style, fashion, taste and 'good design'. Instead, they will provide us with the ways and means to create our own spaces and places and their environmental qualities. Intelligent architecture will become the means to our individual and collective ends. Architecture itself will become the stimulator, provoker, teacher and challenger, and we, the users and occupants, will become the designers of the theatre of life in which our individual growth towards self-esteem and self-actualization can be realized. Intelligent architecture is the frontier that cannot only be very smart, but more importantly, can be responsive, gentle, humane, sensitive, caring and nurturing. It can model desirable human qualities. This, then, is the challenge for intelligent design, a challenge to each of us as designers of the future. Will we insist, by the power invested in us through historic precedent, on perpetuating the creation of high-tech prisons, or will we liberate ourselves and members of our society? And will we embark on a journey to develop an intelligent future, with an intelligent architecture which is freeing, open, soft, sensuous, responsive, touchable, and always in the process of becoming? Notes and references
1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13.
'Toyerism' is, to my knowledge, a word I have coined. I use it to mean 'the childlike fascination of adults with the making of useless or of-little-vlaue objects and the search for their application in society'. For example, the Intelligent Buildings Institute, Washington, DC, and the International Intelligent Buildings Association, Washington, DC. Among them, the international conference on Intelligent Buildings, held at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, Rueschlikon/Zurich, Switzerland, 1986; the conference on Building Controls and Intelligent Buildings, held at Drexel University, Phitadelphis, PA, USA, 1986; the O R B I T conference, held in Tokyo in 1988; and the Berlinmodell Industriekultur, West Berlin, Germany, May 1988. R. J. Caffrey, Chairman, Intelligent Building Institute (IBI), Washington, DC, publicity material provided by IBI, 1986. Ibid. National Research Council, Electronically Enhanced Office Buildings (Washington, DC, August 1988). Ibid. B. Berglund et al, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, August 20-24, 7984, Stockholm, Sweden (Stockholm, Sweden, Swedish Council for Building Research, 1984). Building Research Board, Controls for Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning Systems, (Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 1988); P. Kroeling, "Gesundheits- und Befindensst6rungen in Klimatisierten Gebauden, (Munich, West Germany, W. Zuckschwerdt Verlag, 1985); W. Kroner, The N e w Frontier: Environments for Innovation, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Advanced Comfort Systems for the Work Environment, May 1-3 1988, Troy, NY, USA Center for Architectural Research, Rensselaer. World Resources Institute, World Resources 7988-1989 (New York, Basic Books, 1988). G. O. Barney, The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century Volume One (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1980). L. Brown, Building a Sustainable Society (New York, W. W. Norton, 1981). F. Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (London, Collins 1985).
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