Our view of the world is changing rapidly as communications and travel increase awareness of people's lives worldwide. The increase in world population, the realization of how we pollute the environment and increasing wealth – which encourages the individual to consume more non-renewable resources – are causing many people to feel concerned about our failure to appreciate the finite and finely balanced nature of the biosphere. Buildings contribute more to world CO2 emissions than traffic, agriculture or industrial processes. Developers, designers and contractors are responsible for the resource demands of the environment they create, whereas owners and occupants are responsible for the waste products they produce. Everyone has to contribute towards evolving sustainable workplaces within buildings. Intelligent buildings must stem from a belief in sustainability and the need for social responsibility. They are a key part of the growth in urbanism and the emergence of eco-cities.
Intelligent buildings are important for business too, in terms of efficient data storage and communication systems, control over the environment by the individual and by central systems, and in terms of holistic design, which impacts on the productivity and health of the workforce, making the built environment a life-long asset.
Efficiency was fashionable in the 1960s, costs in use dominated 1970s’ thinking, then quality and effectiveness were topical in the 1980s. Now buildings are considered to provide a milieu for human creativity. Flexibility, adaptability, services integration and high standards of finish offer an intelligence threshold. An intelligent building can be described as one that will provide for innovative and adaptable assemblies of technologies in appropriate physical, environmental and organizational settings, to enhance worker well-being, productivity, communication and overall satisfaction.
The starting point for establishing a model of an intelligent building is people, because they determine the mind force of the building. They not only live and work in buildings, but they design, construct and refurbish them as well. People are not passive recipients of their environment but adapt physiologically and behaviourally to the continual stream of stimuli. People react individually and any response may be a fleeting transient one, or one that is more significant and becomes eventually stored in the long-term memory. The building and its environment, the social ambience, the type of work and the management organization all trigger the response system. We live through our senses. Senses are to be enjoyed, but they are also employed to achieve fulfilment in work. An intelligent building must be responsive to sensory demands and can be viewed at a higher level as a source of environmental stimulation; at a basic level it is a shelter and gives protection from the weather and crime. In practice, too many buildings produce unpleasant climates with wasteful consumption patterns. Intelligent buildings can enhance our mood and our well-being. For example, Lucy Kellaway in the November 19/20 2011 Financial Times Magazine wrote about what makes a good board room and concluded that, besides sweeteners to maintain sugar levels during long meetings, it was fresh air, daylight, ergonomic tables and chairs that were essential to keeping concentration levels high. Ziona Strelitz in her book Buildings that Feel Good (RIBA Publishing, 2008) gives many more examples.
The building, its services systems and work all contribute to the well-being of people within an organization. Workplaces need to be shaped for the individual as well as for the corporate culture. Productivity relies on a general sense of high morale and satisfaction with the workplace. Health, well-being and comfort are all important. Intelligent buildings have a vital role to play in helping to achieve this by providing environmental systems that support the productive, creative, intellectual and spiritual capacities of people. Yesterday's environments supported mechanization and extended our capacity to produce goods and products; emergent environments should extend the human capacity to create ideas, visions and inventions.
Intelligent building has generally been defined in terms of its technologies, rather than in terms of the goals of the organizations which occupy it. When the user is subservient to the technologies, this usually leads to situations where the technology is inappropriate for the user's needs, which can adversely affect productivity and costs. Besides, the building can become too complicated to operate. An intelligent building is more than just the technologies it uses. The building shell must be adaptable to cope with change over time, both in terms of a single space evolving over time and different organizations moving into the space. Simple passive measures like orientation, choice of materials and building mass are essential too.
Cole and his co-authors differentiate between automated intelligence which deals with direct consequences such as indoor air quality and thermal comfort, and human intelligence which includes more qualitative matters such as the interaction between the occupants and the building. The recent work on post-occupancy evaluation attempts to measure both these aspects of intelligence and with the evolution of more and more wireless sensor networks our understanding of this interaction will deepen, besides the degree of personalization will increase further. Cole et al. conclude that human intelligence is likely to offer greater indirect benefits such as increased productivity and more than that bring increased value to the individual and the organization. It is also true that building environments can affect our mood and this is related to the emotional intelligent part of our being, in contrast to the cognitive part.
Baird and Penwell compare the performance of two refurbished offices and analyse in depth the reactions of the users to see how they match with the designers’ intentions. Some facets like comfort (automated intelligence in the words of Cole et al.) were similar but others, like health and productivity, were different (see Cole et al. on human intelligence). The main reason for the differences was that one office had more integrative inclusive design, meaning the occupants were involved in the design process.
GhaffarianHoseini and his co-workers believe the theory of intelligent design needs to be embedded into everyday practice if we want to really aspire to sustainable design and go beyond present-day practice. In another article, he writes with Mosalakatane about how architectural design can affect behaviour. Malaysia with its Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures offers a test bed. Can design soften the cultural clashes than can occur? In the university context they believe it can. For example open plan, naturally lit spaces improve interaction and encourage communication and openness.
There is a common thread that runs through this set of articles, but this needs to be set into the bigger picture on how to achieve sustainable outcomes for architecture which reach beyond being green. In recent meetings on the London Olympics, organized by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the UK Green Building Council, the principal aim has been to plan and design the most sustainable Games so far in our history. This has involved buildings, infrastructure and the Olympic village, which are intended to enrich the area in London for future generations. The overall conclusion was that the following factors were key in attaining this vision:
Excellent leadership which inspires;
Engaging all the stakeholders (as Baird and Penwell conclude in their article) in a unified vision;
Integrated planning, design and management with a holistic systems approach;
Having clear binding agreements between the various stakeholders;
Having an assurance body to measure and check performance;
Integrating the work of designers and contractors;
Thinking in terms of a whole life process from the bidding stage through planning, design, construction, commissioning, operational management, post-occupancy evaluation, demolition and recycling;
The legacy for future generations.
The poet T.S. Eliot in his poem ‘Little Gidding’ from the Four Quartets tells us that the end is really a beginning. In our context this means that everything is evolving and what seems new at one moment becomes replaced or transposed by another stage in a continuing stream of development.