Overly Smart Buildings

by Ted Smalley Bowen Technology Research News, 20-17 Apr 2005 The notion of buildings as "machines for living in," as pioneering modernist architect Le Corbusier put it in the 1920s, morphs to fit the technologies and issues of the day. In the '70s, it was energy efficiency. In the '80s, computer technology spawned "smart" buildings sporting automated controls and pre-configured information systems. The latest crop of technologies include microelectromechanical systems that combine sensors and actuators, wireless sensor networks, and fuzzy logic control schemes, and has the makings of a sophisticated nervous system. Read the article