Introduction to intelligent buildings - Intelligent Buildings and Building Automation - page 5

Materials and equipment that require complex maintenance and unhealthy
cleaning agents, and building components that must be treated as hazardous
waste in the recycling process (e.g. mercury in light-bulbs) would not be used
in a fully developed intelligent architecture.

1.2.2 Intelligent and responsive building façades

The character of the building envelope will be affected dramatically by the
development of intelligent buildings. Façades designed to integrate a host
of emerging technologies will have an inherent 'intelligence' and be able to
respond automatically, or through human intervention, to contextual condi-
tions and individual needs. Intelligent façades currently can:

￿ be centrally controlled while still providing the occupant with the ability
to manually override the system;
￿ change their thermophysical properties such as thermal resistance, trans-
mittance, absorptance, permeability, etc;
￿ modify their interior and exterior colour and/or texture;
￿ function as communicating media façades with video and voice
capabilities;

￿ change optical properties and allow the creation of patterned glazing, pro-

viding the opportunity for dynamic shading and remote light control.

The development of the intelligent and responsive façade necessitates the
redefinition of the terms 'window' and 'wall'. With the introduction of new
glazing and wall assemblies, what is 'transparent' may become 'opaque' with
the flick of a switch. Central controls for intelligent façades will respond
to climatic conditions by transforming the building envelope to optimize
heating and cooling loads, daylight utilization, natural ventilation, and so
on. Intelligent façades will transport daylight deep into a building's interior
and allow the occupants to determine the degree of luminous, acoustical
and thermal comfort required along with the degree of visual and acoustical
privacy provided by the enclosure. Additionally, we can now imagine interior
partitions that will allow the occupants to transform the aesthetic quality of
their working environment whenever and however they choose.
The idea of the intelligent or smart system, originally applied to electrical,
mechanical and aerospace systems, recently has been extended to include civil
structures as advances in sensing, networking and new materials have made
continuous monitoring and control of structural functions a realizable goal.
By definition, the intelligent structure has the capability to identify its status
and optimally adapt its function in response to stimuli. The major focus of
the intelligent civil structure has been on two areas:

1 identification of structural behaviour or properties (e.g. deformation,
energy usage or damage evaluation);