Home Automation: The Latest Architecture and News

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Automation is rapidly becoming a normalized part of many people’s daily lives and careers, a trend which has by no means evaded the construction industry. While this increasingly pervasive technology is often considered a symptom of the contemporary 21st century, however, one automated construction technology may have a history stretching as far back as the 1960s. This technology, the bricklaying robot, has transformed dramatically since its limited realization over 50 years ago, splintering into newer, more technologically advanced variations today.

Home automation, from voice-controlled virtual assistants to app-controlled thermostats, has quickly and unexpectedly ushered the future into our own homes. As technology continues to progress, the way we interact with our environment will likely only grow more and more futuristic – even spaces as personal as our home bathrooms. While the prospect of such a highly digitized personal life may be daunting to some, others see this trend’s potential for improving not just comfort, but health and safety as well. Below, we outline some of the technologies that we hope to see in the bathrooms of the future.

Once restricted to luxury or super-tech buildings, home automation is proving to be an increasingly fundamental and affordable addition to architectural projects, whether to new buildings or renovations. While understanding how they operate can be extremely complex, the primary purpose of technology is to make life simpler, safer, and easier. By definition, home automation seeks to be globally intelligent, functioning as a system that facilitates processes without unnecessarily complicating the user's life. The idea is to connect devices, which in turn connect and talk through a centralized control unit, accessible by computers, tablets, and mobile phones. These include lights, appliances, electrical outlets, and heating and cooling systems, but also alarms, doors, windows, smoke detectors, surveillance cameras, and many other sensors and devices.

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Automation has finally reached our desks. If just a few years ago we believed that technology (including robots) could replace the work done by humans, minus the design specifications and some 'creative' aspects, we were wrong.

Stealth-stage startup Higharc has begun rethinking how new homes are designed and built without hiring an architect. Founded to reinvent new home design for the digital age, the company aims to make custom-fit homes accessible to anyone by automating home design and customization online. Taking on pre-made plans, the team wants to bring design back to housing options and make customization more accessible.

Although the ability to install home automation in a practical way is associated with new projects, it is possible to adapt previously built buildings in a relatively simple way. In both small and large renovations projects these systems can deliver automated features that responds to the requirements and needs of its users. They can also improve the habitability and comfort of its spaces, increase their security and promote long-term energy and money savings. So, what considerations must be taken into account in order to transform an regular architecture project into an "intelligent" one?

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Imagine light fixtures that act as Bluetooth beacons, allowing smartphones to help visitors find their way around a building. Imagine a lighting system which can pinpoint the location of people and physical assets within the building. Imagine an automation system which can use occupancy data and personal preferences to orchestrate an optimized and personalized building environment.

Home automation, or Domotics, is a set of technologies applied to a residence to control lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. Its systems allow for efficient management of energy consumption, security, accessibility, and the general comfort of the building, becoming an important issue to consider when designing, building, and living.

Domotic systems are based on the collection of data by sensors, which are then processed to issue precise orders to the executors, varying the environmental quality of each enclosure according to the needs of the user. The pace of current life and the technological advances we have experienced in recent years have led to new ways of living, motivating the design of homes and more human, multifunctional and flexible buildings. What was once a luxury is now a feasible and effective solution for all types of projects.

In this article, we've compiled a collection of smart homes where domotics have been used.

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According to The Economist, 47% of the work done by humans will have been replaced by robots by 2037, even those traditionally associated with university education. While the World Economic Forum estimates that between 2015 and 2020, 7.1 million jobs will be lost around the world, as "artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and other socio-economic factors replace the need for human employees."

It's not science fiction: the MIT Technology Review warns that the current debate over raising the minimum wage for fast food employees in the United States would accelerate their own automation. On the other hand, Silicon Valley personalities and millionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson warned that the impact of automation will force the creation of a universal basic income to compensate not only the massive unemployment that would generate these new technologies but also the hyper-concentration of the global wealth.

One advocate of this idea is the British economist Guy Standing who wrote at the Davos Forum that it "would be a sensible precaution against the possibility of mass displacement by robotization and artificial intelligence," but will automation affect architects? Will we really be replaced by robots?