Tag: smart-buildings | ArchDaily

Architecture as a Platform: What Makes a Building Evolve?

Ankitha Gattupalli — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Not long ago, recent enough to feel current, architecture entered a moment in which buildings became legible as products. The framing offered discipline and a refreshed perspective to an industry that often deems novelty more precious than operational clarity. Nudging exercises of "form" towards repeatability, user experience, performance, and scalability prepared buildings to be a "product" that could now be evaluated. Architecture is more answerable to how well it works, how clearly it communicates its use, and how consistently it delivers its intended experience.

Designing with Empathy: From Smart to Sensitive Cities

Daniela Andino — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 04:00:00 +0000

The future of cities has long been defined by intelligence: networks of sensors, data, and engineered systems. From traffic-flow algorithms to climate dashboards, the smart city promised to make urban life optimized, measurable, and predictable. Yet amid this technological abundance, something essential feels absent: sensitivity. Cities are becoming increasingly equipped to process information but less able to perceive atmosphere, emotion, or care.

From Smart to Intelligent: Evolution in Architecture and Cities

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 26 May 2025 07:30:00 +0000

"The limits of our design language are the limits of our design thinking". Patrik Schumacher's statement subtly hints at a shift occurring in the built environment, moving beyond technological integration to embrace intelligence in the spaces and cities we occupy. The future proposes a possibility of buildings serving functions beyond housing human activity to actively participate in shaping urban life.

From Modernism to Multiculturalism: The Historical Evolution of Student Housing

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Student housing has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last century. Once seen as a utilitarian necessity, providing shelter and basic amenities for students, this architectural typology has evolved to address increasingly complex societal, cultural, and urban demands. Starting with Le Corbusier's modernist approach at the Cité Universitaire in Paris, student housing has reflected broader trends in architecture, urbanism, and social change.

The Future of Work: Sentient Workplaces for Employee Wellbeing

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Imagine stepping into an environment that fully understands you, knows your habits, and actively works to support your wellbeing as an occupant. Air quality might be monitored and managed, and occupant circadian rhythms might be tracked to suggest ideal states of productivity. Workplace designers have been considering occupant wellbeing and health in their designs for offices of the future. Hypothesizing what time ahead may contain, there is a strong case to be made for sentient architecture and interior design being disruptive forces in how we interact with our work environments.

Building a City from Scratch: The Story of Songdo, Korea

Kaley Overstreet — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 07:30:00 +0000

What does it take to build a smart city from nothing? Or maybe the better question is, what does it take to build a smart city from nothing and make it successful? For over a decade, architects and urban planners worked hand in hand to create Songdo, a brand new business district that sought to represent South Korean advancements in technology and infrastructure. Songdo was once a model for how we would live in cities of the future- but now, the reality of what this smart city quickly became has us rethinking how the combination of technology and community might have gone wrong.

The New Disruptor on the Block: How Proptech is Changing the Way We Interact with Real Estate

Kaley Overstreet — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 07:30:00 +0000

Would you be willing to buy a home from a robot using only an app? As technology becomes more and more integrated into the design and real estate sector, that once an outlandish idea has become a reality. Only a decade ago, almost no one talked about technology and start-ups in the built environment. The real estate industry, which has historically lacked technological innovations compared to other sectors, is now taking a stance to reinvent itself as an industry that is more efficient, flexible, and automated- all resulting in one of the newest buzzwords that has taken the world by storm, proptech or Property technology.

CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati Designs New Workplaces, Addressing Post-Pandemic Challenges

Christele Harrouk — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 06:30:00 +0000

CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati has created a pilot project for Sella Group’s Open Innovation Center in Turin, Italy, addressing post-pandemic challenges. The new workplace design features automated desk sanitizing, collaborative digital platforms, and smart windows to ensure health, safety, and sociability.

7 Architectural Considerations that are Shaping Future Cities

Soledad Sambiasi — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 04:00:00 +0000

By 2050, the world’s population is expected to have exceeded 10 billion people, making overcrowded cities one of the most pressing issues of the present. Data analysis, machine learning, transportation developments, and the rapid development of new social technologies are increasingly changing the needs of people and communities, which will have a direct impact on the issue of overcrowding and on our built environment more largely.

London Launches Open Source App for Homebuilding

Niall Patrick Walsh — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 07:20:00 +0000

Bryden Wood, Cast, and the Mayor of London have launched a new app to speed up the capital’s home building. The freely-available app, titled PRISM, is aimed at the design and construction of high-quality, factory-built homes to address the current demand of 50,000+ houses per year.

SLICE Creates Apartments from Plugin Modules for Future City Living

Niall Patrick Walsh — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 09:00:00 +0000

Iranian architect and concept designer Nasim Sehat has developed an alternative living module driven by adaptability for the gig economy. SLICE is described as a “sustainable, people centric, connected, self-contained, and flexible plug’n-play urban solution” targeted at future city dwellers.

Call for Entries: Tomorrow's Challenges in Today's Buildings

Rene Submissions — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:30:00 +0000

Designing Buildings Wiki have joined forces with BSRIA to launch a new competition looking for fresh and innovative ideas in response to the question: How can tomorrow's challenges be met by today's buildings?

CEBRA Wins Competition to Design Smart School in Russia

Sabrina Santos — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Denmark-based architects CEBRA have won a competition to design a Smart School educational complex in Irkutsk, Russia. Their winning design, dubbed Smart School Meadow, fulfills the competition’s call for a new typology of school that combines architecture and landscaping into a learning environment and local community center.

When Buildings React: An Interview with MIT Media Lab's Joseph Paradiso

Sarah Wesseler — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 01:00:00 +0000

Not so far in the future, smartphones and laptops will go the way of the beeper and fax machine, fading into obsolescence. Soon, according to MIT Media Lab's Joseph Paradiso, we will interface with the physical world via wearable technologies that continually exchange information with sensors embedded all around us.