Project Updates

4.556 J / MAS.551 J Design Workshop: Design without Boundaries
Designing the Connected Sustainable Home

Instructors: William J. Mitchell, Federico Casalegno (MEL, Design Lab), Pattie Maes (Media Lab)
Course Collaborators: Orkan Telhan, Juhong Park

Prereq: Permission of instructors required
Classes: Thursdays 10am - 1pm
G (Spring)

First Class meeting:
Thursday, Feb 5th, 10:00am, MIT Design Lab Conference Room, NE18, 4th floor

Class description:
Among architects and designers, the notion of critical radical sustainability is an emerging notion. Most efforts in this area focus on the use of sustainable building materials and green energy. We are taking a broader approach; we call it the "Connected Sustainable Home."

Our vision is of a home that is not only built with sustainable materials and that uses green energy, but also takes full advantage of all the digital world has to offer to create a building that can respond to its environment and to the needs of its inhabitants more intelligently. It employs the latest in what we know about artificial intelligence, as well as advanced robotics, to improve the quality of life for those who live in the home. And, going even further, it is a home that by its very existence and the way it "works" optimizes human behavior and thus promotes social sustainability.

This class will provide opportunities to pursue real-world design projects that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, apply advanced technologies and address significant social issues concerning the design of the "Connected Sustainable Home."

The MEL Team is happy to announce that our Dynamic Windows Demo is going to be presented at MADE Expo, (http://www.madeexpo.it/en/index.php), the innovative international trade fair dedicated to architecture and construction which will be held in Milano, Italy from the 4th to the 7th of February 2009. The Demo we are showing at Made Expo is a Dynamic Window that respond to inhabitant movement inside the house following them. The concept is working through a series of location sensors and a microprocessor that control and command a long window made of a series of vertical bars.

The MEL Team had a very successful meeting with the FBK team members in Trento last week. One exciting thing they brought back was a sample of Innoptec. Innoptec is a plastic multilayer film based on liquid crystals that can change from opaque to transparent by a switch of an electrical impulse or wireless device. The MEL team has been trying to find an interactive material for a wall that could provide a view or privacy depending on the user's wish. This could be the technology they are looking for! Watch a flash video showing how it works on their website: (http://www.innoptec.it).

Team architect Juhong Park created this typology showing which green technology will work best with which housing form.

Hundreds of MIT students and affiliates will learn about the sustainable building project on Friday, October 24th when an early rendering is used as the background for MIT's homepage. Clicking on the image directs web users to the MEL-FBK page.

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* CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT *
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Introduction: Prof. ANDREA ZANOTTI (President of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler)

Dr. GIANLUCA SALVATORI (Minister for Planning, Research and Innovation)

Dr. PAOLO TRAVERSO (Director of the Center for Information Technology – Irst)

Speaker: Dr. FEDERICO CASALEGNO (MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory, MIT Design Laboratory)

Title: "Presentation of the FBK-MIT Mobile Experience Lab Alliance"

Date: Friday, October 24th, 2008 @ 11:00 am

Director Federico Casalegno is currently in Italy and will soon be joined by MEL team members Leonardo Benuzzi, Simon Kim, Juhong Park and Orkan Telhan. The Team will meet the members of FBK and present our work at the October 23rd-24th conference in Trento.

Photo credits: ({{Information |Description=Panoramic view of Trento. Picture taken by Giovanni Iachello. |Source=first uploaded to en.wikipeda by en:user:Giac |Date=30/06/2006 |Author=en:user:Giac |Permission=relasead by Giac under the Creative Commons Attribut)

Sustainable homes and villages are being built all over the world. This map is a work in progress that will help us keep track of who's building where and how. As we learn about more sustainable projects, we will be adding more here: http://www.communitywalk.com/ecovillages_and_homes/ecovillages_and_homes...

We have been discussing ways to embed information into the built
environment for visualizing energy consumption, providing contextual
feedback to influence the habitants, and monitoring the environmental
effects on the house. Orkan has started looking at some smart material
literature and there are a number of interesting projects that explore
ways to transform traditional materials into information surfaces.

One relatively known example (dating from 2004) uses "electrochromatic"
dyes mixed into concrete, where information is displayed with selective

Mobile Experience Lab Director Federico Casalegno discusses sustainable homes with Stavros Dimas, the European Commissioner for Environment, and the Greek Consul General Constantinos Orphanides.