Smart design

Smart building
Intelligent buildings
Energy efficiency
Energy refurbishment
Thermal comfort
Cost effectiveness
Environment
Surroundings
Environmental protection
Ecological awareness
Integration
Remote control systems
Underfloor heating
Advanced technology
Cutting-edge
Natural resources
Sustainability
Sensor Technology
Automated process
Artificial intelligence
Smoke detection
Intrusion alarms
What Is a Smart Building?

A smart building involves the installation and use of advanced and integrated building

technology systems. These systems include building automation, life safety,

telecommunications, user systems, and facility management systems. Smart buildings recognize

and reflect the technological advancements and convergence of building systems, the common

elements of the systems and the additional functionality that integrated systems provide. Smart

buildings provide actionable information about a building or space within a building to allow the

building owner or occupant to manage the building or space.

Smart buildings provide the most cost effective approach to the design and the deployment of

building technology systems. The traditional way to design and construct a building is to design,

install, and operate each system separately.

The smart building takes a different approach to designing the systems. Essentially, one designer

designs or coordinates the design of all the building technology systems into a unified and

consistent construction document. The construction document specifies each system and

addresses the common system elements or integration foundation for the systems. These include

cabling, cable pathways, equipment rooms, system databases, and communications protocols

between devices. The one consolidated design is then installed by a contractor, referred to as a

Technology Contractor or as a Master System Integrator.

This process reduces the inefficiencies in the design and construction process saving time and

money. During the operation of the building, the building technology systems are integrated

horizontally among all subsystems as well as vertically—that is subsystems to facility

management systems to business systems—allowing information and data about the building's

operation to be used by multiple individuals occupying and managing the building.

Smart buildings are also a critical component regarding energy usage and sustainability of

buildings and the smart electrical grid. The building automation systems, such as HVAC

control, lighting control, power management, and metering play a major role in determining the

operational energy efficiency of a building. The smart electrical grid is dependent on smart

buildings.

The driving forces for smart buildings are economics, energy, and technology. Smart buildings

leverage mainstream information technology infrastructure and take advantage of existing and

emerging technology. For developers and owners, smart buildings increase the value of a

property. For property and facility managers, smart buildings provide more effective subsystems

and more efficient management options, such as the consolidation of system management. For

architects, engineers, and construction contractors, it means combining portions of the design

and construction with the resulting savings and efficiencies in project management and project

scheduling.

Green Building Design’s Natural Ties to Smart Buildings

The new generations of smart buildings aren’t just using technology to be more efficient, but
they’re also being designed with nature as their model. Whole system integration, where the sum
of the parts is collectively in a life-long partnership with the environment, has become the
standard to strive towards when it comes to integrating the two. Today, a new social contact with
nature is uncontested, absolute, and the bedrock to innovation.

One example from nature is how some organisms leverage fluids to maintain thermal stability,
using the radiant transfer to exchange the majority of its energy. Designers can incorporate this
approach by modernizing parts and assemblies to use thermally activated surfaces, which offer
proximity thermal comfort that aligns with human physiology. Thermally activated surfaces are
central to advancing whole building solutions, by introducing radiant fields to heat and cool and
natural convection to induce ventilation, we can collectively achieve thermal comfort without the
use of current forced-air based HVAC systems.

Smart characteristics of a building of the future

1. People-centric – Buildings of the future are designed to function for the people who will
use them. As the needs and expectations of people continuously change, the way we
design and construct buildings must follow.

2. Flexible – Disruption is moving at an exponential rate, continuously affecting and

changing business needs, models, landscapes, and the use of buildings. To address
disruption, buildings of the future should be designed with flexibility in mind. We don’t
want to build white elephants. Gone will be the days that buildings are designed as rigid
structures that are built for one purpose and can’t be changed.

In the future, these structures and spaces will be adaptable without significant building
modification: with walls that can be moved easily and essential engineering services that
can be effortlessly altered and re-connected in new ways.

3. Invisible – Technologies should be embedded to a building seamlessly. It should just

work, no explanations needed. The goal for smart buildings is to self-manage, learn,
anticipate, and adapt on its own, without the need for the intervention or recognition of its
users. Room temperatures, lighting, shading, energy and water utilisation can all be easily
and automatically adjusted based on sensors and monitors.

4. Sustainable – The impact of climate change and rapid population growth to our natural
resources is endangering the future of human kind, making sustainability one of the key
priorities when designing buildings of the future. Thanks to advanced technologies, smart
buildings can exist off the grid and develop self-sustaining ecosystems, enabling it to
produce energy and collect and treat water on site.

5. Learning – Buildings of the future will not only be designed for us, they will get to know
us. Every sensor, automation and monitor installed in these buildings will be integrated
 into a main building management system which can capture every movement within the
building and enable the building to automatically modify its settings and continuously
self-tune.

Structural failures

Structural failure refers to defects in which a load bearing component of the building is

unable to support and transfer loads to another element. Structural failure develops due to

breakdown in the performance of the materials in a structural component may be caused by:

 Erroneous construction: Failure of the engineer to supervise all the construction

activities at the site resulting in faults to construction elements which later develop into

failure; issues like use of salty sand in making concrete, use of poor grade steel not as

specified, improper tightening of torque nuts, bad welds and so on.

 Improper design: Failure of the engineer to account for all the loads the structure is to

carry, application of erroneous design theories, use of inaccurate data, not taking account

of the impacts of repetitive or impulsive stresses, improper use of materials,

misunderstanding of properties and so on.

 Foundation failures: Failure of the ground on which the foundation rests to carry load,

causing displacements, altering the stress distribution to the whole structure and so on.

 Overloading: Excess loads that are applied beyond that which had been anticipated,

these loads might be due to vibrating earthquake, heavy snow loads, hurricanes, storage,

change of use and so on.

 Innovation: New types of structures subject to unexpected failures.