A futuristic metropolitan skyline could indeed be envisioned as an urban cityscape brimming with tall and slender skyscrapers penetrating into the sky, glittery with multitudes of lights mirroring life from within. Sky-high futuristic architectural designs and interventions will rule the extent of vision, interspersed with a symbiosis of advanced construction materials, glass and greenery breathing sustainability into urban living. The skyline will be a testimonial to the future of advanced technologies and sustainable architecture.
Digital architecture is neither a new form of architecture nor an architectural style. It is an architectural discipline that caters to solution-based architecture. This solution-based branch of architecture comprises technologies like Design Simulation, Application architecture, BIM, etc. to name a few. Although we tend to perceive digital as being partially similar to the use of technologies like data analytics, the true nature of digital architecture dwells in its approach towards problem-solving and solution-oriented methodologies. Technology undeniably being its most favored aspect, digital architecture rephrases the solution oriented design process and switches the focus from problem to experience.
Collaborative Design
Conventionally, design proposals awaited the delivery of requirements and architects used to derive the solution outlined by the given requirements. This would lead to an isolated design intervention where architects delivered their layouts relatively at ease. However, it detached them from the actual landscape. There is a chance that architects might miss what really matters to the users. It is essential to remark that digital deals with the overall experience and not just the delivery of a product or a service.
Currently, the world has entered the revolutionary age of technology dominated by intelligence. In the era of intelligence, ways of leveraging new technologies to induce the smart revolution of land-use planning and achieve sustainable land utilization has become a crucial concern. Presently, photography, remote sensing data collection, and processing technologies are progressively being merged together with the aim of originating more reliable, steady, and accurate geospatial referencing data for land use planning. With the development and improvement of technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing (RS), global positioning system (GPS), and artificial intelligence (AI), smart land use planning has gradually transitioned from theory to practicality.
Climate change is already altering the environment. Potential consequences include drastic changes in precipitation and temperature patterns, rise in sea levels, recurrent flooding, and frequent storms. It is vital to know how digital architecture approaches and identifies general principles for demonstrating the powerful role that digital methods can play in helping citizens to combat climate change in their immediate surroundings. It is crucial to emphasize on the importance of generating visible solutions, the possibility of recognizing climate change, and the urgency to consider not only climate change impacts but also its root causes.
Over the past few years, the approach of sustainability has been shifted to include the integration of digital technologies and self-sufficient green thinking. While architecture has upsurged into the digital age, the way researchers and architects approach sustainability has also been transformed by the new technologies. Morphological simulations, on the other hand, examine spatial configurations and building forms, optimizing layouts for utility and user experience. Architects may create amicable places that respect both ecological principles and human requirements by combining eco-morphology and morphology, resulting in resilient and efficient constructed environments.
The Edge, Amsterdam
The Edge is a corporate building in Amsterdam, The Netherlands that showcases the benefits of BIM- Building Information Modeling. Accomplished in November 2014, The Edge was built with the Internet of Things (IoT) as its foundation. The design and construction of the office building did not use BIM in the conventional sense but its implementation of smart technologies enabled The Edge to achieve a number of BIM’s benefits and it perhaps even serves as a role model for a few. Some of these benefits are automated energy performance visualisation, building usage monitoring, and post-processing for energy analysis.
Design Development
The design of The Edge was governed by Dutch building bye-laws and regulations. There were other unconventional dynamics that made the workplace legendary. One such factor dictates that every employee has a right to daylight and needs to sit close to a window. By segregating daylight and sunlight, the atrium at The Edge was oriented facing north. Solar path diagrams and wind analysis on 3-D computer models assisted PLP in exploring several form variations before arriving at an optimal shape for the building’s footprint. By slitting parts of the northern faces, diffused natural light was drawn deeper into the floorplates and workspaces were organized to face a tiered atrium.
Passive and Active Design Elements
The south facade of the building possesses heavy load bearing walls that provide optimal thermal barrier through heat gain. When it was established that the solar panels on the south would not generate enough energy for the entire building, rooftops of neighbouring buildings were rented to install additional panels that suffice the energy requirements. The passion to achieve this was so clear that The Edge has only 1920 sq.m. of solar panels while another 2280 sq.m. of panels have been installed on other rooftops to make it a net-zero building.
One of the most committed features attained was to use the earth as a battery. An aquifer, 130 m below ground level, was bored into to trap heat which is stored over the summer season and is later used to heat indoor spaces during the winters. Thus, by capitalising on geothermal energy and other sustainable solutions, The Edge is estimated to have reduced its impact on the environment by 42 million kg. of carbon dioxide over a decade while consistently making exceptional energy savings.
Digital Competency and Development of IoT
Erik Ubels, former CIO of Deloitte, was interested in accumulating data from all potential sources within the building post its occupancy. Clearly, the technology to cater to such a requirement did not exist and would have to be invented. This new panel has LEDs that are powered by low energy and transmitted by Ethernet cables and has embedded sensors for motion, temperature, light and air. The panels were installed throughout the building with a unique IP address for each fixture thus enabling their remote monitoring.
None of the employees at The Edge have a desk assigned. They are supposed to use Mapiq’s custom-built app for booking their desks based on the kind of work they need to do on a particular day. Mapiq provides an experiential floor-wise 3-dimensional model of the workplace to the employees in order to choose from a variety of available desks and rooms. One can also see which of their colleagues have checked into work and can find them in the building should you prefer to work near them. As the Philips panels are integrated to communicate with Mapiq, users can further personalise their micro-environments to preferred lighting and thermal comfort settings. The app even remembers users’ preferences so that they do not need to be re-entered each time you change desks. Mapiq’s customized app for Deloitte guides users to their destinations with a 3-D model of The Edge. Such a uniform platform for bookings was only achievable with some level of standardisation. Deloitte provided all its employees with Apple iPhones and Mapiq’s app was optimised for it. Furthermore, by not assigning desks to anyone, the building can accommodate 2850 employees across 1080 desks, which is more than twice the number of people than available desks.
Benefits of BIM
Deloitte continuously collects data on staff activities and interaction. This data generated over longer durations is beneficial to observe and keep a track of spaces within the office that require more services than others. Knowing which days the staff will not be using certain parts of the building, these particular areas can be shut, with employees concentrated on a smaller footprint, further leading to energy savings. Similarly house keeping staff is informed about the areas that need more attention, making them more efficient in delivering services. Over shorter periods, this showcases an excellent application of BIM that embeds occupancy data through a simplified graphical interface for a variety of users to access.
By integrating strategies for emergency response and public announcement systems, the aim is to provide safer built environments. Its provisions to collect and analyse user and building energy performance data makes The Edge a pioneer of IoT buildings. Also, as the new data protection laws such as the GDPR come into action, companies will be driven to look for more ethical and intelligent ways to work with user data.
Technology has significantly contributed in the field of design. It has made it effectively easier for the designers and architects to conceptualize, curate, and create sustainable, environment-friendly and inclusive spaces. While advancements in technology and innovation have bought infinite positive impacts on design, there are potential negative impacts to consider as well.
As designers, it is our duty to weigh the benefits that technology can offer us versus the potential risks, threats and limitations that it brings along, in order to create mindful and safe space.
References:
Cui, Xufeng & Li, Fei & De Vries, Walter. (2023). Smart Land Use Planning: New Theories, New Tools and New Practice. Land. 2023. 1315. 10.3390/land12071315.
Mehmet Akyuz (2018). What is Digital Architecture Anyway? – HackerNoon.com – Medium. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/hackernoon/what-is-digital-architecture-anyway-47482189e3fc
Hadjadji, N., Toulan, N. and Dorra, M. (2023). Impact of digital architecture: The impact of digital technology on ecological formations and its effect on determinants of identity and culture in architectural design. Journal of Engineering Research. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jer.2023.09.004.
Clemens Möller (2021). Digital Technologies for Environment and Disaster Resilience Work. [online] Scaletech. Available at: https://www.scaletech.org/2021/07/digital-technologies-for-environment-and-disaster-resilience-work/
Jalia, A., Bakker, R., Architecture, P., Dr, L. and Ramage, M. (2018). The Edge, Amsterdam Showcasing an exemplary IoT building. [online] Available at: https://www.cdbb.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/TheEdge_Paper_LOW1.pdf.
