Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Dutch architecture firm UNStudio has just launched a new company called UNSense, whose purpose is to explore and develop “new sensor-based technologies that are specifically designed to positively impact people’s physical, mental and social health.” They are calling the new business an “arch tech company” and it is their belief that, at some point, all architecture firms will become arch tech companies. You can learn more about UNSense, here.
This announcement got me thinking about the state of smart home technologies, which, of course, is this massive buzzword that everyone is throwing around these days. Many of us have smart thermostats, voice assistants (that may be listening to our every word), wifi lights, and so on. And you can do some pretty neat things with software like IFTT, such as program your lights to come on at sunset or when you walk in the door.
But as cool as they may be, these smart home devices have always felt like patchwork add-ons to me. I understand that this is partially driven by what customers can easily adopt and I don’t mean to discredit the value that they bring, but today’s post is about reminding us to also think more fundamentally, as opposed to just incrementally.
Smart thermostats, for instance, give us the functionality to adjust our heating/cooling from our phone. But at the end of the day, they still control the same underlying system, which, by the way, is a fairly simple one. When it gets cold (because of our R-3 windows), the heat turns on. When it gets warm enough, the heat turns off. Zoned systems certainly add another layer of sophistication, but are we optimizing for the right variables?
UNSense works at three scales: Cities, Buildings, and Interiors. And if you look at what they are trying to do at the building scale, it is around the interface between inside and out. Designing transformable facade systems and buildings that can respond to their environment and our changing needs. These are not new ideas, but in today’s tech-driven world, the timing may just be right.
If you think about the climate we have here in Toronto, it is actually an incredibly difficult design problem. We have cold winters and hot humid summers, which means we have to solve for two different extremes. Mechanical systems have made that a lot easier to do, but if we’re going to meet the energy and greenhouse gas emission targets that we’re all talking about, we’re going to need a hell of a lot more than just smart thermostats.
Image: UNSense
Dutch architecture firm UNStudio has just launched a new company called UNSense, whose purpose is to explore and develop “new sensor-based technologies that are specifically designed to positively impact people’s physical, mental and social health.” They are calling the new business an “arch tech company” and it is their belief that, at some point, all architecture firms will become arch tech companies. You can learn more about UNSense, here.
This announcement got me thinking about the state of smart home technologies, which, of course, is this massive buzzword that everyone is throwing around these days. Many of us have smart thermostats, voice assistants (that may be listening to our every word), wifi lights, and so on. And you can do some pretty neat things with software like IFTT, such as program your lights to come on at sunset or when you walk in the door.
But as cool as they may be, these smart home devices have always felt like patchwork add-ons to me. I understand that this is partially driven by what customers can easily adopt and I don’t mean to discredit the value that they bring, but today’s post is about reminding us to also think more fundamentally, as opposed to just incrementally.
Smart thermostats, for instance, give us the functionality to adjust our heating/cooling from our phone. But at the end of the day, they still control the same underlying system, which, by the way, is a fairly simple one. When it gets cold (because of our R-3 windows), the heat turns on. When it gets warm enough, the heat turns off. Zoned systems certainly add another layer of sophistication, but are we optimizing for the right variables?
UNSense works at three scales: Cities, Buildings, and Interiors. And if you look at what they are trying to do at the building scale, it is around the interface between inside and out. Designing transformable facade systems and buildings that can respond to their environment and our changing needs. These are not new ideas, but in today’s tech-driven world, the timing may just be right.
If you think about the climate we have here in Toronto, it is actually an incredibly difficult design problem. We have cold winters and hot humid summers, which means we have to solve for two different extremes. Mechanical systems have made that a lot easier to do, but if we’re going to meet the energy and greenhouse gas emission targets that we’re all talking about, we’re going to need a hell of a lot more than just smart thermostats.
Image: UNSense
One of the things that I have been wondering lately with all of the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma is if we need to be viewing these catastrophic incidents as the result of climate change or if we’re being too quick to apply the availability heuristic.
The latter being: “Look at all of these horrible hurricanes. Climate change must really be here and happening right now.”
Albert Wenger is covering this topic on his blog right now through his “Uncertainty Wednesday” series and has also written similar posts in the past. The current series is still ongoing, but a few things stood out to me as I was going through the archives. I’ll mention 3 of them today.
Firstly, it’s important to understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what’s happening at any given moment. Climate, on the other hand, is the statistics of weather. Albert proposes the following definition for climate, which I like:
“Climate is the probability distribution of possible weather events.”
Secondly, the data is clear: We have gotten far better at forecasting weather over the years. Accuracy has greatly improved.
But we’re still pretty bad at it, particularly over longer periods of time. According this graph, we’re about 97.5% accurate for 3 day forecasts, but only about 40% accurate for 10 day forecasts. So by “longer periods of time”, I’m really talking about forecasts that go out beyond one week. That’s not very far into the future.
Thirdly, Albert has this post from last year where he talks about the flooding we saw on the U.S. east coast and also the slowing down of the Gulf Stream.
This is fascinating, and also frightening, because the Gulf Stream is a vital ocean current. Among other things, it warms western and northern Europe – likely making it warmer than it otherwise would be – and, according to some models, it lowers the sea level along the U.S. east coast by as much as 3 feet.
The frightening part is that as the Gulf Stream slows it also stops pulling away the same amount of water from the coast, which is arguably why mean sea level is increasing.
I say “arguably”, but the data clearly suggests an acceleration in the rate of rise. Here are two charts that Albert prepared. And there’s more: The U.S. east coast may also have it worse in terms of sea level rise precisely because of this phenomenon.
This is an interesting and, of course, important topic. This post obviously doesn’t do it justice, but I am trying to learn as much as I can. Writing always helps with that.
Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash
Larry Beasley and Jonathan Barnett are about to start teaching a free online course through the University of British Columbia edX called: Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs. It starts April 4, 2017 and runs for 6 weeks.
Here’s what you’ll learn (taken verbatim from edx.org):
The principles of ecodesign and why it is important as a response to the current disorganized urban growth model
Ways to adapt to a changing climate, and ways to mitigate climate change locally
Policies to balance auto and airplane transportation with walking, cycling, transit and high-speed rail
Ways of designing urban and suburban regulations to make cities more livable and environmentally compatible
Strategies for designing and managing the public realm, plus innovative arrangements and processes for implementing ecodesign
The course is geared toward urbanists from all over the world and so the case studies will be global in nature. You can also participate as actively or passively as you’d like. Though, if you’d like to get a certificate, then you need to fully participate.
What immediately stood out for me was the focus on both cities and suburbs. In many ways the suburbs are a more challenging problem to solve. So I hope there’s a good amount of focus on that context.
Beasley was formerly co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver and Barnett is a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater). It should be an interesting course.
One of the things that I have been wondering lately with all of the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma is if we need to be viewing these catastrophic incidents as the result of climate change or if we’re being too quick to apply the availability heuristic.
The latter being: “Look at all of these horrible hurricanes. Climate change must really be here and happening right now.”
Albert Wenger is covering this topic on his blog right now through his “Uncertainty Wednesday” series and has also written similar posts in the past. The current series is still ongoing, but a few things stood out to me as I was going through the archives. I’ll mention 3 of them today.
Firstly, it’s important to understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what’s happening at any given moment. Climate, on the other hand, is the statistics of weather. Albert proposes the following definition for climate, which I like:
“Climate is the probability distribution of possible weather events.”
Secondly, the data is clear: We have gotten far better at forecasting weather over the years. Accuracy has greatly improved.
But we’re still pretty bad at it, particularly over longer periods of time. According this graph, we’re about 97.5% accurate for 3 day forecasts, but only about 40% accurate for 10 day forecasts. So by “longer periods of time”, I’m really talking about forecasts that go out beyond one week. That’s not very far into the future.
Thirdly, Albert has this post from last year where he talks about the flooding we saw on the U.S. east coast and also the slowing down of the Gulf Stream.
This is fascinating, and also frightening, because the Gulf Stream is a vital ocean current. Among other things, it warms western and northern Europe – likely making it warmer than it otherwise would be – and, according to some models, it lowers the sea level along the U.S. east coast by as much as 3 feet.
The frightening part is that as the Gulf Stream slows it also stops pulling away the same amount of water from the coast, which is arguably why mean sea level is increasing.
I say “arguably”, but the data clearly suggests an acceleration in the rate of rise. Here are two charts that Albert prepared. And there’s more: The U.S. east coast may also have it worse in terms of sea level rise precisely because of this phenomenon.
This is an interesting and, of course, important topic. This post obviously doesn’t do it justice, but I am trying to learn as much as I can. Writing always helps with that.
Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash
Larry Beasley and Jonathan Barnett are about to start teaching a free online course through the University of British Columbia edX called: Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs. It starts April 4, 2017 and runs for 6 weeks.
Here’s what you’ll learn (taken verbatim from edx.org):
The principles of ecodesign and why it is important as a response to the current disorganized urban growth model
Ways to adapt to a changing climate, and ways to mitigate climate change locally
Policies to balance auto and airplane transportation with walking, cycling, transit and high-speed rail
Ways of designing urban and suburban regulations to make cities more livable and environmentally compatible
Strategies for designing and managing the public realm, plus innovative arrangements and processes for implementing ecodesign
The course is geared toward urbanists from all over the world and so the case studies will be global in nature. You can also participate as actively or passively as you’d like. Though, if you’d like to get a certificate, then you need to fully participate.
What immediately stood out for me was the focus on both cities and suburbs. In many ways the suburbs are a more challenging problem to solve. So I hope there’s a good amount of focus on that context.
Beasley was formerly co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver and Barnett is a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater). It should be an interesting course.
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