Studies on operating smart buildings show unexpected gaps between the actual energy consumption rates and the ones calculated according to building models. This evidence is concerned with how occupants interact with building and appears to be a consequence of poor consideration of both users’ needs by design team and users’ behaviour by modelling tools. This article discusses the benefits that could be brought at design and simulation stages by the introduction of ergonomic principles and techniques in the design team. Furthermore, a different approach for a viable consideration of human factors in building modelling is presented, under the view that a better consideration of human variables will support the delivery of really intelligent buildings.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeView correction statement:Guiding building innovation in a distinct functional sector: POE of new police accommodation Notes This version has been revised since original publication on 10 December 2012. Please see Corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508975.2013.769795).

Increasing interest has been expressed towards intelligent heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in hospital environments. This article presents a literature review of intelligent HVAC systems used in hospitals. First, we discuss the current state of HVAC systems and common ventilation issues regarding modern hospitals. Second, we describe hospital airflow modelling using computational fluid dynamics. We then define ‘intelligent HVAC systems’ and address challenges concerning their design and implementation. Lastly, possibilities for HVAC system optimization and energy conservation are presented.

In this article is proposed the hypothesis that the labour productivity in Romania is low due to buildings that do not offer a well-being environment to the employees. The complex relationships between buildings and their occupants are explored in order to prove the hypothesis, and finally, based on the intelligent buildings concept, recommendations are made for improving the buildings.

The increasing interest in indoor environmental quality of educational buildings has been underpinned by the rising incidence of asthma and respiratory disease among children, who spend a substantial amount of their lives on the school premises. The susceptibility of children to respiratory disease compared with adults has led to the formulation of regulatory frameworks for the school environment, which specifies maximum CO2 concentrations and minimum airflow rates. This article reviews the evidence that school buildings provide a healthy and satisfactory indoor environment for the occupants. It summarized air pollution levels reported from indoor air quality (IAQ) monitoring surveys and evidence linking school exposure with health responses from the occupants. In addition, environmental and behavioural factors affecting pollution levels in school buildings were examined. The analysis has highlighted the degraded IAQ in some schools that often exceed WHO guidelines, while health impacts of school exposure were reported for concentrations below current guidelines.

Developments in information and communication technologies permit a variety of forms of remote working. The ‘workplace’ now embraces a wide range of possibilities that extend beyond the domain of the ‘office’, reaching out to the home and to a host of public venue ‘hot-spots’ available within the city. This article examines the changing nature of the office workplace to understand the new and emerging spatial and temporal engagement of building inhabitants with their workplaces. It attempts to clarify the distinction between ‘individual’ and ‘shared’ experience of and engagement with manual and automated controls, and how these distinctions are manifest in a variety of different knowledge-based work contexts. It further illustrates how the emerging shift towards more mobile and transient workplaces requires rethinking the notions of a palpable inhabitant ownership, engagement and agency that are considered necessary to support higher degrees of satisfaction. The article concludes by presenting a framework that outlines the relationship between workplace technologies (environmental controls and information and communication technologies) and knowledge-based workers (both individual and groups) across various workplaces (home, office and city).

Extending the narrow scope of building management systems to form the ‘intelligent building’ has led to the widespread use of proprietary ‘enterprise’ software platforms and networks in both monitoring and control. The PC user is only too familiar with the vulnerability of networked computers to malicious software. But it is only recently that attention has been paid to the possibility of virus damage to process controllers. The hazard for ‘building management systems’ functionality is real but the risk is difficult to assess. Pressures on system procurement and upgrades aimed at improving functionality bring with them increased exposure to the probability of a successful attack. Most published security protocols may engender a false sense of security. The key defence is to ensure a ‘fall-back’, ‘black start’, ‘dumb capability’ within the intelligent building.

We introduce neuromorphic architecture, exploring ways to incorporate lessons from studying real, biological brains to devise computational systems based on the findings of neuroscience that can be used in intelligent buildings, adding a new biologically grounded perspective to the more general view that future buildings are to be constructed as perceiving, acting and adapting entities. For clarity, the term ‘brain’ is reserved for the brains of animals and humans in this article, whereas the term ‘interactive infrastructure’ refers to the analogous system within a building. Key concepts of neuroscience are presented at sufficient length to support preliminary analysis of the possible influence of neurobiological data on the design and properties of interactive infrastructures for future buildings. Ada – the intelligent space, a pavilion visited by over 550,000 guests at the Swiss National Exhibition of 2002, had an interactive infrastructure based (in part) on artificial neural networks (ANNs), had ‘emotions’ and ‘wanted’ to play with her visitors. We assess the extent to which her design was indeed grounded in neuroscience. Several sketches for rooms that exemplify neuromorphic architecture are used to demonstrate the way in which research on how its brain supports an animal's interactions with its physical and social world may yield brain operating principles that lead to new algorithms for a neuromorphic architecture that supports the ‘social interaction’ of rooms with people and other rooms to constantly adapt buildings to the needs of their inhabitants and enhance interactions between the people who use them and their environment.

Based on a cross-case analysis of five primary schools, this article highlights, and discusses in context, the views of the teachers regarding the physical environment and facilities of their schools. Participants rated questions about what made for a ‘comfortable built environment’ and a ‘well-functioning spaces’, whereas the researchers examined and compared the spaces and spoke to heads and to the pupils. Although overall teachers rate their schools only ‘adequate’, indicating significant room for improvement, there is significant variation on specific issues. Contributions to how better schools can be created are provided through some unexpected views, either around received wisdom or in areas where no firm view exists in the literature. In conclusion the teachers’ views are compared with those of pupils at the same schools, indicating the need for creative solutions from designers.