Essay

Lately, many technologies are surfacing that help with the tracking of a person’s physiological signals for health. Such a technology is sleep tracking technology which monitors heart rate, movement, and breathing. So, when a person lies in bed sleeping, data is being collected about the quality of that person’s sleep. (1)

Yet, what can you, as an architect, do with such data to help your occupants? And can architecture be the go-between that pulls from data which tracks health, to emitting environmental stimuli which promotes health? Well, I say the answer to the latter question is yes, and for the answer to the first question: read on.

Just imagine if the two could work together: tracking health and promoting health. With tracking, you would find health problems, and with promoting you would treat and prevent health problems. Thus, to make this work, the tracking device and the architecture would need to communicate.

As the device detects shifts in the health algorythms of an occupant, the architecture could pull from this data to release just-in-time environmental stimuli to cater to the particular occupant need.

For example, a sleep monitoring device might detect an occupant tossing and turning in bed while trying to sleep at night. If the architecture could pull from that data (communicating with the device), sensory design could really help the architecture to interactively emit stimuli to prevent further sleep disturbances. Some architectural aspects which could be tailored might include the adjustment of temperature, lighting, sound, and even scent.

So I now ask you to think about how your architecture could be improved if it could communicate with a device within it. What would that communication need to be like in order to make for a successful architectural design response? And how would your architecture be better as a result of that communication?

Reference:

(1) Simonite, Tom. Sleep Sensor Hides Beneath the Mattress. Technology Review. November 9, 2011.

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