Face-2-Face
Dynamic building technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for creative and purposeful real-time interactions between people and building technologies. For example, reducing the energy demand in buildings and personalised indoor environments. Currently, the main challenge in this area is the lack of human-centric interfaces and control systems for driving such dynamic construction technologies. If they respond to human needs in real time, frustration and dissatisfaction among residents can be avoided.
The lack of effective interactions between users and dynamic technologies is a barrier to creative building designers who want to apply these new technologies in their designs. In the Face-2-Face (F2F) project, we tackle this directly by developing a method to capture human satisfaction/dissatisfaction in a new and unobtrusive way and show how this data can be used to shape dynamic building technologies.
The new F2F method is based on facial perception, recently developed by the university partners. Residents' facial emotions and other environmental sensors are used to modulate the transmission of solar radiation through the switchable glazing in real time, creating an interactive, personalised and energy-efficient interior space.
The F2F method and associated design/control strategies will be tested and validated in a real office equipped with the switchable glazing technology and in a complete but portable prototype. The portable and interactive prototype will also serve to demonstrate the capabilities of the F2F method to the general public in the Netherlands and at international trade fairs and trade shows.
Project budget €132,000, with a €66,000 PPS surcharge being used.