House_n: The smartest home?

Filed in archive Home Automation on August 28, 2006

MIT's House_n project takes the smart home concept to the Nth degree. House_n is an MIT research group that explores how new technologies, materials, and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life. As their website explains:

The widespread adoption of digital technologies is leading to profound changes in how we communicate with others, shop for goods and services, receive news, manage our finances, learn about the world, participate in politics, deliver and receive medical care, conduct business, manage resources, find entertainment, and maintain autonomy as we age. Increasingly, these activities will take place directly in the home. As our notion of banks, bookstores, universities, communities, and cities change in response to new technologies, the home will take on extraordinary new importance.

The home as it exists today cannot meet these demands or take advantage of new opportunities created by social and technological changes. Most people live in spaces poorly tailored to their needs, and technologies for the home are too often irrelevant gadgets, meeting no fundamental need and developed out of context.

See for yourself how well MIT is meeting the challenge of changing technology at House_n. (photo MIT)