The big problem with steam as a source of energy is that the output of a boiler is erratic. The amount of steam that comes out (the energy available to you) depends on the weather, the temperature, how much fuel is in the system, how much water, and myriad other factors. When you’re trying to run a machine, erratic power is near-useless and potentially very dangerous.

photo credit: Elsie esq.

In 1788, James Watt solved part of the problem by putting a centrifugal governor on his steam engines. It works like this: part of the power of the engine is diverted to spin a device with two arms connected to weights. The arms are in turn connected to a valve which controls how much steam is allowed to pass through. When there is more power, the governor spins faster, which makes the weights fly out, which moves the arms, which narrows the throttle-valve. When there is less power, the spinning slows, which makes the weights fall, which widens the valve again. The weights quickly reach an equilibrium and the output remains constant.

Look at what’s happening here: steam energy is being converted into information which controls a feedback mechanism. The whole system is regulated through a kind of limited self-awareness built right into the machine.

James Watt’s highly efficient steam engines are credited with being at the cornerstone of the Industrial revolution in England. Centuries later, the use of the centrifugal governor would be seen as a kind of early cybernetic device.

You’re welcome, Steampunks.

Part of a series: Buildings That Protest

Over the course of the last 3 posts, we proceeded from eco-feedback mechanisms to a paranoid vision of automated prisons and crowd control. It’s worth taking a moment to step back and consider the plausibility of all of this. How likely are these things? Would we do it?

photo credit: nolifebeforecoffee

Of course we would

To make grand architecture is to shape the world in your image, in the hopes that it will in turn shape people. This can be benevolently nudging the population in one direction, or forcing them into another, but that’s simply a question of degrees. To remake a space is to make an ethical claim on how that space should be used, by whom, and for what purpose. At every step along the way, builders have used cutting-edge technologies to bring their manifestos to life.

You can’t throw a rock in the Architecture section of a bookstore without hitting a tome that talks about patterns of architecture and how they make people harmonious or otherwise. See also the architecture of every religion, ever.

Security and crowd dispersal was at least one of the factors that guided Haussmann’s Paris redevelopment. In Iran, wide boulevards made it similarly difficult for protesters to assemble.

Henry Ford built an entire village in the Amazon Jungle on the strength of the idea that he could create a perfect society with the right kinds of construction.

Think all of this is too totalitarian? Too historical? Take a look at these contemporary Mega Churches (click that link, you will not regret it).

CCTV tech is rampant. Roads are giving you tickets automatically. In Britain, CAMERAS ARE ALREADY TALKING TO YOU.

The Elephant

Notice that I haven’t yet mentioned Nazi architecture. It’s because I didn’t have to.

All of: Buildings That Protest

4.

Turning left onto a side street and left again, you find yourself in a quaint residential neighbourhood. The houses are all more or less identical – brick single family dwellings with pointed roofs and tasteful lawns. Walk for two block and turn left again. Halfway up the street on your right, you will find a singularly unique house. The owner had decorated it in dark stained wooden cylinders, each no more than two inches in diameter. Everything is covered in these cylinders – the walls, the lawn, the railings and the flower boxes. They form patterns and shapes – spirals meet triangles that intersect with rectangles and circles. You are reminded of Shamanism. A neighbour tells you that the owner was a construction worked until an accident injured his neck. Now, he spends most of his time at home working on his house.

Part of a series: Buildings That Protest

Recap: We’re talking about Alain de Botton’s comment that buildings are forced to sit in silent protest as the people under their care take actions and enter into moods that violate the spirit that the architect was trying to infuse. While this is historically true, we are changing that relationship. Smart buildings will be able to talk back.

photo credit: Ian Muttoo

So far, I’ve focused on houses as places where this kind of interactive architecture might take hold. There is no reason to think that it might stop there. If anything, we’d expect large structures – designed to move masses of people instead of individuals – to be the early experimenters in crowd control.

Scenarios

After the planes hit the towers, all kinds of security mechanisms were proposed for airports. Applying facial-recognition to the already ubiquitous CCTVs was a popular idea until it turned out that the tech was not ready. Someday it will be. Forget cumbersome security lines, why not equip the entire building with highly sensitive chemical noses? A network of sensors can cross-reference the movements of travellers, looking for suspicious patterns. A system of bulkheads isolates potential threats until human security can arrive and confirm the arrest.

The airport knows how long you’ve been waiting and by how much your flight is delayed. The building can alter lighting, music and even air content to soothe worried travellers. Nothing dangerous, mind you. Simply a mild sedative to keep everyone orderly. Raising your voice at the check-in clerks? Well, why shouldn’t the building intervene?

Anything that seems like a good idea in an airport will seem fantastic in America’s overburdened, understaffed prisons. Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon suggests a direction. So do South Africa’s armed ATMs. Why put human guards at risk in dealing with unruly inmates?

Schools aren’t precisely the same as prisons, but many of the same discipline issues arise. Hall monitors can’t be everywhere, but the hallway can. Truancy promises to become a thing of the past, there will be no opportunities to loiter in the stairwells. Rumours spread through the student body of a network of tunnels and maintenance rooms behind the walls, unmonitored. Everyone knows a friend of a friend who’s been there. Pranksters are expelled when they hack the fire suppressors one time too many.

In kindergarten, the rooms gently ease the class in and out of nap time. At certain private schools, anxious parents demand detailed positional reports for the teachers of their child. They pour over the data, looking for signs of favouritism, hints that they aren’t getting their money’s worth.

Churches? We are all god’s children, and a place of worship should use every technique available to the maker to help bring the flock to the right state of mind.

Casinos, malls, amusement parks, boulevards, freeways, undergrounds. There is no place in the world that would not be changed by an infrastructure that could talk back. The flavour of conversation will reflect the spirit of the times and the ambitions of the builder.

What will ours say?

All of: Buildings That Protest

Part of a series: Buildings That Protest

I can’t get the idea of Buildings That Protest out of my mind.

Recap: This is the realization that with the growth of smart homes and internet of things technology, we are envisioning a future where buildings no longer stand mute, but become active participants in shaping our behaviour.

photo credit: vissago

Infused with Ghosts

They are haunted structures, populated by machine spirits. Some of the spirits will be part of the architect’s vision, or the builder’s, or government code. Others will be after-market add-ons, mandated by utility companies or offered by interior-decoration gurus. Some will be installed by the people living there. DIY renovators, house hackers. Some will be malevolent. Black-hat digital haunters, wall-paper spammers, zombie-house botnets.

There will be things running behind the walls and they are actually going to be called “house daemons”.

Haunted houses that you can patch.

I was trying think of a neologism for modifying your house in software. With the idea of hacking it up, I looked up the etymology of renovation. “1432, from renovacyoun: ’spiritual rebirth’”. Perfect.

Where will the control panels go? Will they be embedded in house shrines? Will we rebuild roman larariums? What is the Feng Shui of house spirits that you can commune with through the command line?

All of: Buildings That Protest