25/8/2021

Prof. Dr. Noha Essam, PhD

Professor of Interior Architecture & Interdisciplinary Design

Environmental Psychologist/ A Member of World Design Organization -WDO

“An entire vision is driven by this motto that prompted to a new platform of design thinking towards innovative smart design solutions, with a recognition to the four pillars of sustainability; human, social, economic and environmental in the shades of the global goals focusing on designs, products and services that contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Striving for resilient community development, Work toward the realization of “leaving no one behind”, with relational potential of insight, creativity and innovation.

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Over the last few decades, our Earth has deteriorated massively due to the careless actions of humans. There have been many environmental problems and natural disasters arising such as global warming, water pollution, climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, floods, tsunamis, blizzards and many issues that not only affect Earth, but they are also affecting us; humans and all the animals, above and below water. The harm we are constantly causing to our planet can not be measured, but hopefully it can be stopped.

The United Nations General Assembly decided to set 17 goals which are known as the SDGs in 2015. These goals are intended to be achieved by 2030 to end inequalities, control climate change and vanish all forms of poverty. Sustainable development has been defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (“The Sustainable Development Agenda”, 2021). All developed and developing countries are urged to work on these goals and achieve them by 2030, meaning that if all the world united in achieving these goals, by 10 years we will restore our planet and bring back its peace and prosperity. The 17 goals are targeted to enhance the lives of humans, animals, plants and most importantly our planet’s wellbeing.

In the past 10 years, researchers focusing on the sustainability of the built environment have unanimously concluded that the existing standards and tools pay serious attention to the environmental dimension of sustainability. In addition, they emphasized that generally available standards lack indicators on the background, social, cultural, and economic aspects of the buildings. Although there have been many attempts to establish new frameworks to more fully integrate sustainability into buildings and the built environment, their widespread adoption has been very limited. Today, the international sustainable development agenda has attracted more and more attention outside the public sector, and is increasingly integrated into private organizations and local practices.

The approval of the 2030 Agenda in 2015 marked a worldwide milestone within side the area of sustainability and sustainable improvement. The agenda, inclusive of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets, hooked up a clean expansive framework for improvement which dedicates  equal  interest to the  environmental, social and monetary pillars of sustainability. Moreover, the agenda’s  targets  have been strategically based around 5 key themes: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. The 2030 Agenda gives a strong and worldwide definition for sustainability over the following 10 years that's observed via way of means of worldwide, notation and neighborhood commitments. This balance ought to gain the development sector, mainly designers, in  overcoming a number of the modern obstacles and help within the sector’s transition past its modern ecological and strength overall performance focus. Achieving significant integration of the 5 issues in constructing initiatives calls for  stepping again from the present quantitative standards for assessment, to take into account the wider capacity contribution of homes to the SDGs and their targets. It additionally calls for exploring the approach to translate the worldwide attention of the schedule to the nearby and project-particular level. Although there was some of frameworks proposed for attaining the SDGs, they stay basically conceptual in nature and are not tailored to particular desires of  creation, constructing and design initiatives.

Instead of an incontestable technique to sustainability, which ignores nearby information together with social, monetary and ecologic realities, researchers recommend to apprehend processes to sustainability as layout logics- wherein common sense may be described as a collection of thoughts or concepts, which provide means to social and bodily reality, that may be produced and reproduced, and that may increase via practice. sustainability can be perceived as an emergent assets of layout wondering via reflection-in-action.

Since the overdue twentieth century, buildings occupants’ expectancies of a greater modern, flexible,  and  comfortable  lifestyle  have  increased.  Meanwhile,  state-of-the-art technologies, synthetic intelligence, and robotics have skilled incredible leaps in progress.  The  emergence  of  the  information  revolution  further  inspired occupants’  desire  to  make  use  of  the  internet,  clever  gadgets,  web-enabled integration platforms, and IP-enabled gadgets of their each day lives. Technology has matured  in  its  practicality  and  economic  feasibility,  owing  to  solid  enterprise standards, increased  market  demand, and  sizable cost  reductions  that made era  available  to  a  greater  number  of  people.  These  attributes  additionally bolstered the growth of constructing demographics towards embedding era and community connectivity inside their infrastructures, permitting smart homes to become  part  of  the  mainstream.  Consequently,  this  stimulated  interior designers  to  develop  synergistic  design  concepts  capable  of  integrating  smart systems, fueled through an evolution in smart materials, smart gadgets, and sensors, as well  as a  wider  insurance of  internet  connectivity  and  applications. Smart homes are  therefore structured  on designs  that accommodate  changes for  the benefit of occupants, whilst controlling aid intake and analyzing occupants’ behavioral patterns. In addition, smart homes are characterized through their  integrated  communication  and  management  systems  which  enhance occupants’ accessibility, security, and manipulate over indoors environments, and intention to boom productiveness and consumer consolation levels.

Smart  interior design is  characterized  with the aid of using  its  ability  to  provide  actionable records concerning the overall performance of layout facilities; the layout will become a locus  for  receiving,  transmitting,  and  analyzing  data.  Smart  interior designs proactively  monitors  and  detects errors  or  deficiencies  within  layout  systems, making sure the pride and comfort of the building’s occupants. It additionally contributes  to  resource  rationalization,  real-time  reporting,  and  minimizing operational costs. Smart interior design presents fast, flexible, and monetary responses to the regularly various and complex requests made with the aid of using occupants, and determines the maximum green techniques for supplying a convenient, comfortable, entertaining, and effective environment.

Efficiency  of   smart  interior designs  can  be  measured  through  four  attributes. The  first  characteristic  is  integration.  When  smart interior design solution  are effectively incorporated with the bulk of layout components, this can serve performance,  ease  of  operation,  and  minimize  utility  consumption  over  the layout’s existence cycle. The second characteristic is the success of excessive verbal exchange facilitated with the aid of using smart designs. This consists of person-to-person, person-to-gadget, and gadget-to-gadget communications, each inside the indoors  surroundings and with the outdoor world, connecting homes in a cloud community that serves as an important a part of smart cities. The third characteristic is the functionality to evolve without difficulty to adjustments inside the area and be bendy sufficient to deal with new era requirements. Finally,  the  fourth  characteristic  that  smart interior design should contain is manage over constructing structures a good way to optimize strength use at the same time as supplying real-time and historic perspectives of occupant behavioral patterns. Moreover, using smart materials and furniture in conjunction with smart lighting fixtures and acoustic solutions allows occupants adapt to the interior design theme, thereby increasing occupant consolation and satisfaction.

Smart design facilities include all available devices, sensors, transducers, signal conditioners,  transmitters,  converters,  receivers,  logic  controllers,  displays, recorders,  and  actuators.  They  also  consist of  network  technologies,  internet connections, and function packages that serve the reason in their modules. Priority  order  will  be  set  based  on  the  developers’,  owners’,  and  occupants’ deliverable needs,  as well  as the  constructing type,  availability of  funding, and  the provision of gadget and carrier allowing technologies. Smart interior design solutions ought to comprise flexible systems that could accommodate smart design facilities. In  particular,  solutions  ought to  keep responsive cabling design, an open area with movable or demountable partitions, raised  flooring,  suspended  ceilings,  and  mechanical  flooring to permit  connection among different  design elements  throughout a  single  infrastructure, in  addition  to assembly the needs of future technologies. One  of  the  ultimate  goals  of  interior  design  is  to  offer  a  healthy, safe, and comfortable  indoor  environment.  Smart  design  systems  can  be  proactive  in controlling air quality through the measurement of humidity, pollutants, and toxic gas  emissions. Systems  can  reduce  these  undesirable  particles  thru  proper natural and mechanical ventilation.

Consequently, architects & interior designers have to inspire and recommend the use of smart designs and structures via way of means of embedding them into their solution specifications, in addition to explaining to their clients how those tactics will advantage all building stakeholders and their environment.