Technology + Built Environment
The distinction between smart buildings and smart cities is often framed as one of ambition: cities are simply “bigger”, more complex versions of buildings, aren’t they? In practice, this assumption has proven unhelpful. The real difference is not scale alone, but the qualitative shift in complexity that occurs as we move from buildings to cities, […]
For years, the panacea of smart buildings has been framed around interaction. Tap here. Log in there. Adjust this. Override that. A quiet assumption sat beneath it all – that people would be willing participants in the digital lives of their buildings. They sorta were. But increasingly, they won’t be. Gen Z and Alpha are […]
The smart buildings industry did something genuinely impressive over the last decade. Faced with fragmented supply chains, overlapping scopes, and technologies falling between trades, it created a delivery construct that mostly worked. The Master Systems Integrator brought clarity to capital projects. It defined accountability, reduced chaos, and made it possible to deliver increasingly complex smart […]
In January, I usually look to the future. But winter has a way of slowing you down. Fewer distractions. Sharper thinking. On cold mornings, I like to imagine a walk through a small, fictional graveyard. Not of people, but of smart building and smart city technologies that once mattered deeply, worked remarkably well, and are […]
Smart buildings are becoming sophisticated enough that we’re finally allowed to ask awkward questions. Not “can it optimise my HVAC?” or “will the dashboard impress leadership?”, but something slightly more philosophical: what happens when the intelligence we’ve embedded starts smoothing reality in ways we don’t fully see? Not maliciously, not Skynet-in-a-plant-room, just… systemically. Most optimisation […]
The current wave of AI lives in documents, emails, and dashboards. The next wave will live in space. Embodied AI means software plus sensors plus motors operating in the real world: machines that can see a corridor, decide what to do, and act on it without waiting for a human. Once AI can move, buildings […]
There’s a moment in every smart building project when the confetti settles and reality walks in. The app works. The dashboards load. Then, within weeks, the control room drifts back to radio calls and spreadsheets. The gap isn’t technological, it’s operational. That’s why the most valuable deliverable on any PropTech programme isn’t a feature list, […]
You’d be forgiven for thinking PropTech was on a rocket ship. Flashy demos. AI-powered everything. A conference circuit full of optimism and matching lanyards. And yet, behind the scenes, the UK PropTech sector is beginning to show signs of fatigue. Not a dramatic collapse, but a slow, quiet unravelling that’s easy to miss if you’re […]
Have you ever walked into a building and instantly felt relaxed, productive, or inexplicably on edge? That’s not by accident, it’s the “vibe” at play. But now, there’s a new, tech-savvy cousin on the scene: vibe coding. I’m excited about what it could mean for smart buildings. Google defines vibe coding as: “Vibe coding is […]
One of the questions I get asked most, in boardrooms, conferences, or even in the pub, is: “What’s next for smart buildings?” It used to be a fun question. I’d launch into some enthusiasm about self-healing systems, walls that would talk back to you, or what was real about AI in mobile apps. These days, […]