Internet of Things and Data Analytics Handbook

27SMART CITY ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING: EVOLVING SYSTEMS THROUGH IoT

DOMINIQUE DAVISON¹ AND ASHLEY Z. HAND²

¹ DRAW Architecture + Urban Design, Kansas City, MO, USA

² CityFi, Los Angeles, CA, USA

27.1 INTRODUCTION

Architecture has long been understood as a system: a set of connected elements forming a complex whole that then functions as an affordance for inhabitants and pieces together to form towns and cities. The Bauhaus and especially one of its Directors, architect Mies van der Rohe, worked with systems of construction components to redefine modern architecture and expressions of materiality. Others, such as ecological architects, considered the multiple environmental subsystems in design of the built environment. William Whyte led the way in studying social interactions in urban environments. Yet, there is still considerably more work to be done to analyze and understand how the building itself is part of a larger ecology and environmental system—not just as a singular intervention on an urban site.

Ultimately, there are three scales to consider in architecture: the human level, the building level, and the urban or regional level. Architecture must consider not just the function and life cycle of the building itself but also its impact on the ecologies and communities around it once part of the urban network—throughout the entirety of its life cycle. And governance allows, and ideally empowers and educates, its communities to have an active voice in the manifestation ...