RESTORE Public Conference Kinnarps House, Budapest 13 February 2018

1. COST is supported by
The EU Framework Programme
Horizon 2020
This presentation is based upon work from COST Action RESTORE CA16114, supported by COST (European
Cooperation in Science and Technology).
Giulia Sonetti, Politecnico di Torino
First output of my STSM at KADK, Copenhagen
Exploring the potentials of ICT Tools
for Human Centric Restorative
Design
Budapest, 13/02/2018
WG2, Leader: Emanuele Naboni
COST Action RESTORE
giulia.sonetti@polito.it
@songiu

2. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Aiming for sustainable buildings and cities is claimed to be urgent to lower
our environmental impact. Shifting from a narrow focus on building energy
performance, mitigation strategies, and minimization of environmental
impacts, to a broader framework that enriches places, people, ecology,
culture, and climate is nevertheless of outmost importance.
Research on restorative design is thus critical to achieve a future that is
socially just, ecologically restorative, culturally rich and economically viable.
Intro

3. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Dull design, smart citizens?

4. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Research Question
Can technologies and Artificial Intelligences (AIs) be
used to create systems that make new relationships
between buildings, mechanical systems and
inhabitants, through art, social networks and natural
interactions, supporting the research about human
centric design tools?

5. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Background and the technology mounted and tested in the Human
Observation Meta Environment (HOME) project
More than 2500 posts in social networks (Twitter and Instagram) provided the
sematic realm connected to the word “comfort” in the Turin human
ecosystem to be used in tuning the words and the “feelings” to explore in
restorative design research.
A prototype of the HOME IT-architecture has been tested in an aulic room of
the Politecnico di Torino, aiming at observing and gathering information about
human behaviors toward a sentient building, involving the inhabitants and
making them strategically aware of their behaviors.
The second part describes the results of the prototype presentation to a
wider audience in form of an artistic installation.
The HOME project

6. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
“Hi, I’m classroom one. Are you happy with this
temperature?”

7. https://www.he-r.it/project/persona-non-data-2/

8. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Aims
• Observe and collect information about human behaviors,
interactions, relations and patterns in buildings and sets of
buildings (in our case, university campuses) in relation to
energy consumption
• Describe strategies which correlate desired outcomes in
terms of energy consumption versus human
comfort/behavior/space use patterns
• Create sensorial, visual, interactive outputs under various
forms which are able to engage inhabitants of buildings and
spaces, to become aware and active about the building
energy management strategies and their own
behaviors/energy impacts

9. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
• We described the Architecture and set up a Social
Network campaign to scout the “Comfort” Semantic
Realm and the potentialities of ICT tools
• We created a Working Prototype, exposed as an
Artwork during Turin’s art week in Nov 2017
• We collected the first users’ feedbacks after an
interdisciplinary workshop and an experts’ round table
• We are submitting a paper to “Sustainability” !
Preliminary Results

10. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
HOME / Architecture

11. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
HOME / What
• Case studies: two rooms in two different university
campuses sites in Turin (Corso Duca@POLITO, and
CLE@UNITO)
• Data sources: smart meters,
temperature/humidity/CO2/presence sensors, CC
cameras, plus social network data, for
○ Data Harvesting
○ Data Processing
○ Data Visualization / Interaction
○ Other modules (Geo/Space Semantics, Pattern Sensing and Discovery, Strategy Builder,
Experiment Builder, Smart Agent / Bot Builder)

12. HOME / Where

13. Existing data in both campuses facilities made us need of adapters to integrate them in
HOME’s database
HOME / The Architecture

14. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
HOME / Technologies used
For data collection:
Human Ecosystems, to harvest, geo-reference (and in-building spatial reference),
harmonize and process data from social networks, existing databases
Persona Non Data, to harvest data from CCTV cameras, wifi hotspots, sensors, integrated
sensing and control systems (for example temperature, humidity, presence)
Computer Vision ​(OpenCv based) algorithms for face de-identification through blurring
For data processing:
Human Ecosystems, to process data coming from social networks and other sources
using natural language analysis, emotional analysis, network analysis, geographic/spatial
analysis and machine learning, to identify inhabitants' interactions, spatial distributions,
emotional expressions, recurring patterns in data, clusters, statistical distributions
For Smart Agent:
Voice Synthesis ​(pyttsx) to create the natural, speech-based interface which performs
interactions with building inhabitants (e.g.: “Do you know that you can raise the
temperature of this room by tweeting...”, “I think I will lower the temperature in this
room by 2 degrees. If you don't want to, tweet...”, and other types), and which conducts
the experiments (e.g.: pronounce and execute experiment – for example to lower the
temperature in the room –; wait for user reaction – for example user objects –; send
results to Deep Learning; repeat)

15. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Social Network Analysis

16. Social Network Analisys

17. Social Network Analisys

18. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
• The Smart Agent Art Performance
• The interdisciplinary workshop
HOME / The Prototype

19. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
a generative poem about cold and warmth, performed by the
SmartAgent:
○ using the same setup as for the SA, with an added video projection
on a large screen to visualize the patterns as they are generated, the
SA welcomed visitors in a space and start generating poems (using
Natural Language Processing functionalities) about being cold and
being hot, in sync with the temperature in the room going up or
down, by controlling the climate control
an immersive concert for data, generative sound, visuals and
temperature:
○ visual patterns and sounds, using different colors and tunes to
suggest cold and warmth variation as detected on the database, have
been generated to create a syncretic effect while the SA was
processing users density variations in the space
HOME / The Prototype

20. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma1sOPqJqTk

21. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
The Prototype

22. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
The Interdisciplinary Workshop

23. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
The interdisciplinary workshop helped us:
● to disseminate the activities about the HOME project
● to understand in which ways building inhabitants can
collaborate (Twitter via hashtags like “#Room 10-lower the
temperature!” or Instagram Pics)
● to visualize the principal statistics (how many people
have been in the room, how many spoke with the SA, how
many argued with it, how many have used Twitter, and so
forth)
● to unfold Patterns, Strategies and Experiments that can
be used in synergy with the KADK hardware equipment
and researches
The Interdisciplinary Workshop

24. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
The Art Exhibition

25. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
The artistic installation has created a sort of accessibility
filter for the HOME project, able to offer a physical
materialization of the project that was not "technical".
The language of art and design were able to open up
more human conversations, escaping the sole domain of
information on energy efficiency.
The Art Exhibition

26. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
Next steps

27. COST is supported by
The EU Framework
Programme
Horizon 2020
- Test the Pilot in the two rooms for three months as a
dynamic PMV to be used in centralized control algorithms
for temperature setting / proving of design intent (ex-post
occupants satisfaction)
- Enhance the AI use in autonomous sustainability-
comfort decisions making with users inclusion
- Explore the cost reductions in the design, construction
and operation phase of buildings thanks to the real-
time understanding of the use path of the buildings
- Feed into restorative sustainability research!
Next steps

28. COST is supported by
The EU Framework Programme
Horizon 2020
This presentation is based upon work from COST Action RESTORE CA16114, supported by COST (European
Cooperation in Science and Technology).
Thank you for your attention!
☺
Giulia Sonetti
BArch MArch(Hons) MSc PhD CArch
Polito Green Team Management / Research Assistant
Interuniversity Department of Regional & Urban Studies
and Planning, Politecnico di Torino and Università di
Torino
Skype, LinkedIn: giulia.sonetti / Twitter: @songiu
Mail: giulia.sonetti@polito.it