Whether you’re an early adopter or believe smart technology could invite a host of new headaches into our most private spaces, connectivity and automation are coming for us all. We’re still in the beginning phases of a revolution in the way architecture is designed, built and used, from virtual-reality-enhanced concept development and robotic construction to new levels of hands-free home control with potential to improve the quality of many users’ lives.

Sometimes smart home technology can influence the overall form of the house – like the central wooden block that holds the “life line” of electric panels, air conditioning units, audio visual systems and more within 42mm Architecture’s Pool House, pictured above – but often the effect is less visible from the outside.

Unprecedented Flexibility

A company that produces smart home technology commissioned Dot Architects to build “Baitasi House of the Future,” an experimental house located in a historic hutong area of Beijing. Part of the home’s layout is inspired by the architects’s belief that “the boundary between home and society is blurred by the rise of the sharing economy, nomad workers and technology,” leading to fragmented lives that can’t be served by a conventional fixed layout.

Movable modules within the home controlled by a smart TV system slide around to offer four different layout options, shifting the entire house from a three bedroom home to a small office. Even the facade opens up to connect the living space to the outdoors. Some transforming furniture and other elements the home still have to be assembled by hand, but the process is largely automated.

Privacy concerns around glass architecture could soon disappear thanks to curtains that close or glass facades that switch from transparent to opaque at the touch of a button. That could make large expanses of glazing much more popular for all sorts of applications, allowing for a lot more natural daylighting, enjoyment of views and a sense of connection to the outdoors. It could also make sort of completely transparent bathroom designs sometimes seen in modern Japanese houses a little more palatable to the average Westerner.

Integrating Universal Design

One common reaction to the proliferation of smart technology is a snarky comment about how lazy humans are becoming. Can’t we open doors, turn on lights, pause the television and adjust the curtains with our own two hands? Well, no. Many of us can’t. We live in a world that has long prioritized the young and able-bodied at the expense of everyone else, assuming most people can easily get up stairs, reach typical countertop height to perform tasks, grip objects and see where we’re going.

Conventional approaches to everything from floor plans to kitchen sinks exclude a sizable percentage of the general population. The alternative, a movement called Universal Design, argues that all built environments should be designed to meet the needs of all people who wish to use them. That includes changing both the physical form of structures and how we access them – including the integration of automated processes, sensor technology and artificial intelligence.

Todd Stabelfeldt, a tech CEO who’s been paralyzed from the neck down since he was eight years old, says his life changed for the better with Apple’s 2013 release of iOS 7, which incorporated an accessibility feature called Switch Control that allows people with limited mobility to control their iPhones. The following year, the ability to summon Siri by voice gave Todd even more freedom and autonomy. Recently, he starred in an Apple commercial demonstrating how Siri and Apple’s HomeKit technology help him get around his own home. The video is fittingly entitled “Convenience For You is Independence for Me.”

As AI continues to develop, we could soon see smart environments that don’t just respond to our commands in order to adjust things to our needs and preferences, but do so automatically.

Open-Source, Augmented Reality & Robotics

Access to open-source architecture is playing a central role in the development of smart homes like the Baitasi House of the Future, which features an extension constructed using the WikiHouse platform. WikiHouse provides downloadable online templates that can be used to build houses using wooden components cut on CNC milling machines, easily slotting together.

“Based on the strategy of minimal intervention, we used the WikiHouse system for the only new-built structure on site,” says Dot Architects. “It is lightweight and digitally fabricated. This faster and cleaner construction process suites the crowded and noise-sensitive neighborhood very well.”

Honda’s Smart Home looks like the kind of low-cost contemporary urban housing you can find in just about any city in the United States, but on the inside, it’s a showpiece of smart technology that produces more energy via solar panels than it consumes. Everything from the music to the lights to the blinds is controlled through an iPad app – but most importantly, the plans are all open-source, ensuring that the success of the house can be replicated for the common good.

When actions like moving walls, transforming the opacity of glazing and gaining unprecedented control over climate control capabilities are possible through smart technology, it follows that the process of building construction will soon be carried out in similar ways. Recent advances in technology have already democratized the design process to a large degree, allowing clients to see what a renovation might look like with the use of 3D virtual overlays, for example. Augmented reality could help living, breathing, non-robotic workers construct complex designs. Integrated AI systems could soon connect digital renderings, 3D printing, robotic construction and other high tech ways of designing and building, transforming and potentially automating every step of the process down to the final aesthetic touches.

Blurring Lines Between Architecture and Transit

Concepts like the SYMBIOZ house and car combo by Renault envision a near future in which higher end, privately owned autonomous vehicles take a place of honor right in the center of the home, integrating into the living space instead of being relegated to a garage. The emissions-free, all-electric car becomes a room within a room to make the transition between home and travel more seamless and comfortable. The car can even act as an energy generator in case the power goes out.

But you don’t have to live in a brand new structure that practically puts your car on an altar in order to benefit from a connection between smart cars and smart homes. For example, Ford is working on integrating its cars with the Amazon Echo and the Wink smart home platform, allowing users to control home systems while still en route or check your car’s diagnostics from the comfort of your couch. Ultimately, as cities evolve, smart infrastructure and integration with automated vehicles could revolutionize public transit as well, using location, weather data and traffic monitoring to make getting from your door to your destination more efficient than ever.

This is also the reason why Honda got into the smart home game in the first place. The auto manufacturer believes that automation between buildings and vehicles should be seamless, and that developing efficient and clean technologies for both is integral to fighting climate change.

A Greater Need to Keep Up with Change

There’s (at least) one big caveat to all of this, very real privacy concerns aside. Technology is constantly changing, and it can quickly feel out of date. Anyone who owns a car with its own circa 2010 built-in GPS system has experienced firsthand how features like this can become redundant and obsolete within a matter of months after they’re installed.

A much higher level of cross-compatibility standards will be necessary to make sure smart home devices from different manufacturers are able to work with each other, like Honda’s Smart House energy management system meshing with smart dishwashers from Bosch and refrigerators from KitchenAid. But systems will also have to be built with frequent upgrades in mind, which requires a level of flexibility and adaptability a lot of architecture can’t currently accommodate. Embracing change as a constant (and preparing for the end of a structure’s usability) must extend to the ways in which we design and build everything around us. And just as importantly, smart home technology needs to be egalitarian, integrated into housing that’s legitimately affordable rather than a feature that’s only accessible to the wealthy.

We don’t have to wait for a dystopian future in which our faces are scanned as we walk down the sidewalk and our every movement is logged – we willingly carry personally identifiable tracking devices in our pockets everywhere we go, and cameras are everywhere. What’s the average law-abiding citizen concerned with privacy to do, let alone activists and protesters seeking to exercise their constitutional rights? These wearable counter-surveillance designs, including drone-evading cloaks, signal-blocking phone cases and fingerprint spoofers aim to provide us with privacy-preserving tools in the age of Big Brother.

Edward Snowden’s ‘Snitch’ iPhone Case & The Tunnel Case

Designed by the infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden himself, who knows a thing or two about the NSA, this modified iPhone 6 case features a screen that monitors when an iPhone is transmitting, covers the rear camera and triggers alerts when the phone is transiting data via radio signals that can make a user detectable.

“If you have a phone in your pocket that’s turned on, a long-lived record of your movements has been created,” Snowden explained while presenting the case at MIT’s Media Lab via video connection from Russia. “As a result of the way the cell network functions your device is constantly shouting into the air by means of radio signals a unique identity that validates you to the phone company. And this unique identity is not only saved by that phone company, but it can also be observed as it travels over the air by independent, even more dangerous third parties.”

A lower tech option with similar albeit less robust features, called the Tunnel case, provides similar benefits and is available now, unlike Snowden’s concept. It’s a signal-jamming copper-lined sleeve that blocks all electromagnetic frequencies within ten seconds, making you untraceable.

URME Anti-Surveillance Prosthetic Mask

There’s no denying that this 3D-printed resin prosthetic mask is creepy looking – especially the way the wearer’s eyes tend not to line up correctly with the eye holes. But wearing another man’s face can help you slip past biometric scanners without revealing your true identity. Artist Leo Selvaggio has lent us all the use of his visage so facial detection software identifies the wearer as him. The mask is also available in a budget-friendly, printable paper version.

“Our world is becoming increasingly surveilled,” reads the URME website offering the mask. “For example, Chicago has over 25,000 cameras networked to a single facial recognition hub. We don’t believe you should be tracked just because you want to walk outside and you shouldn’t have to hide either. Instead, use one of our products to present an alternative identity when in public.”

Fingerprint-Spoofing Strips

The IDENTITY kit by Mian Wei is a ‘fingerprint substitute’ you apply to the tips of your fingers like band-aids. Since fingerprints are biological identifiers that we can’t change, they can be used against us, and the rise of consumer devices requiring a fingerprint passcode can put this crucial piece of identity verification at risk. The black prosthetics are made of a mixture of conductive silicone and fibers so you can assign ‘false fingerprints’ to your iPhone and other devices, and so your ‘fingerprint’ can’t be molded and used as a key to your life.

Makeup That Thwarts Facial Detection

For now, facial detection software still isn’t quite advanced enough to recognize human faces that significantly depart from the usual symmetric arrangement of features. That’s where the ‘anti-face’ comes in, a way of altering your appearance via hairstyles and cosmetics to fool computers into thinking they’re looking at something other than a face. The CVDazzle project explores this idea with a series of six style tips for reclaiming privacy, explaining how to foil detection via makeup, obscuring the nose bridge and eyes as well as the elliptical shape of your face, modifying contrast and avoiding symmetry.

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How To Be Invisible 15 Anti Surveillance Designs Installations

Apple Watch’s failure to catch on tells us most people probably don’t want to wear full-on smartphones on our wrists, but that doesn’t mean standard analog watches couldn’t use a bit of modernization. These concepts for technology-augmented timepieces include hybrid digital-analog designs, watches that communicate with your car, wrist-launched camera drones and a smartwatch Darth Vader would love. Some are cool ideas, some need work and others are downright terrible, but they might give us an idea of what’s to come in terms of wearable technology.

Nixie Wearable Camera Drone

Launch a camera zone from your wrist anytime you want with ‘Nixie,’ which uses motion-prediction algorithms and sensors to guide itself along four pre-programmed paths to capture full HD photos or video from the air. Weighing less than 0.1 pounds, it can connect with a smartphone for easy data transfer. Th idea is that the camera can capture whatever you’re doing and then fly right back, whether you want to take a quick selfie or record some kind of stunt. Mimicking the look of a wrist watch, it’s an interesting piece of wearable tech for sure, with one problem: it doesn’t tell the time, so if you like wearing a watch, you’ll have to double up.

Luxury Smart Strap for Analog Watches by Montblanc

If you can’t bear to part with your analog watch, but wish you could upgrade it somehow, this one’s for you: the Montblac e-Strap, which adds a 14.2-millimeter-wide OLED screen to the inside of your wrist. Connecting to a smartphone via Bluetooth, it works as a remote camera trigger, controls for a music player, incoming text and call alerts and physical activity data collection. It also has a ‘find me’ function in case you’re prone to misplacing your phone.

Simple, Elegant Watch Tells Time with Color Gradient

This watch needs no hour hand, using a color gradient to indicate the time. ‘Hidden Time’ by Jiwoong Jung has a minimalist look that’s constantly shifting as the minute hand makes its rounds, with the hard line between black and white telling you what hour it is.

Darth Vader’s Watch by Devon

What would Darth Vader wear? Los Angeles watchmaker Devon answers that question with its Star Wars watch, with a silhouette calling to mind the villain’s helmet, a strap modeled after his Sith gloves and a stand that makes it look like a TIE fighter. If you want one for yourself, you might have to do something villainous to get it: the price tag is a hefty $28,500.

Smell the Time with ‘Scent Rhythm’

‘Scent Rhythm’ doesn’t care exactly what time it is so much as it wants to help your body ease into each phase of the day naturally, aiding your circadian rhythms through the release of four different fragrances. Detecting a certain scent will give an a general “feel” of the time every six hours, activating our natural sense of time, called chronoception. The smells were specifically selected and timed to amplify the rhythms that help govern our sleep and waking cycles. First comes coffee, then a library-like smell of paperback books, then whiskey and tobacco, and finally chamomile. Like the idea? Designer Aisen Caro Chacin offers plans to build your own.

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Time For New Technology 13 Modern Wristwatch Designs

Ready or not, it’s time to stand up when this kinetic desk starts to rise on its own, ensuring that you don’t spend too much time in an unhealthy seated position as you work. Studies have shown that parking ourselves in chairs for eight hours or more per day can lead to organ damage, foggy brain, a strained neck, muscle degeneration and other negative effects. Experts recommend alternating between sitting and standing – and now there’s a high-tech desk that will help you do just that.

The Stir Kinetic Desk gently raises and lowers itself at pre-set intervals, to custom heights of your choice. A built-in touch screen on the desk surface enables you to check your daily stats, telling you how long you’ve spent in each position and when your next adjustment should be.

You just double-tap the home screen to move the desk to its next position when desired, using a slider to create your desk height presets. A function called ‘Whisperbreath’ creates a gentle one-inch rise and fall of the desk surface to signal you that it’s time to stand up so you don’t have to stop what you’re doing.

The creator calls it a “non-wearable wearable,” i.e. a fitness-tracking gadget that works in a similar way to smart watches and Fitbits. You can also synch other fitness tech to track how many calories you burn while standing. The cost of “the world’s most advanced desk” clocks in at $2,990.

Never lose a bike to theft again with smart, GPS-connected parts that alert you when it’s moved without your permission. Two new bike accessories that can be swapped out with standard parts on virtually any bike not only track your bike’s location, but also provide turn-by-turn, eyes-free navigation so you can get to where you’re going without having to glance at your phone.

The first is smrtGRiPS by Boréal Bikes, a connected bike grip that offers haptic feedback notifications and can easily be installed within standard bicycle handlebars. Used in conjunction with an iOS or Android app, the grip will tell you when to turn using vibrations.

You can also get the bike to audibly ring if you have trouble finding it, and in case of theft, it’ll notify a crowd GPS network so that when another smrtGRiPS user comes within 100 feet of your missing bike, you’ll get the location. It’ll even have your phone call 911 automatically when a crash is detected.

Another product, the Connected Cycle Smart Pedal, alerts cyclists when their bike has been moved via a mobile app. The app will also help you track your cycling activity with detailed statistics about how far you’ve ridden over a selected period of time, which routes you take and how many calories you’ve burned. The pedal fits onto any standard bike and made its debut at CES 2015.