Intelligent Workplace: The Office of the Future

[Guest guest]

Intelligent Workplace: The Office of the Future

By Robin Lloyd

Special to LiveScience

posted: 23 December 2005

08:53 am ET

PITTSBURGH—You spend all day there, and if the latest trends in green office

architecture catch on you may actually begin to enjoy your workplace a lot

more.

The Euro-sleek office of the future is already in full effect at an

eight-year-old successful experiment at Carnegie Mellon University called the

Intelligent Workplace.

Here, workers in a heavily windowed living laboratory have a " right to

daylight " —each desk is within 25 yards of natural light. Ceiling panels

reflect

warm daylight to work areas.

More productive

Studies show that access to daylight improves worker productivity by 5

percent to 25 percent.

" You save money if you allow human performance to be part of the equation

for building costs, " says the experiment’s director Volker Hartkopf. " Our

goal

is to generate environments that meet people’s needs—air, thermal, visual,

acoustic, and ergonomic qualities. We meet them physically and

psychologically. "

The " high-performance " office building trend, already standard in some

western European countries, can be seen in the U.S. at the Condé Nast building

in

Manhattan and the Frito-Lay plant in Henrietta, New York. Both have won a

certification called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) given

out by the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

Cool heat

At the Carnegie Mellon Intelligent Workplace, no one suffers in airless

cells that are too hot in the winter and too cold in the summer. Much of the

heat

in the Intelligent Office radiates from slender window dividers, pipes

actually, that snake around the building’s walls and carry water warmed by

recaptured waste heat from generators. Solar and other reflective sources also

warm

office areas.

Cooling is achieved in the summer with interior shades and exterior louvers,

along with windows that actually open.

Consoles at each station allow workers to control the flow of hot and cool

air at their desk area.

All the walls and furniture, made largely of recycled materials, are

_modular and reconfigurable_

(http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=0512\

23_iw_in_02.jpg & cap=Plans+for+the+future+office+includ

e+a+spactially+flexible+environment,+in+which+workstations+and+meeting+areas+c

an+be+easily+moved,+added+or+taken+away.+Credit:+CMU/IW+project+) , so office

dwellers do their own remodeling when it’s time to move a workstation or add

a conference room. Workstations made by by König + Neurath can be folded up

to the size of a door. No more dumpsters full of tortured plasterboard. No

more waiting for contractors.

Commercial and residential buildings use 65.2 percent of total U.S.

electricity and more than 36 percent of total U.S. primary energy, according to

the

the U.S. Green Building Council.

Making electricity

Hartkopf and his colleagues have done systems consultancy for such U.S.

sites as the Owens-Corning headquarters building in Toledo and the Department

of

Environmental Protection in burg, Pennsylvania.

At the _Intelligent Workplace_ (http://www.arc.cmu.edu/cbpd/iw/index.html) ,

he is collaborating with Bosch Siemens, Somfy and Cisco Systems on a fully

automated building façade that will allow for control of daylight and glare so

the building sheds heat in the summer when unoccupied to eliminate the need

for spending electricity on cooling. In the winter, the system will allow the

building to become its own heat collector and source.

Hartkopf told LiveScience that his next large-scale office project at

Carnegie Mellon is the Building as Power Plant. A project that will produce

energy,

not consume it, thanks to the combination of a biodiesel fuel cell along

with recapture of shed heat from the generation of electricity, and collecting

and redirecting heat from the soil and sun.

" That’s what we call renewable energy, " he said.

* _The Smart Home Is Here_

(http://www.livescience.com/technology/popsci_zigbee_051207.html)

* _Conversational Black Holes Found in Workplace_

(http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050216_workplace_blackhole.html)

* _Ultimate Mood Light: New LED Panels Snap into Electronic Walls_

(http://www.livescience.com/technology/051214_electronic_walls.html)

* _Power of the Future: 10 Ways to Run the 21st Century_

(http://www.livescience.com/environment/top10_power_21stcentury.html)