Opening the conference, Roger Courtney, Deputy Chairman of the BRE said that the term
intelligent buildings ‘came with a lot of baggage’. For some, it was about developing technology to control building performance, and many took the view that there was not enough thought given at the design stage to the interaction of systems. For others it was all about information technology. Mr Courtney suggested that a better definition was ‘the creation of buildings people wanted to live and work in’, citing the BRE’s own projects: the Environment Building (Fig 1) and the BRE Office. There is also the Integer House, newly opened on the BRE site (see case study).
Kathy Stansfield