Concept Summary

Jury statement:
The challenge successfully tackled by the creators of this interactive installation involved taking one high-rise, thousands of users, hundreds of thousands of pieces of data and a system that analyses and utilises the data to create a comfortable work environment while reducing costs and conserving resources, as well as making this chain of dependencies accessible to users, engineers and investors, educating them and persuading them of the advantages of the system in an aesthetic experience worthy of the Bronze Award.

What if buildings knew how people were using them and could anticipate their needs? We created an interactive exhibit within IBM’s permanent IoT exhibition to make this vision tangible. IBM’s Munich headquarters are equipped with over 10,000 sensors to monitor everything from environmental information, to the use of energy, to the flow of people.  To show this on a smaller scale, we created an interactive model of the building that gathers data from Watson and turns it into an immersive audiovisual experience.  A specially designed mobile app allows the user to browse through real time data, as well as through historic data, to spot emerging trends in comfort and occupancy levels, and in the flow of people. Shaders express the character and values of the according data sets and via 360° projection mapping constantly transform the appearance of the building model and the exhibition space.  A heat map is projected on the 2-meter-high model to indicate temperature levels. A gas-like shader represents the CO2 levels in the building, something IBM already uses to manage the reservations of conference rooms and public spaces. A liquid shader shows the humidity levels. The Intelligent Building exhibit also features a 7-chapter story mode, which explains the idea of IOT, how Watson helps us to find solutions to problems before they even emerge and how a future roll out to other institutions and facilities will connect the world and positively affect our everyday lives. Our sound design uses abstract sonic interpretations of physical states in order to translate topics like data and data communication into soundscapes.