Vendor Lock-In
Recording: A Blueprint for the Future of Smart Building Retrofits
January 24th, 2024Beyond the Hype: Assessing What We Know About the PassiveLogic Ecosystem, So Far
December 4th, 2023
What the Johnson Controls & Willow Partnership Really Says About Smart Building Patents
Almost 140 years ago, in 1883, American college professor Warren Johnson became frustrated with his inability to control individual classroom temperatures, so designed and patented a multi-zone pneumatic control system to solve the problem. Two years later, in 1885, he established the Johnson Electric Service Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a firm now known as Johnson […]
Standards Vs Ecosystems: The Battle for Interoperability
Our physical world is being colonized by digital technology that seeks to sense, interpret, interface, and augment the human experience. Across the built environment, connected devices promise to feed advanced AI systems with all manner of data on the real world to bring about advanced automation and actionable insight. However, the sheer scale of the […]
We Already Have The Technology, Now We Need It To Work Together
In 2022, we already have the tools to make buildings smarter. What the smart buildings industry needs to do now, is to make their technology more accessible. “What the next decade is likely to bring us in building automation and integration is access. This means access between systems that have traditionally been independent, access to the […]
The Role of Tech Giants in the Smart City
In 2003, a 5-year-old Google began the gradual process of leasing 46-acres of land and buildings in Mountain View, California to create their headquarters. In 2013, the tech giant then leased a further 42-acres of adjoining land to develop the Bay View section of a now sprawling campus. Over this 88-acre estate, the firm has installed and developed […]
Smart Buildings Industry Must Solve Its Own Complexity with Standards
If all buildings were the same we would be able to create a wide range of off-the-shelf devices that would work reliably via plug-and-play in any building, and most buildings would probably be smart by now. The fact that every building is unique is not the only problem holding back the adoption of smart building […]