Bola Sociology Design

Design: Philips Off the Grid

June 3rd, 2009

Philips recently presented a very interesting new concept project  which is based on the premise that our society and our habitat rely heavily on the use of energy and water to work and introduces a new and strategic way to rethink our future.

The concept, developed to create sustainable housing in 2020 in China, is called “Off the Grid” and tries to understand cities as eco-systems that are always changing and evolving, to achieve a more organic approach to building, they integrate functional characteristics using electronic and bio chemical into the build material so that it could sustain its own energy needs.

The idea is to use intelligent materials to construct the buildings, like the exterior panels would have a protective quality that would work like a membrane, changing accordingly to external conditions and conserving energy. So the exterior of the building could reflect the light to lit up indoor accomodations, could capture and store rain water to use for drinking and cleaning, channel the wind to act as air conditioning and to transform sun light into electricity. With all this intelligence in a building, it wouldn’t be necessary to conect it to a power or water grid.