2021, Article / Letter to editor (Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, (2021))This research explores current strategies and approaches directed to integrate innovative technologies in the home modification process to support independent living and ageing in place. The systematic review considered studies conducted from the perspective of architecture, smart technology, and gerontology. Scientific databases of related disciplines (e.g. Scopus, Web of Science, Engineer village, Google Scholar, Crossref) were searched and supplemented by hand search method. Thirty-three out of 2594 articles were analysed from three perspectives: the framework of the smart home environment for ageing in place, the smart home modification process, and problems and countermeasures of independent living. The result shows that both home modification and smart technologies can support older adults’ independent living, especially with fall prevention and indoor accessibility. Technologies deployed in older adults’ homes are transiting from manual assistive technology to more intelligent devices, and the notion of the robotic home has emerged. According to existing practices, universal design is an extensively adopted strategy for smart home design and modification. However, in most cases, universal design is used as a retrofitting guideline for general home settings rather than specifically for smart homes. The fundamental requirements in smart home modification phases are customisation, minimum life interference, and extensible technologies to cope with the ageing process.
2020, Article / Letter to editor (Journal of Building Engineering, vol. 31, iss. 101404, (2020))The dynamic nature of daylight and occupant's position can cause some issues such as heat gains and visual discomfort, which need to be controlled in real-time operation. Responsive facades have been pervasively used for preventing daylight glare and meeting daylight performance requirements. However, some passive strategies such as the colored glass of the Orosi typical architectural elements used in Iranian central courtyard buildings have the potential to filter excess daylight, as well as providing other functions such as aesthetics and privacy. This paper explores, for the first time, the possibility of coupling a kinetic façade with colored glasses to improve the daylight performance. This research builds on a combination of relevant literature and parametric simulation to investigate the development of integration of colored glass from Orosi with interactive kinetic façades, triggered by sun timing and occupants' positions. In total, 72 interactive kinetic façade cases are parametrically simulated, and their daylight performance is evaluated through climate-luminance based metrics. The simulation results confirm the high performance of the interactive kinetic facades for improving daylight performance regarding a base case. The integrated interactive kinetic façade with colored glass provides a real-time adaptation of the multifunctional passive strategy to sun timing and occupants' position. The integrated interactive kinetic façade with colored glass which uses parametric decentralized and hierarchical rotating (0–45°) movements, shows more improvement in daylight performance compared to other cases based on climate-luminance based metrics evaluation.
2019, Part of book or chapter of book (Brankaert,, Rens; IJsselsteijn, Wijnand (ed.), Dementia Lab 2019. Making Design Work : Engaging with Dementia in Context - 4th Conference, D-Lab 2019, Proceedings, pp. 24-34)