Smart buildings help Elephant forget past

London area set for regeneration with IP-based buildings

A £1.5bn regeneration project in South London will see networking technology installed in houses and offices, marking a shift in the construction of new buildings.

Southwark Council to build 6000 homes, a 214 room hotel, a five screen cinema, plus restaurants and shops in Elephant and Castle, and will install fibre optics to deliver IP (Internet Protocol) technology direct to the buildings.

Senior project manager Tony Moseley says a partner develop the infrastructure has yet to be appointed, but he believes the addition of sustainable infrastructure and intelligent building technology will inevitably attract business and home users to the area.

'It is groundbreaking in this country,' he said. 'The fibre optics will go to all the end users. It will enable high-speed internet connectivity, high definition television and IP networking.'

'We've spoken to people elsewhere in Europe where they've put this sort of technology in place and they've said that new businesses have sprung up in the area to take advantage of the bandwidth that's available.

'People are attracted by services that allow them to engage more proactively with media, such as receiving messages to tell them when something they like is on,' Moseley said.

While the ready-built nature of the intelligent building will be appealing from an ease of use perspective, the technology also has safety and environmental benefits and can react to user's needs in real time.

'Lights will turn off automatically when nobody is in the room, air conditioning and heating won't being used in areas where they aren't needed,' said Moseley. 'What we want to see at the end of this process is whether we can do something on an area wide scale which will further mitigate energy use.'

The council has also published plans to establish a multi utilities services company to provide locally generated heat, cooling and electricity for the thousands of additional homes and businesses planned for the area.

In the US intelligent building technology is also used by emergency services, who have a single interface into all the systems in a building. They can then find out where people, lights and doors are, reducing the danger from fires significantly.

BT is spending £10bn creating what it calls the 21st Century Network. When this network is completed in 2010, BT will have converted its entire backbone network to Internet Protocol (IP).

Graham Whitehead, principal consultant at BT Exact, believes intelligent building technology will be used widely within five years.

Whitehead says the Elephant and Castle plan is ambitious, but points out that it is easier to install networking technology in new buildings.

'Networks can really hurt to put in, especially if you live in an old building,' he said. 'If you are looking at regenerating urban areas as you go back in and rebuild buildings, all this stuff is easier and cheaper to put in as part of one big project.'

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