City development for the future requires environmentally sound and efficient building concepts for public facilities and municipal enterprises. The variety ranges from office and operational buildings, to schools, sports halls, event centers, and public housing and hospitals, all the way to train stations and airports.
New strategic approaches to solutions are first of all needed to implement energy-saving, low-cost buildings for the largest possible portion of the building infrastructure. They include cost-saving models for the outsourcing of facility management or the privatization of the buildings themselves. Some cities are turning to completely new, integrated and “green” concepts for a similarly functional, environmentally sound, and user-friendly building design.
On the technical side, there are heat-insulating, low maintenance and recyclable high-tech materials available for construction and building fixtures. Among other options, there are also efficient air-conditioning systems and heat-recapture facilities, along with the increased use of renewable energy, for example, electricity from local solar facilities. At the same time, current automation systems help with buildings' efficiency and environmental balance. This increasingly involves the use of smart measurement and control systems with networked IT. They not only control heating and indoor conditions, but they also integrate an extremely wide range of functions of modern building technology. They can relate to access controls, locking and security systems, escalators and elevators, along with self-regulating lighting systems and the flexibly programmable signage for complex building structures.
The design of public spaces today relies on environmentally sound, energy-saving and mobile equipment that permits the flexible, multifaceted use of available space as much as possible. It also involves greater automation with increasingly intelligent, wirelessly networked systems. The spectrum ranges from solar-powered lamps and a park bench made of recycled materials, all the way to networked information systems and automatic access controls. The upper end is marked by intelligent, interactive public spaces where visitors are given information on the facility via WLAN hotspots, smart phones and augmented reality apps and where intelligent displays identify their observer via RFID chips so they can customize their language and contents.
