Digital mirror: a method to shape Smart Citizenship

The introduction of digital instruments in the architectural process going from management to design, engineering and construction has generated and keeps on generating research on the consequences of the integration between different fields, given by software, on professional relationships and on professional profiles. This paper will explore the peculiarity and the contribution to this research provided by the MED in Italy team, where digital instruments have been structured in accordance with a careful management strategy in the special context of Solar Decathlon Europe competition, where a structured process based on subsequent Deliverables, helps very heterogeneous teams to remain on time. A crucial task for the management staff is to structure the design and engineering process, where relationships between consultants, technical partners, sponsors and team members (mainly students) are very complex, since they involve people with different backgrounds, age, and degrees of commitment. How to combine such situation with the request for a strong Integrated Project Delivery? We chose to fully embrace this opportunity, by establishing since the beginning an integrated networked system of software to support the design team. The same integration is used in a different kind of Home Automation strategy, that relies on a web-based “Dwelling Black Box”, where all data on the behavior of the house have been saved and sent to a remote database building up a timeline of house-living, aimed at raising awareness of the inhabitants on consequences of their actions.