Ten Questions Concerning the Future of Intelligent Buildings
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Ghaffarianhoseini, Amirhosein
Omrany, Hossein
Ghaffarianhoseini, Ali
Cooper, Ian
Baghaei Daemei, Abdollah
Rahimian, Farzad
Chang, Seongju
Powell, Kody Merlin
El Haouzi, Hind Bril
AlWaer, Husam
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Elsevier BV
Abstract
Buildings face growing pressure to reduce energy use and carbon emissions while maintaining healthy, resilient indoor environments. Conventional automation often optimises isolated functions and cannot coordinate environmental, operational, and occupant requirements across building systems and lifecycles. Intelligent buildings (IBs) can address these limitations through integrated sensing, analytics, adaptive controls, and responsive materials, but effective implementation remains essential. This paper examines how IBs address these pressures and identifies the conditions required for responsible building intelligence. The ten questions are organised into four thematic clusters covering foundations, technologies, performance, and ethical and social implications. The paper examines these questions across building information modelling and digital twins, ubiquitous technologies, smart materials, operational systems, grid flexibility, Industry 5.0, and data responsibility. The discussion demonstrates that these technologies can improve coordination, energy flexibility, maintenance, indoor environmental quality, and lifecycle decision-making. However, technology alone does not make a building intelligent or guarantee measurable environmental and human outcomes. Effective IBs require interoperable systems, reliable data, clear performance objectives, cybersecurity, maintainability, accountable governance, and meaningful occupant participation. Neighbourhood coordination is important because shared energy assets, local grid constraints, and environmental exposures cannot always be managed by individual dwellings. Accordingly, IBs should be assessed through measurable outcomes, including comfort, health, safety, energy flexibility, resilience, privacy, and long-term value. The resulting research agenda supports human-centred, low-carbon, grid-responsive, resilient, and ethically governed intelligent residential buildings.
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33 Built Environment and Design, 3301 Architecture, 3302 Building, Generic health relevance, 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, 0502 Environmental Science and Management, 1201 Architecture, 1202 Building, Building & Construction, 33 Built environment and design, 40 Engineering, Intelligent buildings, Smart buildings, Building information modelling, Digital twins, Industry 5.0, Human–building interaction
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Building and Environment, ISSN: 0360-1323 (Print), Elsevier BV, 115189-115189. doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2026.115189
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© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons Attribution