The is a huge B2C or C2B market in connection with home design and adaptations. Nowadays people are inspired by instagram, pinterest, YouTube and TikTok. Additionally, many play around with Apps to create their own images of how they would like to arrange or rearrange their home. Some have taken first steps to include measurements of their home in the design. The compatibility with professional software of the construction sector, however, is a drawback that delays or leads people to go to enterprises that take into account the prior efforts of young lay designers. It is a little bit like an own contribution in home building quite popular among new home builders to alleviate the upfront cash needed for first home acquisition. The younger generation could offer some of their “digital native” skills to bridge the gap in construction and home design. Of course, reworking and precise measurements on the location will still be required as construction has a lot of legal liability issues involved. Cooperation is a form of burden sharing to advance faster and/or with lower costs. 
Air Concept
Well yes, this is the latest fart in design and architecture. The Berlin International University of Applied Sciences composed an exhibition on “Air Architectures” which takes air seriously. The international group of 7th semester students took Air Architecture seriously and developed their ideas in the context of a curated exhibition. Nice semester project.
Air is a fundamental precondition for humans to (co-)exist. The biology of air (breathing) or the chemistry of air (fine particle matter) have been studied extensively. The physics of air flows in cities receive more attention as well in architecture. Interior design has yet a lot to contribute in the age of heat pumps and air conditioning.
Let’s think architecture from the perspective of air and air flow. Depending on our cultural background we might have very different associations with air. Indian or Chinese practices like yoga or Tai Chi teach us to take air more seriously than Western practices. Most architecture in cold countries of the northern hemisphere aim to keep air to the outside of buildings. Yet, the percentage of humidity of air is a serious concern of architecture as well. Air flow and quality then becomes a key issue of construction and architecture, somehow through the back door.
Maybe in approaching architecture we might think first of what is or has been the architect’s concept of air or aerodynamics. 100 years after the death of Gustave Eiffel and the Olympic Games in Paris, we still gain from thinking about air (not only air pollution) and its dynamics. Looking forward to the next generation of air architects.
(Image: Exhibition, Air architectures, at Berlin International, University of Applied Sciences 2024-12) 
Health Tech
Health technology assessment (HTA) is an interesting scientific field. The new digital opportunities allow people to participate in medical and medication trials in their homes or even in bed. Their health data and the administration of medication is also encouraged and sometimes supported through digital devices. The pharma and health industries have many devices ready to go. The differences to the traditional forms of medical trials, however, is an issue as we want to compare the results from both kinds of trials. Participants of trials, might prefer or struggle with these novel kinds of study designs. In any case the results will be impacted in several forms (Study Link). In the best of all worlds for the researcher the effects will cancel out each other, but is rather unlikely. Some participants will reach more positive effects with the use of digital tools, whereas others are challenged and might even abandon during the trial. Monitoring during the study (for example through digital inhalors) is another advantage of such distributed trials. Rather than taking adherence to a trial medication for granted, digital tools allow a more precise monitoring of subgroups as well. Data and effort invested in the trial is preserved through the easier access to person’s information, assuming continuous readiness to stay on in the trial.
Our own smartphones are still underexploited in terms of health monitoring and use in research designs. The possibilities to link data to other external data sources shall further advance the research potentials in many interesting ways. Data protection and data security become even more important with the ever smarter phones and connected devices.
Socioeconomic Circularity
Some sectors of the economy receive a lot of attention, for example sectors selling fancy cars. Other sectors, like the ones regrouped under the name of circular economy, receive much less attention and show up little in headlines. In fact, the circular economy is a great example of this. There are thousands of waste and rubbish collection, sorting and recycling centers, several hundreds of waste-to-energy plants, composting sites across the European Union. Of course, there is also a European Federation of the sector (FEAD). On the last FEAD conference in Brussels 2024 it became clear that Europe is finally waking up to the challenge of recycling costly raw materials.
The narrative concerning the sector needs to change further: what used to be subsumed as costly nuisance is in fact a potential profit center for companies and society at large. We do no longer want to import lots of raw materials from countries with dubious social and environmental records as part of our supply chains for raw materials. Time to act. This, however, is a rather complex socioeconomic challenge of circularity. The price mechanisms are not fully functional in most Member States, let alone across the EU. Additionally, the social practice to recycle varies greatly between countries. Distributional issues matter as well. It is rather obvious that dumping waste from one region/country in another one has huge implications (nuclear waste), but if one country values waste more than another one, due to innovative recycling techniques, the matter takes a marketable turn. Regulation should carefully distinguish categories of materials as we do for hazardous materials in production, consumption and for health and safety purposes of employees.
Metal, battery, cement, plastic and wood recycling pose challenges, but also opportunities to improve the European material import/export balance sheets. However, first in the circle of circularity is the use of materials. There we are clear that “less is better”. Less input of raw materials, most of which we import in the EU, reduces our dependence on other countries. This is the tricky social question of circularity. Mainstreaming of more conscious use and reuse of resources is a huge social issue, which we tend to relegate to a task for the education system. The awareness that supposed waste is also a valuable resource is spreading and the growth of the sector a business and employment opportunity for many. Circularity is the new sexy sector of the 21st century.
What have you recycled today? and myself? Well, scientific online publications. Now think of ChatGPT and the AI gold mines of 2024. There is lots of value in recycling.
(Image FEAD conference Brussels, 2024) 
Build Tec
Home construction has turned into the art of isolation. Saving energy is easiest in a well isolated home. Besides the roof the walls, doors and windows are next issue. Isolation inside and/or isolation outside are good points of departure. Heat pumps are the next step that needs attention. This is already a sequence of works that have to be planned well in advance. Electric current or LAN wiring or even fibre are additional features a modern home should be equipped with. Lots of different skills involved that we are unlikely to find in traditional occupations. Networks of enterprises are involved in building technologies. Startups in this area could offer better integrated services to clients to advance energy savings rather than the traditional skill sets spread over multiple trades and occupations. Learning tasks and skill needs are abundant.
Game Tech
Gaming has moved digital and online for a long time. Networked gaming and following the best gamers online on video-platforms like twitch has captured a lot of attention from younger generations. With a real trend of gamification for industry and even public services, the digital gaming sector is moving from backstage to front end of companies and services. Public administration as a game. Enjoy the use of a public service through a game-like experience. Walk around in the metaverse world and get your admin work done. I would love to have such an experience. There are so many applications for gamification that the bottleneck is in the human resources to program all these applications. Coding the digital and virtual worlds to get real stuff done is just around the corner. The SCCON 2024 in Berlin showed these technologies next to each other. 2025 we might see integrated prototypes. I have a digital dream, others call it a vision for public services in the 21st century. 
Water Quality
Obviously, water is not just an issue of quantity, but also quality. The availability of sufficient quantities of water in a region depends on rain, its storage, and the use of these water resources. The quality of water is a subsidiary issue, as lack of inflow causes concentrations of nuisance in water to rise. Global warming will most likely intensity the concern for not only the quantity, but also the quality of water.
Public services are in charge to sample and monitor levels of water quality for consumers. Independent of public, private or public private partnerships in this field there is a need to check from time to time the quality of water. Public institutions do a great job in monitoring water quality, but as science progresses there are new sources of pollution that enter the already complex analysis of water quality. New chemicals and remains of medical or pharmaceutical analyses have been retrieved from water and, sometimes, they have reached critical or unhealthy levels.
More detailed monitoring is necessary and new digital tools allow to improve just this type of monitoring to inform policy makers on shifting patterns.
A project of that type “Urban Green Eye”, for example, allows to monitor the artificialization of previous vegetation to show up on satellite images of Germany. Independent groups, citizens or communities might find it useful to use their own sampling and testing to guard against abuses or dysfunctional public monitoring systems. Start-ups like “Hydroguard” offer services to support activists, communities or public services in their own efforts to ensure water quality. 
Start-up Winner
The SCCON 2024 has awarded one of its prizes for start-ups to „neuraflow“, which proposes the programming of chatbots for small communities or cities among other AI-applications. The test in multiple languages for the city of Bremerhaven is fun to test and shows that online public services can be witty and fun to use. The incorporation of local dialects gives the impression of a very personalized service. Moving the administration closer to the heart and the location of its citizens is achievable through shifting communication online. Prior information before a first contact speeds up information and administrative processes for everyone involved. Congratulations to the team involved and we look forward to many nice applications of the same technology in other cities. Admin can be fun, even in Germany 😉😂
Smart Cars
Technology of cars and in cars has evolved rapidly with the move towards the smart cars. Smart cars are characterized by many additional sensors, almost permanent connectivity to the producer’s software platform, the internet, autonomous driving capability or, potentially, remote control. We might still curse some nostalgic feelings of being in driving seat, but the supervision of our capability to drive and monitoring of behavior has reached impressive levels of perfection beyond the fasten your seatbelt sign and alarm. The software that is driving our cars has become the challenge of the coming years and with this the concern for data privacy and cyber security. Smart cars have multiple cameras to guide driving and parking effectively. These cameras are also a perfect spy even around or in your home. From our smartphones we all know the scanning of connectable Bluetooth devices or wlan nearby. Smart cars are powerful assistants in data collection sometimes even beyond your control, for example who these data are sent to. June Yoon (2024-10-2 Financial Times) has developed this rationale even further to stir up additional fears: “A hacked self-driving car might even be turned into a weapon”. The weaponization of beepers, talky-walkies is certainly not the last step in this process of potential dangers of technology. Smart cars come with additional risks, not only additional comfort. Better choose your rollercoaster wisely. 
Digital Museum
Paris has lots of museums to visit. At times, this can lead to a kind of mental overload. The ” Musée Marmottan Monet, in Paris allows to take home a digital and printed copy of your preferred, your own curated collection of images from the museum. This is a great learning experience. You scan the number of the item you want to include and a specialized application retrieves the image of the painting or object from their database into the App. After the visit you take a break in the café in the garden and sort your collection and if you like have it printed within a couple of minutes after you paid for the print or digital version. Upon special request I was told that I am allowed to share the link to the small booklet even on the web (Link to pdf below).
Since the visit to the Musée Marmottan Monet we have come back to the digital and printed versions several times and reading of accompanying texts and perfect quotations of origin make learning about art a fun experience. Going back to lived experiences makes more lasting impressions on our memories. Knowledge coupled with emotions is a powerful way to memorize. Sharing the experience with other persons like the readers of this blog is an additional advantage. Attentive readers of the blog entries will find references to many of the themes dealt with over the years in this series of blog entries. Such topics are: gender and art, technology and society, reflections on time, life courses, inequality, art history, funding of artists, lifelong learning or beauty.
(Booklet below in German LINK-pdf of 6MB. The app allows many language versions. You can produce those yourself from you collection within the App) 