With the new Google tools, you’ll be able to look through walls, enter a building without permission. You’ll find common beauty with people around you. Get inspired for the perfect conversation starter, and then, show-off with your perfect tailor-made house. Meticulously crafted to reflect your personality. But if you are not interested in any show-off, Google technologies opens the possibility to fence yourself off manually. Without missing anything. It brings back privacy. Since, architecture in it’s most basic form is about being private — a place to hide. How? Because Google asked itself: how do we behave in and outside our homes?

My Goal

I started writing this post to find a scenario how Google will change architecture. It is based on my own conceptual thoughts, and the writings about Google, such as Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do. I will try to find feasible design concepts, which are still very abstract ideas. The goal I have in mind is to take us further into the mind of Google. But first and foremost, I will build my analysis upon three upcoming Google technologies. On the mysterious Glass project, but also on the less known project Tango and Nest labs.

Recently Google announced its 3D-sensing Project Tango smartphone. A device to map your indoor spaces. Google asked developers to come up with new uses and applications to “give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion”. In daily life, Google says, the smartphone can be used as a wayfinding tool, for shopping or navigation purposes. Or as a gaming tool — adding an augmented layer to interior spaces. Other more niche uses are; a helpful tool for the visually-impaired — it can detect objects in space. And a tool for the emergency services; firemen for example, when entering a power down building, are able to project a layout of the room using, of course, Google Glass. With Project Tango, Glass and the recent purchase of Nest labs, Google enters the spatial realm. A new business sector for the global media company. Let’s see what that brings us!

ONE: The old and the new

Architecture is the discipline of the design and execution of our spatial man-made environment. I’ll use architecture in this broad meaning. Since I believe we shouldn’t really get too confused into definitions. Especially since we are trying to find a different scenario that might not always be sufficiently definable by mainstream architectural vocabulary.

Traditionally specialists — such as architects, planners, construction engineers — are concerned with a similar question Google tries to answer. Architects have been pondering about these questions for decades: How should people move from A to B? How should they feel comfortable when living a habitual life? It became part of a architects self-image as a profound specialist; A home is not only a very useful product, it also inherits a design methodology that help habitants live a prosperous life, and keep them safe, at moments they cannot foresee. To these specialists, architecture is a very complicated puzzle of different actors with different interests and needs. This requires a strict methodology to find the best answer for everybody. With that comes a long learning curve to understand the methodology (e.g. the architectural curriculum thought at universities). But then arrives the internet revolution. Where have we heard these words before? From journalist, photographers, salespeople, managers — careers that are slowly disappearing.

A new question..

Now there’s Google. They use a very different methodology. To them, from a web based perspective, architecture lacks some fundamental properties. Only a few people, with the right license, can communicate through architecture. The rest of us are limited, sitting only at the receivers end. This very notion is at the core the internet revolution. Suddenly everybody became a publisher, writer, movie maker. But the internet had a long learning curve, before 1998 Yahoo and Microsoft dominated the internet. Their business models were based on building a website, filling it with pricey adverts, and trick people to visit. They followed the old strategy; still they were the senders of information, we should come visit — en masse.

This strategy still exists in the construction and housing sectors. Project developers build houses, sales jumps in; “the houses have the best views, bathrooms and lowest energy bills you can find”. You should buy one, please visit the showroom example. Come to us. We won’t come to you (because we know better).

Google understood the time of mass communication is over. In 1998 it revolutionized the Internet and media by digging into the pool of data the mass lefts behind online. In the networks of nodes and connections that became visible, Google discovered people have a lot of different wants, they decided to organize the connections by delivering the tools to individuals. In the process Google became indispensable and essential for our daily routines online. Subsequently, Adsense and Adwords (the advertising tools) became indispensable for Google. The big data revolution set off.

.. for architecture.

So how should we imagine a weblike version of architecture? Maybe it deals in electrons, instead of atoms. Or we should agree architecture is a very slow process. One of small changes, long term effects. Google’s methodology seems to be both. It has opened the ‘box labeled consumer’; with its many different people with different habits, cultures, truths and values. Google understood it is too complex to design fit-for-all solutions. Instead they take people serious, try to understand their wants, and provide the organization, and the tools, so “the people formerly known as the audience” can become architectural producers themselves. So Google will help us build personalized architectures. I would say, bits and bytes first — elektrons. then atoms as second order effect. I’ll explain this in more detail in chapter two.

The new replaces the old, will it?

Spatial professionals on the other side focus on the place, and continue to find a site with many opportunities. They profile a buyer by its supposed need (family house, student condo). They used to prescribe how people should live, now they understand the need for flexibility. But architecture to them is still a mass-media product. Will the same happen to them, as happened to Yahoo.com and msn.com?

TWO: Google its ‘home’ revolution

It is all about asking the right question when doing scientific research, my communication science professor told me in university. She was right. The same counts here. The question Google asks opens up a lot of new possibilities. It requires us to understand people, before actually designing any device or service. The questioner understands society is complex, people are behaving different, and a one-fit-all solutions is not to be found. So rather than asking the impossible, let people find their own way.

Perception (first order)

Now, bits and bytes first. Here’s the trick. These can be personalized. This is done by adding a software layer on top of what we perceive otherwise. We call this computer faced design.

The outcome is both spectacular and odd. Because people will become aware of different perceptions and understand situations differently. Our brain picks out a part of what is perceived, and the highlighting of some parts forces us in a specific direction.

Nowadays, some of us might be colorblind, but generally we perceive our environment in the same way. We have learned to signify some as concrete material in a modern style, other as wood material and classic architecture. Adding a software layer will likely separate us, especially since we are forced towards ‘our google profile’. Since the algorithms in the software have learned to highlight our preferences. Will you become a robot?

Use (first order)

But algorithms can do more in how we use architecture. Some of our most illustrious national buildings are ‘dedicated to society’. I.e. palaces, train stations, monuments. These signify a specific culture, connected to a common identity. Nest labs shows us home devices can do the same on a personal level. Our house becomes a extended version of ourselves — because it has adapted to us, and vice versa. The relations we build with others because of this attribute are the incentive to shape our personal architecture. So to find the extra value, we should see architecture as an attribute in our personal profile — or cluster of profiles.