Cooperative Buildings

Some time ago, the concept of so called ‘Cooperative Buildings’ was introduced by Streitz et al. (1998). The term ‘building’ (and not ‘spaces’) was used in order to emphasize that the starting point of the design should be the real, architectural environment while ‘spaces’ has been used in many cases also for ‘virtual’ and/or ‘digital’ spaces. By calling it a ‘cooperative’ building, they wanted to indicate that the building serves the purpose of cooperation and communication. At the same time, it is also ‘cooperative’ towards its users, inhabitants, and visitors by employing active, attentive and adaptive components. This is to say that the building does not only provide facilities but it can also (re)act ‘on its own’ after having identified certain conditions. It is part of our vision that it will be ‘smart’ and be able to adapt to changing situations and provide context-aware information and services.
The first instantiation of constituents for cooperative buildings are the Roomware® components. At another level, cooperative buildings are the constituents of the overarching scenario and context of  "Smart Cities" building on the integration of real and virtual worlds resulting in "Hybrid Cities".

References

N. A. Streitz, J. Geißler, T. Holmer (1998). Roomware for Cooperative Buildings: Integrated
   Design of Architectural Spaces and Information Spaces. In: Streitz, N., Konomi, S., Burkhardt,
   H. (Eds.), Cooperative Buildings - Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture.
  (Proceedings of CoBuild '98, Darmstadt, Germany), LNCS Vol. 1370, Springer, 1998. pp. 4-21.