Our next Dezeen x MINI Living Initiative video explores Carlo Ratti's proposals to replace traditional heating and cooling systems with personalised environments for different occupants in a building.
Ratti, who founded Italian architecture firm Carlo Ratti Associati and directs the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Senseable City Lab, is developing a number of different technologies that allow personalised heating or cooling.

The Office 3.0 system he designed for an office in Turin, Italy, uses a system of sensors to monitor employees, and instructs heating and cooling systems to follow them around the building to create unique environmental bubbles.

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Occupants could set their preferred temperature via a smartphone app. Fan coil units situated in the false ceilings would be activated by their presence, creating a "thermal bubble" that follows them around the building.

As well as allowing individuals to set their own ideal temperature, Ratti believes such systems could reduce energy consumption dramatically, because no energy is wasted heating empty spaces in a building.
"By synchronising energy usage and human occupancy within buildings, we can create a more sustainable and responsive architecture ? theoretically slashing energy consumption by up to 40 per cent," he said.

The con...