A prewar wood-shingled house with a roomy front porch is an unlikely prototype for the future of energy-efficient living. But what you can’t see is that HouseZero, headquarters of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is tricked out with many, many sensors. A team of graduate students spends its days analyzing millions of automatically collected data points about the building’s temperature, humidity, energy use, air pressure, and carbon dioxide levels. The data inform an ever-evolving algorithm, which controls software that, in turn, adjusts the house’s windows, vents, and shades in constant pursuit of the optimal temperature, air quality, and energy efficiency.
The house is the brainchild of Ali Malkawi, the center’s founding director. Before coming to Harvard, Malkawi spent several summers in Scandinavia, where he…
