intro:
This piece of work can be considered as an architectural appendix to the Static project http://www.tii.se/static. The content is mostly initial ideas communicated through sketches and small text chunks. None of the ideas presented has been tested or implemented but remain as a comment for potential ways of approaching an increased energy awareness through visualisations of energy consumption on different architectonic scales e.g. relating to an entire community, users of the same stairs or inside the individual dwelling.

overview:
When approaching the discussion on energy awareness it is obvious that the it influences allmost any part of our society and the way we live our lives both as community and individuals. The diagrams tries to point out a few of the endless possible departures for engaging in the design for encreased energy awareness.

• How does living in different urban and rural settings influence our attitude towards energy awareness
• How do the way we live and work - shared or individually - influence our attitude towards energy awareness
• How does the time of day or changing seasons influence our attitude towards energy awareness
• Is it possible to design for increased energy awareness without moralizing - and if so, is it a problem
• What are the consequences for the increased awareness

displays types:
Displaying energy consumption or excistence can be achieved in various ways. Display types can range from being very visible and concrete like heat mappings to secret languages like e.g. warchalk revealing the underlaying digital infrastructures.

public display:
An approach to encrease the awareness on energy consumption in a community from a physical architectural perspective is here thought as a public display expressed as a light indication on each dwelling visualizing a relative scale of consumed energy introducing a mix of community competition and informative art.
The interesting part of this quite radical approach is that it influences the entire apperance of the physical space containing the consuming appliances. The architecture would start to tell stories about peak hours for cooking up dinner. One could argue that a block of flats already tell a similar story - who is sleeping and who is having a party. However light indication establish a relation between the flats that are visible to the public. See a small animation here (0.3mb)

semi public display:
To add a bit more privacy than the above example that is potentially communicating to the entire public the display could be applied to e.g. an array of mail boxes that are only seen by the inhabitants themselves and their visitors why it could be described as a semi public display . In the example the display is thought as a simple led indicator ranging from the appartment using the least and the most energy.
It is obvious that a lot of people would feel offended by such a display, but not participating woud however display themselves as "not interested" in energy awareness. See a small animation here (0.3mb)

community display:
Looking at single dwellings in residential areas the situation is not like a vertical display as the block of flats but rather an array of dwellings hard to overview. As we see with solar panels the house starts to express a certian attitude towards energy consumption.
The same approach could be taking to the consumption of heat and water by applying visual containers indicating how much or little each dwelling is consuming to create a community display visible for people in the neighbourhood.

deformable display:
Imagining that the architecture was a deformable display responsive to inputs relating to energy consumption a house could ciel itself during night time and slowly open up parts of the interior as the inhabitants start to use different functions. The decreased volume of house would result in less heating and the awareness would be very "real" in the sense that spaces are not "at hand" as we are used to, but one has to wait for spaces to expand and reveal its functions.
Furthermore the house would display itself to its surroundings and take part in a community display where big is not necessarily beautiful.

internal display:
The single dwelling displays could in a future architecture visualize itself by a more dynamic and flexible building and hereby serve as an internal display . In the example beneath the volume and outside surface of the house is intact, but each space within the house is able to contract and expand according to use. Hereby the section of the house changes and minimizes or maximizes space space where needed and hereby optimizing the volume needed to be heated in the house which is the number one energy consumer.
Furthermore this approach could have impact on the social habits of the inhabitants much like the above example - instead of switching off the light you contract or implode a space narrowing in the space for social interactions.

light display:
In a dwelling with a number of descreet rooms it can be hard to overview the energy consumption. By applying certain lights to each room that change color according to the amount of energy consumed in the space a simple visual overview is provided for the inhabitants. However each space has to show itself in a way so it can be seen from different locations in the dwelling - even if the light display create compelling visualisations it is still hard to distribute the interface to all rooms and still get usable feedback from the system.

sound displays:
To deal with the problem of overviewing the entire dwelling a sound display could be a way of getting audio feedback about the energy state of each room. This could be implemented in a number of ways, but the concept of a pervasive speech interface could be explored further. In my example here each room in the dwelling that is using more energy than the space the inhabitant is asking from responds with sound connected to the appliances consuming energy. In this way you get to hear if the washer is done or if the tv is on elsewhere in the house. One could imagine that inhabitants would shut off appliances in the room they were located in to be able to test which other spaces were consuming.