Raise a glass

smarterAsAsofficesbecome“smarter” – accelerated by the everexpanding network of devices known as the Internet of Things – designers are thinking of it less as an agglomeration and more as a living organism. For Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola, the ofce of the future will be flfluid.

“It will be almost natural,” she told Metropolis magazine in June last year. “We will need to invent new materials but in the meantime we can augment old ones. Glass, for example, might be the most dynamic material for a wall because you can already embed difffferent properties within its membrane.”

Indeed, scientists have made great progress with a process known as “direct doping”, embedding light-emitting nanoparticles into glass so that it remains perfectly transparent but can become opaque at the flflick of a switch, privatising work zones and meeting spaces at will. Able to be moulded to almost any shape, this new hybrid could soon be used to create “smart glass” devices, including 3D displays and remote radiation sensors.