Project

Beacon Concept Store with the Center for Future Banking

The Smart Cities and Cognitive Machines groups have teamed up with the Center for Future Banking to design a concept banking store in the Boston/Cambridge area. This will be a fully functional banking center that simultaneously serves as a living laboratory–a place where new technologies and interior configurations can quickly be installed, electronically monitored (unobtrusively, and with due concern for privacy) to evaluate their effectiveness in use under demanding real-world conditions, and iteratively redesigned in response to this feedback. Utilizing the Media Lab's extensive expertise in sensing, data collection, management and analysis of large-scale datasets, and data visualization, we will be able to create an adaptive environment that embodies a robotic cognitive architecture capable of intelligently responding to the occupants and visitors to the building. Architecturally, the flagship should vividly represent commitments to effective engagement with the community that it serves, sustainability, and forward-looking innovation.