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Pervasive sensing and interactive building controls stand to radically reshape the human response to architecture, the city, and even the air we breathe. Call them the new controls.

As the books by MIT’s Mitchell suggest, buildings are Web sites, and vice versa. A compelling vision for new buildings, perhaps, but most existing buildings are often saddled with undermaintained proprietary systems.

“Unless we come up with robust systems that can be deployed again and again,” Hartkopf says, likening buildings to automobiles, “we won’t make any progress.” Even many of the new Web-based systems have closed programming logics that will make expandability and adaptability difficult in the future.

Regardless, some architects have forged ahead with the building-as-Web-site concept, finding innovative ways to make the new controls part of a comprehensive data-visualization strategy.

1., 2. Every 15 minutes, the Living Light pavilion’s LED lighting system goes dark and regenerates patterns based on Seoul’s air quality.

3. Living Light’s control system depends on two external digital inputs — a Web site that tracks air quality and SMS text messages from people accessing the site.

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