Smart home automation makes coming home a luxury
Putting comfort first in the new tower block in Tampere has paid off with flats selling at a record pace.
When Skanska started the construction of two new residential buildings near the Tampere railway station, the goal was to create apartments that offer their residents the best urban living experience in the heart of the city.
The design team wanted the residents to enjoy a touch of luxury when returning home any day of the week.
Thanks to the windows that practically extend from ceiling to floor, the living rooms of the 21-storey tower offer a magnificent view over the Tampere cityscape. Large windows create a sense of space also in lower-rise buildings, but on the other side of the coin you have increased solar gain in bright homes with great views. As such, when designing the Luminary, we wanted to make sure that the residents have a comfortable home to return to both in sweltering summer and bitterly cold winter months”, Toni Tuomola, the executive manager responsible for residential projects at Skanska Talonrakennus Oy, says.
Smart systems make homes comfortable
Fidelix EasyLiving
To ensure that all flats and rooms enjoy uniform indoor air quality and comfortable temperature distribution, all of Luminary’s 188 flats were fitted with a Fidelix home automation system. With each flat equipped with a Fidelix smart panel, each resident can control the ventilation, air conditioning and heating of their flat within a specific range. The system’s corner stone is the Fidelix building automation technology, a smart automation system that controls the entire building and provides data about it.
Skanska was already familiar with the Fidelix Smart Living solution before the construction of the Luminary started, and the system was known to be able to perform well in the challenging conditions of a high-rise building.
“Due to their structure, residential towers require a smarter and more technically robust system to control the stack effect and ventilation in order to maintain constant indoor air conditions in flats located on different floors and on different sides of the tower. I am happy to say that the Fidelix solution has worked really well in the Luminary”, Tuomola says.
Data for building management
Many smart home systems focus on controlling electricity and lighting systems rather than living conditions and room-specific adjustments of heating and air conditioning.
– When you have the ability to adjust the temperature of your home from one user-friendly panel, everyone gets to enjoy their home exactly the way they want to. Moreover, with the panel you can also keep an eye on how your choices impact energy consumption in your home”, Tuukka Kuuramaa, Solution Manager responsible for apartment-specific solutions at Fidelix, explains.
The smart system compiles data collected from each flat into reports, which the building owner and manager can then use when making decisions about how to manage the building. Having a comprehensive and remotely accessible system configuration makes designing, installation and use easier.
According to Tuomola, putting the comfort of the residents first has had a positive impact on the sales figures as interest in the Luminary has been exceptionally high in Tampere. Completed in February 2019, the tower block has only a few smart homes with great views on the market.
“Luminary was our first tower block project in which we invested this heavily in smart apartment-specific control of indoor air. The experiences we have gained have been so positive that we will definitely continue to work on improving the smart automation systems of homes in high-rise buildings in the future. The system used in the Luminary will be updated in the autumn with a weather control feature, which will allow us to plan the adjustments based on weather reports.”