“AI-enhanced surveillance is of course, vital for public safety, however, it also has a significant impact on privacy,” Dorothy Edgar, a spokesperson for London-based digital modelling firm Modelling Architecture, says.

Increased concerns over privacy are already giving rise to new architectural typologies that offer greater privacy from the outside world.

House of Fluctuations, designed by Tokyo-based architecture firm Satoru Hirota Architects, was built to offer residents extra privacy in one of the city’s densely packed residential neighbourhoods. The firm achieved this by placing a double-height terrace at the front of the building, which covered a parking area that is flanked by concrete walls. These high walls help to prevent a view into the building from the public street.

FujiwaraMuro Architects’ House in Toyonaka project tackled a similar problem by minimising the number of openings in the building’s facade. The design uses offset boxes with small gaps between them to provide light and ventilation while limiting the outside view into the building.

However, designing for privacy presents additional challenges - most notably, ensuring that residents have access to ample amounts of natural light and ventilation.

“This presents issues for architects, as they now have to think of innovative ways to give their clientele the privacy they need whilst protecting rights of light, improving exterior design and considering local residents’ needs,” Edgar says.

The House in Toyonaka project demonstrates this challenge. While it offers optimal privacy, access to natural light and air flow is limited.

The firm’s House in Takamatsu project offers privacy, light, and ventilation by using ‘voids’ in each corner of the building, and thin, high windows around the facade to allow plenty of natural light in. An open-plan interior and high ceilings are also used to improve airflow inside the building.

Similarly, Japanese firm Chop + Archi Kamiuma House project demonstrates how dead spaces can also be used to increase light and ventilation in homes designed for privacy by converting these spaces into high-walled courtyards.

As technologies such as facial recognition become more widely used, the industry could see a rise in demand for these fortress-like homes and buildings. However, while design features such as high-walled terraces and interior courtyards offer protection against more traditional privacy concerns, technology will present unique threats for architects to address.

Researchers from the University of Leeds, University of Massachusetts and Northwestern University in Xi’an in China, for example, recently developed a drone-mounted scanner that can detect humans through walls. While developed to aid emergency workers, there are also ways that such technologies could be abused.

According to Edgar, architects will also have to consider the potential for advance audio surveillance.

“Implementing walls, roofs and shelters are traditional ways of protecting privacy, however, as tech gets more sophisticated, architects will have to think of ways to protect clients from audio surveillance as well as video surveillance,” Edgar explains.

Despite being the cause of the problem, Edgar believes that technology may hold the answer to protecting against these concerns and maintaining the privacy of building residents in the surveillance age:

“Small scale audio-jammers and counter-surveillance devices have worked in the past, but it’s likely that architectural design will need to incorporate these technologies more discreetly in future in order to offer true privacy to clients.”

Elaine Rossall, chair of the British Council for Offices [BCO] research committee, agrees that embracing technology will be key to finding the balance between reaping the benefits of emerging technology and maintaining privacy - particularly in the workplace, where technology has the potential to boost productivity and efficiency.

“Architects are under an ever-increasing amount of pressure to design and deliver workplaces that are as respectful of the end user’s privacy as they are innovative, or beautiful,” Rossall says. “Add to that a world where there are increasing demands for collaborative work and spaces that, in their very nature, bring colleagues closer together and the challenge for architects to protect privacy become tougher still.”

“The key to finding harmony between privacy, collaboration, optimal space utilization, and worker productivity is in embracing technology, and finding a natural purpose for it rather than shoe-horning it in for vanity’s sake.”

The BCO’s Fast and Slow Buildings report explores some of the ways this could work, from detection systems that use cameras placed below knee height to monitor footfall, to thermal cameras used to optimise air temperature while anonymising the end-user.

Technology has the potential for both good and bad. The architecture, engineering, and construction industry will play a role in finding that balance and designing new-age buildings that reap the benefits of emerging technologies without compromising its occupants’ right to privacy.