The Casa do Futuro is a SMARTIF House
House of the Future in the Cloud
Since 2003, the House of the Future exhibition, incorporated into the Future Space, has been one of the permanent exhibitions at the Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações | Museu das Comunicações (Portuguese Telecommunications Foundation) dedicated to the encouragement of knowledge of new technologies - equipment, applications and advanced services – in a housing environment. House of the Future is a registered trademark of the Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações and is a forum in which the concept of the future is permanently updated, benefitting from the work undertaken in partnership with different institutions linked to the technological innovation sector with the constant and special mission to disseminate the importance of the communications sector for civil society. The timeline underpinning the exhibition aims to stress the evolutionary process of the House of the Future concept, with a special emphasis on certain paradigmatic aspects since the 19th century and above all on those aspects which employed new technologies as structuring elements from the mid-20th century on. New housing concepts and solutions with a major impact on people’s wellbeing are presented and, as in real life, the exhibition accumulates know-how and builds on the knowledge of earlier stages.
Living in a Smart City
In this concept, the House of the Future exhibition strengthens the humanisation of technologies by presenting and demonstrating the fact that they are a means to an end: that of bringing greater quality of life to communities through the use of cloud computing in a family setting, placing the house in the cloud. Digital convergence is being enhanced by cloud computing, based on the sharing of resources to attain consistency and economies of scale similar to that of a user via a network. The concept is demonstrated through interactive exercises performed either inside the house or remotely, since users can access functions via the internet regardless of their location. These are functions which all houses in the smart city of the future will feature! The Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações, which since its creation has played an active and important role in promoting and disseminating technological projects and solutions which foster social inclusion in all of its facets, by bolstering its partnership with the Fundação PT aims to increase its contribution to achieving these objectives, enabling its countless visitors to the House of the Future to discover and experiment technological solutions which bring improvements in terms of the autonomy and quality of life of senior citizens and people with special communication needs.