The term ‘living lab’ was, allegedly, coined by William
Mitchell, Kent Larson, and Alex Pentland at MIT but
enthusiastically adopted by the European Union, most notably
in their European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL)1 which
was founded in November 2006 and is an international
federation of some 300 benchmarked Living Labs. A Living
Lab is, as the name suggests, a living environment which
houses both people and technology, in a semi experimental
setting that promotes symbiotic innovation, development and
research. An example of such a living lab is the Essex
University iSpace which is a purpose built domestic apartment
in which researchers live and innovate new technologies for the
smart home [30]. The key aspect of a Living Lab is that it
transforms the role of the users, from being observed subjects,
into being members of a co-creative ecosystem. This is what
we are trying to achieve in our vision for IoT buildings; an
educational environment in which the underlying technology
and structure forms both the teaching and research facilities,
together with supporting everyday working and living
activities, thereby creating a novel type of educational
establishment which we characterise by the axiom “The college
building (or campus) is the lab”. We are approaching these
lofty goals by adopting a 'smart-box' strategy, where boxes
range in size from desktop facilities to whole rooms, buildings
or even campuses. Indeed, we see the concept of the iCampus
and a Living Lab as being complementary and mutually
supportive models. Our particular approach is introduced in the
following sections.