Seeking to explore power as crucial factor in the design of the built environment, we will look at energy systems and related objects, from sites of generation to spaces of consumption, from distribution networks to control rooms.

Tutors: Filip Geerts and Sanne van den Breemer
Director of Studies: Salomon Frausto

Contributors: Santiago Ardila, Juan Benavides, Daniella Camarena, Stef Dingen, Marco Fusco, Jack Garay Arauzo, Theodora Gelali, Shaiwanti Gupta, Hao Hsu, Marianthi Papangelopoulou, Felipe Quintero, Gent Shehu, Siyuan Wang


@theberlage.nl






Electricity Meter

Institution, Housing, Consumption, Distribution, Neighbourhood, Metropolitan, Construction, Economy, Lifestyle, Governance, Patent Drawing

An electronic meter is an automatic reader that measures electricity usage and monitors power quality, communicating the data to the gateway node. In Tokyo Tepco Power Grid company uses the RF mesh network where there are high-density residential areas1 a system that relies between individual meters with a concentrator pole commonly known as electricity poles. Walking around a residential area we can see the crowded electricity poles in each corner representing the power supply for each household.
    Residentials areas of Tokyo are crowded with detached houses. In the 1920’s the suburban housing developments were aimed for the “modern” family with the ideals of a system of home ownership. In the confines of those houses several new houses and subdivisions have arisen. The changes in the inheritance tax rates have forced people to divide its plots2. Since first built ninety years ago, a division and later subdivision of plots started to emerge as a pattern in residential areas of Tokyo, increasing the number of households per residential area. Nowadays the multigenerational houses form the residential cityscape of Tokyo. High density residential areas have increased the demand for infrastructure and the rapid changes have allowed new configurations within a plot, where it used to be one electricity meter, now there are three and a fourth might be in its way to be installed. As a solution for the demand Tepco started implementing the use of smart meters that makes it easier to be replaced without handling wires, creating a system for the intelligent management of household energy.
    Where building technologies, legal frameworks and the basis structure of the family has evolved, the expanding growth of the city, the population boom, the inheritance taxes and real estate development have made these neighborhoods crowded areas. Encouraged by the short life cycle of the japanese house, which is said to stand for the idea of the social system that guarantees changes.


1. https://www7.tepco.co.jp/pg/development/domestic/smartmeter-e.html
2. Kitayama Koh, Tsukamoto Yoshiharu, Nishizawa Ryue, “Tokyo Metabolizing” July,2010