In nature, everything has a purpose – a role and responsibility in the grand scheme of the overall ecosystem, interrelated and codependent – the circle of life.

Yet, now, humans are more far removed from nature than at any other time in history. With access to the data that proves the benefits we are missing, we also are starting to wonder why. Why are we moving away from this built-in, health-providing system that can benefit us in so many ways?

Since geographically we have put ourselves in urban islands and places that long ago tamed nature (well, maybe not quite), there has to be a new approach to connect, and that connectivity may be slightly counterintuitive.

As the CEO and founder of Delos, Paul Scialla says, “When considering smart home, a home is not smart if it’s not healthy.”

So, in the quest to bring health into the home, there is an innate tie to nature, and to make that connection, we need technology.

Dan Bridleman, senior vice president of sustainability, technology and strategic sourcing at KB Home, is one of the drivers behind the BUILDER KB Home ProjeKt: Where Tomorrow Lives.

For the ProjeKt, KB Home brought in dozens of experts and a collaborative approach, emanating the natural collectiveness of the circle of life and the well-integrated throughput of systems in nature. In that process, KB Home selected Delos to be part of the concept project with a new product, Darwin, the first smart home system to focus on health and wellness.

“We now spend 90% of our lives indoors and have thus lost 90% of our of connectivity to the natural outdoor condition,” says Scialla. “Any room that you are in has a direct immediate impact on your cardiovascular health, respiratory health, cognitive abilities and sleep.”

Which, would be good, except it’s not. Scialla explains that up until a couple centuries ago, we woke up with the sunrise and then spent all of our time outdoors, being active throughout the day, breathing in fresh air, then sleeping in cooler temperatures. The rise and fall of the sun set the schedule of our lives and our productivity.

“Now we spend most of our lives in a synthetic box,” Scialla says. “We breathe stagnate air. We are exposed to artificial light that disrupts our 24 hour sleep/wake cycles. We drink water that runs through multiple levels of infrastructure. We don’t know the quality of water in our homes.”

Scialla’s initiative, Darwin, inserts a layer of intelligence on top of the already existing smart technology that uses a platform of controls and algorithms to incorporate the benefits of the natural conditions into the artificial setting. Darwin controls lighting to mimic the sun patterns, giving optimal, bright daylight to wake up our bodies and keep them active and then slowly putting us into a comfortable bedtime routine.

“Since the lightbulb was invented, we have been walking around in a constant state of twilight,” says Scialla. “We get too little light during the day, and too much light at night. We are supposed to be exposed to the very bright sky to suppress melatonin all day long. And, artificial light at 11 pm isn’t good. None of us are sleeping as deeply as we should.”

Darwin also offers water filtration, and protects the indoor air quality from more harmful synthetic materials and particulates that are always coming in and out of homes, where air quality is up to five times worse than outdoors.

The KB Home ProjeKt also is incorporating Noon lighting systems that give home owners the technology to better control their environments, which can lead to improved health and well-being.

“With Noon, we are building a sensing network that can learn consumer preferences, measure air quality, temp/humidity, monitor occupancy and the health of the homes occupants, including heart-rate, respiratory rates and more,” says Sean Paterson, head of sales, at NOON Home. “In the future, we can provide data from monitoring services to help consumers understand their environments better and help their loved ones feel more secure.” 
In a mission to improve health for the masses, the KB Home ProjeKt brings together manufacturers and industry experts to rethink the idea of health and well-being provided at home. “Health and wellness in the home needs to be positioned as a right not a privilege and builders, like KB Home, hold the key,” Scialla says.

The KB Home ProjeKt, is taking this innovation, prioritizing it and making it a core part of Where Tomorrow Lives. In this video, Bridleman addresses the need for more thoughtful homes that KB Home will be putting in reach of more buyers, making the features of health and well being a right.

And, what if we continue on the path of evading nature? “If that doesn’t happen, our gene pool is potentially changing,” Scialla says.

So, Where Tomorrow Lives will be a natural arrangement of how we lived hundreds of years ago, married with today’s technology. See the home revealed at the International Builders’ Show in Vegas in February 2019 and read more about the design and construction at www.buidleronline.com/kbhomeprojekt.