Smart Buildings: How Technology Is Changing Shared Living

When we talk about smart technology, we usually think of a single apartment or house — lighting, climate control, blinds. But the same logic of automation and remote monitoring is increasingly moving up to the level of the entire building, where the effect is felt by the whole community of residents, not just one household. Through several of our projects — from building management software, to solar panels for shared consumption, to a smart intercom and elevator — we'll show what that looks like in practice.

The trend tying all of this together is called a Building Management System (BMS) — a single system that unifies heating and ventilation, cameras, intercom, and alarms, instead of management and residents juggling five different apps for five different devices. Everything below — the resident app, solar, intercom, elevator — is really just pieces of that same system, applied to the concrete problems of one building.

Digital building management

Traditional building management is still mostly run on paper and through a notice board in the lobby. Our resident-management platform changes that by giving administrators and residents one shared digital space:

• QR-code payment slips — each resident gets a payment slip with an embedded QR code (similar to the SEPA QR standard used across Europe), so paying through mobile banking takes a few seconds instead of manually typing in a reference number and recipient. This directly reduces late or incorrectly entered payments.
• Digital notice board — news and announcements from the administrator reach every resident directly, instead of paper taped to the elevator door.
• Polls — management can ask residents for their opinion (e.g. whether to change the security provider, introduce a new service) and get a measurable result instead of hallway small talk.
• Per-unit finances — each resident sees exactly what and when they paid, what they owe, and exactly how much maintenance costs per square meter for their unit — a level of transparency often missing from traditional management.
• Issue reporting — a resident reports a problem through the app, and it goes straight to the administrator or maintenance contractor, without phone calls and someone having to write down what was said.
• Community documents — decisions, meeting minutes, and other documents available to the administrator in one place, instead of a folder in an office.

Building finance overview — planned vs. collected, real-time balance

Per-unit payment tracking through the year

Payment slip with an embedded QR code — ready to scan in a mobile banking app

Solar power for shared consumption

Shared parts of a building — hallways, the elevator, pumps, garage lighting and ventilation — consume electricity whose cost is split across all residents, usually with no visibility into how much is actually used or why. On one of our projects, we analyzed exactly this shared consumption and prepared a feasibility study for a solar plant — here's what can be learned from it and applied to any building:

• The goal is to match consumption, not maximize production. Without a battery, a plant sized to produce roughly what the building consumes annually is more cost-effective than a "bigger is better" approach — a system that significantly exceeds consumption just throws away the surplus that expires at the end of the billing period, with no compensation.
• Why skipping the battery makes sense for shared consumption. As long as net metering exists (offsetting production and consumption within the annual period), the grid effectively acts as a free "battery" — summer surplus offsets winter shortfall. On top of that, shared-area consumers (elevator, pumps, lighting) draw the most power during the day, exactly when the system is producing, meaning high direct self-consumption even without storage. A battery here would only extend the payback period.
• How shared electricity costs are actually split. The cost isn't read directly per unit — the supplier gets a total consumption report for the building and splits it by a criterion the community itself has set: by unit's floor area or by the number of registered household members. These two models produce very different bills per unit, so it's worth checking which criterion is officially registered for a specific building — many residents don't even know on what basis their shared consumption is calculated.
• The process runs through "prosumer" status. The homeowners' association registers as a prosumer for the shared meter with the local grid operator: a request to adjust the metering point, installation of a bidirectional meter, then a net-metering contract with the supplier. Up to a certain capacity this requires no construction permit, but the approved connection capacity is the upper limit on plant size, so that has to be checked before anything else.
• Comparing sizes makes the logic clear. A smaller plant (covering roughly 70% of consumption) is "safe" but leaves part of the cost on the grid; a plant sized to roughly 100% of consumption gives the best ratio of savings to payback time; anything bigger than that, without a battery, starts wasting an increasing share of the energy produced — its payback stretches out, while savings don't increase further since consumption is already covered.

This naturally connects to consumption monitoring: once a building already has solar panels and production metering, the same system can easily show real-time consumption too — which can then be displayed to residents through something like the finance module in the resident-management platform.

Smart intercom and access control

A traditional intercom does exactly one thing — it rings when someone presses the button. With Dahua equipment, we're planning to make it part of a broader system:

• Phone notifications — a call to the intercom (with a recording of who rang) arrives as a push notification on the resident's phone, even when they're not home, instead of missing the call because they weren't in the unit.
• Access tracking — the system logs who entered and when, which building management can use for security without anyone having to physically sit and review footage.
• NFC stickers instead of tags — instead of a resident carrying a physical tag or card, we're planning an NFC sticker that attaches to the back of a phone — opening the door by tapping the phone, without an extra object in a pocket that can be forgotten or lost. This follows the global shift away from physical cards toward mobile credentials, which by 2026 has become the standard rather than the exception.
• Integrating the intercom screen with IP cameras — a single screen where, besides the door camera feed, residents can also see cameras from the garage, hallway, or yard — instead of switching between three different apps to see who's at the door versus who's in the garage.

Elevator upgrades

The elevator is one of the few pieces of equipment in a building that every resident uses daily, and it's usually also the least "smart" part of the entire building. A few upgrades we're planning:

• Direct service call from the elevator — a button or an automatic signal that calls the authorized service provider the moment the elevator gets stuck or reports a fault, without waiting for a resident to report the problem.
• Predictive maintenance — sensors that track the elevator's behavior (vibration, cycle count, door speed) can flag that something is "off" before the elevator actually fails — the technician comes for an inspection, not an emergency call with someone stuck inside.
• Camera inside the elevator cabin — surveillance inside the elevator for safety, so that in an emergency (getting stuck, an accident) the service provider or administrator can immediately see what's happening, not just hear an alarm.
• Wi-Fi in the elevator — a signal that doesn't drop the moment the doors close, important both for the camera/service-call communication itself and for residents who don't want their connection to vanish for the 20 seconds of the ride.
• The same for the garage elevator — service calls, camera, and Wi-Fi apply equally to the elevator running through the garage, where surveillance is often even more important since it's less busy and easier for something to happen unnoticed.

What else could go into this story

• Garage door/ramp automation via the same app or the NFC sticker that also opens the front door
• Flood and fire sensors in shared spaces, connected to a notification for the administrator, not just a local alarm
• Smart lighting for shared spaces (hallway, basement, garage) with motion sensors — directly ties back to the solar topic since it reduces the consumption the panels otherwise have to cover
• Per-unit energy monitoring — smart meters that show consumption in real time, not just at the end of the month

Conclusion

Individual smart homes solve the comfort of a single household. A smart building solves something harder — coordinating dozens of households that share the same costs, the same entrance, the same elevator, and the same infrastructure. Digital management, solar panels for shared consumption, a smart intercom, and a smart elevator show that this coordination doesn't have to depend on a notice board and neighborly goodwill — it can be a system that runs on its own.