Can Digital Twins Help Us Design Buildings That Bring People Together?

How Architecture Can Combat Loneliness Through Better Design

Loneliness is not a new problem, but it has become harder to ignore, with reports now describing it as a public health concern. Policymakers frame it as a social and economic challenge. Architects and planners increasingly link it to the way we shape our towns and buildings. A home can be warm, efficient and structurally sound, but still leave its occupants feeling cut off. The same is true of offices, campuses and later-living developments. Good design has always been about people, and the industry is beginning to ask how buildings can support human connection, not just function.

At first glance, this feels like a question rooted firmly in design, architecture and sociology, not technology. But if we step back and consider the role of digital twins in understanding how buildings are used once handed over, an unexpected opportunity begins to appear.

What Twinview Offers Today

Twinview is a digital platform that connects the design, construction and operation of buildings. It brings models to life by linking them with real-time operational data. Building teams use Twinview to monitor energy use, environmental conditions, equipment health and asset information throughout the lifecycle of a building.

For owners and operators, Twinview is already a practical tool. It helps reduce maintenance costs, supports compliance, enables better asset planning and gives clear visibility of how a building is performing day by day. It also offers insight into space utilisation through occupancy analytics, helping teams understand how rooms, floors and communal areas are used across a building or estate.

In other words, Twinview today is firmly grounded in building performance and operational decision-making. Yet embedded within that capability is a layer of information with far wider potential.

Listening to Buildings, Quietly

If a shared lounge in a residential development is always empty, that is a piece of data. If a workplace canteen is only used for twenty minutes a day, that is a piece of data. If a university campus sees first-year students spending most of their time isolated in private rooms rather than in study spaces, that too is a piece of data.

These are not just occupancy statistics. They are subtle indicators of how people inhabit space, and whether those spaces enable connection.

Today, Twinview reports on how a building performs. But in doing so, it also begins to reveal how people behave inside that building, including where they linger, where they avoid, where spaces succeed and where they fail silently. No sensors can measure loneliness, but they can surface patterns that invite questions about social experience.

A Future Direction: From Performance to Belonging

There is a quiet opportunity here to imagine digital twins playing a role in shaping buildings that support community. Consider a residential developer creating a build-to-rent neighbourhood. A digital twin could not only help manage maintenance and energy costs but also surface insights about resident experience. If shared kitchens or rooftop terraces sit unused, perhaps they are hidden from circulation routes or feel like someone else’s territory. If outdoor seating areas are popular at certain times, a landscape architect can learn from that pattern and repeat it across the estate.

Or imagine a workplace adjusting its layout to encourage informal collaboration. Data could help identify spaces where people pass through but never stop. Subtle interventions, including adding seating, daylight, warmth, planting or acoustic comfort, could be tested and measured through the twin. The goal would not be surveillance. It would be feedback, which could then be used carefully to better support real human interaction.

None of this replaces thoughtful architectural design. It simply continues it. It brings the building into conversation with its users long after handover. Instead of guessing how a space might work, we can observe and refine.

Where Twinview Stands

Twinview is not claiming to solve loneliness, and that would be an unrealistic ambition for any technology. But it already offers a practical foundation for understanding how buildings shape experience. It connects how a space is designed with how it lives. It brings operational data into a form that is usable by owners, designers and operators alike. And with continued development, it could also help explore questions of social value alongside performance and efficiency.

The built environment is ultimately about people, and data should serve that purpose. Used responsibly, digital twins have the potential to quietly support not only smarter buildings, but also more human ones. The next step is simply to stay open to that possibility and continue exploring what buildings can teach us.