The house of tomorrow will be made of soda bottles--that's how we best know the substance called PET, or polyethylene terephthalate. But architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake see a much different use for the plastic: embedded with flat circuitry that will enable walls to store heat, generate electricity and double as giant, flat-panel displays. Their iteration, called SmartWrap, could also make the building process faster and cheaper than ever.
The smarts in SmartWrap come from flat circuitry called OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes), which are tattooed onto the plastic by an ink-jet printer and can function either as a light source...