Continuing the Business Times’ tomorrowSERIES features, we take a look at the" Home of the Future", or tomorrowHOME. While future homes have been explored widely for many decades, albeit in the context of television shows and architecture and design forums or even as it pertains to living on different planets or the more recent novelties conceptualised by consumer electronics companies, primarily to excite their target demographics and ultimately sell products; one key notion which kept popping up was that our very definition of what a home or an office or even a doctor's office or hospital, etc. would likely not stand into the future, especially with the concepts of office and home already blurring thanks to telecommuting and freelancing.
Homes of the future may look suspiciously like relics of a wasteful past with functionality replacing sleek lines. Some ideas that are already being touted include using old shipping containers as frames for future homes. Picture shows a home made out of old containers - courtesy -inhabitat.com |
However, for the purpose of this feature story, we will attempt to lay out homes in their most recognisable parts and put forward the ideas that futurists think will most likely impact these spaces the most.
Design / Decor
Considering the growing popularity of the ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’ movement, tomorrowHOME will probably count cardboard, wood, glass, etc. as important building block. In fact, the homes of the future may look suspiciously like relics of a wasteful past with functionality replacing sleek lines.
Some ideas that are already being touted include using old shipping containers as frames for future homes while still-to-be-introduced materials such as the so-called bendable concrete, which is 500 times stronger and half the weight than its namesake, will be used to coat these frames for a more workable and familiar outcome.
Meanwhile, thanks to health and sustainability factors highlighting the value of natural light, future homes will probably have fewer walls and more windows and skylights, while if there are walls these would most likely be completely covered with interactive or display wallpaper. This leads to the incorporation of concepts like constantly changing decor and shape shifting furniture so that tomorrowHOME will change daily or even minute-by-minute instead of being redecorated every few years. This will also finally kill the notion of a family television room as all rooms will essentially have wallpaper displays.
Further, the occupants of tomorrowHOME will need neither key nor alarm. Pre-approved people will be allowed into or will be allowed to invite strangers into the house. This will be thanks to the house's Operating System (OS) and the various sensors embedded throughout the house which will constantly track the biometrics or maybe even chips related to every visitor.
However, although today's tomorrowHOME was from the start designed for convenience and comfort, it is interesting to note that many consider this to be a health risk which aids bad behaviours, such as obesity, in affluent societies.
As such, more emphasis may be given in future designs to try and embed exercise into the essential workings of the house such as exercise based access to entertainment system and the kitchen.
Kitchen
The kitchen of the future will likely also be very different from the present model. It is believed that all appliances will gradually migrate into one combined appliance or even a machine chef which will replace microwaves, juicers, toasters, stoves, etc.
In fact, the ultimate vision of the tomorrowKITCHEN is best suggested by the television show Star Trek where a replicator transforms stored matter into any programmed dish, a scenario admittedly some distance off.
For the immediate future, kitchens may recommend and fast cook recipes based on what groceries you have presently on your shelves, probably identified via reading the products' barcodes or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, which will likely take the place of barcodes in the future. This will also allow the kitchen to automatically grocery shop online. Kitchens may eventually also count your calories and, in conjunction with the orders/network of approved doctors regarding what you can and can not eat, they may be in charge of the personalised diet for each occupant.
Most interesting of all will be the composition and look of the kitchen of the future, from all accounts a complete change from what we are familiar with today. These will be characterised by adjustable sinks and countertops as well as easy-to-clean or even self-cleaning and self-disinfecting surfaces. In fact, many future appliances are said to be focused on getting rid of the need for housework, particularly mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing; all tasks that have been carried out in the same way for decades. Or at the very least, make these tasks easier and more ergonomic in nature by way of positioning the furnishings in the kitchen and even through the home.
Bathrooms
The most startling thing about the bathroom of tomorrow is that it may also be uniquely qualified to double as tomorrowHOME's in-house medical analytics. Thanks to sensors in toilet seats and room-wide which are able to gauge all the human body's signals, from weight to fat content to heartbeat to waste, etc.; the future bathroom will monitor various biometrics and automatically update your heath record day-by-day.
Importantly, this may also allow doctors, or maybe just their computers, to monitor you 24/7 and treat you at home using telepresence technology or even just act in a timely fashion during a medical crisis.
Connectivity
It is also widely believed that tomorrowHOME will comprise a central computer and network and maybe even an Artificial Intelligence (AI) which will control every facet of the house, from lighting to unlocking and locking doors to tinting windows to turnig off lights in unoccupied rooms, etc. Further, a central network will act as a bridge between your office and your home while also facilitating the ability of your current work projects travelling with you everywhere you go, from your bedroom to bathroom to anywhere else within the house perimeter. Additionally, appliances which are preset and networked to start working when you are on your way home will also be alerted via computer. Connectivity also extends to facilitating wire-free charging of portable electronics using either power pads situated across the house, which may even be activated by the house, or even just wirelessly no matter where these electronics are placed within the house.
Sustainability
While in past decades the ideas for the homes of the future have centred on convenience and gadgetry, in recent times there has been a major shift towards sustainability, even over convenience. So much so that ideas such as smart metering, solar ceilings, roof gardens, etc., have all become de rigueur for tomorrowHOME while energy savings and carbon neutrality have also become intrinsic in all the items which it will house.
Ideally, tomorrowHOME will also go so far as to produce its own energy, maybe from human-generated kinetic energy or more possibly the sun or even biomass, as well as being able to re-fuel tomorrowCAR using electricity or fuels.
In addition, kitchens and bathrooms will conserve or recycle every millilitre of water while also relying on rain or wells as key sources of water. Meanwhile, water may no longer be used to flush toilets and concepts like toilets directly linked to compost heaps masked by sawdust, etc. may eventually turn out to become the norm. Another area of concern is cooling, especially with the high cost and energy usage of air conditioners during increasingly warm months. As such, in the future cooling may not be dependant on electricity but rather on metal rods that are buried deep into the ground.
These allow radiated coldness from the depths of the earth which would be absorbed by the metal rods. Concepts such as cross ventilation, etc. could also be used to aid cooling while other concepts can be used for colder climates to retain heat, such as reflective windows, etc.
While we have attempted to explore a sufficiently wide number of ideas suggested for the most possible tomorrowHOME, there are innumerable more concepts being discussed today, hundreds in fact, in just one area such as sustainable architecture which we have not touched on in any way, shape or form.
No matter what ideas have be suggested, one thing we know for sure is that tomorrowHOME will likely surprise us all, just as ideas such as the McMansion and high-rise buildings and condos surprised our forefathers just a few decades ago. In fact, with the aforementioned inability to properly define spaces such as bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms, especially due to merging functionality, tomorrowHOME may not just surprise but shock due to its total disregard for privacy or other such mores which we hold dear today.
(Comments are welcome to this ‘tomorrow’ series and can be sent to mobileoption@gmail.com) |
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