Wardrobes that clean your clothes. Mirrors that check your health. And smart toilets that monitor your dietary habits... Harry de Quetteville looks ahead to the home of the not-too-distant future. (Technophobes, brace yourselves)
How will we live in 2030, or 2050? It's tempting to think not much will be different, but if Covid-19 and recent months have shown us anything, it is that dramatic change can come quickly, transforming our houses and neighbourhoods, the space around us and the way we live.
In the blink of an eye, homes have been pressed into service as never before - moonlighting as offices, as classrooms, as gyms, cinemas and restaurants. "More than ever, the role of the home is being questioned," says Kaave Pour, co-founder and CEO of Space10, sometimes described as Ikea's secret innovation lab. "Previously the home has been a space for storage and sleeping. Now it is this sanctuary where everything should happen: teaching and exercising and socialising remotely."
Regardless of whether the pandemic blooms or fades in the next year or two, that trend will not wither, says Pour. Rather, Covid-19 has accelerated three dramatic forces that designers and architects of our future homes were already grappling with: a societal revolution, as we age and become more isolated; a technological revolution, as we seek to control and automate our homes; and an environmental revolution, as we make houses that are more energy-efficient - some that even generate, store and distribute their own electricity - and are robust in the face of the floods and heatwaves that come with global warming.
The first change we are seeing, thanks to the pandemic, is the need to adapt rooms and spaces more cleverly. "It's hard living with the people you love, cheek by jowl, all the time," notes Alex Beaugeard, director of design at Lanserring, interiors and joinery specialists. "Briefs now have much more emphasis on spaces that transform - using pocket doors, sliding glass or acoustic barriers."
Clients, he adds, want offices that are adjacent to but not part of the rest of the house, offering solitude to concentrate. It sounds obvious, but it marks a shift from the open-plan and warehouse vogue of recent years, "with everything knocked into a single colossal volume". Wire meshes or semi-translucent screens lit so they can become opaque, like a darkening sunglasses lens, turn an open corner into a space for tranquil concealment. Even that old trick of Jacobean panelling - the secret jib door - is back in fashion, says Beaugeard. Sometimes we all need a place to hide.
Another change, brought about by Covid, is that we're all pimping up our homes - perhaps inspired by glimpses of celebrities' and commentators' personal spaces via TV interviews during lockdown. Or perhaps it's the effect of the hit Netflix real-estate series Selling Sunset, with its slick US$44 million LA pads. Whatever the cause, we are spending more on our homes. While overall consumer spending declined by 31 per cent during lockdown, Brits splashed out more - collectively, an extra £247m each week - on our lives at home, from hobbies to groceries, according to research by insurer Legal & General.
Gadgets are also becoming more prevalent. "People are beginning to see the uses of technology," says Gwyn Roberts, head of housing and policy at the Building Research Establishment (BRE). "That's changed since 10 years ago."
What started with simple Nest thermostats and Ring video doorbells, which are internet-connected and can be controlled from anywhere via smartphone, will continue in coming years with an ever-expanding lattice of devices and sensors that, increasingly, will interact with each other.
"First we are going to see a sea change in security," says Andrew Royall, director of Eclectic Home Technology and a member of Cedia, the global trade association for residential technology. "A camera is infinitely better at spotting fire than a smoke detector, and motion than a motion detector. Add to that other devices and you get to: the camera sees motion in the room, the sensor detects the air quality is bad, so a window is opened or the air filter is turned on."
Such systems exist already, he says, in the affluent London neighbourhoods of Hampstead, Mayfair and Chelsea - the current cost for a bespoke solution for the whole house can start at £50,000 ($95,000) and run to millions. "[But] you need a company like mine to glue it all together. In 10 years, you won't."
Kaave Pour believes tech will advance even further. He predicts that physical screens and controllers will begin to disappear entirely in favour of "augmented-reality technology", which will overlay information on the surfaces around us. Forget catalogues and websites: "spatial computing" will allow digital objects - like a 3D image of a sofa - to be projected into our homes, to sit alongside the actual physical objects there, so we can see what fits (and looks good), and what doesn't, before deciding what to buy, all without unpacking a single flatpack box.
Ikea is a pioneer of this technology, which may be rolled out as early as this year. "Fully immersive renders will show how furniture would look in your home," explains Pour. Different styles and layouts can be swapped in and out with a click. "It is as simple as touching a few buttons in an app." We are all interior designers now.
Once home-control systems are automated in a way that becomes hassle-free, the list of devices that can be added will be almost limitless. Of particular interest at the moment are wardrobes that sanitise clothes. "It's an innovation from the hotel industry that's crossed over to residential," says Monique Tollgard, of Tollgard Design Group, an architectural interior-design business. Some use UV light and claim to be able to kill bacteria, odours and mould. Interior designer Alessia Mainardi says, "We are currently working on a project and the client requested a new appliance inside the wardrobe" - a Samsung AirDresser, which promises to 'relax' wrinkles, remove dust and eradicate odours. (It retails at £2199.)
Bathrooms are where, perhaps understandably, the sanitisation theme is taken furthest, with sensors allowing hands-free technologies, from loo seats and flushes to taps. At a conference earlier this year, Paul Flowers, chief design officer of the Japanese bathroom-design group Lixil, explained how smart loos could even begin to analyse "dietary inefficiencies". If that sounds outlandish or faintly yucky, Google has patent applications on devices that could monitor the health of your cardiovascular system through 'various non-invasive sensors' embedded in mirrors, bathtubs, mats and, yes, even your loo seat.
It doesn't have to be creepy. At the BRE Innovation Park in Watford, testing shows that sensors and cameras, combined with automated computer analysis, can help older people live independently for longer.
"Think of carbon-dioxide sensors to tell if people are breathing normally," says Gwyn Roberts. "Movement sensors can see if they have got up in the morning and are going about their business as usual. That can help families or social care - if everything is as normal, maybe older relatives just need a two-minute check-in. If carbon dioxide drops [suggesting they have stopped breathing], an automatic alert tells you to call the emergency services. Keeping people at home for as long as possible [rather than in hospitals or care homes] is a positive thing."
The problem that arises, though, is what happens to that data as our houses acquire more and more built-in tech. "How do we integrate technology in a way that is good for people, not just those companies providing the services?" asks Kaave Pour. "Does it just mean we will be tracked in our homes as we are with our phones? Privacy is critical to feeling safe."
Smart devices, including assistants such as Siri and Alexa, process data in the cloud rather than locally. "All the big companies have had data breaches," points out Andrew Royall. "So when your automated camera is filming in your bedroom, where does all this go?"
In the future home, Royall thinks, the quality and security of data will become as fundamental as the quality of air; we will have a purifier for one and a firewall for the other. "The revolution is already percolating out there," he says.
Indeed, "engineered purity" is the newest trend - whether purity of water, air, energy, data connections, surfaces, even light. The buzz phrase is "biophilic design". Machines in our homes will filter, absorb, monitor, shield, trap, lock, hide and adjust to make us feel at ease, but we will not want to see them do it.
Monique Tollgard and her husband Staffan describe the rash of buttons and controllers that accompany each tech invasion as a "wall acne" and yearn to replace it with voice control.
Royall talks about automated circadian lighting inside - with cooler blues in the morning and warmer tones in the afternoon and evening "that mimic the rhythms of the day".
Beaugeard discusses "air purifiers, hidden sensors in our kitchens that measure particulate matter in the air, including virus particles", while also freely admitting that clients have an "appetite to get away from tech - a yearning for realness, in timbers, marbles and metals, a desire for craft and tactility". Like Capability Brown parkland, our best future homes will appear natural, but be driven by artifice.
Take the work of Marjan van Aubel, a Dutch designer who believes that, in future, "a home will be considered broken if it does not generate its own electricity". From her studio in Amsterdam she shows me a thin piece of film, cut into a leaf shape, which turns out to be a small solar panel. Solar tech, she says, now it's transparent, lightweight and foil-like, should simply be considered a material like any other.
She has made lights that can power themselves, and tables that power tablets and phones. Her stained-glass-style solar panels, designed for the roof of the Dutch Pavilion at the postponed Expo 2020 Dubai, show that these materials can be beautiful too. "And yet five years ago that simply couldn't have been done," she says. "Now you can design with solar, decorate and generate electricity. It has become not just functional but also about expression."
It is not just fancy expo pavilions. Large developments, like the hundreds of homes in Nottingham's Trent Basin, can have "community generation" of electricity at their core. There, solar power is stored in a giant Tesla battery and redistributed at times of need. And the developer, Igloo Regeneration, is one of six finalists in the Government's Home of 2030 contest for another of its ideas: energy-efficient homes with simple frame structures and standardised components.
Standardised components? Yes, prefab is back, and in a big way. "Of course, no one calls them prefab; they're terrified of repeating the mistakes of the 1960s," says Peter Murray, curator-in-chief of New London Architecture (NLA). "But if you can build in a nice clean factory, it's much better than on a muddy site, with a shortage of good builders."
A century after Henry Ford put together the production line for cars, it is now finally emerging for houses, with all the meticulous attention to detail, quality and cost control that allows. There is one difference: Ford was famous for saying, about his Model T, that "any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black". But with modern prefab houses, like modern cars, the basic template can be customised by the buyer.
"Each house can be different; you can choose it. That's what everyone thinks the shift will be in the next few years," says Murray. He points to developers Urban Splash, pioneers of "modular housing". "All prefab stuff," he says. "Medium-sized developments, using digital plans - a big shift from putting normal houses together."
In the UK, says Urban Splash, just 10 per cent of new homes are put together offsite. In Sweden it is more like half. In Japan the bulk of houses are factory-built.
The advantages are clear: to be carbon- efficient, or even neutral, airtight home shells need to be high precision. But there are other benefits. Take Project Etopia's modular system. Its lightweight, airtight, fire-resistant panels can be shipped to sites, where they slot together, allowing homes to be built quickly and cheaply. The first four homes in its flagship scheme in Corby were constructed in just over a week.
So where will these modular, voice-controlled, energy-generating, sensor-laden homes be built - in cities or the countryside? In fact, will it be possible to run such a home in rural areas that lack a decent internet connection? And what about cities? Stories abound of urban flight, of residents exchanging outrageous rents and shoebox sizes for glorious rural vistas and vast home offices.
The likely answer is that cities will survive; but they'll adapt. Just look at New York after September 11. Then it was not people but big firms that moved out to the suburbs, so destroyed were parts of the city. Yet since then, lower Manhattan has simply adapted, transforming from a purely financial centre into a mixed residential and office area. "An interesting and speedy shift," says Peter Murray. "The City of London may have to face that as well."
"There are lasting changes that will arise from the current crisis," says Richard van der Laken, founder of the What Design Can Do foundation. "The home already is and will become a much more multifunctional place. All these things that we outsourced, we are bringing back home. It's a re-appreciation of cooking, of baking bread, of the garden and the balcony. Of getting control of the basics in life.
"Some people will move out of the city. But whether you are in the countryside or in the city, design is essential. Most people still perceive design as just aesthetics, as exclusive. But great design is more than that. It will address our fundamental social and environmental issues too."
Graphics: 123RF/NZ HERALD
