We may look forward to going there, but as a state of mind and place, home isn’t always progressive—most homes are constitutionally driven by continuity and comfort. For many of us, home is memory. As home designers look forward to a not-so-distant future, residential bliss is in flux as the Internet of Things creeps into our most quotidian moments. The landscape itself may be stubborn (about one in three American houses were built in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the latest census), but our latest homes are becoming more dynamic.
We’re no longer at home alone; as the space-race era predicted, technology has transformed our daily lives, robotics have already begun tackling our daily chores, and eventually, Alexa and Siri may well dictate our day-to-day lives (and not the other way around). Increasingly digitized, home is where your data is.
And how will this look, feel, and operate in the year 2039? We spoke with leaders and visionaries in the home-design community to understand how the concept of home—a space of creature comfort—will change in an industry in which the lifespan of innovation is increasingly short-lived.
TECHNOLOGY WILL DISAPPEAR
At home, technology—with all of its bulbs, bulk, beeps, and boops—will be omnipresent, yet virtually undetectable. “Technology that is interruptive, distracting, and that is a visual scar on the home environment will disappear for experiences enabled by intelligent and invisible tech,” says Yves Béhar , the Swiss industrial designer and founder of Fuseproject. “For me, the home in 20 years is silent, focused on human interaction, sustainable, healthy, and uniquely shaped experientially for its occupant. I see the systems of the house are passive and efficient. When I walk through the spaces, an overwhelming feeling of peace is the main impression.”
MORE TECH EQUALS LESS
The current push is for less clutter by collapsing various technologies into universal systems; home-tech will command the room without crowding it. “It’s complicated, but I think that more technology will help us use less technology,” says Isabelle Olsson , director of design for Home products at Google. “The products we’re making now are a start to that—we’re creating one place for many of those physical items like calendars, shopping lists, and reminders.”
Mirroring Olsson’s logic, Elizabeth Mathes , director of Smart Home at The Home Depot, anticipates that “eventually, it is possible that smart technology embedded in the home will allow for homeowners to turn on or monitor lights, thermostats, and other items solely with their phones, relying less on the physical fixtures in the home.”
THESE WALLS CAN TALK (AND RESPOND)
In 2039, Béhar envisions entire walls covered in modular, digital screens that are camouflaged until activated. “Once enabled, those screens are windows into different world locations in real time that transport us to inspiring moments,” he says.
And he’s not alone, either. “The surfaces of the future homes will forever change to our needs,” says industrial designer Karim Rashid , as he paints a picture of future. “The patterned wallpapers are a series of 3D graphic abstract imagery of wireframes. Ideally these surfaces would be made of soft-touch polymers, such as synthetic rubbers, and silicones that are translucent, transparent, and digitally changeable—that all contribute to a new softness of our interior environment. By touching the pellucid surfaces, images text and sound can be surfed, scanned, changed, and morphed.”
A NEW EMPHASIS ON TOTAL BALANCE: WORK, LIFE, AND SLEEP
As lifestyles shift, layouts follow suit—a relevant hierarchy of space will take shape within the home. Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman & Williams imagine that old-fashioned and mostly unused spaces like large media rooms and formal dining rooms are on their way out, making room for the home office. “The entire home is by then an open office—with sitting, lounging or standing as a work position available throughout the home and outside,” comment Standefer and Alesch in an email to AD . “Kitchens will never disappear—they are still the center—even for people who order take out.
Technology will begin to define new territory, too, including with furnishings. “We must enter the civilization of information also with furniture. Last year for Cassina we did an installation that reimagines the home of the future where the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina looks how the bedroom has become more central as people not only sleep but use technology in their beds,” says architect and designer Patricia Urquiola . “Furniture will need to adapt to this.”
SMALL MATTERS
The bulk of homes grew larger over the past three decades, but the latest American homes continue to grow smaller. While the effect is chiefly due to shortages in labor and land, designers will embrace the trend.
“In the next 20 years architects and designers will work on ‘small is beautiful,’” says Béhar, whose team is currently designing 250- to 500-square-foot “micro-unit” apartments optimized with robotic furniture by Ori Systems, an MIT start-up. The concept brings Murphy bed-logic to the max; modular furniture and layouts shift and reorder on command, like an apartment with multiple personalities.
Expect to see next-level iterations of tiny living, too. “I think in the far, far, far, future, the idea of home is sort of going to evaporate from bricks and mortar into more of an abstract notion of homes wherever you are,” says Jeff Wilson , the founder Kasita, which builds 352-square-foot homes that can be positioned anywhere (the sky is the limit, zoning permitted—even the rooftop). “In the future you’ll just pull up a map . . . and say, Hey, I need to move, and it will say, Hey, here’s a place five blocks down with no lease, no deposits, we’ll move all of your stuff—just swipe right and we’ll take care of all of that,” Wilson explains, noting that you can bring all of you settings with you.
SMALLER—BUT MORE CONNECTED
And what about the home in context—the neighborhood? “I think the future begins to network homes together to drive efficiencies and economies through which the homeowners and the neighborhoods can all benefit,” says Nirav Tolia , cofounder and CEO of Nextdoor, a hyperlocalized social networking service for neighborhoods. “Either through energy savings, security, building community, it is the creation of homes networked to other homes in their proximity that I believe holds tremendous value in ways that are hard to imagine today.”
As for how this might shape the physical home, Tolia anticipates change. “We may find that there will be a ‘public’ and ‘private’ area of the home that allows the owners the flexibility to integrate with the neighborhood, while also maintaining the privacy that is critical in a home.”
