The Roses’ home, with its brick exterior, doesn’t look like the kind of place George Jetson would hang his space helmet–but it does provide some down-to-earth insights into the way our living areas are likely to evolve in the 21st century. Besides being automated, it’s a ““casual, fun house,’’ says Rose, and, in that respect, it’s the shape of things to come.
The rise of the so-called great room, a combined space that replaces the traditional living, dining and family rooms, has been one of the most noticeable shifts in our architectural preferences over the past decade or so–and is likely to persist. ““We’re living much more informally,’’ says Sarah Susanka, a Minneapolis architect who’s writing a book about the future of home design. ““There are fewer families that have Mom home all day, so that when everybody’s there there’s more of a desire to be social together.''
Unfortunately, at the moment, great rooms have a tendency simply to become bigger, louder television rooms. Susanka forecasts, though, that the portability promised by wafer-thin, flat-screen TVs will break this social logjam, as no one room will ever again need to be dominated by the box. TVs, by the way, aren’t the only appliances that will have a different look in the future. Margaret Walch, of the Color Association of the United States, predicts that refrigerators and other home devices in the next millennium will ““shift toward cool tonalities’’–sky blue, say–and also move toward metallics like chrome and copper. Say what you will, but we’ll all be a lot thinner if we have to see ourselves reflected on a chrome refrigerator door.
Our houses are likely to evolve structurally as well. Lumber prices are up, so builders are already turning to materials like steel and concrete. Someday, we may even have homes made largely of plastic. But we will not be living in domes or pyramids. Architect Don Jacobs, of the Irvine, Calif., firm JBZ Dorius, points to the current neotraditionalist movement, marked by the return of the front porch. ““As technology becomes impersonal,’’ he says, ““we long for a connection back to the personal, and the home is one of the things that can be that for us.''
But technology doesn’t have to be impersonal. Smart houses will allow us to personalize nearly every facet of our environments, and, as time goes on, do it in ever more personal ways. Tod Machover, professor of music and media at the MIT Media Lab, is engaged in a 10-year research project entitled ““Things That Think,’’ exploring ways to sever the technological tethers that force us to sit at a computer in order to use one. Machover envisions a time when you will not only send information to your house–to dim the lights, say, or play music–but will receive information from it without the need to operate a keyboard or remote. Sensors in your shoes might transmit your vital signs into the floor. Your home could then monitor your medical condition, or just your mood, and respond appropriately. ““It might act as a counterpoint,’’ says Machover. ““If it saw you were very tense, it might pull you toward relaxation.’’ They say home is where the heart is. In the future, it may be where the brain is.
When will the last witnesses to the 20th century’s most memorable events pass from the scene? A sampling:
ESTIMATED DEATH OF LAST WITNESS Cubs win the World Series 2013 WWI veterans 2005 ‘29 stock-market crash 2035 FDR’s first Inauguration 2039 Holocaust survivor 2052 Brown v. Board of Education 2063 JFK assassination 2074 Woodstock festival 2080 Vietnam veterans 2062 O.J. Simpson criminal trial 2108 SOURCES: Social Security Administration, Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs, Research by Dante Chinni–Newsweek
