Gadgetory

in the last six months we've seen this home of the future here in Austin Texas go from pieces in a factory to a beautifully designed house packed with the latest connective technology with a thing about aiming for the future is that it's a constantly moving target technology and design evolve at a rapid pace and the last thing you'd want is for your home of the future to feel like it's living in the past what clues can we take from the home of today to help us determine what we need in the home of tomorrow I tried to collect every image that existed of a home of the future and I started in the 1920s this is Michelle Addington Dean of the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture even as certain styles might have changed they're all the same always the first part of the home of the future is automating the door one in the 1960s involve a camera system as we approached our arrival could be observed by an automatic closed-circuit television system which would notify our hosts this special hosted by Walter Cronkite in 1967 took a look at the home of 2001 like our home today it featured surround sound speakers a console to control the entertainment center and a monitor for surveillance cameras today we're living all those dreams but it's still a home of the future and not a home of the present why after 50 years are we still thinking about our home this way what's stopping us from making more radical shifts in what we think of as a home still four walls and endure it that's the part that is familiar to us that's the part we keep you know a lot of it has to do with risk you know for many people this is their life savings it's the single most expensive thing you'll ever buy as an individual absolutely and so it can tolerate much less risk than you can and many other things as we've seen so many other areas technologies have rapidly evolved throughout the 20th century and yet in the case of the smart home we're looking for ways to implement the latest technologies but to do the things that we've always done so what if we allow ourselves to rethink what we assume a house needs to be what kind of improvements could we make if we discard basic assumptions of what a house should do right now we have heating ventilation and air conditioning systems so all of our bodies are surrounded in this blanket of homogeneous conditions that are contained by the envelope of the house it's a clumsy way it's an expensive way and it's an incredibly energy intensive way and interesting up not a particularly effective way of dealing with how the body exchanges heat so everything that we're doing all around here wasted wasted assuming we could successfully utilize a system to heat or cool our bodies in a more efficient envelope it would obviously reduce the energy demand on our home drastically and it could even shift how we think of those four walls in a roof but I've got to be honest it's a hard thing to see happening to think about a future without a cooling system for that as thermally inefficient as it may be for our personal bodies it seems difficult to accept so this is why kind of have to step back and sort of reimagine what that's environment is going to be and that's partly why imagining the far future of home design is difficult our cultural and physical environments tend to change slowly with time while architectural trends are evolving from tiny homes to communal housing it's rare to see mass adoption even our homes modular design is far from becoming mainstream modulars been around for decades but still isn't overtaking the market its most economical at scale and the pipeline just isn't large enough to reduce costs around factories and shipping but within our basic framework of four walls and a roof what are some areas that could change radically in the next few decades let's turn to our kitchen now one thing that you can't miss in our home of the future is this a smart fridge first of all it's got a giant LED screen you can draw on it find the absolute worst way to surf the Internet this is absolutely a crime and you can make it transparent so you can see inside without having to open the door let's say you're at the market and you can't remember what you're out of you can call up the smart fridge on an app turn on the internal cameras and see what you're missing and oh yeah there's a Bluetooth speaker for reasons this is all fun to play with for now but bear this in mind the average refrigerator lasts about 15 years 15 years ago this what's the most popular cell phone so when we try and consider what appliances will last with us into the next home in the future I'm not sure if the smart fridge checks all the boxes but this is only version one when I think about tech that changed my life I think about matters I used to have a map for every region I was in and would draw the path before I set out then there was the age of printing customized directions on MapQuest and now smartphone GPS I didn't even know it was a problem until technology gave me a much better solution and after that there was no going back is there anything like that that you see a problem that we didn't even know that we had that the smart home can solve for us I think particularly around the issue of food one of the reasons that people are not making the best food choices today especially families with children is because of the impracticality of making sure that you have healthy food at all times this is an voicing a futurist who runs a strategic consulting business here in Texas I think that for families the convenient choice is not always the healthiest choice so potentially a home of the future could help you get closer to having those two things be in line yes and then we're not wanting to go back after that the way we eat has actually always played a role in imagining what the home of the future will be typically revolving around speed and convenience like the instant pizza and back to the future part two and remember that Cronkite piece this new play normally cooks in 40 minutes with microwave that's ready in 90 seconds ah the miracles of the microwave the quickness and convenience also usually means less healthy unless in the home of the future it doesn't have to now I see these solutions to these problems particularly in two areas one is the ability to order staples and foods that were using all the time so for example instead of you having to know oh I'm running out of milk you have a scanner in your refrigerator that's running out oh you're running low on let's go ahead and just you know order and then you might even do do some of the agriculture yourself in your home grow your own food in in your home of the future yes growing your own food either in your own home or if you live in some sort of high-tech community garden or home garden which is hydroponic which is using computer physician to find out exactly how much it should be water what type of nutrients down to the fine tune very high resolution level and that way you can have much more control over the food that you were using and consuming on a daily basis and save you a lot of time at the same time and if you link these two ideas you've got your high tech community garden delivering the best quality food to you when you need it it's a great dream and who knows maybe 50 years from now it could be a reality to be honest it's hard to even build today's home of the future let alone tomorrow's our house was built specifically with that mission in mind to be the home in the future and in a lot of ways it is our brain pulls all of our devices into one control system even giving us a live readout of our power usage our solar panels are built into our carport and we even have an entire audio system hidden in the backyard landscaping there's still a ton more we would have wanted to add to this house but with delays in our timeline zoning limitations and budget overages on site actually building a house still requires compromises and while some technology like our smart fridge may not seem particularly future-proof you can see how they are building blocks for something more ambitious down the line historically tech and design takes time to be perfected and once they are we're already hard at work imagining the next steps they can take but at least for now I'm just gonna enjoy the time I have in my home in the present thanks so much for following along in our home of the future series how would you rethink the home for the future let us know in the comments below if you've enjoyed this show check out our new future of music series hosted by the Verge's own Danny Deal