A STUDY OF THE FUTURE
LIFE IN A CITY OF 2030 Heraclitus, a pre-Socractic Greek philosopher said that “Change is the only constant in life”. Change may arrive as a gentle breeze or as a violent, category 5 typhoon, but it will come. By the year 2030, we expect to see significant changes in the world, and how we live in general. According to projections by the United nations the world population of humans is estimated to be between approximately 7.8 billion and 8.5 billion people. There are expected to be major advances in technology, in form of self driving cars, and robots with artificial intelligence, moving in to take over even white collars jobs. Also there will be advances in health, where we expect that functioning organs can be built with 3-D printers. Machines will replace 80% of doctors, and nanobots will be implanted in the human body to augment the immune system. Everything you considered a product, would be a service. There is access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things needed for daily activities. Transportation would have dropped dramatically in price, and nobody own cars anymore, because driverless vehicles, and car sharing are the order of the day. Transport would be much more organized and coordinated because public transport is easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Shopping and shopping malls are distant memories in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy, borrow what they need on demand, and get it delivered right to their doorstep by commercial drones. So the question is, how will the advances affect our homes, flats, and the way we live in general? Well, I’ll tell you.
In cities, no one pays any rent, because someone else is using your free space whenever you do not need it. Your living room is used for business meetings when you’re not there. Homes are built for sharing. You can cook anything easily because the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at your door within minutes. There is no need to buy all the equipment because you can just order them when you need them. Houses will need to have inbuilt rainwater tanks and double reticulation grey water systems. The popularity of large gardens and pools will diminish and we may even see the disappearance of the water-guzzling bathtubs in favour of showers that automatically turn off after two or three minutes. Inside the house, virtual assistants like Alexa, Amazon Echo’s SmartHome assistant, will become your best roommate ever. It will read you the news, answer even the trickiest questions, take phone calls, control lights, open curtains and update shopping lists. The whole house will probably be rigged up to the assistant, so it can be controlled from anywhere, on any surface. People will start growing their own produce, and with gardens shrinking, it is likely that rooftops and vertical spaces will be used to plant vegetable and herb gardens. To keep e-commerce purchases delivered by drone safe, there may be special landing hatches on the roof, possibly even refrigerated ones for food deliveries. Through LED and projection technology you’ll be able to change the look of your house on a daily basis. One day you can project rose gold wallpaper onto your lounge feature wall, and when that trend moves on, you can go ahead and switch to a smoky blue paint effect.
Furniture-wise, most surfaces will be interactive and smart glass. There will be everything from virtual wardrobes to rollable tvs. An internal server will run the house by connecting everything from beds and wardrobes to one central technology system. The home’s energy consumption, room temperatures, security and occupants’ personal schedules can be viewed on the same screen that displays the weather. It’ll know how much energy you’ve got, it’ll connect in with smart grids, your phone, internet, it’ll be cloud based and it’ll stream all of your TV’s. It will allow you to automate or remotely control the functions of your home in several incredibly useful ways. You could turn your heating or cooling on as you head home, set your coffee machine to automatically brew you a cup when you wake up, or even unlock the doors remotely if you’ve forgotten your keys. You could use key fobs to unlock your home, allowing you to monitor the comings and goings of your housemates remotely or keep an eye on mischievous teenagers looking to sneak out on a Saturday night. All in all, it seems like it will be a good life, where we would have tackled many problems like; lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. I’m personally excited and intrigued about seeing what the future holds...are you?
FURNITURE FOR THE FUTURE
THE LAUNDROID Laundroid is a laundry folding robot. With Laundroid, you can liberate your loved one from the time and bother of housework. It creates a new relationship between people and clothing. The design is beautiful, with a sleek mirrored finish that looks good in any room. Laundroid uses multiple robotic arms to pick up the clothes, which are then scanned by cameras. It’s connected by Wi-Fi to a server that uses artificial intelligence to analyze the object, and a neural network containing 256,000 images of different clothing items. The robot arms then determine the best way to handle the clothing, where to hold it up by, and how it should be folded. You’ll need a couple of hours for it to finish folding a load of laundry, as one T-shirt takes about 5–10 minutes to fold.
Clothing items are analyzed piece by piece in order to relay information to the robot arms, but the machine uses the data of the type, size, and color of the clothing to sort it in different ways. A companion app will keep track of every piece of clothing analyzed by the Laundroid, and let users categorize clothes by household member or item. The dedicated app manages data and images. It will also suggest clothing co-ordinations. It’s essentially an online wardrobe organizer. Laundroid leverages the almost limitless knowledge stored in the database to decide on the best way to fold each item. The more it is used, the more the database evolves and grows. All you have to do is put dry clothing in the box and carry out the start operation. Laundroid will do the rest by itself, folding the clothing automatically.
THE SMART FRIDGE
The Smart Fridge here is for those who have shunted cooking to a hobby and rely more on designer microwave meals. The idea is to give you a fridge that is intelligent enough to come up with a healthy recipe, depending on what you stock in it. Not only that, it guides you with vocal instructions, spoon by spoon, till you dish out the perfect-wholesome meal. A touch interface door glams up the appliance. To use, you just need to fill up your fridge, input your now food, select a meal based on what you have, see what you need, collect ingredients, and start cooking while listening to or even watching the instructions from the fridge. Once the door closes, it becomes a touch surface. The interactive touch surface will allow you to set timers, control temperature inside the fridge, mirror your TV, play music, and it will let you know when your food is about to expire, and suggest recipes so you can use them before they expire. Cameras inside the fridge connected to your phone, allow you to see everything from the grocery store, so say goodbye to grocery lists. The fridge will be able to monitor diets and probably even order groceries right there at the fridge.
WALL SIZED SCREENS With this technology, walls and picture frames are turned into screens.
The screens make it a bedroom for daydreaming in the teenager’s bedroom of the future. Every surface is interactive. With entertainment and social connections seamlessly integrated into the walls through interactive display surfaces and touch technology, the room’s design can change to match a teenager’s many moods. A projection system simulates digital wallpaper that displays a multiwall collage of images that can be posted using a hand-held computer. And for the smaller kids, your child can choose what stuffed animal appears in a story during story-time. Just hold it up to a camera, and the screen will recognize it and insert it into the story. As you start telling the story, it’s illustrated on the screen for the kids. When Grandma visits, the walls can be changed quickly to reflect her color choices and photos. In another adaptation, the walls display icons for different online services that can be browsed and accessed by twisting a motion-sensitive orb.
FUTURE FLAT DESIGN The aim of this project was to create innovative designs for apartments using a given set of furniture, and an empty flat plan. It was meant to acknowledge that even with modular design, people will be able to decide and create different looks that suit their different tastes. It proves that even in small homes, with smart furniture and good design, we can obtain maximum comfort with minimum space. The clients for this apartment were a family with only one child. They cooked daily, so having a good kitchen was a very important factor for them. They also are not too big on guests, so it wasn’t something i took into much consideration. They were interested in smart furniture everywhere they could get it. They don’t work from home, so having a separate and quiet space was not a necessity. Because they have a kid, and probably expect to grow as a family, it was important that laundry services were easily accessible. My final design, came down to a two bed-room apartment, with both rooms en suite. With both rooms on separate ends of the apartment, there is privacy for every member of the family. Wide openings in the apartment maximize and control the amount of energy and light let in.
A motorized wall separating the living room from the dining/kitchen area allows for the extension of space depending on what function is being used. The wall contains an inbuilt glass interactive TV, so it can be watched from both sides of the wall. with fold-able tables space is even made more in the apartment when some things are not in use. With the incorporation of the Laundroid, the smart fridge, and even an interactive wardrobe, the house, is smart functional, spacious, and exactly where you want to be. And might I add, the apartment is only 72 square-meters in size!
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PREVIUOS DESIGN CONCEPTS DESIGN IDEA A
In this idea, the apartment opened to see the dining room and kitchen, There was a direct connection to the terrace which could be good for someone who would like to have a terrace garden. There is easy access to fruits and veggies. There is a fold up table and bed just behind the kitchen, and the movable wall attached to the bathroom creates a room with adequate space during the night for the child. The main problem with this idea was that the living room was way to small. I intended it to serve as a den, but due to the nature of the house, it would have been more appropriate if it served some other kind of purpose, or was cancelled altogether.
DESIGN IDEA B
This design was better, as it was more carefully thought out. You enter into the apartment with the kitchen on your right. Here, the living room is directly on your left and with a folding bed, behind what also serves as a wall, the living room is larger and ore spacious. towards the end of the apartment there is a row of wardrobes, so there is a lot of storage space. The problem here was that the positioning of the bed did not provide optimum privacy, however this was an easy fix by exchanging it with some wardrobes at the end of the apartment. Something still didn’t feel right though.
3-D RENDERINGS