The applications of technology in residential architecture and the blurred future of smart homes

CONTENT PAGE Research Question

Introduction and Framework

Theoretical Background

A Space Called Home

Consuming Home Technology

20th and 21st Century’s Future Home

Smart Home Technology

Case Study Analysis

The Smart Home

The Environment as Space

My Dream Home According to Technology

Synthesis, Conclusion and Speculation

What is the role of technology in homes?

The first technologies implemented in homes played in a role of providing ease and comfort of inhabitants in the twentieth century. Today, smart homes are convenient, advanced, makes our lives comfortable, at times too comfortable that we become lazy, does implementing this technology in our homes really make life better?

Will smart technology in homes start taking over our lives to the point where we feel a sense of uncontrollability and are not able to function manually anymore?

What will the future of smart home technology look like?

RESEARCH QUESTION INTRODUCTION AND FRAMEWORK

There is a wide spectrum of the roles of technology in homes, but they mainly serve comfort, convenience and ease. Home appliances such as ovens, toasters, refrigerators all serve a purpose of shortening the processes of chores and homemaking.

Smart technology is derived from merging the abilities of a telecommunicating system and a computer into other technologies to make them work better than before. Smart technology is called “Smart” because it is able to communicate with other technologies and automatically integrate itself as an improvement to it’s current system, hence giving these technologies the abilities to control itself without humans’ touch.

There were various speculations, depictions and visualizations of the future made by the people of the twentieth century, both optimistic and pessimistic. However, the pessimistic visions often end with a prediction of dystopia and “the end of humanity” and how technology is going to take over the world. In the series of three case study themes, I will be analyzing a series of papers, books, films, completed and uncompleted project.

Within each case study, there will be a comparison and analysis of two to three precedents, identifying the optimistic and pessimistic examples, concluding with my personal opinions and speculations of each case study, based on how applications of these technologies in residential architecture blur or visualize the future of smart home technology in homes.

These case studies will be compared with each other based on the speculations made in the twentieth century, and how society in the twentieth century is making these speculations true in an optimistic and pessimistic way, identifying the blurred answers to what our future will be like in homes. I will be analyzing and concluding on the endless possibilities of how applying advanced technologies can further enhance or hurt users in their own spaces. I will be speculating the practicality and excessiveness of smart technology being applied to our homes, the place where we are in our most comfortable and vulnerable state.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

A SPACE CALLED HOME

A house is a space where humans inhabit and call it “home”. But anywhere can be a home as long as humans slowly adjust to the spaces they are conditioned to live in. Like in Banham’s paper, the americans have adjusted to organic and non-uniform spatial planning, where the trend of creating a big space with no doors, partitioned into smaller membranes of spaces that are categorized as “rooms” for different functions, except there are no doors. It started becoming trendy amongst the Americans to design a huge single space with no layout, open space planning, allowing inhabitants to have the ability to customize and separate spaces according to their preferences, hence making their houses take form through the spatial planning of their home.

Reyner Banham pointed out that with all these technologies in our homes, why do we still need a house? With the relevant technologies we can live in a box that provides everything we need in a home, including comfort. A device with technologies advanced enough to power and accommodate to the living conditions of each inhabitant, not needing a house or flat.

He did preach on Sullivan’s famous quote from the 1900s, “form follows function, accusez la structure, firmness commodity and delight, truth to materials, wenig ist mehr,” (Sullivan, 1896). These were words from pioneer modernists who disbelieves in monumental and ornamental architecture, breaking traditional architecture and finding beauty in being “true to materials”. The idea of removing uniform spatial planning also came from pioneer modernist architects that defied traditional practices. For example, “Mies Van Der Rohe and a few modernist architects explored the dissolution of rooms, and eventually the visual dissolution of building boundaries” (Hicks, 2021).

So, if we could dismiss the uniform design of houses and customize our homes in the way we want it to look and feel comfort in, why do we need a house then? Banham speculated that mobility will play a huge part in homes. Houses are downsized to fit in a car, with the right technology, anyone can live anywhere. Banham also speculated that by introducing a “standard-of-living package”, a domestic revolution will come.

A domestic revolution where it becomes popular amongst inhabitants to go mobile. Caravans and camper vans are part of a culture, and now Banham speculates that the “van-life” culture becomes more readily available and easier to all. Banham also pointed out that “an essential component in one non-architectural anti-building that is already familiar to most of the nation – the drive-in movie house, only the word “house” is a manifest misnomer – just a flat piece of ground where the operating company provides visual images and piped sound, and the rest of the situation comes on wheels” (Banham, 1965). Although most humans define a house as a home, Banham does make a point that the term “house” can be manifested anywhere.

The literal meaning of a house is a building for human habitation, “especially one that consists of one or more upper storeys” (Banham, 1965). But it does not define the meaning of the use of a house, because a house can be defined based on the activities happening in a house.

In the twenty-first century, the idea of modernism and comfort in homes have become broader, and encouraged more freedom to design. The manifesto “form follows function”, has become modernity’s ambitious manifesto and detrimental straitjacket, as it liberated architecture from the decorative, but condemned it to utilitarian rigor and restrained purpose (Scheeran, 2016). A refined version of “Form Follows Fiction” coined by Bernard Tschumi, was presented by twenty-first century modernist architect, Ole Scheeran, who believes that it has “proposed a completely different quality. If “Form Follows Fiction”, we could think of architecture and buildings as spaces of stories, stories of the people that live there, of the people that work in these buildings.” (Scheeran, 2016). Modernism has greatly impacted everyone’s idea of buildings and houses.

Architects create marvellous designs with wonderful meaning behind every project. However, the inhabitants of these architecture truly redefine the meaning and stories behind every architecture. The term “form follows fiction” feeds Banham’s statement on “a home is not a house”, but in a more optimistic manner. A space is defined by how it is being inhabited.

CONSUMING HOME TECHNOLOGY

Consumerism and trends have contributed largely to the development of these smart home technologies. We as consumers, are so reliant on these technologies that we are always expecting something better from manufacturers. The progression of home technology in the twenty-first century have rapidly increased over the years, as compared to the twentieth century.

For example, in fig.1 (Greenwood, n.d.), the shares of US households with basic electrical appliances have rapidly increased since first introduced to the public, and the average working hours of a homemaker has gone from 60 hours per week to a significantly low average of 14 hours per week. The decrease was gradual, but the increase in electrical appliances and home technology applied in homes have gone up significantly and stayed at a stagnant high in the nineties. “These technologies were so disruptive because they massively reduced the time spent on housework. The number of hours that people spent per week preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning fell from 58 in 1900 to only 18 hours in 1970, and it has declined further since then.” (Swanson, 2015).

Banham definitely predicted radically about the future of homes, he pointed out how americans breaking the architectural spatial planning culture was unorthodox. This definitely changes the perspective of the future of homes because the culture of creating a huge singular space then separating them into smaller sub-spaces became complex ever since. Everyone designs homes according to how they like the space to be, no longer following a uniform spatial planning. This definitely created a broader prospective of the future designs of homes, it changes over the years and become trends, where the turnover rate would be quicker than previous architectural movements.

Fig. 1 The diffusion of basic electrical appliances through the U.S. economy (Greenwood et. al., n.d.)

20TH & 21ST CENTURY’S FUTURE HOME

The average turnover rate of updating and introducing a newer version of each technology has accelerated over the century and manufacturers today are able to produce new products almost every year The dymaxion house was a visionary modernist concept that peeked the future of mobile homes, unfortunately never in production.

The understanding of the word dymaxion is a state of maximum dynamics. The dymaxion house was visualized in the twentieth century of what homes would look like in the future. The house was a concept initiated by architect Buckminster Fuller as a solution to mass-produced affordable housing that can be easily transported. The home was named Dymaxion house because of it’s purpose of serving maximum dynamics in a house that is supported by maximum tension.

The word tension is derived from how the walls, floors and ceilings are hanging from a small pole that is supported by a small base foundation. The house was also designed to be packed into an aluminium tube to be shipped to anywhere.

The dymaxion house was equipped with futuristic home technologies like space-savvy automated revolving shelves and closets. Although the house was never mass-produced, Fuller’s vision of the future in the twentieth century was accurate to a certain extent.

Fig. 2 Bucky and the Dymaxion (Bettman, 1927)

In the tweny-first century, affordable mobile houses have become more common. Although these mobile homes are equipped with advanced technologies, they do not completely emulate Fuller ’s proposed mobile house design. However, the smithsons’ house of the future predicted various technologies that we possess in our homes today. The progression of these home technologies were constantly fed by the modernism movement, where the pioneers played a huge part in not just the architectural movement, but also the lifestyles of inhabitants in the twentieth century.

“at every moment, either directly or through the medium of newspapers and reviews, we are presented with objects of an arresting novelty. All these objects of modern life create, in the long run, a modern state of mind”. (Colomina, 1996). The modernism movement influenced the advancement of various home technologies. Corbusier’s states “a modern state of mind”, is influenced by the mass media and publicity, but at the same time, this is impacted by consumerism. The more products are advertised, the more it reaches the general public, influencing their “state of mind”.

Le Corbusier’s practice of modernism and the his architectural practice was mainly powered by advertising, marketing and publicity. His “modern-age” movement derived from his influence of then, unorthodox methods of advertising. His magazine, lesprit nouveau, “rely to a great extent on the juxtapositions of image and text. Unlike the “representational” use of imagery in traditional books – whereby the image is subordinate to and consistent with the written text” (Colomina, 1996). His methods of curating and creating advertisements not only challenged the traditional ways, it also made a powerful influence in advertising. “Le corbusier’s arguments are to be understood in terms of never-resolved collisions of these two elements.” (Colomina, 1996).

Linking privacy and publicity to Jacques tati’s film playtime, in a scene in fig. 3, where lifestyle is displayed to the public. Where inhabitants have their windows widely displayed like a store-front, and it seemed like the inhabitants were living in a showroom, allowing people to watch every movement they make and everything they do. And as I further watched the film, I noticed that everything seemed perfect, the juxtaposition of the inhabitants from wall to wall seemed organically uniform, maybe it’s the way Jacques tati wanted the film to look but it seems scary, like if I were to put myself in the film, I’d feel uncomfortable, because of how everything seemed perfect, following the main character ’s daily movements.

Tati’s portrayal feels optimistic yet pessimistic at the same time. However, living in the twenty-first century, with the technology that we have, we constantly grow out of old fashioned technologies and constantly move forward with newer technologies . The way of life in Tati’s visualization of futuristic and technologically advanced city of Paris felt very dull, as the movie progresses, I have noticed that the colour palette of every frame is quite dull. But as we progress to showing certain “new” technologies as seen in the scene where customers go shopping, the sales and display of these home technologies were displayed in a very colorful and positive manner, showing how “cool” the gadgets are.

Fig. 3 PLAYTIME (Tati, 1967)

For example in fig. 4, this scene depicts a salesman promoting a vacuum cleaner to a group of ladies, demonstrating that the vacuum cleaner is compact, gets every corner and the special feature of the vacuum cleaner was that it has a light attached beneath the vacuum cleaner to allow better visibility in concealed areas, the customers watching the demonstration were so impressed their reaction was exaggerative, vocal and optimistic.

In today’s society of the year 2023, we could easily purchase a cordless vacuum cleaner with attached lamps for as cheap as thirty great British pounds, the technology in such household gadgets have become so advanced that it even detects dust. Comparing the introduction of advanced technologies in the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, consumers are constantly expecting better and more advanced gadgets for their homes, because we are complacent and reliant on these technologies.

Jacques Tati also portrayed a futuristic lifestyle in his film “Mon Oncle”. Where the protagonist visits his brother and explores the town. The scenarios are very contrasting as the town is filled with traditional and ornamental architecture. Whereas, the estate that the brother of the protagonist resides in, is filled with modern architecture, everything very clean and bright, but the city is portrayed as a dirty area that is avoided by the protagonist’s brother and his family. The routine of the family’s lifestyle is quite odd, everytime someone rings the bell, the wife of the protagonist’s brother would check to see who it is and if it was an unfamiliar guest she would switch the fountain on, as seen in fig. 5.

Unfortunately I had to watch the film without subtitles, but the film definitely portrayed a very dystopian visualization, where the upper class is segregated from the middle and lower class. In a scene in the kitchen of the modern home, the protagonist struggles to figure out how to operate the cabinets and kitchen devices as they looked very advanced, as seen in fig. 6. He then managed to open the cabinet as a round shaped jug falls out of the cabinet, catching the jug just in time. However, he gently places the jug on the table, then realizing that the jug is shatter-proof and was able to bounce back like a basketball when he drops it on the ground, he then proceeded to try it with a glass, ended up shattering it, hence not every single item in the modern household is technologically advanced.

Fig. 4 PLAYTIME (Tati, 1967)

Fig. 5 Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)

Fig. 6 Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)

SMART HOME TECHNOLOGY

Today, homes are equipped with smart technology that controls the ventilation, insulation, lighting, sometimes even kitchen appliances. These smart technologies provide comfort for inhabitants in various ways. Technology was first introduced in a home in the nineteenth century but became more common in the twentieth century. Electric home appliances like fans, refrigerators, electric stoves and dishwashers were invented within the period of 1800s. However, it became more prominent in the early twentieth century, specifically 1907, where an improved version of the electric vacuum cleaner was created.

The progression of home technology hastened throughout the twentieth century. The utopian vision in the mid twentieth century provided a massive opportunity to realize ambitious, large scale, futuristic and impossible inventions. The idea of living in the future has triggered the idea of creating smart technology in homes.

Smart home technology was first invented in 1969, an introduction to the ECHO IV, a smart home computer that could store recipes, grocery lists and serves as switches for home appliances and adjust home temperatures, however it was never commercially sold. The following year the Honeywell 316 was invented as a kitchen computer, invented to store recipes, which was, in 21st century terms, “cancelled”; a phenomenon in which those who are deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner are ostracized, boycotted, or shunned. The product was “cancelled” for its inability to serve more functions other than being an overpriced digital cookbook that was excessive to a middle-to-upper class housewife, There were no records of a single unit sold.

The ideas of these technologies in the 60s did make an impact on the progress of smart home technology tremendously because today, we are able to have a smart fridge in our own homes where the fridge doors operate as smart screens that help you visually organize your refrigerator, as well as store reminders, expiry dates, recipes and a million more functions that the innovators in the mid century would never have imagined existed.

CASE STUDIY ANALYSIS

THE SMART HOME

Since google nest and amazon alexa was introduced to the society, it has significantly changed a lot of households’ way of life. Inhabitants have become more dependent on technology since the twentieth century.

The IOT is a system of interrelated devices connected to the internet to transfer and receive data through each other. These devices contribute collected data to a giant network of devices that are connected to the internet. The data is usually used to evaluate on the user experience and how they can be improved and innovated into better versions.

The data collected from all, recorded in 2021, 47 billion smart devices, are then linked to the user experience of these products. Hence, us humans contribute the most to the advancement of these technologies.

Smart home assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Nest, provide a service for home users to link every device and smart appliance in their homes, allowing users to control their homes with their smartphones and being able to give commands to the smart device to activate and deactivate home appliances that are linked to the google nest or amazon alexa.

The optimistic aspect of this smart home technology is that they improve the quality of living for households, through having everything controlled with a touch of a button and a series of simple voice commands. The broader and arguably pessimistic aspect of these smart home technologies, is that they record the movements, sounds and activities in every household, transmitting this data to a cloud accessible to manufacturers, allowing them to assess all the data to analyse, identify and troubleshoot the flaws in these technologies. However, this said “cloud”, poses risks of hacking and data breaches, which puts all consumers at a huge risk of compromising the privacy and security of their homes. And because all IOT devices are linked to that one smart home device, once hacked, everything else is compromised and it could possibly ruin lives.

For example, a presentation by Ken Munro, a security researcher or “ethical hacker”, pointed out, at a Tedx event, that a household’s entire security and privacy can be easily breached by something as simple as a home appliance like a smart kettle that can be controlled by your mobile phone through connecting both devices with wi-fi. He then added, “how convenient to have boiling water in thirty seconds without having to fill the kettle and walk to the kitchen” (Munro, 2018). But he also demonstrated how simple it was to hack into the kettle to retrieve the wi-fi password to hack into all the devices connected to the wi-fi, then showed the possibility of a hacker gaining access and worse, control over all your IOT devices in your home.

THE ENVIRONMENT AS A SPACE

In one of Philippe Rahm’s works, he proposed a home designed as a winter refuge, making the heat and ventilation one of the key architectural elements of the space. He proposed, with the experimentation of “electromagnetic fields and chemical realms”, the possibility of invisibily modifying a space, “proceeding from one of the primary rationales of domestic architecture, that of artificially defining a climate habitable by man, we seek to define a quality that is at once chemical and plastic.” (Rahm, 2002). The idea of being able to chemically modify the climate of an interior space is new-age technology, it anticipates the future of spaces and it’s tempered environments.

In parallel to Reyner Banham’s “Home is not a house”, with this cutting-edge technology, Banham’s speculation is made possible in the twenty-first century. Although the project was only experimented and never constructed, it does give us a glimpse of the future of home technologies. What if we could command “Alexa, take me to Bali”, and the entire home’s environment transitions, with multi-sensorial functions, literally into a tropically climated interior space, giving us the ability to enjoy summer during winter. Nest technology, later acquired by Google and marketed as Google Nest, first created a smart thermostat, later expanding it’s product services to smoke detectors and security camera systems, furthermore, everything is mainly run with wi-fi connection.

The research and development performed at Nest Technologies also proved the broad possibility of smart learning and adaptation of technology for controlled environments. The Nest Learning thermostat was able to gather and analyse data collected from the different temperatures of a space throughout, allowing it to smartly adapt and adjust temperatures according to the capacity of the space, time of the day and even adapt to the changing seasons.

This smart home technology, also a part of the internet of things, expands the possibilities of identifying environments as space. A space is defined by the inhabitants’ visual explanation and personal identities of comfort. What if by the year of 2050, I purchase a new home, but I miss the elements of the nostalgic musky scent and creaking noises in my old flat, am I able to extract this data off my advanced multi-sensorial thermostat and downloading this data to my new smart home device, allowing it to project these sensory mementos in my new home?

MY DREAM HOME ACCORDING TO TECHNOLOGY

The project is a form of speculation on how a system can configure a space based on the feedback it has received from humans. The term “ive heard about” creates an uncertainty amongst us as it broadens and blurs the future of technology as a whole. Because, people speculate, anywhere and anytime. “Fiction is its reality principle: What you have before your eyes conforms to the truth of the urban condition of “I’ve heard about”.” (Roche, 2005). Speculations form fictional realities based on the sensorial memento of a human being, encouraging creative imaginations that lead to rumours.

Smart technology today are constantly advancing at a faster pace, maybe in ten to twenty years, I would be able to completely configure my dream home completely out of the data collected from my smart home devices in my previous home, or start collecting data the moment I move in and slowly adapts to my movements and configures my dream home without even realizing the comfort my environment is providing. “The world is terrifying when it’s intelligible, when it clings to some semblance of predictability, when it seeks to preserve a false coherence. In “I’ve heard about,” it is what is not there that defines it, that guarantees its readability, its social and territorial fragility and its indetermination.” (Roche, 2006).

From film Smart House by Disney Originals: “she analyzed your DNA, registered your body temperature, and then broke down your entire medical history” and “the thing about PAT (personal applied technology) is the more time she spends with you, the more she learns. So, before long, she is going to know more about you than you know yourself”.

The reaction to these statements were skeptical, the father in the movie expressed his immediate concern stating “that is kind of creepy, isn’t it? Its like Big Brother is watching you, only Big Brother turns out to be your house.”

And the subsequent days their lives were made more convenient with personalized alarms, coffee made to the right temperature. The family dog gets an exercise program where PAT throws balls around the room for it to catch, always ending with “Mutt’s exercise program complete”. The father’s office job was then moved into his home from his office where PAT programs his “home office” to receive data from his work computers, with a faster and more technologically advanced computer.”im linked to your warehouse database Nick, everything they know, we know”. Clearly by doing so, this has affected or changed the anthropology of Nick because “by working here, you save commuting time and expenses, have fewer distractions. Not to mention, guaranteed increased productivity.” But Nick makes a speculation of how he might have to join the dog’s program knowing hes not going to move around on work days.

The film progresses as PAT starts to learn more about the family’s anthropology and takes charge of their lives completely. From waking them up earlier to encourage better wellbeing to packing them lunches before they even ask for it. As days go by, the family starts getting fed up by PAT’s controlling behaviour. For example, PAT forces the children to wear clothing she picks out for them, shocks them if they rebel. PAT eventually malfunctions and starts taking control of everything in the house and put the family in danger by locking them in the smart house. The creator of PAT, who is also the father’s love interest, pries her way into the house and manages to shut PAT down saving the family. The creator did not remove PAT from the house but instead ensured everything was in control.

This film, which premiered in 1999, foresaw the abilities of smart home technology today and although the film had a good ending where smart home technology is completely under control, but will we be put in danger in future if we allow technology to take over our lives?.

SYNTHESIS, CONCLUSION AND SPECULATION

The future of smart home technology is blurred because the development of these technologies are mainly derived from consumerism. We as consumers constantly want more out of technologies and we are constantly finding ways to make life easier. Although we are feeding into the twentieth century’s depiction of the future, we are still clueless of what the future of smart home technology holds for everyone. The rate of the development of these technologies blur the future of smart home technology, because of how fast these technologies are further developed, based on the data collected from every user on this planet that possess at least one device that contributes data to the internet of things.

The great thing about the internet of things, also the purpose of IOT, is to improve and enhance better living qualities of users. The technology used in homes can be so advanced that while you are asleep in bed in the middle of the night, your watch is constantly reading your heart rate and detects a high risk of heart attack. The watch immediately sends this data to the nearest hospital to you via GPS and internet, deploys the emergency team to your place of residence, lock on your front door is deactivated for hastened access, all of these things happening while you are fast asleep.

Although there are further advancements of these technologies, they also pose a higher risk of criminal activities that potentially ruin the lives of users in their own homes, the thought of having all my data stored in a cube and being stolen by a stranger scares me. We are constantly assured by big technology companies that frequent updating of softwares in our smart home devices help prevent hacking, but I still feel uneasy knowing the advancements of technology, the more advanced the security and privacy breaches can reach.

To what extent is technology providing comfort and causing harm? The ability to control you entire home with a robot smarter than me is intimidating. Will I lose control of my home one day and will I be stuck in a controlled environment for the rest of my life? These technologies are bound to malfunction or break one day, potentially harming the living environment of inhabitants, like how PAT holds the entire family captive wanting to be in control of everything in it’s surroundings in the film The Smart House.

To conclude, the rate of progression of technology in residential architecture has accelerated through the twentieth and twenty-first century, allowing early visualisations of the future to be as accurate as possible. The speculations of the future in the past was equally precise and inaccurate at the same time. This brings me to wonder what will it look like in the year 2050?

A neo-futuristic planet with cutting edge technology that isolates inhabitants from the outside world, creating an artificial environment in individual cube spaces that we call home? Security and policing is fully controlled by smart technology, working remotely becomes an inevitable option due to your entire city powered by holograms. A day in a life would consist of getting out of bed to take a shower in my favorite rainforest simulation, brush my teeth while staring out of my mirror-cum-artificial window, manually hand-pour my coffee to reminisce physical activity, my body weight is maintained at a healthy level due to technological advances of physical training without the need to move. My apple watch controls every single function of my little cube home. On off-days we are entitled to take one “vacation simulation” every 2 weeks, this week I chose Lake Como, Italy. One day I spill my hand-poured coffee on my watch, the entire cube home shuts down, I panic as the flat turns pitched black, I forgot there are no real windows in my flat, my nyctophobia triggers my anxiety, I started screaming and shouting wanting to get out of this cube, but instead I get locked in my own little cube for suspicion of hacking into the great cloud of internet of things. I sit in silence, breathing calmly, wishing life was simpler.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Announcingit (2012). What Came First? Electric Appliances Timeline. [online] AnnouncingIt.com Blog. Available at: https://www.announcingit.com/invitations-blog/what-came-first-electric-appliances-timeline/.

- Banham, R. (1965). A Home is A Home is Not a House. [online] pp.1–10. Available at: http://mindcontrol-research.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_banham_home_not_house.pdf.

- Bradbury, R., Auden, W.H. and Blume, C. (2012). There will come soft rains. ... There will come soft rains. Braunschweig Diesterweg.

- Buckminster Fuller Institute (n.d.). Dymaxion House. [online] Buckminster Fuller Institute. Available at: https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-house/.

- Campbell, C. (n.d.). What is ‘Smart’ Technology?. Williams. Available at: https://oit.williams.edu/itechposts/what-is-smart-technology/#gsc.tab=0.

- Hendricks, D. (2014). The History of Smart Homes. [online] Iotevolutionworld.com. Available at: https:// www.iotevolutionworld.com/m2m/articles/376816-history-smart-homes.htm.

- Hicks, S. (2021). Inside the Lost House of the Future by the Smithsons. [online] archdaily.com. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/969751/inside-the-lost-house-of-the-future-by-the-smithsons. impermanenceatwork.admin (2021). How Technology Provides Convenience and Comfort to People. [online] Impermanence at Work. Available at: https://www.impermanenceatwork.org/technology-ease-comfort-peoples-lives/.

- Maley, H. (2022). The PROBLEM with Smart Home Tech. www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Du7J00KU980&t=4s

- Riley, A. (2020). How your smart home devices can be turned against you. [online] www.bbc.com. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-devices-are-being-used-for-domestic-abuse.

- SciShow (2018). How Worried Should You Be About Smart Home Security? [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CvLz55cjoc.

- Snazzy Labs (2021). This Smart Home Isn’t Stupid. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=85yH56DS5mg.

- Spicer, D. (2022). History of Computing. [online] Free.fr. Available at: http://dembinhyen.free.fr/UDS/Ebook/CD1/Kien%20Truc%20May%20Tinh/ThamKhao/200006hc/do200006hc001.htm

- Stevens, P. (2014). apartments in reignwood’s singapore tower boast adjoining sky garages. [online] designboom | architecture & design magazine. Available at: https://www.designboom.com/architecture/hamilton-scotts-singapore-reignwood-tower-sky-garages-12-03-2014/.

- Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books.

- Fran (2005) Francois Roche I’ve heard about. Available at: https://new-territories.com/I%27veheardabout. htm

- Hicks, S. (2021) Inside the Lost House of the future by the Smithsons, ArchDaily. ArchDaily. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/969751/inside-the-lost-house-of-the-future-by-the-smithsons

- Howe, B.J. (1987) “A Home’s Setting,” in Houses and Homes: Exploring Their History. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History.

- Munro, K (2018) Internet of Things Security | Ken Munro | TEDxDornbirn. YouTube. Available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGtnC1jKpMg&t=6s

- Mon Moncle (My Uncle) [film] (1958). France: Gaumont.

- Owens, G. (2001) “Alison and Peter Smithson’s 1956 ‘House of the future,’” Gastronomica, 1(1), pp. 18–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2001.1.1.18.

- PLAYTIME [film] (1968). France: Národní filmový archiv Praha.

- Rahm, P. (2002) Winterhouse, Winterhouse - Philippe Rahm Architectes. Available at: http://www.philipperahm.com/data/projects/winterhouse/index.html

- Riley, A. (2022) How your smart home devices can be turned against you, BBC Future. BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-devices-are-being-used-for-domestic-abuse

- Scheeren, O (2016) Why great architecture should tell a story | YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQsnObyii4Q

- Colomina, B. (2001) “Publicity and Privacy,” in Privacy and publicity: Modern architecture as mass media. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press.

- Ferrovial (2020) The internet of things: Definition and examples of how it is used, Ferrovial. Available at: https://www.ferrovial.com/en/innovation/technologies/internet-of-things/#:~:text=The%20internet%20of%20 things%20is,them%20through%20a%20communications%20network.

- McQuire, S. (2013) “From Glass Architecture to big brother: Scenes from a cultural history of transparency,” Cultural Studies Review, 9(1), pp. 103–123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v9i1.3587.

- Perry, A.T. et al. (2019) The definitive history of smart home devices, Smart Home Point. Available at: https://www.smarthomepoint.com/history/#:~:text=Technically%20the%20first%20’smart%20 home,home%20networking%20protocol%20in%201975.

- Radu, A. (2022) How often should you replace home appliances? your repair or replace guide, The Appliance Care Company LLC. Available at: https://theappliancecarecompany.com/blog/repair-or-replace-those-home-appliances/

- Spicer, D. (2000) If you can’t stand the coding, stay out of the kitchen, History of Computing. Available at: http://dembinhyen.free.fr/UDS/Ebook/CD1/Kien%20Truc%20May%20Tinh/ThamKhao/200006hc/ do200006hc001.htm

- Swanson, A. (2015) Why household appliances are the 20th century’s most disruptive technologies, World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/why-household-appliances-are-the-20th-centurys-most-disruptive-technologies/

- Wasdin, J. and Darkflight, T. (no date) H316 - Kitchen Computer honeywell, OLD. Available at: https:// www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=927

- What came first? electric appliances timeline (2019) AnnouncingIt.com Blog. Available at: https://www. announcingit.com/invitations-blog/what-came-first-electric-appliances-timeline/

- Wp-Support (2021) Home Tech trends over the past 50 Years, Reliable Home Improvement. Available at: https://www.reliablehomeimprov.com/blog/home-tech-trends/#:~:text=Home%20technology%20became%20increasingly%20popular,energy%20and%20time%2Dsaving%20features.

- Bedell, C. (2019) What is Nest Labs?: Definition from TechTarget, IoT Agenda. TechTarget. Available at: https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/definition/Nest-Labs

- Merin, G. (2019) Architecture classics: The dymaxion house / buckminster fuller, ArchDaily. ArchDaily. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/401528/ad-classics-the-dymaxion-house-buckminster-fuller

DISSERTATION BY CHIN EE TANG

STUDENT ID: 20029210