Multi-domesticity

Homes were forced into becoming multi-functional during the pandemic, from offices and schools to fitness studios, often resulting in cluttered environments that negatively affected domestic wellness. Now, designers are embracing multi-domesticity, creating functional and beautiful solutions that facilitate different kinds of living under the same roof.

Wellness rooms are becoming increasingly desirable to luxury clients. Designer Chad James explains that ‘offering a space that is distant from your routine will create a sense of retreat’ in the home.

In future, wellness will be built into domestic environments. Life Time Living Green Valley in Nevada, USA, is a luxury fitness complex offering semi-furnished flats for fitness fanatics. In addition to a gym, pool, spa, pickleball courts and concierge services, residents also have access to weekly meal plans, personal chefs and aestheticians.

Deep Focus

Once reserved for luxury home-owners, and now aided by ambient technology and design, distraction-free spaces that cultivate focus through interiors, lighting and soundscapes are becoming commonplace. Google’s Little Signals concept explores the potential of haptic design to help its users achieve balance and tranquillity while spending time online in the home. The anti-distraction technology consists of conceptual items that use movement, shadows and sound to gently alert netizens when something requires their attention.

Designer Yuri Suzuki also realises the importance of sound in the home, introducing The Ambient Machine to allow people to easily tailor background noise. ‘White noise can mask unpleasant sounds around us and give us a sense of relief,’ says Suzuki. Natural sounds can ‘provide the feeling of relocating to a new environment’, he adds.

Domestic Wellbeing

Driven by the need to access healthcare remotely during the pandemic as well as a greater focus on self-diagnosis, wellbeing in the home environment has skyrocketed. Previously focused on remote exercise and instilling daily habits that we explored in Recuperative Living, today more complex healthcare needs are attainable without leaving the home through wearable devices and smart AI technologies – backed by medical professionals.

One Bupa in the UK has introduced a number of smart AI technologies that allow users to take charge of their own check-ups, and University College London (UCL) researchers are already developing wearable devices that collect data and help detect various diseases, allowing for earlier diagnosis, more personalised treatment and even preventative healthcare to be accessible at home.

The future home is likely to include intuitive technology such as smart mirrors and bathmats that will prompt small daily changes to improve overall health, or smart toilets that analyse residents’ waste to detect diseases or encourage changes in diet or lifestyle.

By 2050, we will be in dialogue with this technology. It will personalise its tone of voice to suit the age, personality and needs of a home’s residents, making people more attuned to its advice and suggestions.

At the same time as homes are becoming increasingly attuned to our health, they are also becoming more transient. As a result of displacement, the traditional concept of ‘home’ is changing from a physical space into an emotional identity, a marker for personal development and expression. This is especially true for younger generations.

When Dazed Media and Space10 asked Generation Z ‘what is home?’, one UK respondent said: ‘[Home is] a place, feeling, energy that encourages me to express myself fully with no limitations, that keeps me grounded while allowing me to think and dream big, being surrounded by people who encourage me, motivate me and keep me in check’. This impermanent future will force conscious design elements and integrated home technologies to move with citizens throughout their lives.

Further reading