House of the Future

December 3, 2002 12:42 PM

Where will you be living in the future? Las Vegas' metro area is the fastest growing community in the nation, but we still build houses the old fashion way. MIT looks at what the homes of the future will provide and also gives an interesting review of what the homes of the future were like in the past, including my favorite future house of the past. What do you want in your next home?
posted by IndigoSkye (12 comments total)

Playstation 14 ?

No, seriously, I'm a Schindler - Neutra fan
posted by matteo at 12:53 PM on December 3, 2002

I'd like to live in a cloud.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:02 PM on December 3, 2002

I want Solar Shingles on my next home.
posted by onhazier at 1:18 PM on December 3, 2002

That Disney Monsanto House of The Future at Futureland link was broken so here it is complete with video tour.
posted by y2karl at 1:25 PM on December 3, 2002

More bookshelves.
posted by languagehat at 1:52 PM on December 3, 2002

Having taken some classes in collaboration with house_n, I found a lot of the stuff wayyy out there. If you want a better idea of what they're up to now in terms of research, look at Stephen Intille's home page. He's a researcher with them. Some of his favorite assigned readings on future homes and home technologies (mostly available online) can be found here. There's so many good ones, and they're so well sorted, I'll hold against making recommendations...
posted by whatzit at 2:00 PM on December 3, 2002

I think this stuff is a lot like what you see with Ford and GM concept cars: Incredibly futuristic, cool-looking stuff that you'll never see outside of a lab environment. The new design might incorporate striking new ideas and technologies, but they're too radical to sell successfully. As true as this may be with cars, I think it's doubly so for housing developments, where most folks are going to be thinking about resale value as one of the factors for selecting a home.

That being said, if Ed McMahon will get here with that darn Publishers' Clearinghouse check, I'll start on my passive-solar A-frame three-story with the garage underneath.
posted by alumshubby at 2:22 PM on December 3, 2002

I want walls and doors. Most of the houses of the future (and often present) I see are full of this open concept, workroom combined with bedroom, and open hallways cathedral ceiling type thing. I like to be able to get away from the people I'm living with.
posted by JanetLand at 3:31 PM on December 3, 2002

I love the Media Lab and we definitely need visionaries, but I love my old (1890) house. We've just rewired it so it's got CAT-5 and low-voltage throughout, and I'd like to do solar and gray water systems, too. But the bones will remain true to the 1890 design. I'm with JanetLand on this one.
posted by acridrabbit at 9:03 PM on December 3, 2002

there's also disney's other home of the future: xanadu! i remember getting really excited reading about it in my brother's world (national geographic kids?) magazine :D

here's metropolis mag's look at house_n via slashdot and one from architectural record. also came across these (mostly) london designs :D

i like that (IDEO?) concept cylinder home/room/living space whatever linked to somewhere here before, where you could add or subtract sections by rolling modular slices in or away. the new "deam" airstream trailer is pretty cool too. oh and earthships!
posted by kliuless at 8:53 AM on December 4, 2002

How, oh how depressing the LV is so growing. WTF?

Not that playing Tic Tac Toe against a chicken wasn't fun, but
W T F?!?!?!?!
posted by ParisParamus at 10:07 AM on December 4, 2002

This is just fascinating - thanks, IndigoSkye. I would like to stay in my little house by the sea, but one thing I've noticed about beach houses: there's never enough storage! It's as if the designer/architect/builder never thought that people might actually live there all year round. I'd like more storage, both inside and out. And then all the wiring, and another heat source besides electric heat, and some way to make our big windows energy efficient, etc.
posted by Lynsey at 11:37 AM on December 4, 2002