Hey everyone!
If you were wondering why this blog hasn’t been updating for the last week or so, it’s because we’ve been planning our first infosession! You can see me giving it at the link below. If it dosn’t play properly in your browser, rightclick on the link and select Save-As.
This is a Roomba.
If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a small robot that cleans floors — a small vacuum cleaner is inside it, and it randomly wanders over the floors of your house, sucking up dirt as it goes. It’s not a substitute for cleaning the floors, but it will stretch out the period between cleanings, and make cleaning faster when it does come. If you have a cat, the cat will most likely attempt to ride the robot, become startled, and it will be adorable.
This is a solar panel.
If you’re not familiar with it — say, because you’ve been living under a rock for the last twenty years — solar panels convert the suns light directly into electricity, and are often favored by environmentalists as a means of reducing your houses net carbon emissions. Although they aren’t market competitive yet, they’re rapidly reaching that point, and in the meanwhile, are the subject of many subsidies and grants.
What do these two technologies have in common?
They make something about your house easier. But they don’t really change your house at all.
You can’t run a house on just solar panels — that little detail of using power at night tends to get in the way. Your house still needs a grid connection, and will likely still face a power bill every month. Likewise, the robot just doesn’t do a good enough job to completely take humans out of the cleaning process. In both cases, the device is fundamentally passive. You interact with your house in exactly the same way you did before (using power and cleaning at regular intervals), the burden placed on you is just reduced — less cost for power or less time spent cleaning.
Like certain other things we’ve examined, these technologies do have a lot of potential to make the houses we live in today better. Lower power bills are as desirable as less household drudgery. But they don’t change the way you interact with, and live in, that building.
Negative criticism is always easy to write — we could list a lot of technologies that aren’t going to fundamentally change houses, but are still very worthwhile. Smart windows, high-efficiency bulbs, HVAC systems and more. A more interesting challenge is trying to list a technology that will have such an impact, this generations washing machine. Here at the Future Blog, we have a few ideas, but we’d like to hear our readers suggestions first.
What technologies do you think could fundamentally change houses? Leave a comment with your own ideas — and next week, we’ll cover your suggestions, along with our own answer.
Imagine that you wanted to buy a car.
You head to the dealership, and find it to be filled almost entirely with used cars, “The car market isn’t strong right now” the salesmen explains, “Not many people are building new models. But you could commission a custom car if you wanted.” One glance at the price tag for that is enough to convince you that used isn’t so bad. There are no models, manufacturers, brands, and other then a few tacky, cheap models, they all seem to be different, making you check every one in person.
Finally though, you find one you think you like — it’s got the right amount of space, the right look, and the right features. So you turn to the salesmen and ask, “How’s the gas mileage?”
“Dunno.” He answers, “Upkeep costs aren’t really our thing, we just sell them. You could call the previous owner and ask though.”
“Well.” You answer, a bit put off, “What about damage? It’s a used vehicle, do you know if it has any mechanical problems, or can I get an accident report or something?”
“No.” He answers, “You can call the old owner for that too. Or if you like, you can hire your own mechanic to give it a look over before you buy it.”
“I have to hire my own mechanic?” You reply, incredulous, only for the salesmen to raise his hands, shaking his head faintly. “You don’t have too.” He insists. “We spot check them when they come in. And you can always ask the old owners.”
After a moment, he adds. “Just, sometimes, they aren’t always honest — and it’s a lot of money. So really, having it checked out just seems prudent.”
You decide that you can take the bus a little while longer.
People are very good at putting things in context. We would be furious if someone sold us what they knew was a defective appliance, even if they offered to fix it later — but we have no trouble with companies that sell buggy software with plans to patch it after release. If a company tried to sell us a toy that only worked with their special (and pricey) batteries, we’d call it a scam — but we buy cell phones that only work with a specific carrier plan. We apply wildly different standards to different industries — for quality of product, level of honesty, and acceptable behavior.
Consider what standards you hold realty too.
Would you accept these from any other industry? No guarantee of product, no return of defective product, product only comes in unique and used models, no testing the product before use, and you have to put down an investment before you can use it — for anything but a building, these standards are ridiculous.
But consider what it would take to fix these problems.
If you could fix these problems by fixing the buildings — if homes were drastically cheaper, and easier to modify. If a house is inexpensive, you don’t care as much if the resale value changes — and it’s not so bad if you have to build your own home, if what you want isn’t available. If a home is cheap to modify and repair, it’s not such a problem if it has some defects that you didn’t spot when you bought it, or if the bills are too high. In effect, every house you buy has the potential to be a custom house — you just want a good location, and something to start with.
You could also fix these problems by fixing the purchase — if people rented and leased homes in the long run, instead of buying. If you are leasing a home indefinitely, the resale value doesn’t matter to you — you don’t own the home. You don’t have to worry about problems with the building, your landlord is responsible for the upkeep of the building according to your contract. It becomes possible to “test drive” a building for a month or two, before signing a long term lease — or even to make deals regarding the buildings upkeep and utility bills.
Would you be willing to live in a “house of the future” that cost a 1/5th of what a traditional house would have cost? Would you feel like you got a good deal, all of the benefit for none of the downsides? Or would you feel like you couldn’t afford the real thing?
Would you be willing to sign a ten year lease — or an open ended lease — instead of buying a house? Would you feel like you did the prudent thing, keeping them safe from instability? Or would you feel like you fell short of your job to provide a home for your family?
Putting things in context helps us understand them — but it can also lead us to foolish actions, just because it’s “the thing to do.” Would you accept either of those solutions? If not, why not? Leave a comment about your interests and reservations, and what things you’re looking for in buying a house. We’ll be revisiting both of these solutions in detail later, and some reader commentary will let us know where your interests lie.
Looking at this flying saucer of a house, you might think that the designer was a little off his rocker — but when John Lautner designed the Chemosphere in 1960, his goals were actually perfectly reasonable. He saw that there was a lot of land outside his home in Los Angeles that was undeveloped, because it was on slopes considered too steep for construction. Rising to the challenge, he found an engineer, Leonard Malin, who owned some of that “worthless” land, and was determined to live there. The land was a 45 degree slope that was subject to heavy rains and California earthquakes, but using an innovative concrete and steel support beam, Lautner designed a home that could not only handle the hill, but survive everything nature threw at it.
Lautner had commercial visions for his Chemosphere — he thought that when the previously worthless hilly land suddenly became open to development, there would be a rush to build many more structures like it, from which residents could live within easy range of the Lost Angeles lights, but stay above its noise and bustle.
Sadly, it was not to be. The flying saucer shape of the house put people off, as did its Dymaxion-esq one floor design. Despite featuring many amenities, appearing in popular culture and movies, and being critically acclaimed by other architects, it languished on the market for years, unsellable, and in the end, no more were built.
As a place to live, the Chemosphere was a great success. As a house, it was a failure. Would you buy a Chemosphere? If not, why not? What qualities are there you want in a home that it can’t give you? If you can answer that question, you’ll understand why the Chemosphere was not the house of the future — and have an inkling what the real thing will look like.
Leave a comment — and show us how you think of the buildings you live in.
There is an expression, “Generals prepare to fight the previous war.” It is meant to emphasize that when building an army, while generals may have new technology and new strategies to draw upon, they’re still trying to solve the problems they faced when they were young. It would be as accurate to say that companies prepare for last years market, the government deals with problems senators had before they were elected, and teachers prepare kids for the world they grew up in.
Designers of homes and living space fare no better. But by understanding why they design the way they do, we can see how they view buildings, homes, and the way people interact with them.
This is Babcock Ranch. Self-proclaimed “city of the future”.
Currently under development by independent investors backed by the State of Florida, Babcock Ranch is intended to be a model of efficiency, convenience, and environmental friendliness. It is designed to run entirely off of renewable energy, to be easily accessible by bike or on foot, and to feature complete computerized management. Every building in the city (its backers claim) will contain smart grid systems monitoring its power usage, enabling them to save energy, eliminate waste, and cut costs for everyone involved.
Now, there is a fine history of people trying to build “cities of the future” with technology that does not, in fact, exist. Mile-high buildings, atomic elevators, and 500 mile per hour trains have all featured in plans for “future living” that expected themselves to be taken seriously. But for a moment, lets take it as an assumption that the creators of Babcock Ranch can actually do what they claim — and see just how people would live in that city.
Generally, when people look at pictures like this, you get one of two knee-jerk reactions. “That’s very progressive and green!” or “That’s a rich-hippie vanity project.” Knee-jerk reactions aren’t very well thought out though, so lets take a closer look at that picture and see if we can make a more insightful observation.
For instance, we could ask, “What exactly is all of that green stuff on the roof for?” We could go to their website and look it up, but lets see if we can figure it out. There’s a few things it could be useful for:
Now, imagine how people would have to live in this city, and interact with the buildings inside it, for any of these to be true. Beautification seems very straightforward, until you realize that these are 8-10 story buildings, so the roof isn’t visible from the ground. All we’d see if we looked from ground level is a strip of green. Babcock Ranch’s designers seem to be aware of this, as you can see the effect in their own promotional pictures.
See the little strip of green up there? Still — that is a benefit, so we can understand what interactions would make it worthwhile.
Of course, it would be much easier for people to appreciate the gardens beauty if they were standing in it, surrounded by the plants, so perhaps relaxation would be a better use. People don’t go up to the roofs of their buildings very often now, but, if there was a beautiful, warm garden up there, they might go more often. That lets us see very clearly how people would have to interact with the buildings around them for that to be a good idea.
Of course, if the gardens are just there to absorb CO2, nobody needs access to them but the staff. Then again, plants can absorb CO2 anywhere — they don’t have to be right on top of the building itself, and it is certainly much cheaper to build a garden outside the city then on a high-rise roof. But maybe there’s some kind of benefit to having it on hand — it might make the air quality in the building more pleasant, or prevent smog from accumulating. We can stop, and think about what might cause people to immediately care about that sort of advantage.
Finally, the gardens could be there to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Certainly, that sort of healthy eating is becoming more popular. But as you can see:
The cities stores, malls, and grocery stores have perfectly functional road access. There’s no reason fresh food couldn’t be brought in from outside — and if growing food on rooftops really was cheaper and easier, you could do it in existing cities, instead of building a new, planned community. Thus, we can see how people would have to interact with their buildings for this to be a sound solution.
Babcock Ranch is preparing to fight the previous war — it has been under development for years and was designed by older, “veteran” environmentalists. It’s trying to solve the problems of decades past, not the problems of the future. So stop, take a second — you were alive in the past (we presume), and so you remember what people were most worried about then. Without going to wikipedia and looking up if rooftop organic gardening is popular or if buildings with green roofs sell for more — take a second. Which one of these four options do you think is the real reason? The answer is given below.
If you picked greenification for building air quality, you got it! Organic food, “green” living space, and environmentalism as a selling point for buildings are all relatively new, but people have been worried about urban air quality for ages. In cities that are subject to heat waves — and remember, this is in Florida — even the greenest of cities can develop clouds of “urban heat” and smog. Covering the roofs of buildings with plants helps prevent this, and gives the people living inside the buildings more pleasant air.
While they may use new technology — solar panels, fiber optics, computer management, and more, the designers of Babcock Ranch are looking at the problems cities faced in the 50′s and 60′s (smog and rolling heat), and the environmental concerns of the 80′s and 90′s (the need for clean solar power).
We actually like Babcock Ranch — it’s not the city of the future, but if its designers can deliver what they’re promising, it could be a very good city of the present. But it’s also a very good example of our ideas about how buildings are used and how we interact with them subtly biasing us. Without knowing a thing about air pollution, plant behavior, or environmentalism, we were able to determine the purpose of a very expensive feature, just because that’s what people were worried about when the designers of this system were young.
Any of the other three answers could have been correct. They could still be correct, 10 or 20 years from now, when the kids and teenagers growing up with today’s environmental concerns get older. If you enjoyed this article, stop and leave a comment about what that world would have to be like for one of the other answers to be correct — or tell us how you think future generations will interact with their buildings.
Behold, the Dymaxion house!
Anyone who has studied science or been to Disney world has probably heard of Buckminster Fuller — inventor of the bucky ball, the geodesic dome, carbon fullerenes, and the phrase “spaceship earth.” In 1929, he saw that industrial devices were becoming steadily cheaper — cars, radios, and such labor-saving devices as washing machines and vacuum cleaners were becoming things that everyone could own. At the same time, houses were getting more expensive — and with the start of the Great Depression, were something not many people could afford. He was sure that he could invent a house that you could build in a factory and assemble on site, that everyone could afford, and that would be better and more comfortable then standard homes.
Of course, we know it didn’t work out, since we aren’t living in those homes today — but it didn’t fail for the reasons you might think.
To Fuller, the house of the future had to be, “Proof against fire and flood, tornado and earthquake, electrical storms and marauders. It must be proof against drudgery — that is, in it must be accessories such that the housewife can accomplish all her cleaning within fifteen minutes.” It had to be comfortable, affordable, of a reasonable size, resistant to damage and cheap to upkeep. And these were not idle statements — Fuller planned to sell these homes in the mid-west, and so they had to be strong enough to resist a tornado coming within a few hundred feet. He planned to sell them in California, so they had to withstand earthquakes. He planned to try to sell home-convenience in the middle of the depression, so they had to be the easiest home yet made.
His investors were a bit dubious about the need for “marauder” resistance however.
Fuller decided to accomplish this with a bit of clever engineering. The outside of the house would be a stainless steel shell, anchored to the ground, completely water tight, and strong enough to resist an earthquake or tornado. It would come to a point in the center, so that on hot days, the warm air would rise into the point and be pumped out of the house, and on cold days, the vents to the point could be closed, so there was less house to heat. All the utilities — electrical box, heater, and air conditioner — could be in a single utility room under the point, so that you could build them in a factory and drop them into the house on-site. It would be easy to upkeep because there would be no materials to rot or rust, and easy to clean because it was compact.
This was the result.
Not bad. Not bad at all. Looking the other way, we can see that the building wraps around, heading towards the kitchen:
Lots of room, a fireplace, plenty of windows — low upkeep and safe. It’s a little “cute” in its look, but far from ugly. So why did it bomb?
Because it didn’t feel like a home.
That was the start and the end of why the Dymaxion house belly-flopped when it should have swan-dived. No matter how the interior was arranged or what dividing walls were added, people felt like they were living in a one-room house. Even if the interior space was the same as that of a much larger, traditional house, people looked at it and said that it looked small. The all-steel construction left people making comparisons to “living in a grain silo.” And perhaps most importantly, it was the cheapest house ever made.
Which meant that if you bought it, you were admitting that you were poor.
Kids don’t want “age appropriate” knockoffs of their older siblings toys, teenagers don’t want near-beer, food lovers don’t want instant meals, and young couples don’t want “special” houses. They want the houses their parents had, that they grew up in. Things they can look at and feel proud of. For most, getting a knockoff doesn’t just mean you’re getting something worse — it makes you feel like you couldn’t afford the real thing.
When Fuller made the Dymaxion house, he bragged, “My entire house can be fit in the back of a truck!” To which homeowners responded, “It comes in a truck? Like a trailer home?”
The Dymaxion house wasn’t the first “home of the future” to crash and burn — but there’s a reason it was the first one we chose for the blog. It didn’t fail because the designer was foolish, or arrogant, or over-optimistic, or obsessed with gadgets. It didn’t fail because it got too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, or because of leaks, or noise, or looks. It failed because the designer saw a house as a machine, that does a job — and he focused on that job. Not on how the people living in the house saw it, and interacted with it.
We picked the Dymaxion house, because it serves as a warning — about why the content of this blog is important, and why the house of the future will not look like the house of the future.
Not helped them. Created them.
The value of a washing machine is obvious to anyone who has ever had to do laundry — it’s one of the most ubiquitous labor saving devices, and arguably the most useful. Respected academics have claimed that the washing machine was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution, and it’s not hard to see why. People trying to pinch pennies may turn off the lights lights, turn down the heat, or even go without a car — but nobody washes their clothes by hand. There’s a number of arguments as to just how important the washing machine is — including one very entertaining video linked at the end of this post — but everyone can do the math.
Time to Wash a Load of Laundry by Hand: About 3 Hours
Loads of Laundry: About 1 per Day (in a house with kids)
Time Per Year Saved: Forty-Five Straight Days
Before the washing machine, a woman doing her own family’s laundry would do an amount of work equiviliant to an 8 hour shift, every day, four months out of the year — not counting time spent heating water, carrying water, or buying cleaning supplies. For women with large families, the situation would be even worse. The invention of the washing machine freed these women from a backbreaking, monotonous, relentless job.
And that is how it created stay-at-home mothers. Because the key word there is job.
Before the washing machine, before labor saving devices, maintaining a house was a full time position. Women who stayed at home may have raised children, but they would not say that child rearing was what they did. What they did was washing, cleaning, cooking, and supplying, but also such tasks as inspecting the house for damage, arranging workmen (or getting the men in their family to work), and managing expenses. Even if sexism stopped it from being seen as “real work”, the woman of the house was kept just as busy as her husband, being fully responsible for the management of the home. Upper class women didn’t do the labor themselves — but they were still employed, directing servants, ensuring the upkeep of the grounds, and managing household money.
There was even a term for it. When an unmarried man bought a house, he would hire a “woman of all work,” who would upkeep the building, and even manage other servants, if he needed them.
But then came the washing machine. There were still many household tasks to see to, but in houses with this amazing new device, women had more free time. Girls did not have to help their mothers carry and heat water, and women could spend some time focused entirely on raising their kids — or pursuing their own hobbies. A trend that would continue, until today, when a woman who chooses to stay at home is assumed to be primarily focused on raising her children, or pursuing her own ideas. In 1912, the term “stay at home mother” would have made as much sense as “stay at work employee” — keeping a house fit to live in was a job, and it took a hard working person all day, every day, to do it. Now, women have a choice, and so we need that distinction.
And this is how it all comes back to houses. The washing machine created the stay-at-home mother because it turned a house from a place of labor, in which people happen to live, into a place to live, where some labor happens to occur. Even if it would be too expensive, we can imagine a house where the laundry is done at the laundromat, food is ordered out, and the repairs are done by professionals — a house where the residents do almost no physical labor in the house. Before the washing machine this would have been absurd, ridiculous — a house was a place of work as much as any factory. Now, a house is a place to live, it’s just easier to do some work inside.
We still have some other ideas about how a house works, of course — more then just “a place to live”. For young people and students, making the transition from renting an apartment to renting a house can be an important step in their lives, signaling maturity. Moving into a house can be a sign of financial stability, a sign that we’ve “made it,” or something a couple does to seal a marriage and settle down. Buying a house can be an investment, or just something we do because we need a place that’s “ours.” These are all ideas about how a house works as unspoken and obvious to us, as the idea that a house is a place of labor would have been to someone in 1912. We don’t really talk about them, because we don’t need too — that’s just how things are.
But, there’s no reason things will always be that way.
If you enjoyed this article, leave a comment about ways you think of a home beyond “a place to live.” Be it a sign of stability, a place to run your home business from, or something that’s been in the family you don’t want to part with. We’d love to do a spotlight on one of our readers, and how you relate to the buildings you live in.
I’ve always been a little strange. Part of it is that I’m quite sharp (started college when I was 12), and part of it is that I’m a bit of a nerd (started D&D not long after), but most of it is that I never felt I had to go along with the group. When I was young, my parents enrolled me in karate, in the hope that I’d learn discipline and meet a few kids my own age. On the first day, the instructor lined us up, and asked us, “What would you do if no matter how hard you tried, you could not perform the maneuver correctly?” The first student answered, “Practice, sir!” The second student answered “Practice, sir!” And then he came to me, and I answered, “Well, I’d probably do it a different way. If that way wasn’t working.”
The instructor suggested to my parents that karate might not be the thing for me.
I may have been a bit of a nerd, but I was never anti-social – I love spending time with people and I never think so well as when I’m going back and forth with a group. When I was a teenager, I bothered my friends to no end, talking to them about space exploration, physics, and authentic medieval warfare. That all changed in college – when I found a new group of friends to bother about all new subjects: economics, robotics, and renewable energy. I met quite a few people in internet debates, who I still exchange emails with, a little group I can take with me wherever I go, always good for ideas.
When I entered my master’s program after college, I knew I wanted to start my own business – I picked the program I did specifically because it had a reputation for being all about entrepreneurship. But when I arrived, I found that the universities idea of being “all about entrepreneurship” was taking classes on the subject. I’d had enough of classes at that point, and so I decided to take a different approach.
Turns out, if you say you need the big auditorium so you can give a presentation, they just assume you know what you’re doing and schedule you in — same with the email list and the school website.
I did not know what I was doing – and the crowd I presented to was not merciful. But amongst the many students who took the chance to poke holes in my idea or presentation, I found two who saw something in it they liked. And two was all I needed. I loved the first term of my master’s program because I was able to spend it hashing out my ideas, bouncing plans and strategies off of two fellow students. And when the next term started, and I presented my ideas – more than two people showed an interest.
That process of refining ideas created this blog. When I wrote up what we had talked about that week, for the internet and my email group, I realized that I wasn’t boring them to death. That presented right, this material was interesting to more than just students. When we finally had our refined ideas and needed to decide how to present them, this blog was the clear next step.
Personally, I’m a very driven, outgoing sort of guy. I don’t do anything partway – go big or go home. I would say I have a lot of hobbies – I study space travel, economics, and sociology in my spare time, play D&D and video games, and write amateur fiction. But really, I only have one hobby. I like imagining things and then working to flesh them out – to make them happen. I never did well working for a boss, and make work drives me crazy, but I take a lot of pride in a job well done.
Of course, that runs in the family. The wooden boat I’m sailing in the picture above? Built in my dads garage by hand, one piece at a time.
Comparatively, writing a blog doesn’t seem so hard anymore.
Consider how much homes have changed in the last century.
Those of you actually living in houses over 100 years old are excused from this exercise.
So, not that many changes. Someone from 1912 could walk into a house today and would be able to orient themselves fairly easily, even if the appliances were strange. Compare that to the changes they would observe in the horse-buggy, telegraph, and zeppelin industries. They would understand computers perfectly well – until you explained that they’re devices used to look at videos of funny cats, not accountants you hire to do math for you.
There are some changes, of course – electrical lamps are smaller, running water is more common, and servants’ quarters have been replaced with appliances and a laundry room. But while living in retrofitted houses from a century ago isn’t that unusual, nobody drives “fixer upper” 100 year old cars or sends messages by telegraph. The changes to homes in the last century have been a tiny fraction of the changes to almost all other industries – where others race ahead, houses are still in the gate.
Now, that’s not because nobody’s tried. In fact, we have a tag on this blog, #crashandburn, just for architects, engineers, and scientists who tried to change housing forever. The modern house has been wildly successful because it’s a winning formula – it provides the comfort people need, good use of volume, good weather resistance, and is easily adapted to conditions across the world.
But that doesn’t mean houses will stay the way they are forever. All the big changes to houses in the last century haven’t been changes to the house at all – they’ve been changes to how people interact with the house — washing machines instead of hours of scrubbing, refrigerators instead of large kitchens and regular grocer visits. And you don’t have to look far to see all the up-and-coming technology that changes how we interact with things – the internet, smartphones, robotics, integrated computing, and more. The house of the future will still look like a house, but living it will be as different from now as now is from 1912.
And to us, that real, tangible difference seems way cooler than fantastic tech-stories about “houses of the future.”
We’ve got a tag for that too, #inhabitedfuture – for when we ask everyone to stop and imagine a future that they would actually live in. It’s easy to make fun of futurists “predictions” of what houses will be like – buildings like overgrown iPods packed full of gadgets – but it’s a lot harder to imagine what sort of changes might really come in our day to day lives, and how we interact with the places we live.
That’s why this isn’t a blog about housing – it’s a blog about living, and how we’ll interact with the places we live. That’s why this isn’t a blog about the future, it’s a blog about next month, next year, five years from now, ten years from now. You can say anything you like about the future, but when you have to envision just how you’ll get from A to B, things get more complicated
We’ve broken it down a bit, of course. #houseeconomics articles for how houses and money might work differently in the future, #housetech for gadgets you might actually want to use, and #silentmarkets for articles about home construction and the housing market. But no matter where you are on this blog, it’s always about the same thing – how our relationships with our homes will change in the future, what developments we can look forward too, and which we should be nervous about.
Stick around. This stuff is pretty interesting.
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