This week, we had two major presentations about the House of the Future design that we’re supposed to be making. Over the weeks, we’ve perfected our spiral concept, the transition between private and public, and the size of the windows. This is the version we called Home 6.0. In it, we also integrated the car (at my insistence), we got the garden right we introduced a void connecting the sleeping quarters with the living room, and speculated about a sloping roof, which is the often seen as the formally archetypal sign of a home. The design is by Ceciel and I.

Home 6.0, Photo by Ceciel van Rinsum
We’ve also started a little sketchbook in which we record principles and detail-sketches of things that we believe can accommodate the feeling of a home (in Dutch: thuisgevoel). Home 6.0 would be really located in a sort of suburbia that everyone who doesn’t live there despises. When we presented this, Jack Breen (the associate professor who’s running the minor) said: “That’s all good and well, but how is this a contribution to the future”. The point was, as another instructor pointed out that it could very well be a very good house, a third generation of a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but it is not per se future in anything.
Therefore, Ceciel and I had a week to come up with something that would fall into a non-Utopian future. We finally thought up of a scenario for the future, in which we could carry out our home concept without making the context more important than the concept. We finally came up with the following future scenario:
In the future, due to the rise in sea levels and further sinking of the ground in the Netherlands, a choice will have to be made. Ultimately, only the larger cities and the land that is used for agriculture will be still kept dry, with the other land being flooded. This will mean that suburbs like Ypenburg will have to go. All these people will migrate to the cities, as the other land is only reserved for agriculture.

Future Scenario
The cities will become more populated. But rather than building sophisticated, high-tech, super compact, super high-rise dwelling machines, we believe that people will first try to fill up all the unused spaces in the city. Below elevated highways, above railway tracks, or above light-industrial sites, like this:

Before, and after: Increasing density without decreasing dwelling size
So, in the city of the future, people will live in the places that most people now would not. Also, due to certain technological developments, such as the wide introduction of the electrical car, noise near roads will be reduced. Also, traffic won’t increase too much, since almost everyone lives in the city, commuting is no longer necessary, while most can and do use public transport. Therefore, spaces like this:

Beneath an elevated highway, The Hague (Google street view)
Can in theory become a place like this:

A Semi-Detached House of the Future (Google street view)
Many people thought this was an OK idea. Dick van Gameren, the professor of Dwelling who commented on everyone’s presentation today, said that ours was promising, but needed to be worked out better (no, really). We can actually use everything we learnt in the preliminary stages in making this design. Making a home in an ‘unhomely’ setting.
Our own instructor (Onno) said that he actually thought that our first context was OK, and that we needed to communicate our work better in our presentation (which is true), but even then, we’d end up with a good house, not a good house OF THE FUTURE. So we’ll see how things will work out.
That’s all folks!
Peter S
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Posted by petersmisek 
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