From Making High-Tech Work for You
Any architect, builder or scientist can speculate about what the house of the future might be like. But Grace can tell you.Grace is a talking house. Her high-tech gadgets and innovative uses of everyday objects, along with advances in design and construction, will change the way we think about our homes -- and live in them. Grace isn't the only one exploring how technology can make our homes more efficient, safe, comfortable and fun. Here, a sampling of home innovators' best ideas.
Grace is not a real house. More formally known as the Microsoft Home, she exists inside an office building on the company's campus in Redmond, Washington. But once inside, it's easy to imagine you're in a trendy, futuristic home.
Picture this: You enter the house, and Grace's voice, coming from hidden speakers, relays your messages. In the kitchen, you set a bag of flour on the sleekly engineered stone counter. Grace sees what you're doing, and projects a list of flour-based recipes on the counter. Once you choose one, Grace recites a list of ingredients. She even knows what's in the pantry, thanks to RFID technology (the kind of system that lets you go through a toll plaza without stopping).
There's also a bulletin board in the kitchen made of "intelligent fabric" that functions like a touch-screen computer. You can tack up postcards or invitations and surf the Web with the touch of a finger. The invitation could be RFID-encoded, so tacking it up opens an online RSVP window. It's part of Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT), which seeks to make everyday objects more efficient.
The day when your house will be like a family member is not that far off, says Pam Heath, a manager in Consumer Strategy and Prototyping at Microsoft. This notion of seamless computing, in which technology is everywhere yet nowhere (except when we want it), underlies most future-home thinking. At the Andersen window company in Minnesota, advanced technology manager Jay Libby envisions windows made of smart glass that can be transformed into a TV.
"Nobody wants a television set," says Libby. "You want the service it provides." If he gets his way, the TV will disappear into the view, and the term picture window will be redefined.
Home entertainment is just one consideration for the future. At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, scientists are designing systems that will allow older people to continue living independently. So Grandma's home can be intelligently wired to recognize her patterns of wake, sleep and movement; family members would be notified of any changes via computer.
Does spying on Grandma sound creepy? Director Beth Mynatt says that "a good bit of our research has been working on how to convey information without sacrificing privacy and autonomy. We also don't want to create inappropriate anxiety. Maybe she just took a quiet day to read, and the system would have to recognize that."
Home Construction With a Twist
If we're going to live in our homes longer, they'll need to be more flexible. The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH), a public-private initiative, is working on houses that can be easily reconfigured. "As a family changes, we want to accommodate that, so an older couple isn't stuck with a house for four kids," says PATH engineer Glen Salas.One PATH idea is to separate pipes and wires from the walls, so walls can be readily moved. Another idea: to cover walls with electronic fabric, eliminating the need for wires.
Future homes will likely be manufactured in factories, then assembled on-site. And we're not talking about trailer parks. Already, some homes are made out of pre-fab walls called structural insulated panels (SIPs). These boards wrapped around a foam core eliminate the need for conventional stud framing. The hefty wall panels are then lowered into place by a crane.
Factory housing makes sense, says Vermont architect John Connell, who started the Yestermorrow school, where adult students learn to design homes. It offers lower labor costs, better quality control, less waste and less soil disturbance on the site. "We don't build cars in our backyard," says Connell. "Why build houses there?"
Like cars, houses will come with tools to monitor and adjust everything from furnace efficiency to ventilation. And today's computer-aided design (CAD) programs make it easier to match the design to the specifics of the site and the homeowner's lifestyle.
In a factory near Detroit, workers at Insulspan translate CADs into codes that generate custom wall panels down to a fraction of an inch.
Besides offering speed, strength and accuracy, panelized construction is extremely airtight because the foam core completely seals the home. Insulspan president Frank Baker calls it "a total energy envelope." He ought to know: His own 5,000-square-foot panelized home costs less than $500 a year to heat.
The Energy Answer
At some point, homes will have to embrace alternative energy sources, such as solar panels that look like regular roof shingles. The technology uses a solar-sensitive material called thin-film triple-junction amorphous silicon, which is sandwiched inside conventional-looking shingles and wired into the home's electric system. Today, these systems are rare and expensive, but they'll start to look more attractive as electricity costs climb.Windows are a challenge, because even the best glass can't insulate like a wall. So in the future, some windows will likely be made of lightweight particles called aerogels, which insulate like foam but transmit light.
It's easy to get carried away with visions of homes that heat themselves, keep us company and remind us to call the folks. "But technology never drives the aesthetic," says architect Sarah Susanka, author of Home by Design. "That's why those weird-looking 'houses of the future' never come into being. People will always want their house to look and feel like a home."