Home, Smart Home

Talking walls, solar roof panels, movable rooms. Welcome home.

by Max Alexander

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.

Making high tech work for you

Grace is not a real house. More formally known as the Microsoft Home, she exists inside an office building on the company's corporate premises 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 put down a bag of flour on the sleekly engineered stone benchtop. Grace sees what you're doing, and projects a list of flour-based recipes on the benchtop. Once you choose one, Grace recites a list of ingredients. She knows what's in the pantry, thanks to RFID technology (the kind of radio-frequency identification system that lets you go through a road toll by using a tag).

There's also a notice board in the kitchen made of "intelligent fabric" that functions like a touch-screen computer. You can stick up postcards or invitations, and surf the internet with the touch of a finger. The invitation could be RFID-encoded, so sticking it up opens an online reply window. It's part of Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT), which seeks to to unchain the computer - or more accurately the information it provides - from the desk in the corner of the bedroom.

The day when your home 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 television.

"Nobody wants a TV 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 recognise her patterns of waking, sleep and movement; family members would be notified of any changes via computer.

Spying on Grandma sounds creepy ("She's hitting the sherry again!"), but 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 recognise that."

Assembly-line houses

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 made for four kids," says PATH engineer Glen Salas.

One idea is to separate pipes and wires from the walls, so walls can be readily moved. Another idea is 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 mobile homes. 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 panels are then lowered into place by a crane.

Factory housing makes sense, says Vermont architect John Connell, who started a school where adult students learn to design their own homes. It offers lower labour 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 heating 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 the Insulspan factory near Detroit, workers translate CADs into codes that generate SIPs down to a fraction of a centimetre. Besides offering accuracy, speed and strength, panelled construction is extremely airtight because the foam core completely seals the home.

Energy savers

At some point, homes will have to embrace alternative energy sources, such as solar panels that look like normal roof tiles. The technology uses a solar-sensitive material, thin-film triple-junction amorphous silicon - which is sandwiched inside conventional-looking tiles and wired into the electric system. Today, these systems are 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 keep us company and remind us when to call the relatives. "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."

Home, Smart Home

Talking walls, solar roof panels, movable rooms. Welcome home.

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