LIving for tomorrow

Next time you’re specifying a social housing development, why not make some of the homes inflatable? Perhaps your tenants would prefer to live in plastic bubbles stuck onto the side of office blocks, or apartments that float on water? Should you include appliances that sense when they need repairing and call out maintenance workers all by themselves?

These ideas were all among the designs at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Future House London exhibition last month. Although they sound eccentric, they respond to problems that are very real for today’s social housing providers – such as cost squeezes, scarcity of land and environmental or sustainability demands – and are set to get worse.

The plastic bubbles, known as “web houses”, were devised by architect M3 for key workers who work in city centres. Nadi Jahangiri, one of the firm’s directors, explains: “One of the biggest problems of the future is going to be finding new niches for homes in the middle of cities. Flat bits of brown dirt are getting so few and far between that only the wealthy can afford to build houses on them.” By hanging lightweight houses from the windowless sides of office blocks, housing associations could slash land costs by negotiating 25-year contracts with property companies to rent the space.

Waterways provide another potentially cheap, pleasant and adaptable place to locate homes. Architect Niall McLaughlin, whose luxury houseboat design won an award at Future House London, says it may be easier for associations to get permission for houseboats than to build homes on land, especially if they use cutting-edge technology or sustainable designs.

“There are these great bodies of water all over the city that are under-used,” he says. “Just imagine the benefits of a watery landscape full of permanently floating houses.”

His vision doesn’t stop there. Social housing developers could also fit more units onto a site if they were to take advantage of McLaughlin’s idea of stowing away furniture and appliances at ceiling height when not being used. They could be brought down at the touch of a button when needed.

Not to be outdone, fellow architect Marcin Panpuch has come up with floating glass pods, which he imagines could be moored out of town overnight. In the morning, key workers or young professionals could up anchor and float into the city.

There, the pods would hang from cranes like grapes until home time. The development officer of the future would be impressed by the price – Panpuch estimates off-site manufacturing costs would be equivalent to those of a mid-range car, at about £20,000-30,000.

Pressure for land in future will mean associations and planners have to look to sites where development would previously have been unthinkable – beside motorways and under flyovers, for example. Designs that provide insulation from sound and pollution could help to make this more palatable.

“You can have one long structure turning its back onto the motorway and looking internally at gardens you have created,” says architect Amin Taha, who has designed just such “future terraces”.

And the need to conserve resources will mean devices such as the rainwater storage tanks used by Bere Architects may become common. Bere’s design for a low-energy house also includes a swimming pool that helps to get rid of excess heat.

Meanwhile, advances in technology should make maintaining the homes of the future much easier. For example, BT is trialling a system in Liverpool that opens doors remotely by recognising a caller’s phone number. This could be very handy for maintenance workers, cutting lengthy appointments systems and making repeat visits a thing of the past.

Appliances might also be fitted with sensors to pick up on changes in heat or sound. Then information about a broken washing machine, for example, could be transmitted to a control centre and a message sent telling maintenance staff it needed fixing. Such transmitters could even be fitted to the fabric of buildings to give an early warning of damp.

Care and support of many residents will be revolutionised by video-conferencing technology, which could eliminate delays in getting assistance to those in need. Frank Shaw, director general of think tank the Centre for Future Studies, believes such remote technology will benefit rural housing associations in particular. Already in Scandinavia “virtual surgeries” connect specialist doctors to patients who live hundreds of miles apart for video-linked consultancies.

But it won’t all be remote interaction. Shaw predicts that, if current community cohesion efforts pay off and environmental awareness increases, people could end up living in friendlier groups where resources from cars to lawnmowers are shared.

So, when can we expect this brave new world to arrive? Sadly, that’s the one thing the futurephiles aren’t prepared to predict. “You never know exactly when things are going to happen,” admits Shaw. “The one thing we always get wrong is the timing.”