The House of Tomorrow Ewoud Ruifrok Faculty of architecture TU Delft, Netherlands

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The House of Tomorrow Ewoud Ruifrok Faculty of architecture TU Delft, Netherlands Summary This is a comparison between two projects that show tomorrows technology inside the house: The House of the

1 The House of Tomorrow Ewoud Ruifrok Faculty of architecture TU Delft, Netherlands Summary This is a comparison between two projects that show tomorrows technology inside the house: The House of the Future and Living Tomorrow. The House of the Future opened in 1989 and Living Tomorrow opened in What are the major implications in technology in this period and did it change our everyday life was the start of the internet age. What implications did this have and how did it change the view on future living? Introduction Future technology has always been a subject that s fascinating lots of people all over the world. What will future decades bring in technology and how will this technology change our everyday lives? What will be possible in the future, how will technologies help us make live easier? Can we fly to our work in the next decade and will we have a robot that does all the nasty jobs? In this paper I want to look at the way people looked at new technology years ago and what has become of it today. Which dreams were realised and which dreams appear to have been a complete utopia or are maybe still dreams. House of tomorrow I want to look at passed projects of designers in which they were able to give there view on a future world and where they were able to show, often for those times, new radical ideas. Examples of these projects are the World EXPO s or world fairs that have been held since 1851, and other projects that developed with the idea to show future technologies, such as the house of the future in Rosmalen Netherlands, Living Tomorrow in Amsterdam, The house of the future from Alison and Peter Smithson and Homelab from Philiphs. As a student of the Hyperbody research group at TUDelft I m especially interested in the development of electronic systems that improve the comfort of everyday living. What can we learn of the technology that found its way in our lives and why did this happen. And why did other, at those times maybe more promising technology, fail to convince us. What could we learn from this when we look at today s practise. And can we say something about the houses of the future of today by looking at those past developments. In this paper I will look at the house of the future in Rosmalen in the Netherlands. This house was constructed in fig.1 The House of the Future Alison and Peter Smitson

It was built in cooperation with a large number of companies that each in their own disciplines implemented the most advanced systems at the time.

As both projects have been built with the same intentions showing the technologies of tomorrow, the time frame of 15 years in between them holds an impressive development in communication and

2 It was built in cooperation with a large number of companies that each in their own disciplines implemented the most advanced systems at the time. I will compare this project with Living Tomorrow in Amsterdam, constructed in 2004 as the new house of the future. As both projects have been built with the same intentions showing the technologies of tomorrow, the time frame of 15 years in between them holds an impressive development in communication and computer technologies. By looking at the technologies and their expected developments in both I will try to come to conclusions in relation to future living concepts and the technological innovations in the past decade. The Projects The house of the Future, 1989 Location: Rosmalen by architect Kees van Dam. The project was realized by a consortium of mainly Dutch companies that used there latest innovations to build a house that showed the expected new developments in technology over the next decade for future living. Besides new building materials the house is equipped with fig.2 House of the future Rosmalen numerous new electronic devises. Given the time frame of this project it is interesting to see the view on technologies of those days. Internet and mobile systems were there but making there first steps into the world and the personal computer was slowly breaking through in everyday live. The house is equipped with numerous electronic systems, climate control, fire alarm, solar collectors, chip identification and even simple voice recognition. Although not completed in the final project the aim is to connect all these systems to a central computer which is called a Home-Bus system. Through this system the inhabitant should be able to control every system in the house and let it respond to the inhabitant s personal needs. Beside the installation system great effort has been put into a system to control all electronic equipment (television, VCR, dishwasher) through the fig.3 House of the future Rosmalen areal view Home-Bus system and into one remote control that should be able to control all the electronic devices. Communicating is mainly done by phone. The new ISDN system is introduced, which opens new possibilities in communication such as text messages (digital answer machine), video phone, phone banking and shopping. Besides that there is a great expectation of voice recognition which could control your personal computer and even make it possible to communicate with a person that is speaking a different language by phone. Although not implemented in the house this is seen as a system with a great potential. Television is another important application that is expected to largely improve the 24 channels available by satellite should be expected to grow. The house is connected to a glass fibre network. A new technology that should greatly improve communication.

Living Tomorrow, 2004 Location: Amsterdam by UN studio Living Tomorrow Living Tomorrow integrates new innovative communication and information technologies into a future living atmosphere.

In the architectural design the technology is implemented into design in such a way that visitors aren t confronted with the systems behind the technology, but only feel the possibility of it in

This is a system that registers the provisions of the inhabitants and is able to order new products without involvement of the user when supplies run out.

3 Living Tomorrow, 2004 Location: Amsterdam by UN studio Living Tomorrow Living Tomorrow integrates new innovative communication and information technologies into a future living atmosphere. The project is realized in cooperation with forty companies that implemented the latest technologies in their working field. In the architectural design the technology is implemented into design in such a way that visitors aren t confronted with the systems behind the technology, but only feel the possibility of it in their lives. The house is equipped with interactive television that allows the user easy access to e-commerce. This is a system that registers the provisions of the inhabitants and is able to order new products without involvement of the user when supplies run out. Biometry is used to identify people and to let the system identify the user. The house is controlled by Domotica. This is a system that controls all the technology inside the house through a central network, and make sure all systems can be linked. The house can adapt to the best living environment for its inhabitants and even look over the wellbeing of its inhabitants. Voice recognition is implemented in some of the systems so users can communicate by voice with some devices. Climate control is fully automatic and can be changed in every room of the house. fig.4 Living Tomorrow fig.5 Kitchen computer fig.6 Interieur design Living Tomorrow

4 The house of the Future versus Living Tomorrow Looking at both projects, what changed in a period of 15 years in the perception of how we live tomorrow? When you look at the physical technology in both projects not so much has changed. The improvements in communication and information technological gave us much more possibilities. Internet makes the big difference between both projects. The house of the Future had technology that wasn t fully developed yet and has grown up in Living Tomorrow. Because of the development of internet, Living Tomorrow can add a large amount of new applications that further improved the living quality of inhabitants. The main step in Living Tomorrow is the way the technology lives beside and works together with people. It s more supporting in everyday life, taking over simple jobs so life becomes easy and you can focus on really important things. The real technology was already implemented in the house of the future. Solar panels, climate system, central computer and remote controlled housing equipment were there. The only thing that actually changed is an improvement in usability. This is done by improving interfaces and communication with the technology so it becomes easy to use for the inhabitants. Besides easy to use technology the improvement in communication gave use the opportunity to communicate easily with everybody around the world using internet, mobile phones and . Both projects in relation to everyday live of today. What technology of these projects do we see in our everyday life? To answer this question it s best to look at The House of the Future, as Living Tomorrow is just realized. The thing that makes the big difference between the two projects is actually also the thing that came into our everyday lives and changed it so much: the internet. As shown above, the real hard technology in the two projects conceptually didn t really change that much. Living Tomorrow only takes this technology and implements it in a time in which internet has caused major changes. Considering an average family house most of the technology implemented in The House of the Future didn t find its place in the average household. The dishwasher is still a stand-alone machine with maybe a little more options. The automatic climate system has maybe improved but isn t really the central control system yet. The solar panels are rarely used in housing projects, everybody still uses his normal metal key to enter the house and although the personal computer is incredibly fast compared to 1989 you almost never speak to it. What did get into the average household and really changed living is the personal computer with internet and mobile phones. It changed the way people communicate with each other and how we get information that we use in our live. This development, although in some way expected in the house of the future, made the major change in our home environment. But it doesn t include all the technological improvements shown in the projects.

Conclusion So the new question would be: will new, although more advanced, usage of this technology in Living Tomorrow eventually find a place to everyday live of the next decade?

The two projects try to make our lives easier and comfortable but in the end we don t use a lot of the systems. Are they to expensive or aren t we trusting the technology to take over?

5 Conclusion So the new question would be: will new, although more advanced, usage of this technology in Living Tomorrow eventually find a place to everyday live of the next decade? An impossible question to answer as it will be only a guess. Of course a large number of parameters are responsible for the failure or success of a technology. The two projects try to make our lives easier and comfortable but in the end we don t use a lot of the systems. Are they to expensive or aren t we trusting the technology to take over? Is it just a matter of time to adapt to these new technologies? As fare as I m concerned it all has some influence. What s really hard to except for my grandfather is completely normal for me. Technology needs time to be accepted. And of course sometimes a tool looks really handy on the drawing board or in the showroom but appears to be of no use in everyday life. Living Tomorrow shows technology that is using the existing information from the internet and brings this to the users in a new way. The internet was missing in The House of the Future to bring the technology to a higher level and getting information to the user. Living Tomorrow is trying to control the internet, selecting the right information for the user and make it easy for him to access and use this information when needed It tries to keep the user from getting drowned in an overload of information. This control of information will probably be the next step. As the technology was there in 1989 we now have the information network that is able to control this technology and use it to our best needs. Controlling technology to our needs is the next step and Living Tomorrow is trying to do this. The key to this will be new smart interfaces and programmes that control the information. Will it be like the technology in Living Tomorrow? Partly it will, but other things will look almost ridiculous. As shown in the past 15 years it gives a good image of where we are going and tries at its best to show what is possible and could change. But in the end projects like these aren t able to show the real future technology at work as the implementation of internet couldn t be predicted 15 years ago. fig.7 Electronic fare Japan fig.8 Home theeater of the future

6 References Hans Iblings 1989 Het inspannigsloze huishouden; huis van de toekomst in Rosmalen Architect vol.20 no.7/8 juli/aug p Chriet Titulaer 1989 Huis van de Toekomst:, Chriet Titulaer b.v., pages Theo Verrips 2004 Living Tomorrow, Tielt Lannoo pages Living Tomorrow 2004 R. Cavallo 2000 Plandocumentatie wereldtentoonstellingen, Delft University press 91 pages Bernard Leupe en Jante Leupen 1992 Dwelling and Modernity, Publikatieburo bouwkunde Spatial fluidity p. 95 Boris de Ruyter days ambient intelligence research in homelabphilips Research to mark the first anniversary of Homelab on April 24, pages hyperbody group website.

The Policy Implications of End to End December 1, 2000 Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, Stanford, CA

The Policy Implications of End to End December 1, 2000 Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, Stanford, CA Introduction: Lawrence Lessig, Andy Schwartzman, Jerry Saltzer LARRY: When I was